The Inner Child

photo by Luba Rasine; The Sparkly Water

When I'm feeling inexplicably sad or the like, I look for my Inner Child to check on how she's doing.  I use the Active Dreaming technique of journeying to meet her in a familiar place, usually a dream place.

When I journeyed to meet her today, I was surprised and deeply re-assured to meet my wonderful friend, Bear, the huge grizzly that once scared the pajamas off me in a "nightmare." It also made sense, because as Robert Moss frequently points out, the Inner Child will often feel protected and comforted by large animal guides.

To begin with, I sat in silence with my feelings of sadness to see where they traced, and yes, my little girl was sad.  As often happens in dreams and journeys, the unexpected takes over and something real happens; I know it's real because it's so unexpected.  I witnessed her tears and bent to comfort her where she sat curled into herself, and that's when I felt the presence of Grizzly Bear from that long ago dream.  After that, I had flashing images of all the Black Bear guides that have been showing up in my dreams frequently over the past few years. Each image gave me huge comfort and a true sense of being loved and assisted. Finally, I saw this wonderful scene from a card I have by Hillary Bird; a little girl in a teepee with a bear, sitting crossed legged opposite each other, obviously deep in warm conversation, though they are depicted as silhouettes against the beautifully painted canvas of the tent glowing from within.

Relief from sadness flooded me, as it became my little girl in that teepee telling Bear all she was feeling.  She wasn't talking about past stuff alone, she was talking about what "I" was feeling now, she wasn't even talking to me, the observer/big sister.  My restlessness, lack of productivity and despondency were inexplicable to me, not at all caused by anything in my environment I couldn't fix; well, most of it anyway, (what I can't fix, I choose to accept in love).  Bear listened and Bear advised.  The shift I felt is comparable to leaving a great therapy session. I am so grateful.

The Inner Child has been on my mind for another reason, too. One student I'm working with has a clear image of a five year old self from a dream of that age; thus, she has a portal to genuine interaction with that aspect of herself and is exploring what she might learn developing this inner relationship. It's fun for me as a dream guide because I can readily identify with the experience of first connecting to my own five year old self through a dream and synchronicity experience 15 years apart.  I share that with you in Crocodile Friday.

What is the "Inner Child"?  To be objective, I did a quick search and got:

 "... a person's supposed original or true self, especially when regarded as damaged or concealed by negative childhood experiences."
 

"...inner child is our childlike aspect. It includes all that we learned and experienced as children, before puberty. The inner child denotes a semi-independent entity subordinate to the waking conscious mind." (my underline:-)

I know from my own studies and practice as a counselor, that there are many good psychological theories of the gifted/wounded inner child and its effects on our emotions, behavior and self-image. In my view, no theory around will give me a better insight into my own inner child than connecting with her, just as if I wished to reconnect with any friend or relative.  I'd make the effort to see and talk to them; to listen to how their life is going and catch up. 

One of the many gifts of a dream practice like Active Dreaming is that things go from the theoretical to the poignantly personal and experiential very quickly.  You're consciously exploring dreaming locales in a spirit, energy or imaginal body.  I don't think any amount of talking, Left brain, analysis or theorizing can yield such rich results so quickly. In my experience, genuine interaction flows from Right brain, creative approaches to engaging the dream character, symbol or place. 

In Robert Moss's wonderful book, "The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse" he writes:

We are at the center of all times. The dramas of lives being lived in other times and in parallel realities may be intensely relevant to understanding and navigating our current relationships and life issues.  We can learn to reach into those other lives to share gifts and lessons.  We can dialogue with our own older and younger selves within our present lifetimes.  We must entertain the spirits, starting with our very own - the child self, the inner artist, the passionate teen, the animal spirits the creative daimon.  p. 13.

One would think that we'd welcome our little girls and boys home to us with open arms, like we might do puppies or kittens, but I've noticed in my own and others' experience that there can be quite a bit of resistance.  Why is that? What sometimes comes up is a very judgmental adult ego self, one that will not let that little kid be flawed in any way, who might want to get away from that little child and who needs to learn love and compassion for that child before that "inner child" may agree to come home for a re-union.   This was a fascinating discovery for me, one that time and again, my dreams have assisted in clarifying.  Like all inner work, depending on the degree of trauma suffered in childhood, it may require wise, compassionate counseling to undertake in highly traumatic cases.

When I encounter in myself unwillingness to embrace an aspect of myself, especially a child aspect as she manifests, I want to face my own resistance.  If she won't talk to me, it's up to me to figure out what it will take to strengthen our bond, to make her comfortable with me and me with her, to "entertain" her.  I ask myself, what am I holding back? Am I judging this child for something?  Has this child's voice gotten overlaid by an older self, inhibited, saddened or repressed?  What I want to see is her smile, her joy, her bliss and the bond of our mutual love. After my journey to meet her, I went for a walk on the beach - with her.  One seagull was screaming as they do and part of me wondered how to understand its cry, what it's trying to say, until I saw my little imaginary companion hopping after it on one leg imitating its call.  What a lesson in child vs. adult nature that was!

She isn't just an imaginary aspect of myself dominated by my waking ego ("subordinate to the waking conscious mind"), she's as "real" as "I" am. In the Dreaming, all time is NOW.  Ignoring her distress, distress that is an undercurrent of my waking ego's feeling experience, is not only unkind, it's unwise. Our soul aspects in the inner world, perhaps what Jung meant by complexes, have a life and "mind" of their own. My relationship with my inner child is that, a relationship.  The illusion of being in control which the ego perpetuates becomes evident when, like in my case, sadness would out, regardless of my ego's effort to ignore or over-ride it.  "I" prefer a sunny disposition and a good sense of humor, so I was having none of this weepy child.  My little girl "Inner-Child" was demanding and directing my attention from my external, waking world to my ever-present inner world. The minute I relented and journeyed to meet her, I witnessed Bear come to her immediately and felt awed by Bear as I recognized again, Bear's numinous nature.  What a gift to me to be reminded of something so strengthening and powerful that I experienced in a dream long ago.

What my inner child is, is less important than who she is.  Who she is harbors some of who I am that I may want to reclaim now; plus, she may need me to feel totally loved and accepted again, as every child should feel.  One of the easiest ways to do that is through the portal of dream/play.

Remembering childhood dreams or dreams featuring little children, writing them down, drawing or using any creative expression to manifest the energy they contain for our waking life, can bring our little selves back to us, helping us each feel our genuine core of joy.  Dreams don't get old; they belong to a realm where time is irrelevant.  Exploring childhood dreams and memories as if they were dreams through Active Dreaming can open floodgates of creative and caring energy blocked, perhaps, by shutting out the little person we each once were.

Here's a toast from that magical poet of the inner child, Shel Silverstein, who crossed over in 1999:

“If you are a dreamer come in
If you are a dreamer a wisher a liar
A hoper a pray-er a magic-bean-buyer
If you're a pretender come sit by my fire
For we have some flax golden tales to spin
Come in!
Come in!”

Crocodile Friday

Today is Good Friday; Christians all over the world commemorate the sacrifice Jesus made on their behalf, a sacrifice rooted in extreme LOVE.

For me, today is also Crocodile Friday. Let me tell you why.

When I was a little girl, around 5 years old, living in Havana with my mom, dad, big brother and collie, I had my first Big Dream. It was Good Friday and in those pre- revolution times, Good Friday was a religious holiday observed by all business, media and people. I didn't grow up in a religious household, just a loving one. As usual in those halcyon days, I got up and had the whole day to play on my swings, draw or find some other enchanted occupation for myself.

Graciela, the wonderful Afro-Cuban woman who came to help my mom, was in the kitchen chopping carrots. I ran in to say hi and she was uncharacteristically curt with me. In a firm voice she said; "No nina, vete, que tengo este cuchillo y el diablo esta suerto hoy, y alomejor te corto sinquerer." Meaning, "No little one, get out; I have this knife and the devil is loose and I might cut you accidentally." Needless to say, I made a bee line for my swing set in the front yard. But then, I was afraid to swing, just in case, so I sat and thought about what Graciela had said.

I might have forgotten all about it after a while because next thing I know, it was bed time and I'm kissing my mom and dad goodnight; they were watching a Passion Play, which was the only thing being televised. In the middle of the night I woke up from a big ass nightmare, crying.

In my dream, I know that there is a gargantuan crocodile standing in the bathtub. I see it in my child mind's eye, just towering in the bathtub. I do the only sensible thing and scream for my parents to come and get me.

Spring ahead 13 or so years later and I'm a Freshman English major in college. Reading Joseph Frank's, Literature of the Bible, I come across a footnote on the creature Leviathan in the Book of Job. To paraphrase (as I no longer have the book handy) he says that Leviathan is often depicted as a humongous crocodile and identified with Satan. I hadn't remembered my crocodile dream until that moment when it came slamming into my consciousness like the huge dream train slams into the station in the movie, Hugo. I sat there and marveled; how could a five year old child know this? As a Freshman, I hadn't read Carl Jung's work on the collective unconscious, but my deep curiosity about dreams and the nature of dreaming began that day.

In Jung's view, and this is something that contributed to his rejection of Freud's dream theories, the unconscious is not just a repository for suppressed, uncivilized and aggressive impulses. (No wonder people don't want to look into that velvet dark.) To Jung, the unconscious is a vast inner space, (to borrow a phrase from the brilliant Sci-fi author, Ursula LeGuin), a space that offers both creativity and healing and is accessed in dreams. Part of that space is the collective unconscious, the source of all that binds humanity as one, home to the Archetypes of human kind.

I've since learned that Cuba is thought to resemble a semi-submerged crocodile, because the island is shaped like one and that there is a species of crocodile, one of only four in the new world, that's found primarily in Cuba and is called the Cuban Crocodile. It's known for leaping straight up from the water in order to catch prey mid air. I didn't know this till just recently; imagine!

My Crocodile visitation is an ongoing source of fascination to me. Since I discovered this particular animal archetype in my childhood bathtub, I've come to see many aspects of the image. Today, She is the Babylonian Queen of the Ocean, Tiamat, the primordial dragon, and She is fearsome. She is Howling Mary, the slain Feminine archetype who came to me in my Howling Mary dream, biding her time, letting her presence be known. http://litadreaming.blogspot.com/2011/08/howling-mary.html And, haven't you ever seen those wonderful little front yard shrines to Mary in an upended bathtub? Yes, it's Mary in that bathtub, too.

This is the power of dreaming. This is how Big Dreams often come, as childhood or early nightmares. Perhaps, with apologies, the dream source impacts us with nightmares and hopes we've got the good sense to explore the message further.

I don't want to skip over the role of Devil in my early totem dream. Certainly, I would never romanticize or cutesy up the crocodile; never do I want to come face to face with one in waking life, (unlike my elephant totem which I've met on both sides).

I hold that the devil is the invention of patriarchal religions, as is dualistic thinking and the hierarchical paradigm. Goddess inclusive religions tend to see things cyclically: birth, life, death, birth again, mirrored in the seasons of earth. Death isn't evil, it's part of life. We're all capable of good and evil. The Devil is part of a dichotomy that projects evil as one Absolute, the opposite of Good, God. As Jung taught, it's dangerous to project our own dark shadow on to others and as Jesus taught, don't look for the mote in your neighbor's eye unless you remove the plank from your own.

But tomes like the 15th century classic, The Malleus Maleficarum or The Hammer of Witches, written by two Dominican monks as a guide for Inquisitors, are monuments to blind projection and provide ample evidence of the malice, cruelty and misogyny of the medieval Christian Church. In those illustrious times of male bullying, women were leagued with the devil, at least any woman who showed the least bit of spine and independence, owned property that could be taken from her, or just knew too much.

If Woman is maligned by being linked with the devil, the serpent and the apple, the fall from grace, the first one to sin, then no wonder Mary is pissed off and there's a crocodile waiting for me in the bath tub; waiting to talk to me, to teach me.

On Crocodile Friday, I honor the Great Mother and I honor Jesus, her beloved Son. I honor Spring and I honor Dreams. Blessed Be.

The Strange Case of Me and Not Me

I’ve loved public libraries since I was 15 when I worked in one after school; recently, I've taken to frequenting my neighborhood library again. I’ve especially enjoyed access to a great selection of literature on audio CD. I can listen to wonderful stories while I’m making jewelry, driving or cooking. Sometimes I listen to contemporary works, other times I select a classic. Often, I'm delighted by the energizing synchronicity of finding myself listening to the exact inspiration I need at the time.

I just finished Robert Louis Stevenson's classic, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", wonderfully narrated by Scott Brick. I was mesmerized by the story of a brilliant man who experiments with splitting himself from his Shadow and consequently reaps the tragic results. Stevenson wrote the story prior to any publication of Jung's famous work on the Shadow and what's even better, the story was based on his dreams.

In a recent post from Robert Moss's Dreamgates blog, Robert includes these great quotes about the story from Stevenson and from his wife.

'“For two days I went about racking my brains for a plot of any sort; and on the second night I dreamed the scene at the window, and a scene afterward split in two, in which Hyde, pursued for some crime, took the powder and underwent the change in the presence of his pursuers.”

His wife related picturesquely how one night Louis cried out horror-stricken, how she woke him up and he protested, “Why did you waken me? I was dreaming a fine bogy-tale!” She also related how he appeared the next morning excitedly exclaiming, “I have got my schilling-shocker — I have got my schilling-shocker!”'

You can read the rest of Robert's post here:

Stevenson entertained a vibrant dialogue with his dreams and believed his very livelihood depended on it. An active dream dialogue is key to unlocking many of life's essential mysteries, not the least of which is how to achieve balance within our imperfect humanity.

According to Carl Jung, the characters we reject or that repulse us in our dreams, especially when they are the same gender as us, are our Shadow parts. These are the aspects of our personalities that we don’t want to own, aspects that we deem undesirable or socially unacceptable. Sometimes, we also reject our "bright Shadow," admirable characteristics or qualities which our low self-esteem won't let us claim as our own.

The thing about the Shadow Archetype is that in waking life, we often project on to others what we reject and fear in ourselves. When we're hyper-critical and condemning of others, we may be animated by our unconscious Shadow blindness. But when we're actively in dialogue with our dreams, we have an opportunity to interact with Shadow aspects of our personality in ultimately rewarding ways.

Case in point is my Jeze-bella, whom I've renamed after getting to know her a bit.  When she appeared in my dream, I saw her as opposite to me, the Whore to my Madonna. But it was that gut feeling of rejection that led me to seek more interaction with her in a dream re-entry. When I met her in my night dream I was indifferent to her; I was willing to let her take my risks and suffer my dangers without so much as a thought for her well-being. Then I re-entered my dream and really met her, talked to her and came to understand her life strategy. Maybe she's down and dirty, but she’s a survivor, with a survivor’s stealth and wile. I’m learning a lot from her. Now, I love getting together with her for continued extended adventures in the in-between spaces of dream re-entry.

Dreams teach us introspection. They put us in dialogue with dimensions of ourselves that we've unconsciously rejected but that our dreams show us we must consciously integrate. Jung believed that the Shadow Archetype is critically important to our personal development and saw it as the first gateway to individuation. He also posited that integrating aspects of our Shadow selves is the secret to unlocking our true creativity. Creativity is the goddess/god given faculty of living life with imagination, a sense of humor and an accurate compass to where our bliss lies.

Each time I react negatively to a dream, especially to a female character, each time dreams leave me with feelings that are icky, scary or embarrassing, my dream radar says, “Darling, do you think this may have some valuable teaching from your Shadow?” Owning the "not me" parts of myself allows me to navigate my waking life more consciously and responsibly, with fewer blind spots to trip me up.

Now, what do you think Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry would say about their inner Jezebels or Mr. Hydes? In the same sense that we project our evil and taboos on to others individually, we collude with other one-dimensional personalities and project as a group on to other groups all our denied short-comings, fear and doubt. This was characteristic of the Nazi fervor in WWII, absolute Black and White; we’re Good, God is on our side; they’re Evil, Satan on earth. If you think this is a past phenomenon, just look at what, besides money-greed, is fueling our scary world conflicts today.

Instead of buying our own ego hype and living in a rigid Persona, we come to realize through dream-play that we’re capable of many personalities, some good, some bad (in our own judgments anyway), some we see as "me" and some we insist are "not me". Establishing a dialogue and living consciously with our rejected parts guards us from the lure of polemic ideologies; we become rooted in our own spirituality. Without this insight, we sit in judgment of people whom we believe are opposite to us; we list the faults of others and criticize their choices. But when we have experience meeting and dialoguing with our own Shadow through dreaming, we recognize the complexity of the other person's existence, and though we may still not agree with them, we don't need to villanize or exterminate them.

I think that the more of us get chummy with our personal Shadows, the more of us will recognize the Shadows looming behind the ideologues that seek to rule us. We can point and say, “I’d like you to turn around and answer to that Shadow behind you, and when you’ve found your humility and compassion, you can speak to me of your god, your right and wrong, and your vision for our country.

Archetypes

The word archetype derives from the Greek, archetupon. meaning something like, first-molded. It combines arche, the beginning and tupos, a pattern, model or type. (My source is Wikipedia.)

According to one on-line dictionary I used, it’s come to mean:

1. the original pattern or model from which all things of the same kind are copied or on which they are based; a model or first form; prototype.

2. (in Jungian psychology) a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern of thought, image, etc., universally present in individual psyches.

I bring this concept up because my husband, Jim, and I have a favorite "discussion"; "What is an archetype?" We often lapse into it lying in bed, waiting for sleep; I love when the room is dark and we talk. If I bring up our archetype discussion he’s likely to pose the question; "If there were no people, would archetypes exist?"

I think he believes that "archetypes" are human constructs. For instance, he'll say, "our pre-historic ancestors are out in a terrifying storm, the lightning blazing and the thunder booming so loud their teeth chatter. For that ineffable power they’ve experienced, they create an archetype, the God/Goddess of Thunder or Storm, the ultimate source of all this power.

Well, it makes sense. The purpose of it, I suppose, is to interact with this power in some approachable form in order to see if you can get IT to go easy on your neighborhood.

No people, no archetypes seems to be his thinking, but maybe it’s no people, less pressure on the Archetypes to make it better. Here's how I see it:

Archetypes are Energies that have been intuited by humans from the dawn of our habitation here on earth. They are energies experienced universally by woman and man of any race, in any culture, at any time in history. I don't think we create the Energies, although I think we create the forms they take in our personal or elected cultural mythology. These Energies can shape shift into many forms and can be recognized in stories, myths, religions and now, the mind-bending science of contemporary physics.

Because the Archetypes are actually Energies not subject to one permanent form, I think it's a waste of time and an invitation to trouble to fix the Energy, say of Divine Love, into one immutable aspect of itself. Especially when that concrete image excludes other aspects of that same energy vital for it to flow and do its job. For instance, God the Father definitely suffers from a lack of God the Mother.

In our dreams, the archetypes show up in many forms and communicate a lot of useful information. Jung identified some common ones as: the Self, the complete person, integrated in her or his many aspects, body, mind and soul; the Animus/Anima, the opposite gender aspect of each person’s psyche, one we’re likely to project on to the person with whom we “fall in love.” In dreams, this archetype can be tracked in the opposite gender characters peopling our night adventures; the Shadow, which contains the disavowed aspects of ourselves we commonly project on to others, shows up in characters we dislike, envy or of whom we are in awe, usually the same sex as the dreamer; and the Persona, is the mask to meet the faces that we meet, the one Ego dons to face the public. Sometimes when we dream of ourselves naked in public, it may have to do with how we think we’re perceived or how we desire to be seen.

There are many Archetypes; the Major Arcana of the Tarot is a gallery of universal archetypes preserved through centuries in a pack of playing cards. The greater the Archetypal figure in our psyche, the stronger the energy that accompanies its appearance. How I feel about a figure in my dream is often the first clue to who I’m really dealing with.

In my next post, I’ll tell you my Howling Mary dream. This is a Big Dream in my life story, a visit from the Mother Archetype. It came some forty years ago, before I had any idea what its message was, but to this day, it’s my moral compass and spiritual paradigm.

Although we may name the Archetypes, we don’t invent them and we certainly don’t control them. In my opinion, religion tries to bottle these archetypes and sell them under their brand name. I see no point in denying that the Archetypal Energy manifests in a myriad of metaphors and shape shifts according to each persons needs. That is normal. What's not normal is trying to claim absolute TRUTH status for one manifestation.

Being in tune with personal revelations in our dreams can save us from believing the projections of those whose intentions may be to manipulate us where we are most vulnerable, our imaginations. Dream work helps us claim our imaginations for our own ends, making us far less vulnerable to the myths of others.

What are “archetypes” is a popular conversation with many people, in and out of bed. The wonderful astrologer, Caroline Casey, suggests that we consider “composting” the word; her Trickster Redeemer is a wonderful manifestation of her composting work with archetypes. I’m grateful for my own on-going dialogue with such a wit as is Jim; and now, I’m opening the discussion to you. Your comments are most welcome.

Video courtesy of Jim and Chango.