A full-blown midlife crisis
When I was 38, grace came through an unexpected event. I had a brain concussion from a ski accident, which rewired my brain. After recovering from the accident, my meditations became effortless and the feeling that something was missing was gone. I became much more intuitive and always felt guided in my actions.
[su_pullquote align=”right”]The increasing gap between my undeveloped and broken child-self and the rest of my being made me a good match for dramatic events.[/su_pullquote]
By that time, I had done a huge amount of work on developing a conscious personality to support my life, e opening the channel to my soul. Unfortunately, I had done relatively little inner child work (I was not aware of the concept at the time) and the increasing gap between my undeveloped and broken child-self and the rest of my being made me a good match for dramatic events.
I experienced a full-blown midlife crisis and attracted a partner with an even more unbalanced development. She was a clear channel to her higher self, and held the most remarkable spiritual knowledge; however, her whole life was actually controlled and made miserable by childhood traumas she felt powerless to heal.
Because of her spiritual gifts, she could see right through me, and I could not hide my wounded inner children anymore. I had repressed so much of the pain of my childhood to achieve material and spiritual success, that my lost inner children actually manifested themselves externally via my loss of my real children through parental alienation.
Throughout my life, I faced many challenges, but none compared to the brutality of this experience. My marriage collapsed, too, as a repeat of my unhealed abandonment by my mother.
It has been a difficult year, and I am now playing catch-up in regard to reparenting my inner child. I have found many distractions to escape the torment of my hurt inner child. Outside achievements and identification with my spiritual self have been my favourite coping mechanisms.
I sit without judgment
I finally know better. When my child-self hurts, I just sit in meditation with the pain and let it speak to me. I refuse to shut him up anymore, as I have done for most of my life. Whether he speaks about loneliness, betrayal, depression, anger, jealousy, suspicion, mistrust or sadness, I just sit with it without judgment.
With enough patience on my part, my inner child is slowly rebuilding trust with my inner adult. I actually discovered not a single child, but many expressions of my inner child, representing traumatic events that occurred when I was between two and 11 years of age. It is clear that this aspect of me is far behind in development, compared to my personality and the connection to my transcendental self, so this is where I need to put my focus if I want to wake up to my full potential.
If you consciously know which part of yourself is active, you can adjust your course of action accordingly; in particular, when choosing to do either positive focus exercises or shadow work. If your soul or inner adult is active, it is OK to push and stretch yourself to achieve any internal or external goals.
However, if your inner child is active, let it flow. Enjoy the moment and follow your inner child’s joy, if they are in a good mood. If they are feeling down, do shadow work with the compassionate presence of other aspects of yourself. Shutting down or bulldozing your inner child is likely to come with the most unfortunate consequences.
Awakened beings and the aspects of the self
People with a well-developed personality, but little connection to their soul, may be very successful and nice if they have a healthy inner child. However, there will be little incentive to help others outside their immediate family. The ones with an unhealthy inner child may become autocratic and exploitative.
[su_pullquote align=”right”]The Dalaï Lama often acts out as a joking little kid, but can articulate complex concepts from his personality and never loses sight of his transcendental nature.[/su_pullquote]
These three dimensions are easy to see in awakened beings. For example, the Dalaï Lama often acts out as a joking little kid, but can articulate complex concepts from his personality and never loses sight of his transcendental nature. He can shift between these aspects at will, depending on what is required in the present moment.
A developed personality can understand and know God, but only the healthy child within us can experience God directly as love, unity and creativity. This is why it is often said that the heart (which the inner child has direct access to) is the seat of the soul.
Once we’ve developed this trinity within us, we can look at the stars with feet solidly planted on the ground, in order to create Heaven on Earth. I hope my personal experience has been able to show you the importance of staying balanced, when it comes to these three aspects of our being, as we go through our spiritual journey.
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image 1 The Dalai Lama and Bishop Desmond Tutu taken by Carey Linde in Vancouver, Canada in 2004 [Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons 2 Pixabay 3 Pixabay 4 By Ever falling via Flickr (CC BY 2.0) 5 midlife crisis by Steve Johnson via Flickr (CC BY 2.0) 6 Judgment of Paris Museo nazionale romano di palazzo Altemps [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
