HEALING YOUR INNER CHILD

Why would anyone want to delve into their past, dredging up old memories long forgotten, so that you can relive them in an endless masochistic exercise? I wouldn't and neither should you. The only reasons you should undertake any journey of self exploration is for the freedom and healing of your awareness.

Unfortunately, most people wait until these issues become stronger than their ability to hold them at bay and they (their sense of who they are or their ego), collapse's in surrender. Sometimes they confuse this feeling with the feeling of defeat. Sometimes it is so big that death feels like the only option. Those that do surrender often experience a euphoria, a sense of freedom, of the world made anew.

This process is a natural cycle. The problem is that we have forgotten how to embrace this type of growth. Instead we fight to the death to keep this horrible monster of surrender to the self at bay, so great is our fear. In our culture, we have little in the way of role models to observe, so that we may KNOW from first hand experience that this is ok, and maybe we could support each other. Could you imagine an ego death party where we celebrate the death of who we are, so that we might step into our present self, music played by the Grateful Dead.

Many times it is our inner child frozen within by some trauma this life, or sometimes other lifetimes, that leads us into these times as it seeks healing or just simply acts out in self destructive behavior.

As a parent I know from experience that many confrontations with my children can be defused by love, by loving who they, are as they are. And in that moment they start to find themselves and become motivated by their inner light . In all honesty this has been a process of trial and error for me. But the more I learn, the stronger my children become and the more whole I become . I find that as a parent, I mostly express the stored disapproval I learned from my childhood.

What if I were to take this lesson and apply it to my inner self, the parts of my wounded inner child? How would I go about it ? For me it has become a meditation. A time when I sit quietly and practice the meditatio
I was taught. I begin a dialogue with whatever part of my inner child is ready to express its self. In the beginning of learning this, I started by feeling the parts of me that didn't feel in present time.

For instance, have you gone back to your parents and here you are 35. Yet the moment you walk in the door and they say, " hello," you feel 10 years old again. This is a part of your energy, your emotional self that is frozen in the past. Sometimes in a two dimensional sense and sometimes in a three dimensional sense. In that three dimensional sense your inner child is living and acting out now, maybe in your relationship, creating the other person as parent to try to find your healing. Reclaim your capacity to parent yourself! Until you are ready to parent or re-parent your inner child, many of your relationships will end up in a co-dependant space.

Sit down and imagine saying "hello," to this part of yourself. Tell this part of yourself you would like to heal and that you love this separated essence and you want to become whole again. Ask what is necessary and guide this part of your self back into the present. Remember just as your children need both love and firm guidance, so does your inner child. Many times, as I've done this meditation, I've seen these parts of myself change before my eyes and grow into the adult that I am. As a paradox, my capacity to enjoy my childlike inner self only grows larger and larger.

I encourage you to take the time to make this a practice, a practice of giving to yourself. Encourage your inner child to play in the now.

Welcome to present time. n