Freedom - the inner child chat

Freedom — The Inner Child Chat

Freedom, is a very different thing when it moves from an idea into the skin.

This is one of the reasons I have such respect for inner child integration. I have taken many people through these practices over the years and there is something quite profound in watching what happens when a person meets an earlier aspect of themselves from the awareness they have available now. What can look almost ridiculously simple from the outside; closing the eyes, bringing an image or felt sense of the younger self into awareness, listening, speaking, allowing, perhaps offering love or reassurance, can create a very obvious movement in the person experiencing it.

You see it. Sometimes in the face, sometimes in the breath or the way the body suddenly occupies space differently. The voice can change. There can be tears, laughter, anger, softness, silence, or an unexpected piece of information that seems to arrive from somewhere beyond the conversation we thought we were having. I have watched and experienced people access an understanding through these processes that they have been trying to intellectually resolve for years, yet when it is perceived through the body, imagery, feeling and the wider field of their awareness, it has an entirely different quality. It becomes theirs.

This is where the process gets really interesting for me because I am not simply interested in revisiting what went wrong in childhood. I am interested in what becomes available now in processing.

We were extraordinarily receptive little beings. Before we had language sophisticated enough to explain the world, the apparatus was already receiving it. Genetics, biology, family, environment, culture, relationship, tone, touch, absence, approval, fear, love, expectation and projection were all part of the soup. We were reading the room long before we knew that was what we were doing, and the body-mind was making adjustments according to what it perceived was needed.

A child who discovers that being quiet creates harmony may become exquisitely good at quiet. Another learns that achievement creates attention. Another becomes funny. Helpful. Invisible. Fiercely independent. The one who needs nothing. The one who keeps everybody together. There is an intelligence in this that I don't want to make wrong. The mask that formed may have been a brilliant little piece of engineering for the environment in which it was created.

It is when we continue wearing it long after the environment has changed that things can get a little tight and this is where I experience the inner child not simply as wounded material from the past, but as a doorway into aspects of our nature that may have been constrained along with it. The freedom to play, to imagine, to receive, to be curious, sensual, expressive, ridiculous, tender, creative, noisy, quiet, wildly interested in a beetle for twenty minutes, whatever belonged naturally to that particular being before the editing became so efficient.

When an integration process touches this territory, there can be a fluidity that returns which is quite beautiful to witness. It isn't necessarily dramatic. A person may simply begin expressing themselves with less effort. They might speak more directly, receive affection differently, become more playful, find themselves creating again, or realise they no longer need to perform the familiar role that has organised their relationships for years. This is the development that interests me: not simply having an insight in the process itself, but seeing the fruits of it appear later in the way someone actually lives.

There is an intelligence revealed through this that I find difficult to reduce to one mechanism, and I don't feel the need to. The psyche participates, the body participates, memory and imagination participate, our neurological and physical reflexes participate, and so do the energetic and spiritual dimensions of experience. Sometimes the perceiver knows exactly what has shifted and can articulate it beautifully; other times something has simply moved and the meaning arrives later.

The experience itself has intelligence.

Perhaps this is also why I experience our innate nature as coherent. Not perfect, polished or permanently peaceful, but coherent in the sense that when more of the instrument is available to itself, its expression becomes less distorted by all the energy required to maintain old protection. There is more room for the finer images of our nature to find form; love, beauty, creativity, freedom, connection, curiosity, generosity, play. They begin to appear not because we have pasted them over the uncomfortable parts of ourselves, but because the organism has more freedom to express them and what we hold within inevitably colours what we project into life.

If I am organised around an old expectation of rejection, that expectation will participate in the images I perceive and the way I meet people. If I have learned that being seen is dangerous, I can consciously desire visibility while another part of the apparatus quietly keeps pulling the curtains closed. When that younger organisation is finally met, listened to and included rather than overridden, the projection can begin to change because the perceiver has changed.

The world may be exactly where it was yesterday, but suddenly there is another image available.

That is a form of freedom experiential understanding opens through the experience of practice.

It is also why the practices around inner child integration don't have to be terribly serious. Play is potent. Creativity is potent. Nature, movement, laughter, imagination, meditation, giving ourselves permission to be beginners again, all of these can nourish parts of the instrument that adulthood has sometimes squeezed into very sensible little boxes.

I love observer meditation for this reason. It allows us to notice that we can witness what is moving without immediately needing to become it or change it. Inner child meditation brings another quality again because we deliberately enter relationship. I might invite someone to see themselves at a particular age, notice what arises without scripting it too quickly, and begin a conversation. How would you speak to this child? What tone would you use? What happens when you offer encouragement, protection, permission or simply your presence? What does the child show you?

Often the most profound part is not what we tell the child but what we receive back. That is where the chat becomes a two-way street. It becomes a physical shift and the anatomy changes because of what releases or is exposed.

The adult has perspective and resources that weren't available then, while the younger self can carry qualities and information the adult has lost contact with. Integration allows those worlds to meet, and I have watched that meeting create an extraordinary shift in how a person perceives themselves and subsequently participates in life.

Maybe that is why I don't see inner child work as continually returning to the past. Done well, it seems to do almost the opposite. It releases energy for the present and the nurturing quality that opens up for the iindividual supports maturation of previous story/experience.

There is less effort required to keep the old architecture standing and more life available for what wants to move now.

More of the innate nature gets through and when love, freedom, beauty, creativity and the peculiar genius of an individual human being are given a clearer passage through the instrument, they don't stay inside the skin. They become choices, relationships, creations, conversations, environments and the images we offer back into the collective field.

We aren't only tending the child we were. We are giving greater freedom to the human being we are here to express.

Have fun exploring.

Continue the exploration

If you want to take the inner-child inquiry beyond an idea and into your own human instrument, Discover Worlds Within explores the body, mind, emotions, nervous system, energy, spirit and consciousness through which we experience and express life.

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Continue the exploration

Discover Worlds Within

Discover Worlds Within explores the human sleeve — body, mind, emotions, nervous system, energy, spirit and consciousness — and the conditioning, intelligence and possibility that participate in the way we experience and express life.

An invitation to understand what has shaped you while becoming increasingly available to what wants to move through you.

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The art of process

What if life isn't asking us to arrive, but to participate?

There is an intelligence to process. We can see it everywhere in nature.

A seed contains possibility, but possibility alone does not make a garden. Soil matters. Water matters. Light matters. Timing matters. The environment matters and there is something within the seed itself that knows how to move towards expression.

Perhaps we are not so different.

Our lives are continually being shaped through the relationship between what is within us and the environments in which we live; our experiences, relationships, conditioning, attention, choices and the ways we respond to what life presents.

And within that relationship is something powerful:

Our capacity to consciously participate.

We Are Always in Process

Human development is often spoken about as though there is somewhere we are supposed to arrive.

A better version of ourselves. More healed. More evolved. More successful. More spiritual. More together.

But what if the invitation isn't to finally become finished?

What if it is to become increasingly available to the process of being alive? Our bodies are continually responding.

Our nervous systems are continually receiving information. Our emotions move. Our thoughts change. Our relationships reveal us. Our environments affect us. Life happens. And through all of it, something is continually being expressed, reorganised, discovered and created.

When we begin to pay attention to this movement, development becomes less about manufacturing a new self and more about developing a relationship with the human being already here.

Attention Is Part of the Environment

We often think of environment as something outside us; the room we live in, the people around us, the food we eat, the culture we inhabit.

But attention is also an environment. What we repeatedly give attention to influences what becomes familiar.

The stories we rehearse. The sensations we notice or ignore. The assumptions we continue to make. The possibilities we allow ourselves to perceive. This doesn't mean pretending everything is wonderful or using positive thinking to override what is actually happening.

It means becoming curious about the quality of attention we bring to our experience.

• What am I nourishing?

• What am I rehearsing?

• What am I protecting?

• What am I giving life to?

• What might become possible if I brought awareness somewhere new?

Trust and Action

This is where the art of process becomes interesting. There is a dance between trust and action and subjective experience. Between listening and moving. Between allowing and choosing. Between recognising that life carries an intelligence of its own and recognising that we are not passive spectators within it. We participate. We can tend the soil. We can change environments. We can interrupt patterns. We can listen differently. We can choose where attention goes. We can become curious about our conditioning rather than unconsciously living from it. We can notice contraction without immediately making it wrong. We can act when action is called for and allow space when something needs time.

This is not control.

It is self-governance.

The capacity to be in relationship with what is moving through us while becoming increasingly conscious of how we meet it.

The Garden Doesn't Bloom by Force

There is something wonderfully humbling about a garden. You can create conditions that support life, but you cannot pull a flower open. You can water it. Feed the soil. Give it light. Protect it when necessary. Prune what no longer serves its growth. And then there is an element of allowing.

Human beings can be similar. Our fullest expression isn't necessarily something we have to force into existence. Perhaps part of our work is creating the conditions in which more of what is already alive within us can emerge.

• Awareness.

• Attention.

• Movement.

• Rest.

• Relationship.

• Play.

• Curiosity.

• Love.

• Challenge.

• Expression.

• Food/thoughts/friends

All become part of the environment. And importantly, so do the difficult parts of being human.Process isn't only the beautiful blooming.It is also the compost.

• The uncertainty.

• The seasons when nothing appears to be happening.

• The things that fall away.

• The moments that ask us to meet ourselves differently.

Nothing in nature blooms continuously.

From Potential to Expression

Potential is an interesting word. We can spend our lives trying to reach our potential as though it exists somewhere ahead of us. But perhaps potential is not simply a destination. Perhaps it is something life continually invites into expression. A possibility becomes an action. An intuition becomes a choice. A feeling becomes communication.An idea becomes creation. An awareness changes a response.

Something once unconscious becomes visible, and suddenly another possibility exists.

This is where process becomes practice and practice becomes expression. Not through perfection.Through participation.

Get Your Skin in the Game

We don't learn the art of process only by understanding it intellectually. We experience it through

• Our bodies.

• Our relationships.

• Our reactions.

• Our creativity.

• Our choices.

• Our grief.

• Our joy.

• Our resistance.

• Our desires.

• Our willingness to begin again.

The human organism becomes both the instrument and the place of inquiry and perhaps that is part of the extraordinary opportunity of being alive: to become curious about the life moving through us, to participate consciously in its unfolding, and to create the conditions in which more of our innate nature can find expression.

This is an invitation to tend the garden. Give attention to the soil. Notice what you're feeding. Pull a weed occasionally. Plant something wildly optimistic. Leave some room for things you didn't plan and trust that not every stage of becoming needs to look like a flower.

You are not a finished product.

You are life in process and there is an art to participating in what wants to bloom.

Continue the exploration

Discover Worlds Within is an experiential exploration of the human organism — body, mind, emotions, energy, nervous system, spirit and consciousness — and what becomes possible as we develop greater awareness of the life moving through us.

Explore Discover Worlds Within →