Stop beating yourself up. It isn’t that you aren’t trying. It isn’t that you don’t believe. It isn’t that you can’t meditate. It isn’t that the affirmations don’t work. It isn’t that God doesn’t hear. It isn’t that the Universe is not friendly. It is also not that you aren’t doing it right. You can be doing everything perfectly… as though you had a recipe, a formula, a program. But it can still fail to “fix” you, even though it worked for “everyone else.” It didn’t actually, you know. It’s just that they were at a different point in their journey when they found that remedy and they were ready. Sometimes the inner child that felt unsafe just can’t sit down and “be,” and all that inner chatter or agitation, or the physical symptoms are that tiny person asking to be made safe.
Healing is intentionally bringing to our awareness the intersection of our life experience and intrinsic identity. It is understanding that our being cannot be undone by the doings of life. Most self help books, medical or mental health treatments, and even many holistic approaches attempt to move you from where you are now to where you want to go without addressing the past. However, your present dysfunction has its roots in your past. The way your family thinks, the culture you grew up in, traumatic events that happened to you, even in the womb. When your life is deeply spiritual and connected, but you still struggle with your health, anxiety levels, random crashes or burnout, there’s a tendency to think that all of your enlightenment is counterfeit and nothing is true. This can create a bit of despondency and detachment.
I’ve heard a few people comment that they feel that they are completely alone. If they are one to pray or meditate they feel that even God is quiet. The isolation felt in this space can make it feel like the world is caving in, and you might not make it. If you happen to be going through a reevaluation of what is true, real, or imagined in your core beliefs at the time, it can be rather chaotic. Here’s the thing: God is quiet. The Universe is peaceful. The cacophony of our own agitation obliterates the harmony of the intrinsic vibration. We often cannot use the learned behaviours of our religious culture to connect to peace because they are based on the idea of an external Saviour, or ideological prophet, or even the ways of a guru. Someone we have to go and seek. Our Source is woven into our make up, the depth of our Being. God is in a place few of us go, within.
I think a perfect illustration of this is Elijah’s experience with God in 1 Kings 19. Elijah is agitated because it looks like the world is after him. God tells him to go to the Mountain, and wait for Him. So he does. He experiences gale force winds, strong enough to move rocks; no God. He experiences and earthquake, a fire, both cataclysmic events which one might expect an All Powerful Being to show up in. Nothing… and then, a small sound, a gentle sound, and there He is. Elijah expected God to show up in a blaze of glory, but he got a whisper. If he hadn’t been quiet, he would have missed it. And at the end of the story, God sends him back prepared to be present and fulfill his purpose.
So, if our heads are busy, life is chaos, and we feel hemmed in on all sides by impending disaster, anxiety and the physical manifestation of it dictating how well we can cope with our present, and we cannot get quiet enough to hear the whisper, what then? Look where the noise is coming from, because if it isn’t God making it, it’s quite likely that it is your inner child having a temper tantrum because they’re feeling ‘not safe, not safe at all’ and they really need attention.
So, how to make that wee one safe enough that the past doesn’t intrude on the possibilities in your present? It seems so simple, but one can learn to self parent. Essentially, you sit down with yourself. I prefer to do this in the lap of Father, or Love… however it is your heart sees the Divine, or that which is bigger than you. When I dismantled the structured theology I grew up in and found how very inseparable I am from the One I call Father, this process became simple. I existed in that creative imagination before I appeared in a physical body, therefore, we remember together who I was before my life intersected with the other humans that were part of my early indoctrination. Essentially, God knows what seemed to have shattered in order to skew my worldview and break down the relationship between me and my Source. And, I, I have learned some things on the road to adulthood, in the process of parenting my own children, and unpacking my trauma. I have learned that I know what that little child inside needed to hear, feel, see, express or understand, and I can help her move the stories she keeps replaying from the current reel into the archives. I can let her know that she is safe, and held, and that those things are no longer able to tear at her soul, she doesn’t have to protect either emotions or spirit any longer. Lots of grown ups might have done, said, modelled or inflicted painful things on that little person, and they did the best they could. Admittedly, for many of us, the experiences are in areas that are neglectful or abusive and it is difficult to see the broken behaviour of those adults who should have loved us as the result of the wounded children they are, or were. It’s also difficult to understand the impact of our family history or culture on the genetic markers in our physiology (some ailments or syndromes do run in families, but, not, I think, because they are unavoidably genetic).
Let yourself heal from the trauma, and you may find that many of your internal conflicts, agitation, interpersonal frustrations, or just general lack of peace might dissipate. You may just find that your mind is quiet for the first time in your life, and you are able to enjoy just “being.” So many of us have an underlying belief that we are wrong, not enough, or even unable to belong because no one really saw us as a kid. But we were not only seen, we were known well, and we still are.
We are whole. We always have been whole. It is possible to be fully integrated so that all of our perceivably fragmented selves are working in peaceful tandem. We need our inner child… for there is our connection to wonder, delight, unwavering hope, newness, essentially the dawn of new ventures is energetically seated in their need to explore. Dreams and passions were planted in the fertile ground of our uninhibited child heart, they are explored and developed into skills and real potential as we mature. If we meander too far away from who we were in the imagination of the Maker, our life pursuits often do not serve us well long term, because we burn out or make inauthentic choices.
And if we forgot who we were and are desperately trying to find out retroactively? We can. Our history is written on our Soul by Spirit. Our Soul is a great weaver, able to connect past, present, and future, weaving the intrinsic identity of spirit and the experience into the perfect healing journey so that we can live our most beautiful existence in tandem with our Source, free of inhibition. Our being cannot be undone by the doings of life. The Depth of who we are, just Is. Sometimes the journey of discovery into our intrinsic identity just needs a little facilitating so we can imagine alongside the One whose Dream We Are, and see things come to be.
P.S. If you’re interested in learning how to have conversations with “little you,” It is possible to do it. There isn’t a blanket “method” so I didn’t include “steps.” However, I have been known to have conversations that have proved helpful with some who have reached out.