Discovering Your Inner Child

[Guest guest]

"Discovering Your Inner Child" Written by Shakti Gawain "Most of us think we're supposed to be one consistent personality, and we wonder why we sometimes feel so inconsistent. One day we feel one way, another day we feel another way. Sometimes one minute we feel one way and the next minute we feel a different way. What I've been discovering is that we're not one person at all. We all have many people inside us, many different characters. "Think of these people as being different sub-personalities. Each is distinctly its own character, with its own set of needs and desires, its own point of view, its own opinions. Often these sub-personalities are diametrically opposed to one another. We have a part of us, for example, that thinks the most important thing to do is work very hard and become successful. And if that part of us were running the show we would be

working all of the time. On the other hand, there may also be a part completely opposite who just wants to relax, hang out, goof off and enjoy life. "Usually, we're more identified with one or the other of these parts within. If we're a workaholic, type of person, we are heavily identified with the character in us that's a hard worker, and we generally ignore, deny, or suppress the other character in us that's perhaps the hedonist, the pleasure lover, or the one that likes to simply BE. Sometimes we feel the conflict between the two and we bounce back and forth between them. "It's very interesting to get to know all the people inside and to respect them all. Each of them, in fact, is an important part of us. Each is an aspect of our personality that we need to learn to know, respect, explore, and appreciate. By allowing ourselves to know and express ALL the sub-personalities within us, we can become balanced

instead of being identified with only one side of a polarity. Ideally, we want to explore both sides of the polarity and then be able to choose the appropriate moments for the different sub-personalities to run the show. "Coming to know all of your selves is quite a fascinating exploration. I sometimes think of myself as being a family, not just one person. And as in most families, there's a certain amount of conflict, and there's also a lot of love. The idea is to let every member of the inner family play its role, express itself, and be respected for the part that it plays in the family, so that ultimately the family can be in harmony. "Another interesting metaphor for this situation inside of you is to think of yourself as being a committee. When you think about yourself as a committee, it often explains why it is so difficult for you to get a job done or make a decision. We all know what happens when a

decision is made by a committee. One person wants one thing, another wants another, and half the time nothing gets done. If you can get to know the members of your inner committee and allow them to express themselves clearly, then YOU, as a conscious person, can begin to make the decisions, instead of allowing whichever part of you happens to grab control in any given moment make the decisions. "Another way I like to look at this is to think of myself as a theater, and all the characters are playing out their dramas on an inner stage. We tend to attract people into our lives who reflect the various characters inside ourselves -- we are attracted to people, and attract people to us, who are similar to our sub-personalities. In this way we play out the inner drama externally. Many lessons in our lives involve learning to see the reflections of people in our lives and what they show us about our inner selves. "The

ultimate point is to come to know, love, and accept all aspects of ourselves. There's no part of us that's bad. Everything in the universe wants to be loved and wants to be accepted. Whatever you're not loving and not accepting will follow you around until you love and accept it. "For many of us, for example, it's difficult to accept that there's a person in us that's angry. In fact, it's REALLY angry because it's never been listened to and hasn't had a chance to be accepted. But you can start to find safe, comfortable, appropriate ways to allow your anger to be felt and experienced and expressed appropriately, that self eventually becomes an accepted part of you, and a lot of the "charge" dissolves. "Each inner character is very important in our lives, and each has gifts to give us. But one of the most important aspects of ourselves is our inner child, the child that lives inside each of us always. In fact, we

have many children within ourselves. We have within a child of every age, from earliest infancy through adolescence. "These children within have many different aspects. We have a child within that is very vulnerable, very emotional. In fact, the child inside of us is the seat of our emotions. So, to learn to be in contact with our emotions and to love and accept our feelings, we must be in touch with the vulnerable child within us. "There is a child in us that's very playful, that knows how to have fun, just as little children naturally know how to have a good time, know how to play. We all have that child within us, a child that naturally sparkles and has fun and plays and is constantly looking for what's fun in life. "We also have a magical child inside us. This is the part that is naturally tuned in to the magic of the universe. As adults, most of us have forgotten about this

magic. When we were children we knew there was magic and we were connected with that magic. We naturally understood the magic of little plants and animals, and maybe we were even in contact with elves and fairies or whatever magic meant to us. "There's also a very wise child within us. It's a part of us that's very truthful, that sees and knows what we're feeling, what other people are feeling, that has the power to cut through much of the superficial dishonesty that exists in adult society, and always goes right to the core truth of situations. "A good way to start to get in touch with or become aware of the child (or many other sub-personalities) within us is to look at real children. Children reflect the child inside us. I'm sure you've all had experiences when you've looked into an infant's eyes and felt a very profound connection. Or you've seen a child be very playful, and it brings out that playful part

of you. Or you've had a child say something to you that's so profoundly wise you feel extremely moved by it. You feel that this child in a way knows more than you do. That's a reflection of the knowingness of your inner child. "The child within us is certainly one of the most important aspects of ourselves to contact. One reason is that, as spiritual beings, we come into a physical body and are born into this world as a child, as an infant. So the child is the closest part of our personality to the spiritual essence. When the child is born it is almost purely spiritual essence, because at that point it has no contact or experience with the world. That is why we are so moved when we are with very young children; we see the reflection of our own profound and beautiful and innocent spiritual essence that has not yet been buried or hidden. "As we get in touch with the child inside us, we get in touch with our

deepest and purest spiritual essence. By cultivating the relationship with the inner child, we automatically form a deeper and stronger connection with our essence, and our spiritual essence can then come through. "Another important reason for getting in touch with our inner child is that the child is the key to our creativity. We all know how creative children are, unless they've already been inhibited. Very young children are endlessly creative. They're always playing some kind of game of imagination so easily. You know: Let's play house. Let's play fireman. Let's pretend this. Let's pretend that. And they go right into that imaginary world. They're filled with imagination and creativity. They love to draw. They love to paint. They're always singing little songs. They dance. They're magically creative beings. "All of us are that way, too. We all had that magical, creative essence within us as children,

but as adults we have suppressed it, we have inhibited it. So, as we get in touch with the child inside us, we release our creativity. "The key to creativity is bieng willing to try something, to risk doing it and to see what happens. Our creative child is the part of us that's not afraid to try new things. When children draw pictures, they don't worry about whether they're going to look exactly the way some critic thinks they should look. They just do it for the joy of it. And that's how our creative energy can be freed, by feeling the essence of that child within us and being willing to try things that are fun and enjoyable and exciting and new and different. I find over and over again that as people get in touch with the child they open whole new areas of creativity within themselves, which is immensely fun and rewarding. "Also the child is the key to intimacy in relationships. Because the child is the part

of us that feels the deepest emotions, it's the part of us that can truly love. And it's also the part of us that's vulnerable, the part that can be wounded, hurt. To feel real intimacy with another person you must be in touch with your vulnerability, with your love, even with your ability to be wounded. "So it's the vulnerable child within us that allows us to feel intimacy and closeness with other people. If we are not in touch with our child we will not experience true intimacy. As we learn to be in touch with the child and take care of the child and protect and express the child in appropriate ways, we can experience intimacy in healthy, fulfilling ways in our lives. "Some people are in touch with their inner child. Perhaps some of you already know that you are in touch with your child or you may know people who are in touch with their child. These people are usually fun to be around or move us emotionally,

who touch us as a child does. "But most of us have suppressed or buried the child because at a very young age we discovered that it's not a very safe world for the child. So, from the very earliest times in our lives we began to build defenses and protection for the child. Most of our personality structure, in fact, is a defense, created to take care of that very sensitive, vulnerable, feeling essence that is the inner child. We build stronger and stronger walls of defense, more and more mechanisms for surviving in a touch world that's not set up for this innocent child. "Eventually, the child that we're trying to protect gets totally buried inside us, and we don't even know it exists. That's the predicament most of us are in. We automatically run on our defense systems and our survival mechanisms, and we forget that the reason we have them is to take care of and fulfill the needs of the child. But the child

inside us is in pain because its needs are not being met. The child does not go away. It never grows up. It never dies. It is with us through our entire lives. "If we're not conscious of those needs, then we are constantly trying to fulfill them unconsciously. The child within us is unconsciously motivating all our behavior. We may, for example, develop a sub-personality that's a workaholic because it's trying to make enough money to make the child feel safe and protected. But we end up forgetting about the child and spend our whole lives working hard. We may accumulate a lot of money and a lot of success, but none of it gives us the satisfaction we need because we've forgotten about the child who was the original motivating force. "Sometimes the child will actually sabotage our attempts to be successful or do the things we think we should do, because secretly the child knows that its needs are not going to be

met by what we're striving for. I've found that when people have a block about being successful in life, often the block comes from the inner child whose needs are not being met. The child will stop you from being successful until you start to give it more nurturing, more love, more time to play, or whatever it needs. "So our challenge is to get in touch with the inner child, to find out what the child's needs are, and to begin consciously to take care of the child. The child's needs are for love, for physical and emotional contact, for enjoyment, and to express itself honestly and creatively. As we begin to find ways of doing those things, we find our whole personality starts to come into alignment, and we become healthy and balanced. "There are many ways to get in touch with the child inside us: through playing, dancing, singing, drawing, painting, by being in nature, or by hanging out with children and

allowing ourselves to experience our inner child. Buy a toy, a stuffed animal, and allow your inner child to express what it wants and needs in ways that are fun. Often the child inside comes forth with animals, because children naturally love animals. "One way that's been very helpful for many people is through the meditation that follows." Copyright 1991. "Meditations" (book), written by Shakti Gawain, Published by New World Library. http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/AffirmationstoDe-Stress A positive thinking, positive affirmations support group, that empowers us with ways to sail through daily life stress. Come aboard! PJ and Gang