Time To Shake Up the Inner Child

By Barbara Brennan

You can choose from more than 60 books on the subject. Across the world, tens of thousands of people attend multitudes of workshops devoted to its exploration. And if you stacked all the CDs and tapes about it on top of each other, they’d reach…well, you get my meaning. The Inner Child has never been more popular. If it had a physical manifestation, it would probably be an enfant celebrity – hailed as a brave little hero, interviewed on Oprah and its short life story fought over by publishers and snapped up by Hollywood, giving it at last the attention it craves.

My tongue-in-cheek view apart, the Inner Child is a serious business, although perhaps not in the way you might think. In our compassion, we have given this imaginary being a status and a reverence far beyond any entitlement, a kind of mythical holiness. In meditations and visualizations we take this fragile creature, dry its tears, wrap it in care and comfort, hold it to our bosoms and vow to protect it from life’s cruelties. And we genuinely believe we are healing our wounds. I know this is not dissimilar to telling kids the truth about Santa Claus, but I have to share this with you – your inner child does not exist, at least not in the popular form.

It was invented as a tool to allow people an easier understanding of – and access to – their childhood wounds. So if not a ‘child,’ what is it? The precise reality is that what we have labeled the inner child is actually a block, or more than one block, of split stagnant energy consciousness that was frozen at the time when trauma first occurred, usually at an early age. This generally shows up in the human energy field or aura as a mass of dark energy that is split in two. The need to dissolve these blocks and heal the wounds within remains a priority for anyone on a journey of personal growth. So the high level of interest in ‘inner child’ work is, in fact, very commendable. It just needs to be straightened out a little.

The duplicitous energy in our blocks is a result of the split between our painful emotions from the event and our thought memory of that event. When something painful happens as a child, we become startled and hold our breath for just long enough to stop the flow of our energy-consciousness. From then on, when we remember the event, we no longer feel the pain because our emotions have split from our mental energy. As a result, our entire energy field weakens, trapping our creative energy inside the block. Once a block forms, we accumulate confused ideas and emotions around it.

Each time another similar experience occurs, we add more stagnated dark energy to the block, and our life in that area will continue to be difficult. To regain our true creative energies of both feeling and thoughts, and to return to a healthy creative process in that area of our lives, we need to get back into the block, clear the split and re-unite the mind and feelings energies. The impact of these early wounds on our adult lives can be profound and even devastating. Virtually all of us grow up with views about love, self-worth, trust, deservedness or some other aspect of life that are distorted to some degree.

The more wounded we were, the bigger the distortion. And since each wound invariably has its origins in childhood, our consciousness in that area is frozen at the age when the belief was first planted. There it remains, trapped in its duplicitous immature state within an energy block that grows another layer each time an incident occurs that underpins the original belief. A woman with an abusive father, for example, may never trust men. That lack of trust would probably ruin any adult relationship she might have, reinforcing her belief that men are untrustworthy.

It’s a vicious circle. The block keeps us trapped in our history. And we will remain there until enough energy consciousness re-enters the block to unlock the emotions we have worked so hard to guard against. Once these are released, we can view the situation as adults and learn to make better choices. This is not an easy or a painless process and usually not one that can be accomplished without the help of a healer experienced in the different levels of the human energy field. Nor is success instantaneous. Gradually, we become aware of the ways we have limited ourselves, sold ourselves short or given ourselves away.

We learn to value ourselves, be patient with ourselves, and as the energy flows again where the block once was, so too does our creativity. There is a danger, therefore, in not seeing the ‘inner child’ for what it actually is. If we are too gentle or fearful, we will join it in its misery – feeling the pain but failing to resolve the issues that cause it, thus feeling hopeless to change ourselves and our lives. The split child consciousness has to grow into a healthy maturity. This means that when energetic debris from the wound gets triggered in a current situation, we can recognize it for what it is – a piece of our history – and just let it go. With that understanding comes a tremendous sense of self-empowerment as well as the absorption into our adult self of the wonder and joy of the child. More than that, we can relish again the simple but elusive pleasure of being alive. end