“In the shamanic world, what you went through is preparation for living a different kind of life, and that kind of life can be had when one is ready to view one’s life as a journey of the utmost importance.”
Chuck spoke these words to me when I was in the midst of recapitulating my childhood sexual abuse. They were transformative words, words of light in the midst of deep personal agony, for they focused me on the intent of my journey through this life. Why am I here? What am I supposed to learn about myself? What is the greater meaning of all that happens in this world? Once again, these words rang through me as I contemplated what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School last week.
I believe that we are all on journeys of the utmost importance, whether our lives are long and fulfilling or cut short. So, what are we to make of the senseless shootings at Sandy Hook? What meaning can we find in that tragedy, in the deaths of so many young children and the educators who dedicated their lives to engaging and teaching the youngest members of our society, a most important job?
We must face ourselves. We must face the world we have created. We must take this senseless act as a final wake up call and we must not go back to sleep. We must all take a journey of the utmost importance now and change ourselves and our country.
We must allow ourselves to feel every aspect of this most horrific act of violence, really feel it, and be guided now along a new path. We must all partake in creating a new society, not one based on fear as we did after 9/11, but one based on compassion and caring for all living things.
We must not wipe the tears from our eyes and then go out and buy more guns to protect ourselves, arm teachers and bus drivers, as has been suggested. Had I been a gun owner I would have wept and then immediately destroyed my guns. Why is this not happening? Why do we still contend that to be armed is our right and our need? It’s not a need at all, it’s a contention based on fear. And so we must ask ourselves what we fear and why?
In countries where there are few guns, in places where even the police don’t carry guns, there are few shooting deaths as well. It’s a no-brainer. But here, in a society rampant with greed, we have become like complacent animals. Locked in our cages, we are fed more pills, more food, more poisons, than we can possibly need. So drugged are we by the ideas that we need more things, more protection, more guns, that our brains have numbed. We are no longer capable of independent thinking, feeling, and action. We are mere cattle crowded into feedlots, long ago having forgotten that we are free beings, on journeys of the utmost importance.
In the wake of this tragedy, it’s time to wake up and stay awake, to take up not guns but a new weapon called compassionate change that is based on what is universally right for all living beings. Are we a nation of killers, or are we a nation of good, of kindness, compassion, and love?
Change happens slowly and it also happens in an instant, as the shootings at Sandy Hook show us so clearly. If we are truly on journeys of the utmost importance, it’s up to each one of us to take up the cause of personal change now—right now—to instantly turn away from violence, hatred, fear, and instead become truly caring beings. But we can only do this by facing our own deepest fears, by challenging ourselves to stay awake and really confront what lies at our deepest core, to question what is holding us back from becoming the truly amazing and loving beings that we are meant to be.
The shots at Sandy Hook were heard around the world. And now the rest of the world is waiting to see what we will do in the wake of so many truths so loudly declared, that is: that guns kill; that we had regressed into an angry, entitled, fearful nation; that we are no longer the shining star to look up to for guidance. How many times must we make the same mistakes? How many wake up calls do we need?
We must all face what we have become and take full responsibility for not only where we now find ourselves—those overfed cattle in the feedlots—but for our own thoughts, actions, and deeds as well. In our complacency we’ve let a lot of things happen, but now we are being rallied to really change, and to change drastically. If we are truthful, we will look at our world with open eyes and truly see that there is so much that is going in the wrong direction, and that each one of us has a duty to get on the bandwagon of change, in whatever way we can, and turn it in a new direction. But first, as I said, we must begin by changing ourselves. We must investigate our own attitudes, fears, and prejudices by asking ourselves why we feel so entitled, and why we continue to fear, judge, and criticize others rather than face ourselves.
Do we have to face yet more jolting wake up calls? Or can we take up a new cause now and take our journeys of the utmost importance in a new direction, to a higher level of conscious awareness and action so that those who died last week—those who gave us this most frightening wake up call—will not have died in vain. Let their journeys be considered journeys of the utmost importance by truly taking action to change ourselves and our country, and show the world that what lies in our hearts is what now leads us forward.
We have mice, little gray house mice and brown, white-footed field mice. We have big mice and little mice. One day we opened the door leading down to the garage and found two baby mice, blind and shivering, hunched down on the threshold. They were tiny and supple enough to flatten their bodies and squeeze under the tightly fitting doorjamb. As we opened the door, they scrambled back into a tiny hole in the doorframe. Mother mouse was probably out hunting, hunting in our kitchen right next door no doubt.
Evidence of mice greets us every morning in the kitchen, little mouse doots all over the place, in the sink and on the counters. We leave very little food out, but the mice still come. I had three little red chili peppers drying in a small bowl on the counter. One day I noticed that one of the peppers was missing. The next day all three were gone, taken by the mice. I wondered what kind of mice we really had. They like hot chili peppers?
We hear them running up the walls to the attic. We even hear them knocking things over up there, thumps and crashes that make it sound like more than just tiny mice. When our girls are visiting they see mice scurrying across the bathroom floor. I’ve plugged up the most apparent entryways, but the mice still get in. We feel bad about killing any creature, but we made an executive decision to put out traps. We justified this by saying we’d feed the dead mice to the crows, one creature giving its life so another might live. It seemed reasonable.
Every morning we’d find mice in the traps we’d set out. I’d apologize and thank the mice for giving their lives, and then put them out on an altar-like stone ledge in the front yard. Soon crows would arrive and take the mice. It was a system that seemed to be working, at least on the outside. But inside I began to feel bad. I noticed that I had a swollen gland in my neck. I’d notice it when I was reading, my head bent at a particular angle to my book.
A sudden insight…
The other day—the day Hurricane Sandy blew inland and rattled our windows and shook our house with gusts of wind—I had a sudden insight while standing at the kitchen sink. I realized I had to stop killing the mice. It wasn’t right. As the rain pelted the kitchen window over the sink, I suddenly knew that the swollen gland in my neck was due to this killing.
“I have to stop killing the mice,” I said to Chuck. “Even though I’ve justified the killing, saying that it’s necessary and that I’m feeding the crows in turn, it’s still wrong. I’m absorbing the energy of those dead mice. That’s why I have a swollen gland. It may sound pretty farfetched, but it’s been bothering me for a while now, and I knew it had something to do with something that wasn’t quite right, that something was bothering me on a deeper level. Now I see what it is.”
Last night, I didn’t set any traps. My decision felt right. I had forgotten about my swollen gland, but a little while ago I noticed that it’s completely gone. The message that came in on the storm rattled more than my windows. I got a much deeper appreciation for how we are affected by energy, if we care to investigate ourselves on a deeper level. It’s what Jeanne mentioned doing in her message on Monday, and although I didn’t consciously follow her missive, the storm itself led me to investigate and resolve an issue, as the energy of nature, the storm, awakened a deeper unrest inside me.
The empty altar stone.
The mice came into the kitchen last night. I cleaned up their droppings this morning, but I feel no anger or animosity toward them. They are just doing what mice do.
We are on Great Duck Island, a 220 acre private island in the Gulf of Maine, ten miles from the mainland. Only one house. We are renting it for the week. No roads, no amenities. We have been dropped off by boat with all of our supplies and will be picked up a week later. We are sharing the island with over seventy species of birds.
Our sixth day here dawns rainy, foggy, and cool. Finally, by late morning, the sun begins to shine through, piercing the fog, drying the grass. We decide to go for a walk. The tide is coming in, but it will be several hours before it is at its highest.
We decide to tramp along the cliff, heading North, beyond the spot we’d explored yesterday and then cut down to the popplestone beach further along the shoreline. The ground beneath our feet is soft, peat, and we sink into it at every step. We’ve already learned that walking on this island takes attention. Whether on the soft ground punctuated by storm petrel burrows or on the rocky shore, we are aware that we must put our feet down with consideration of what is beneath us, with care of our bodies and the nests that pop up unexpectedly everywhere we walk. Our walks are slow as a result. There is no hurrying on this island.
The Sentinels
We are supremely aware of the gulls perched on the rocky berm that frames the entire island. Like soldiers standing on a thick castle wall these sentinel gulls watch us intently, sending up trumpeting calls of our approach. There are no quiet walks on this island. This island is alive, the energy of nature unleashed and at its most basic, unadulterated by human interference. We are aware that we are interlopers, unwanted, considered dangerous. We stick to the path until we come to a fork that veers down to the rocky beach. We take it.
Supremely alert now, the gulls croak more loudly. Some of them fly up, attempting to distract us from their scattering of nests in the rocks. We are foe. No matter who we are or what our intent might be, they detect us as intruders and nothing else. We are not to be trusted.
When we’d hiked along the rocks yesterday, at low tide, we’d been closely watched and monitored. The gulls had kept up a constant croaking and mewing, alerting their neighbors along the berm of our approach, punctuated every now and then by a loud shriek, but otherwise they had tolerated us. I’d called back to them, mimicking their staccato calls as we hopped along the rocks, studying the life in the numerous tidal pools, searching for small stones naturally tumbled to soft smoothness by the waves. We’d watched as the more threatening natural predators, the eagles, had come. Swooping down upon the gull’s nesting grounds they’d arrived suddenly, stealthily, large, ominous black shadows momentarily cutting off the light. The largest gulls had flown up just as quickly and like jet fighters they’d attacked, driving the eagles offshore. By comparison we were nothing to worry about.
Today is different. As soon as we step off the path and onto the rocks the gulls go crazy. I assume that after a while they will get used to us, just as their neighbors to the south had done yesterday. But I am wrong. The gulls continue to shriek and fly overhead as we make our way to the water’s edge. The rocks here are smoothed by the tides, popplestones of a variety of sizes, large and small they rise up like shaved monks heads from the incoming tide. It’s tricky walking on them. I center myself and get calm. Taking my attention off the gulls, I concentrate on getting a good hopping pace going, on balancing and sure-footedness, thankful for all my years of yoga training.
Sitting in the vastness...
Chuck is nearby taking photographs, his eyes picking out the beauty of the surroundings, the uniqueness of the large rounded stones that now sit so calmly exposed. Rolled by the tides for millennia, they have been here for far longer than we will exist in a lifetime. We are quiet, each having our own experience, our gazes downward. I pick up a beautiful stone that fits nicely in the palm of my hand and carry it with me, shifting it back and forth from hand to hand as I balance on the rocks. I pause to sit on a warm pink ledge of granite. I see that Chuck has walked further to the north now while I have been making my way south and east, back the way we came. He is thoroughly engrossed in his own experience of this moment, taking in this day’s delights.
Suddenly I am aware of the gulls shrieking wildly overhead. I look up, wondering if eagles have come again, but I see nothing in the sky except a swirl of gulls. Where yesterday one or two gulls had monitored us from above, today there are twenty. Sea gulls are large, and with their broad wingspans their shadows are as darkly ominous as the eagles’ shadows that I’d experienced yesterday.
I get up from my pink ledge and call out to Chuck. He can barely hear me above the sound of the waves and the cries of the gulls. “They don’t want us here!” I shout. I see him nod, but I know he doesn’t understand. I point upward. “The gulls! They don’t want us here!” He nods again and goes back to his camera. I see that there are only one or two gulls high above his head. They don’t seem to be bothering with him, while I am now inundated, surrounded by shrieking gulls. They don’t want me here!
Suddenly I’m afraid. As if on cue the gulls get more aggressive. They dive at me, screaming in my ear, their wings clipping close to my head. I scream back. I cannot help myself. Fear takes over. Cowering, I creep along the rocks, in a hurry now. Like Golem I slink, guilty of what I know not, but I am the enemy and the gulls want me out of their territory.
Fear takes control...
Caught, trapped like an animal in the middle of the popplestone quarry, I look at the expanse of rocks ahead of me. This is not easygoing terrain to cross in the best and calmest of circumstances, but it’s the path I am on now. I have no choice but to take it. I hop and jump, going as fast as I can while the gulls swoop lower and lower, so close that I feel the air of their wings brushing the hair on my head, their shrieks deafening. I hunker down even lower, fearful of being struck with their knife-like wings, afraid of being nipped on my ear by their sharp beaks. At the same time I repeat what I have recently read in a manual at the house we are staying in: The gulls will not attack you, but they may poop on you. I use it as a mantra to drive away the fear that has now permeated me.
Suddenly, I am a spider scurrying along the rocks. On all fours I let fear take over. It envelopes me and the gulls maneuver ever closer, intent on driving me from their territory, into the ocean and away from their nests. It’s high tide so the rocky beach is not as wide as it could be, the tide coming in a little higher every moment. The more I hunker down the more the gulls shriek and the closer they fly. Cowering down between two giant rounded stones I look back to see where Chuck is. I want him to come to my rescue, and to take care too, to hurry up and join me in getting out of here as fast as possible, but he is nowhere in sight. I have scurried over a rise and he is far away on the other side, oblivious to my plight. I am in this alone. Trapped, afraid, targeted by the gulls, all I want to do is get out of here!
I look around at my options. Perhaps I can make a run for it back up the slope, to the top of the berm and through the nesting beds, but I know that I will never make it through the thickets of wild roses that grow along the ledge nor get past the loudly trumpeting gulls lined up like a firing squad. There is no possibility of escape. I must face the situation I find myself in. The incoming tide is now lapping at my feet, the cold water sending chills down my sweaty spine. Gripped in fear, the crowd of gulls growing louder and more numerous, I am nothing more than the predatory eagle I saw yesterday and they are intent on driving me off. Finally something clicks.
“Don’t let the fear rule you,” I tell myself. “Take control.”
And then I know I am here in this moment in time to conquer this experience of fear, for we have come to this island aware that its limitations will present us with many confrontations of self and self as part of a unit. We are living within the sealed oven of containment, and in the heat of the closed oven we must confront whatever arises.
In this moment I get it, I am being overwhelmed by fear and the gulls know it. They sense it in me. In the grips of this fear I have become a threat, to both the gulls and myself. I know that I can’t appear so weak and frightened or the gulls will continue to harass me. I stand up quickly, my head grazing the wing of a gull, but, as soon as I do, everything changes. The gulls immediately rise higher, taking their scissor sharp wings and their bloodcurdling cries with them. And in the instance of rising my fear completely disappears, like the jacket I had shed earlier in the heat of the clearing day I feel it slip away into nothing.
What is there to fear now?
Standing at my full height of 5 feet 3 inches, I am suddenly a giant of calmness. No longer acting like a guilty thief caught in the act, I walk slowly and deliberately into the still screaming flock of gulls. But now I notice them acting differently too. No longer do they heckle me. No longer do they come strikingly close but instead fly out over the ocean. Drawing my attention outward, they put on an increasingly curious show. Swooping and circling in the air like clowns, they dance above the waves. Crashing into each other and falling tumbling into the ocean, they put on a mock fight, granting me a most unusual acrobatic display.
Glancing at my feet, ready to take the next step, I suddenly see the reason for all of this, for the whole experience. There, tumbling through the stones, is a small gull chick, a gray-speckled ball of fluff blindly stumbling toward the water. I get it now. The whole thing has been about this, about the gulls protecting this young chick, drawing my attention away from it and perhaps many more that I have not noticed. They have been drawing me, the predator in their midst, away from noticing this most vulnerable member of their colony. I note the chick and quickly move on. Not wanting to cause any more distress, I walk away, tall and steady, in balanced calm, aware that I have just had a most transformative experience.
Finally I stop and look back. Chuck is catching up to me now. With the camera pointing down, he’s still taking photographs, still oblivious. I see that he doesn’t notice the gull chick. I wonder if the gulls will get it back into the nest before the eagles fly over.
As I stand and wait for Chuck, I look back over the popplestones and over the experience I just had as I crossed their vastness. Overcome by fear, I became a fearful being. In the midst of appearing like a predator I became prey. But it was all illusion created by the circumstances. The fear escalated as the gulls detected it, and as I fell for it, fully embracing a sense of impending doom.
Upon realizing that the gulls were treating me like the scared animal that I was indeed portraying, I was able to muster enough energy to enact a shift. Shedding the fear, the illusion that I now saw it as, was a mere physical act. With a shift of my posture, I flung off the fear and regained my equilibrium. In rejecting the fear, I sent the predators away—both the gulls and the fear—and in so doing released myself from being perceived as a predator as well.
While I stand and ponder all of this, the gulls continue their air show. As they circle around I can still look right into their perfectly round beady eyes, but I fully understand the game we’re playing now. I stand without fear, looking back at them in total calm now, aware indeed that they will not attack me, not in this state anyway. Their look is no longer frightening, but almost has a glimmer of humor. “Ha, Ha,” they seem to say, “we really scared you!”
As Chuck draws closer, I see the gulls circling over him too, but he pays them no heed. I see that’s how to do it. He’s done it naturally. Totally focused on his task at hand, intent upon capturing the beauty of this wild, ever-changing landscape we are so privileged to be spending the week in, he hasn’t fallen into the predator’s grip.
“Did you notice what was going on?” I ask.
“I looked up at one point and I couldn’t believe how fast you were going!” he says. “I wondered what the heck you were doing!”
“I was freaking out!” I say and I tell him about my experience.
We laugh and look at the gulls still trying to draw our attention away from their babies. I’m exhausted by my encounter with the nature of fear. I need to get off the sun-drenched rocks and rest in the shade awhile.
Fear washing out to sea...
“Being on this island is so meaningful. I learned a lot today,” I say, as we sit on a bench and look back over the way we’ve come, over the ocean pounding on the shore, hearing the gulls still calling, some other predator now in their midst. I see that I still carry the small stone in the palm of my hand. I remember at one point along the way, in a moment of intense fear, I’d thought of it as a weapon, something to throw at the gulls, though in reality I could never have done such a thing.
The gulls will not attack you, but they might poop on you. I laugh as I tell Chuck about reading this in the house manual.
“I don’t know about that,” I say. “I sure felt like I was being attacked. Being pooped on would have been nothing compared to what I just experienced. But I see how fear takes over and gains control, so easily really, but in the end I discovered that it was nothing. It didn’t exist as soon as I stood up. It fell away like water rolling off a duck’s back. Once I faced it squarely, however, I saw just how intensely it had held me in its grip.”
As we head back along the cliff, I imagine my fear, lying among the popplestones where I left it, about to be washed out to sea by the incoming tide, and I walk freely once again.
My Dear Ones, fear is energy. Fear is knowing the truth of the self at a very deep level. If you are looking for signs and guidance, look first at your fears, for that is where your answers to all your questions lie. It’s where the energy of new life lies too. In fear will you find new life and the energy to forge ahead.
Fears are encountered in the strangest of places and ways...
Face your fears and discover your untapped self. Why do you think you have fears to begin with? They come to warn you, not to be afraid but to be aware of something stirring inside you. What is stirring will be deeply personal, a part of the self long suppressed perhaps, or a part of the self totally unknown. It may be the child self asking for attention. It may be the daring spirit self asking for freedom. It may be both of these things at once, an abundance of energy seeking outlet. It is rare, however, that unbridled release of such energy will lead to any real change.
As spring arrives, look at the modern expression of such energy. In the youthful community it tends to be expressed in uninhibited explosion and momentary unleashing with few long-term results. For in such release is there, unfortunately, little deeper understanding of the true need for such expression.
In fact, all of you are deeply attached to nature, far more deeply than you may realize and this is what you contend with at such times of life: primitive self—nature—stirring deeper awareness of ancient spirit as it seeks joining with everyday self. Fears arise as the everyday self is confronted with primitive self. Expression of this confrontation is often suppressed, rejected, or allowed expression that is misaligned with its true intent.
Choose a new word for fear. Perhaps “change” is more appropriate, or perhaps “transformation” is better because the urge for transformation always comes riding in on fear. Shift away from fear as negative and turn it positive. Fear is really a positive sign, your personal sign, the only guidance you need now, and at any time, as you face life, everyday life and inner life as well.
In facing fear—change and transformation—one must be attentive, alert, constantly aware that one is on a journey. A lifetime is one journey, a lifetime in human form, but that is only part of the true journey of self. The other part is infinite, a simultaneous journey being taken, accompanying the everyday self in the everyday world. This infinite journey is full of insight, full of strange and wonderful happenings, offering deep truths about the human journey as well as its own.
The journey of primitive energy in nature
As you take your journey through life, look upon what happens to you as transformational information: synchronicities and signs that come to greet you on a daily basis, asking you to not only note their presence but to find out what they mean about you personally, the deeper you, the infinite you.
Learn to trust the infinite journey that you are all taking while you are also taking the human journey. Facing fears as nothing more than transformational energy will begin a process of greater awareness of these simultaneous journeys that you are all on.
How you take your journey now is important. Are you like a child with this energy of transformation? Well, on the one hand, that is good, but on the other hand it must be balanced by ancient awareness recognizing its deeper meaning and its deeper challenge.
Discover the difference between child-self and innocent-self. Though they are entwined they are deeply different. Ancient awareness asks child energy of fear to join it in maturity, with reverence, and, yes, in release to its true purpose as transformational information.
How does transformational information come to you? How does change approach you? Watch nature for secrets of success as new roots grow now, new shoots appear, and new energy blossoms all around. Nature does not hold back, yet its direction is both deep and wide.
In nature, in all-encompassing, fearless awareness, new life grows and takes precedence. Human children mature naturally on the outside, but it is equally important for them to mature on the inside. That is your human challenge: to take the inner journey to maturity—transformational beyond anything already undergone on the outside, though it will naturally re-transform the outer self as well, as its process is undergone.
The chickweed naturally grows deep and wide each spring...
Allow for a natural process of self-growth at all times by facing fears and transforming them into new ideas of growth and self. Mature fulfillment requires true innocence in alignment. True innocence must be accessed, understood, trusted, and fully embodied in order for such a journey to be taken, so do not leave your spirit’s true innocence behind, take it with you each step of the way!
These are Jeanne’s words of guidance for this week as I asked her to offer us all some guidance as we experience the energy of spring, bursting upon us in the Northeast USA. I hope this is useful guidance no matter where you are.
I’ve been doing inner child work for years. I’ve learned so much from long encounters, from hours of what Jung termed active imagination, from weeks of inner focus, as I’ve attended to my spirit. I sometimes feel that it’s like driving a car; sometimes I’m aware that I’m doing it, alert and conscious of everything I pass along the way, at other times I arrive at my destination wondering just how I got there.
I do inner child work especially when confronted with a dilemma or when conflicts arise. I know that it’s imperative that I constantly check in with my inner child and see how she’s doing. Although my personal challenges are, for the most part, clearly defined now, I also know that sometimes they are not the issues that need attention but that something else is calling to me, some deeper more profound need is making itself known.
Self-reflection?
I have a dilemma. How do I solve it? I ask for guidance. I wait for an answer. Meanwhile I have my own agenda. For the time being my personal agenda rules. It takes over. It’s all I can think about: how to set it in motion, how to contrive to make it happen, how to make it meaningful. I can’t get away from it. As I allow it to assert itself, it begins to dominate not only my thinking but my actions as well. This feels like part of the process I must go through, but deep inside I feel restless. Something else is stirring in me, raising a protest, asking me if this is really what I intend to do. I push it away.
“No,” I say, “I want it to happen my way. I want to be in control. I want to set up my life in such a manner that I can determine not only the process but the outcome as well.”
“Sorry,” I hear. “You are not going to be granted that wish today. Today you are going to have to struggle and eventually you are going to have to let go.”
“No, I don’t want to. I want things to work out my way!”
As this tug-of-war goes on, I know, deep inside, that I must stop playing this game. From experience, I know that the sooner I acquiesce to a process that is already in progress, already laid out for me, the better things will unfold. This is how I resolve my dilemma: I acquiesce to the process, but it takes deep work to get to this place of acquiescence.
I know I must dissect my personal agenda and discover why I am so attached to it. I must face the fact that I may be trying to hold onto old ideas, old agendas, and old comforts that no longer serve me. I must face that even though I may want those things, they are not good for me; they no longer serve who I am becoming, who I have the potential to become, and whom I need to become to evolve.
Once I’ve studied my personal agenda, the next step is to turn inward. I must get quiet in order to do this. I must let myself have a few moments of meditation or simply sit quietly and comfortably. I must ask myself: What is really going on here? What am I missing? Am I just reluctant, avoidant, affronted? Am I being shown something I must embrace; or the opposite, that this is something I must refuse?
Sitting in calmness allows the voice of our inner child to be heard. If we listen carefully we will hear truths spoken that we may not have wanted to hear before, that we may not have been ready to hear until now. If we allow ourselves to become a frightened child again, knowing that we are facing changes that we don’t want to happen while we also remain our adult selves, we may reach a new level of understanding about how we tend to function on a normal basis.
We all have a needy, wounded child inside us. No matter how much inner work we do that child will always be present, suggesting deeper issues that need attention. Its needs are endless, ancient needs. Eventually we learn that they stretch far back, into eons, into past lives full of similar needs left unresolved.
Ready to get off the well worn path and enter the abyss?
As we do inner child work, our spirit will repeatedly guide us in how to sit alongside our child self, perhaps in discomfort at first, but later in full acceptance as we face the ancient knowing child self and ask it to tell us what comes next. What must I face this time? Where are you taking me?
We must be prepared to face our fears. We must accept that our inner child self of this lifetime is frightened of change. We must accept that our adult self of this lifetime is afraid of change too. Both parts of us must constantly face the truth that change is challenging us to face our fears and conquer them with awareness.
Whenever I sit in calmness with my adult self and my frightened child self, I know that there is something else beneath the fears that I must also face. I must go even deeper. I must reach down to that far more evolved ancient child self, the one who has already lived these life challenges before. This is the knowing self that constantly challenges me to go beyond my present self. This is the place where I will gain clarity on what to do to resolve my dilemma.
Clarity often comes in calmness, delivering a direct blow. Much like getting hit over the head, it strikes quickly and with utter clarity. When we are ready we are able to accept it and immediately act upon it. If we are not ready it will remain churning inside us until we are ready.
When our world is challenging us, even collapsing on us, our deepest dilemma is often in learning how to acquiesce, to let go, to not fight as we have been taught, but to let the process guide us. Often we may find the deeper meaning inside, rather than in constantly looking for reason and answer outside. Sometimes we just can’t have things our way.
There is so much more to doing inner child work. As we work with what our inner child presents, going deeper and deeper, we get to know just who that child is, and just who we are and why. Eventually, we all arrive at that place where the ancient child self speaks. Often the sound of that ancient child’s voice may be distant and difficult to decipher, but if we let our personal agenda go, for even a second, we may be able to accept the truth it brings us. Sometimes just a hint of something different, a deep inner knowing, may waft up and offer us just enough to help us along, to make a decision that will indeed set us on a new path.
What lies in the vastness of the inner world?
The inner world is vast, bigger than the outer world. Jung once noted that once we do inner work we will no longer be able to ready novels, because nothing can compare to what we have already encountered inside the vastness of the self. I have found this to be true. I personally can no longer read a novel. I am quickly bored, knowing that inside the self reside all the mysteries and horror stories that I once enjoyed reading, the adventures and relationships I loved to tap into, other people’s lives I’d turn to. All of those things, and more, reside inside us, in the vastness of our inner world, just waiting to be tapped into.
As we let ourselves be guided through the terrors inside us, we arrive at precipice after precipice. And each time we stand on the brink of change we know that we must take the leap into the abyss that yawns before us, if we are to keep evolving. That is where our riches lie, where our thrills await us, where our adversaries lurk, where our beauties hide, and where our spirits will greet us.
Going ever more deeply inward, we soon discover that our outer world is less threatening, less frightening, less terrifying, for we discover that it cannot present us with anything as frightening as we have already faced within. This is what Jung learned and this is what we also may learn as we continue our inner child work.
Thank you for reading, and may you all enjoy the adventure of a lifetime, inside the self.
