Acknowledging The ‘Wounded Inner Child’
I remember a conversation, with my children, sometime just after my 50th birthday. They mentioned that they had never seen me cry.
A strange thing to note I thought, but was it true? I thought about it, and I guess it was true. They had never seen me cry.
I thought maybe I had felt like crying before but didn’t. And then I remembered something. I did all my crying ‘inside’. Not outwardly. I had learned to do this at a very young age, and it had served me well.
I had trained myself not to cry. I was taught, ‘Big boys don’t cry.’ ‘Real men don’t cry.’ Right? But for me it was something more.
Growing up it had not been okay to cry. My father didn’t like crying. He didn’t seem to know how to handle it.
Even while being punished, I was told to stop crying. I was taught to believe that crying was for the weak.
After a time, my ability to cry just seemed to disappear. I didn’t seem to have the urge. And even when I felt like crying, I didn’t seem to know how to anymore.
‘The Wounded Outer Adult’
As a man, I had always considered myself to be steadfast, strong, and courageous. At times unflappable.
Or so my ego told me.
It took me more than a half of a century to acknowledge I even had any hidden emotional insecurities or deep-seated fears.
To recognize that I had suffered any psychological or childhood traumas.
I denounced even the consideration that I had a ‘wounded inner child’.
And if so, I refused to embrace him as anything other than an illegitimate progeny of a failed emotional maturation process.
I considered individual acknowledgements of the wounded inner child as excuses for the weak.
And then I realized that even this rejection, was only a feeble attempt by my ego to protect my ‘wounded outer adult’.
Something would have to give.
If I was to grow in my spiritual maturation process, my spiritual journey, I was going to have to prune my egoic mindset.
I was going to have the shed the outer armor that had protected me for so long.
I was going to have to come face-to-face with my inner self- my hidden pain.
The pain I had faced in childhood from the scars of emotional helplessness and physical vulnerability.
I had indeed abandoned, even the memory of that inner child, in order to survive in my outer world.
I had run away from that child, and by all psychological calculations I honestly believed I had suppressed him out of existence.
I truly imagined that I had effectively cut him out of my memory mind, and that I was better off because of it.
In truth, I had been running from his presence my entire life. But how do you run away from something that is the most intimate part of you- that is you?
How can you leave behind that which gave birth to your inner soul- your spiritual you- your inner child?
You can’t. At least not forever.
So, I embraced the journey. I stopped running away. I took a deep breath and turned around. I dove heart-first into the journey back to my inner self- my spiritual consciousness.
Deeper and deeper, I traveled. Through prayer and meditation, I journeyed.
Until I came to a clearing on the path.
Until I saw a light behind a heavy dark veil.
The dark veil of my ‘wounded outer adult’.
Anxiously I lifted the veil.
It was much, much heavier than I had thought.
Weighted down by the heaviness of the years of aborted tears, denied trauma, and suppressed pain.
And there he was. My wounded inner self.
Right where I had left him.
Waiting for me.
He didn’t smile.
He didn’t reach out to me.
He just waited.
Waiting for me to recognize him.
Waiting for me to acknowledge his existence.
Waiting for me, I suppose to reach out to him. And why shouldn’t he? After all, I was the one who had abandoned him.
The moment I lifted the veil, something shifted.
The moment I stepped inside within my ‘wounded inner child’ and fully saw him for the first time as my adult self, I felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted off me.
A weight I wasn’t even aware of being there.
The moment our eyes touched; I felt a sense of relief.
A peace maybe?
A peace that comes with the enlightenment of the spirit.
The feeling that might come with the reunion of a long lost loved one.
One whom you’d secretly hoped had been safe during all those years of physical separation but had been too emotionally afraid to look for them and find out the truth.
Once I saw him, I knew he was okay. And once he saw me, he knew I was okay too.
And so… he cried. And I cried too. Together we cried. And it was okay.
Not because of sadness, but because of the overwhelming joy of becoming whole again.
The acknowledgement of the inner child and the outer adult surviving the pain and making it back to self- self-realization, self-actualization, just self.
My Spiritual Gift and The Word of God
I realized that this acceptance had to take place for me to begin my own spiritual healing process.
That this reunion had to be realized to uncover my spirit man- my inner child.
Recognizing and embracing my wounded inner child was the first step in my journey of progressing to my wholeness.
To my physical, emotional, and spiritual unity.
The acceptance of this ‘inner me’ was also necessary to identify and embrace another component of myself- my spiritual gift.
The gift that my spirit had to give to the world. The gift beyond the earthly gift from my physical man.
If becoming a physician was my earthly gift to mankind, then the discovery of ‘The7Realms’ was my spiritual gift to the world.
Understanding and appreciating this divine gift was also a crucial part of my personal journey to healing.
The inner child led me to and revealed to me my spiritual gift as a gift of healing to myself, and subsequently to the world.
As a part of my new spiritual journey, I had begun a daily morning routine of reading and meditating on the Word of God. The gift, in part, was the divine ordination of the gift of pattern recognition.
As this gift developed, I formed the ability to visualize unique patterns formed by certain biblical words and scriptures.
I would see these word patterns and scriptural cadences as I would read the Bible.
In all truth, I realized this special gift of pattern recognition actually began in childhood through my fascination with puzzles and building blocks as well as numbers and math.
In retrospect, I believe this gift was nurtured out of the painful birthing of my inner child.
I believe that I would gravitate towards external things that I could physically control. Things such as puzzles and building blocks, or numbers and math.
I leaned towards these things, most probably as a coping mechanism, that I would use to create order in my otherwise emotionally conflicted and volatile childhood.
This practice began with simple puzzles and math but later led to a higher level of pattern recognition.
This special gifting continued to evolve in high school, college, and later medical school. It evolved to the ability to envision unique patterns amongst certain biblical words and scriptures.
I was taught that the Bible was ‘the inerrant Word of God’.
So, I thought, if the Bible was indeed ‘inerrant’, then I needed this true truth in my life.
If the words of the Bible spoke only truth and order, then I had to examine its words and scriptures as a means for emotional and mental stability.
I approached the examination of the Word of God as I did a puzzle or a math problem.
I looked for patterns.
I searched for answers in the words and text.
And I found them. Hidden in plain sight.
This discovery led to my lifelong journey to spiritual enlightenment.
These unique word patterns would ultimately uncover a hidden path to spiritual consciousness and subsequently spiritual wellness.
This spiritual gift and the uncovering of this hidden pathway led me to develop a practice of Christian Mindfulness and Biblical Meditation based on the establishment and delineation of The Seven Trilateral Realms of Spiritual Consciousness (Spiritual Wellness) aka ‘The7Realms’.
And thus, after abandoning my wounded inner child in search of my earthly gift (becoming a physician) I had to embark on a journey to spiritual enlightenment to find my spiritual man.
The journey to my spiritual man required me to reconcile the existence of my wounded inner child.
The path I took in doing so led me on a pilgrimage of prayer and meditation which ultimately led me to the discovery of ‘The7Realms’- my spiritual gift to the world.
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