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 By
Keith Amber
One of the main reasons
people pull on others for their self-worth, acceptance, and
well-being comes from their unresolved inner child issues. Inner
child issues can often also be recognized from narcissistic
patterns, an inability to blend socially, intimacy problems,
relationship issues, neediness, certain inabilities to function in
daily life, and immaturity. Unresolved past life issues usually
carry over into the inner child issues of the next lifetime.
An inner child comes from a time, and sometimes multiple times, in
your childhood when something you perceive as traumatic occurs and
you feel unable to cope. At that moment, you leave a part of your
ego structure and personality behind, numbed out, as the rest of you
grows up. The part left behind becomes your subconscious inner child
with dysfunctional issues. As an adult, it is your responsibility to
retrieve these parts, and wholesomely, effectively, re-raise them to
become integrated, functional, and whole once again. In your
subconscious realms, when your inner child runs amok, it often
causes you to try to get your well-being from others. On a worldwide
scale, inner child issues cause millions upon millions of
relationship problems. Until we become conscious of these parts, and
re-raise them, they can subconsciously influence and even dictate
parts of our lives. If we die having not re-raised into wholeness
our inner children, these incomplete fragments will follow us to be
dealt with in our next lifetime. See Self-Mastery Exercise:
Re-raising Your Inner Child at the end of this article for
specific suggestions on how to work with your inner child.
Are You Whole?
You will know you
are whole when you can stand in the middle of nowhere, with everyone
in your life gone, completely at peace. In this state of being,
there is nothing or no one that you need in order to feel whole and
complete. To find out if you are this whole and complete, imagine
yourself for a moment losing your: spouse, children, partner,
friend, pet, parent, sibling, soul mate, or other relative. As you
imagine this loss, notice if you find that you would be able to
efficiently and effectively adjust yourself, grieve if you need to,
and then functionally move on, or would you be slammed, wounded, or
incapacitated by this loss? We are not suggesting that you don’t
care or love one another. Rather, this process reveals possible
dependencies, neediness, and a lack of your own whole, independent,
functioning identity.
When you
find an area in yourself where you react severely at the thought of
permanently losing someone close, or a pet, you have found a hole in
yourself. This type of hole usually reveals your inner child’s need
to be healed and transformed, a necessary step to wholeness and
unconditional well-being. When you die with strong attachments such
as these, you can get trapped in the astral plane: a self-induced
state of purgatory.
Unattached Enlightenment
Relationship attachments can keep you from
being whole, balanced, and healthy unto yourself. The healthiest
relationships are based on two whole people who respect, love, and
honor each other as independent people who, while they love each
other, are able to stand alone in peace and wholeness. Enlightened
people have worked through all their attachments, including
relationship attachments, and are poised to let go of anyone or
anything upon request. They have learned that the distance they
progressed in inner growth is really what is important, and in the
end, is the ONLY thing that goes with them when they die. The idea
of dying is peaceful and they have no regrets, no unfinished
business.
Enlightened people often love many people, yet
they are attached to none. Death is not an end, but a continuation
on another dimension. There is not necessarily an expectation that
their current relationships will continue on the other side. Many
souls, when they are done with their current life, will not be
together in spirit. Their souls come from different places, and to
different places they will usually return. And though they will
henceforth always know the soul they shared an earth life with,
there may never be another lifetime together in the future.
Your Inner Child is so called, because
underneath almost all relationship problems are the issues that
still stem from old childhood issues unresolved within you. Soul
mates come into the equation because so many people are looking for
their "perfect soulmate," when what they really need to be doing is
tending to their own inner child. These inner child issues are some
of the most pervasive issues that people avoid dealing with. They
run underneath many, many problems, and never get properly
transformed.
Soul Mates
Some humans are obsessed with finding their soul mates. They believe
a relationship with a soul mate will be easy, romantic, magical, and
naturally aligned. Many also think that they have only one perfect
soul mate. They think they need their soul mate to complete
themselves: the one that they can be whole with. A great emphasis
has been placed on soul mates, and people have a misguided ideal of
what one actually is. Here is a great story about soul mates from my
wife, Sharmai:
“I contracted with my mother to have her keep
me from reaching my higher destiny. She was a formidable,
intelligent woman who was tough to get past. She judged all things
spiritual, metaphysical, and mystical—my very lifeblood—as evil, and
did everything in her power to stop me from touching those worlds as
a teenager. I chose such a contract because the challenge would
qualify and prepare me for the difficult circumstances to come after
I had left my family home.”
“My mother, brother, and I
shared a past life during the Roman times. My mother was my
brother’s and my boss as Roman Gladiators. My brother and mother, in
that lifetime, had a strong bond together and shared the same
unenlightened views. In a life and death battle between my brother
and myself, I was victorious. His hateful dying words expressed his
promise to get revenge. He brought this promise forward into this
lifetime. Our relationship in this lifetime has most certainly
reflected this rift from an early age. In the final hours of my
Roman lifetime, I shifted and became more enlightened, and I brought
that consciousness forward to this lifetime. This allowed me to gain
my freedom from the bonds of the rift that my brother still carries
in his heart. Both my brother and mother are my soul mates.”
Defining Soul Mate Connections
Soul Mates come in many forms from siblings, to our children, to our
parents, to our spouses, to our friends, or co-workers. The
relationships range from healthy to unhealthy. No soul mate is ever
intended to take the place of another’s own well-being and
wholeness. Soul mates are souls that are here for us to work out our
life lessons with and we have shared many past lives with them as
well. Here is a list of soul connections on earth, beginning in
their broadest form:
Souls—we each have
many souls that we interweave with over the course of many lifetimes
to experience life and learn our lessons with. Souls in this group
might be found at work, in church, and in other broad groups.
Soul mates—there are fewer soul mates and they
are found more as family members, friends, and sometimes co-workers.
These will be more familiar.
Twin souls will be more profound
relationships and there will be far fewer of them. These usually
come together to work out major lessons, like disabilities or
illnesses, or to accomplish something significant together.
Twin flames are an
individually contracted agreement. Your soul contracts with one twin
flame at a time. Two souls will agree to come together for a
specific period of time to teach each other specific lessons. They
usually share a specific number of lifetimes in a variety of
different relationships until the contract and growth phase is
complete and the twin flame connection dissolves.
Perfectly
complimentary souls are two souls who share the same personality
traits in perfect balance. Any given soul has one or two perfectly
complimentary souls in the entire universe, and finding one’s
complimentary soul is astronomically difficult. Perfectly
complimentary souls rarely come together on earth, and then only
when they have a huge job to do where it will take their perfect and
total alignment to accomplish their service-oriented humanitarian
mission. Perfectly complimentary souls either spark one another
upwards or downwards, and there is no in between. Their relationship
will be either really good or really bad.
Two halves
of a whole, is the highest individual soul connection found
on earth, and is even rarer than perfectly complimentary souls. Each
soul has only one other half. The risk with two halves of a whole
joining is that being together is so fun and fulfilling that these
souls often collapse into one another and accomplish very little in
spite of the great synergy constantly being catalyzed by being in
each others presence. Two halves of a whole are the male and female
counterpart of one soul.
Marriage versus Divorce
Too often humans want their soul mates,
from whichever level, to complete them rather than completing
themselves. When a soul has lessons of loneliness, it would be more
productive to get at peace with being alone.
When it no
longer matters whether you are alone or not, then the time is ripe
to consider a relationship. Soul connections on all levels are
designed to facilitate our lessons. Many people want perfect
relationships without putting the time and energy into working out
inherent lessons. They think that finding the right person can take
the place of doing the work required to keep the relationship
working right. I have heard many couples who have been together for
30 or more years comment that any good relationship takes work.
The relationship between my wife, Sharmai, and myself was
certainly no different, and required a dedication to maturely
choosing personal growth to facilitate alignment and wise
progression. A good marriage is worth it many times over. Many
couples are meant to stay together and work out their differences,
choosing to learn their lessons rather than running away from the
difficulties and getting divorced. Often with a premature divorce,
the same conditions and problems show up in the next relationship
because the lessons were not learned in the first marriage. On the
flip side, there are couples who are contracted to be married for a
specific period of time so each can learn certain lessons and then
get divorced. In these contracted situations, after a certain point,
staying together becomes very counterproductive. Staying married or
getting divorced are tricky questions with no simple formula that
applies to everyone. Marriage and divorce is written into our
prebirth contracts.
Dysfunctional Love
Some people believe love to be when you feel
you cannot live without another. This is actually dependency, and is
not healthy. However, some relationships start out this way to get
two individuals hooked enough on each other so they will stay
together and then learn their lessons. When a person is whole, they
feel complete by themselves. Sharmai shared with me the dependency
she had with her first husband. She believed she needed to
physically connect with him, even if it was just touching toes for
several minutes, to feel secure. She discovered this one night when
she was brooding outside alone, missing him. Suddenly, like a
thunderbolt, she realized that she was in the habit of sucking
energy off her husband. She believed her well-being came from the
energy she sucked off him. She was an energy vampire. She needed to
heal her inner child. She began the process immediately.
Sharmai realized that the inner child work was actually the
beginning of her wholeness. We can suck energy or well-being off
another for our entire life and never feel whole. We each have our
own energy signature that we must provide ourselves. No one else can
do this for us. One time Sharmai and I were working with a client
who sucked the energy off anyone in her presence. She sought others
to provide her self-worth. For one week she voraciously sucked the
energy off Sharmai (she was paying karma for the time when she used
to do the same thing). When Sharmai was totally depleted, she
pointed out to her client that she had no more to give to her, yet
she herself was still not full. We can never get our sustained
well-being from others. When we pull on others to give us well-being
and wholeness we deplete them, undermine ourselves and produce no
lasting benefit to ourselves.
Self-Mastery Exercise:
Re-raising Your Inner Child
Successfully re-raising your inner child for most people requires a
total commitment, day in and day out, for at least six months. We
are conditioned from childhood to neglect ourselves in certain ways.
To change this ongoing subconscious programming, you must devote
yourself to being in touch with, taking care of, and transforming
your stuck psychological tape recording of your dysfunctional
childhood. For many, this unending underlying dysfunction never
seems to change, and can be very defeating, debilitating, and
depressing. However, no matter how many techniques or how much
effort you put into transforming your dysfunctional behavior, if you
don’t sufficiently access and transform your inner child
programming, you can’t fully walk out of the old pattern into a new,
freed, and wonderful life.
The following “I love you”
technique can be done as a stand-alone shortcut to re-raising the
inner child, and will work by itself if it is done right and
consistently for a minimum of six months. Every additional month you
devote to this technique will give you even more long wished for
behavioral improvements. If you find this technique is not working,
there are additional suggestions listed below.
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Consciously separate yourself into
two parts
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Your seasoned, tough, mature,
survivor adult parent self (adult)
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Your fragile, precious, vulnerable,
personal, emotional, inner dialogue, inner child self
(child)
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Your adult self then takes care of
your child self. Your adult stops your outer, confusing
world, takes a lovely refreshing breath, centers and
says, “I love you,” to the child with feeling and total
sincerity. Your adult insists that love gets to the
child part. No matter what it takes, your adult will
secure this love for this precious inner you. Through
this process, the adult must assess both the inner child
and the adult if they now experience being wanted… cared
for… loved… looked after… prized… protected… and
respected. The adult part ensures that the inner child
knows that you are partners in this together and you,
the adult, will make sure everything works out okay.
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The inner child now has a
participating, mature parent and best friend—you, the
adult you, and no longer looks to get these needs filled
by someone outside your selves.
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Repeat this process five to ten times
a day. More is better.
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When the “adult you” successfully
gets this relationship rolling with your most
vulnerable, confused, unloved, or dysfunctional inner
child parts, these child parts can be transformed into
mature self-loved, balanced, and well-functioning inner
parts. As your inner world becomes balanced, whole, and
fulfilled, your outer world follows suit naturally. Life
mirrors what’s going on in the inner you. Your life will
dramatically improve.
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At first, many inner children are
autistic-like, or rejecting of the adult’s attempts at loving it.
However, with consistent applied focus and effort, you can find ways
into that wounded inner child part. Eventually you can prove to be a
reliable best friend. Once this is established, the inner child
gradually grows up and, if you follow through with this process long
enough (most people stop too soon), the child becomes you. Then you
have reached at-one-ment. Here your inner child melts back into the
adult self and you are both one.
Because you have taken an
enormous amount of time to make sure that all of you is okay and
cared for, you have taught your inner child and soul that you are
worth it, and that you will do whatever it takes to make sure your
well-being is taken care of first. This puts you in top form for
taking care of whatever other responsibilities you have in your life
as well. From this space, all other aspects of your relationships
and intimacy can quantum forward successfully. Through this process
you will notice positive changes in yourself and new talents or
paths begin to grow. Your core well-being is no longer in deficit,
and those needed missing ingredients from your inner child are now
healed, united with your adult self and flourishing.
Critical Strategies to grow up your Inner Child:
1. Consistent application of strategies and
love. As children become exposed to anything consistently, they grow
to believe that this is how it is, they become imprinted by it, and
they bond their beliefs, dysfunctional or not, to that reality (or
fantasy).
2. That love is effectively connected to your inner
child consistently, and your inner child is clear that he/she is
loved. With this support, the child has incentive to keep evolving
and growing up like any other healthy, wholesome child would.
3. Daily communication, interaction, and playing. This gives
your inner child the family structure and hands on inner action to
naturally grow up and be normal (comfortable with his/her self,
others and life).
Additional
tools that facilitate a good connection with your inner child
include:
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Ice cream, or any enticing food or
drink that soothes your inner child. This brings the
inner child out so you can connect with them and they
can become better functioning in this world.
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Draw with your non-dominate hand, and
invite your inner child to continue. Observe his or her
subtle moods or thoughts while painting or drawing, and
also notice what the picture conveys. Talk about it with
your inner child and get to be friends. Be
compassionate, not judgmental.
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Play. Remember, or figure out, what
is fun for your inner child and go do it often.
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First thing upon waking, and last
thing before you go to sleep, check up on your inner
child. Ask them if they have something they would like
to do that day and try, within reason, to facilitate it.
Find out if they had a good day, and if not, what you
can do to help the situation.
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Sometimes you need to pretend or
imagine that your conversations with your inner child
are real, until they become real. Other times, your
inner child is very real and present. Don’t drop the
ball. Your inner child needs your consistent support.
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By Keith Amber contact Keith for more personal guidance with
Recovering and Healing your inner child.
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