Ask Parvati 41: The Power of the Inner Child - Part 3: Let The Child Take You Home

(Continued from "An Apple in an Orange Grove")

 

Recently I was out with a friend in a mall. She was asking me a similar question, feeling a bit stuck with her attachments to her family. I said to her, look around. Beside us is not a 24 year old guy and a 35 year old woman but a two year old boy and a three year old girl. This mall is full of two and three year olds. Many of the fundamental decisions we make every day likely come from our unconscious mind, that is, the unresolved inner child that continues to rule our life until we give it the love and attention it needs and turn towards the Divine, the source of unconditional love. Anyone who has tried setting long term goals knows this to be true. We need to have our unconscious mind in alignment with our conscious mind, or else we inevitably meet an inner saboteur and fail. That is because our unconscious mind is ultimately in charge. Our primary commitments live in the depth of our unconscious, so we had best befriend these in order to evolve.

 

Most of us live with a buried inner child, held captive by the grip of our ego that is committed to getting limited power through whatever means it can, such as people pleasing, power plays, expectations and disappointments, lofty then thwarted dreams -- anything to keep the wanting mommy and daddy dynamic alive, that is, the wanting to find the infinite in the finite.

 

Our inner child is the summation of the joys, dreams and wounds we carried from our previous lives and our life in this incarnation. He/she is connected to the voice of our soul. Because in truth we are children of the infinite, our inner child remembers the purity of that connection. When we listen to our inner child, he/she can lead us there.

 

We can easily blame our parents, our circumstance, our life out there that is "happening to me" for our hurts and unhappiness. Then, we are like sour apples in an orange grove. Or we can hold our parents or external things in the highest light, making them like gods, thinking that those oranges are so much better than our apple-self, our authentic nature. Only when we see our parents and all external sources of happiness as they truly are, in their temporal humanity, beautiful and frail, perfect and flawed, can we be the apples we are and leave the orange grove, so we may blossom in our own apple orchard.

 

We need to leave the illusion of the finite being infinite in order for us to contact our true self. This process is the process of coming into contact and healing our inner child. Through the eye of our inner child, we can reconnect to the infinite, which we once knew implicitly. Our inner child, in essence, guides us home to wholeness.

 

What we experience in our lives is a reflection of our core beliefs and our previous karmic tendencies. Our parents and our current life, that was created by the choices we have made since infancy, are a reflection of these, all the while guided by a loving universe to help us see the errors in our ways, the root of ignorance we carry as well as the love we truly are.

 

The wounds we experience from childhood are like ruptures in the mirage of finite perfection, so that we can break through our slumber and attachments to ignorant wanting, that keeps us disconnected. This happens so we may return to the one source of true unconditional love. In this way, love always was, even through the painful moments, even when we thought it was not. Love always is. Just ask your inner child. Those sparkling, deep, infinite eyes are still with you. Look deeply. Look deeper still. There you will find your inner child with open arms, ready to take you home. If you need some help contacting your inner child, you may refer to the exercise given in my Be A Mother To Yourself post.

 

Much peace to you,

Parvati

 

PS. A reminder that Thursday is the deadline to send your questions for the next Ask Parvati. In the meantime, stay tuned for the next issue of Parvati Magazine.