“Once your awareness becomes a flame, it burns up the whole slavery that the mind has created. There is no blissfulness more precious than freedom, than being a master of your own destiny.” ~Osho
The biggest excuse that most of us lean on is that we either don’t have the time, energy or resources to deal with our wound. It simply happens to the best of us. The demands we’ve placed upon ourselves have become so loudly important that we cannot hear the wounded child quietly knocking.
One would think that once we are aware that wounded little you is sitting there, alone, cold, naked, and miserable at your back door, that we would stop everything we were doing and let this helpless soul come inside. Yet, we are creatures of habit, and the patterns of remaining perpetually busy and in denial of our wound run deep inside.
One main thing that will help is being aware that we have become completely mesmerized and hypnotized by the world of doing and being productive. The infinite “to do list” often takes precedence over our inner world, and this list soon becomes the main priority of life itself. We are devoted to a life of having bills to pay, places to go, people to see, things to do, and food to buy.
We also may live in a house which is never quite finished and always needs more organizing, cleaning and more beautiful things to make it a better home. We’ve constructed our lives much like a house of cards, feeling that everything could fall apart if we forgot for a week about being responsible adults who pay our bills. I feel that the most mature and responsible thing we can do is to create time each day to invite our inner wound into a state of acceptance and wholeness.
“Love yourself and be awake. Today, tomorrow, always. To straighten the crooked you must first do a harder thing…straighten yourself.” ~Siddhartha Gautama ‘The Buddha’
Little you knows your biggest priority is probably doing everything you can to keep your house of cards from totally falling down. Little you and is very aware of just how busy you are, how many important things you have going on so usually wounded you won’t bother with knocking too hard on your back door.
There is a quiet acceptance that little you has about your life, that you’ve become overly consumed by something more important, perhaps the perpetual list of needs, wants and desires, and have no time to deal with the real wounding inside your soul. Perhaps deep down there is a belief that one miraculous day the outer life will be perfect, and then we can finally relax, rest and take care of our lost forgotten wounded child.
It is vital that we become aware of all our avoidance strategies if we truly wish to heal. It is only through creating a deep penetrating awareness of our creative avoidance can we take this first step towards wholeness. In the beginning when you let little you inside, it always feels like our world is turning upside-down, yet this is the first time in our lives that things will be turned right side up.
Another strategy we have is that the neediness of our wounded inner child is soooo huge, that it would take ALL of our love, attention and life energy. We might become totally drained by meeting it, and would have nothing left to enjoy our day with. Things are going in a pretty good direction so why focus on the negative and muck it up!! We may believe that it’s probably best to stick our head in the sand and pretend the wound doesn’t exist.
There also may be a part who is afraid, that if we embraced little wounded you we may not know exactly what to say or how to handle the situation. We might feel embarrassed, ashamed, or perhaps even more upset at ourselves for ignoring this sacred little soul who has been there sitting alone and wounded, waiting at our own back door forever. We also might feel selfish in taking time to radically heal ourselves, or we may feel we are cannot financially afford to take the time to stop everything and care for little neglected you.
No matter how you look at it, there are many very good reasons and excuses (that you’ve already got) to not attend to the most abandoned part of your self. I invite you to write down all the excuses you have right now, as these are going to be the most sacred blocks and challenges of your entire life to overcome. Of course the number one rule doing this exercise is to be gentle with yourself as you go through it.
Your wound is not going anywhere. It will not go away on it’s own. The knocking may just get weaker through the years, yet little you will remain there, waiting for your embrace, and receive a deep healing hug. That is little you’s purpose and reason for being wounded inside you. Little you is here to give you extra incentive to be gentle with yourself.
“Courage is mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” ~Unknown
As with approaching any Mt. Everest in our lives, we may initially feel overwhelmed by the intensity, details and depth upon first seeing it. We may not understand our wound right away, and why we should still feel emotionally upset about some random event that happened so long ago.
We probably have developed a sense of numbness, vagueness, and loss of memory about what occurred. We may feel an emptiness there, a lost feeling, or perhaps a generalized form of denial that says everything is ok.
Anytime we feel any form of disconnection from life, from God, from ourselves, or from others in our world, it’s a sign that little you is still being ignored, unloved and unattended to. It is an enormous emotional risk to take on and truly attend to this unhappy wounded soul. Yet, perhaps the greater risk lies in what happens if we continue avoiding. What would the face of little you look like after 20 more years of neglect?
A good rule here is to never take action out of fear, yet use fear to push you out of laziness. There is always a procrastination saboteur up ahead who is ready to distract you. There is going to be a more important reason to delay, to be in avoidance, and a real tantalizing excuse to do something other than to deal with this pain and emptiness inside.
Perhaps there is something delicious sitting in the fridge, a friend on the phone who needs you, or something exciting on TV. Anything is going to seem better than having to feel this unbearable child grinding in pain. This habit to open the fridge (instead of our back door) is exactly why one out of three Americans are obese or overweight! Usually, it’s not until some real trauma or drama comes into our lives do we actually realize that we have totally ignored our health, and now are urgently in need to take the time to heal our forgotten wounded self.
The good news in all of this, is that you can change especially when you are being gentle with yourself. With a gentle awareness it is possible that we have the ability to open the back door and let this sacred innocent soul come inside for nurturing and love. Healing first begins with making the commitment to meet with little you everyday. When you make this commitment, you will see and feel everything change in your life.
It just happens that our outer relationships are mere extensions of our inner world. When our wounded self feels held, loved, nurtured and cared for, those beings who are in our outer world will feel the same. Our friends and family will sense that we are more whole healed beings on the inside, and approach us with the same love and gentleness.
After you’ve taken on the commitment to welcome little wounded you into your heart everyday, the next step is how to deal with each separate personal wound. We must investigate, be a warrior for the truth, and truly discover what actually happened and what interpretation did we make out of what happened. We need to teach young you to see a bigger reality, and invite it to experience how deeply loved and cherished it truly is.
The unhappy wounded part of us will of course test our love to see if it’s real. Little you is no idiot, and needs to be reminded all day long of the love you have inside. Little you trusts in your love, yet just happens to be used to living outside, alone in the cold, knowing it’s abandoned, ignored, and is supposed to be quiet on your doorstep. All I can say is be very consistent and patient when dealing with your inner child. There is a 99% chance that little you will try to go back outside, in the cold to be alone even if you persistently invite it in for a cozy healing love snuggle.
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