This is Part 7 of a 7-part series on ‘Hole In Your Sole’:
- Part 1 – Dustbin of the Mind (Article & Meditation)
- Part 2 – Healing Your Drama Triangle (Article & Meditation)
- Part 3 – The Confidence to Feel Your Feelings (Article & Meditation)
- Part 4 – How The Sensitive Personality Types Let Go (Article & Meditation)
- Part 5 – What Do Other People Think? (Article & Meditation)
- Part 6 – The Power of Observe (Article & Meditation)
- Part 7 – [You are here] Healing The Inner Child (Article & Meditation)
OUR CHILD WITHIN IS AN EXPRESSIVE ENERGY, it’s assertive, and creative. It can be both childlike and mature to the point of deep wisdom. The child needs to play and to have fun yet it is happily vulnerable, open and trusting. It is healthy, self indulgent, and takes great pleasure in receiving, free of guilt, the inner child is happy to play within the vast mysteries of the Universe.
Is this your inner child?
Most people’s inner child is restricted by the ‘false self’, the part of us that generally feels uncomfortable, strained, and at times, struggles to be authentic. Once we open up to our intuitive side the ‘false self’ and its influence begins to wane.
Becoming aware of our feelings and dealing with them is a crucial part of healing the inner child.
Dealing with feelings allows us to engage with the child energy and its influence in our everyday life. It heals the hurt of not getting our needs met, and accepts the part of us that needs protection, nurturing and a sense of respect.
If we look at our internal world as consisting of mainly two feelings, these are the experience of joy and the experience of pain. Painful feelings leave us feeling drained and empty, yet at times those feelings have taught us the most and allowed us to grow. The ‘false self’ pushes us to experience the depths of the painful feelings, it hordes them and keeps us withdrawn. It tells us how awful we are, how we’re not worth the sharing of the painful experiences or the chance to let them go. The ‘real self’ however knows how to experience both joy and pain. It expresses and shares them both, which it does appropriately with others. The ‘real self’ helps the child experience the full spectrum of emotion and allows it to learn from its world and mistakes.
Your Level of Awareness
When we have experienced a troubled early life we grow into an adult with inner child issues. These manifest in our world as a range of feelings limited to the ‘false self’. At times we may have glimpses of the ‘real self’, but we talk ourselves back into the emotions of the ‘false self’. It is what we know. It is so familiar that we are eluded into feeling ‘safe’. Unfortunately, this sort of loop manifests as the inability to fight for our own empowerment and accept our own potential. There are four levels of awareness to pass through on the journey to healing the inner child.
1. Closed Feelings
This is when we cannot feel a feeling. This is the stage in life when we don’t know who we are, what we want or how to get there. We find it tricky to experience the true self and certainly do not know how to communicate with it. This is the stage at which we are drawn towards superficial experiences and conversation. We report facts, we express little, masters of small talk. No awakened sensitive is in this stage, yet every intuitive sensitive has passed through it. As an aware person, you now no longer have a tolerance for it but you experience much of it around you.
2. Exploration
At this stage we begin to explore how we feel. This is the ‘opening’ process, the time at which every sensitive becomes more intuitively aware. The stage of growing psychic experiences and natural abilities of the higher senses. We explore our feelings, we become more aware of the mind body connection, but we’re guarded as to who we share those feelings with. This may come out in conversation disguised as ideas and opinions rather than actual feelings. We are now testing new territory. The intuitive feelings are temporary and it isn’t long before we have a strong mix of emotions and experience a bit of a clash, a fight, an internal struggle between the ‘real self’ and the misgivings of the ‘false self’.
3. Experiencing
At this stage we have gone into the experience of healing. A fascination for the sensitive at this stage in all things spiritual begins to emerge. We begin to trust our intuitive instincts and have a greater sense of our own accuracy. Relationships in our lives begin to change as we dare to stretch into our authentic self. At this stage, we know how we really feel and we are able to tell people as feelings come up. This is the point at which compromise is near impossible. If we have people in our lives who are functioning at stage 1 and 2 we struggle to engage with them.
We begin to grow mentally, emotionally and spiritually. We know our-self better and are better equipped to develop authentic relationships and friendships. This is when the child within is set free, and the balance of the adult / child world begins. This is the time of tremendous change and adjustment for the sensitive. This can be both emotional and physical change.
4. Knowing
Stage 4 can be a long time coming. It is the stage at which we really ‘know’ ourselves. Our feelings are transparent and we are keen to keep them as authentic as possible. We’ve experienced the energy of the inner child, we will have met this energy and explored our internal world at this level. At this stage we are great at knowing what we want from life and are willing to go and get it. What others think is less important as we have discovered what WE feel. This is expressed calmly and without the need to shout it. However, this is the stage to discern carefully. We begin to discover who we can trust and share our feelings with and who is going to take care of them, in a safe and supportive environment. We find ourselves moving away from those at stages 1 and 2 as we have no desire to experience rejection. This is no longer something we find necessary to learn from as the ‘false self’ is calm and the vulnerability of the inner child in its beauty is evident for all to see.
Spontaneous and Observing
As we become more comfortable with the energy of the ‘real self’ we become masters of observing our not only our own thoughts and feelings, but also those of other people.
As we do, we discover something incredible: we are not defined by our feelings they are simply helpful tools to negotiate the physical world.
We respect they are crucial for our sense of aliveness and our ability to know and enjoy who we are. We can though, simply observe them. At this point we are at peace, harmony and in our true self. Free of the victim we can instantly intuit how we feel. We are truly free to be our-selves.
You are now ready for the meditation:
Advancing the Psyche, Healing the Inner Child