By Arline Rowden

How do you feel your inner child fits into your spiritual life? Is the playful magical child in touch with the soul essence? Did it come in with a vision from the Soul? Before the child is conditioned by the world, and its ego strongly developed to keep it safe, was the spiritual blueprint for the life closer to the surface? There are so many different ideas and beliefs to ponder. It is interesting to read about different perspectives and hear the opinions of others. But in the end, we each will need to decide for ourselves what works for our spiritual prospective.

What do you remember about your interests as a child? There is a theory that those interests can give us many clues to our life focus from the perspective of the Soul. Looking at your interests from the summer when you were 7 years old, especially the things that you were drawn to when you were playing by yourself and not with others. Was there a book, movie or TV series that you loved? I encourage you to give some thought to this and write down what you remember. Then be creative in how those interests might be reflected in your life now.

Is it hard for you to remember fun times as a child? Were there difficult times in your family? Did someone in your family have a serious illness or did a loved one die? Were there financial struggles? Did you live in an unsafe neighborhood? Were your parents divorced or were they never together in the home? Did you have to take on adult responsibilities such as care for younger siblings or work to earn money for the family? Were you abused physically, emotionally or sexually? If you experienced any of these issues growing up, have you worked with a professional therapist to work on these issues? If so, where do you feel you are on your healing path at this time? If not, are you considering doing this in the near future?

Do you feel that you have a healthy inner adult or inner parent energy that you can call on when needed? You might have developed it as a parent to your child or children or as a pet parent. Can you feel a sense of caring and compassion within yourself for others and hopefully for yourself, too? I feel this is so important in all healing but especially for inner child healing.

Intellectually, we know (and have been told) that there was nothing wrong with us as a child and that we didn’t do anything so wrong that would have justified being abused in some way or not cared for in a way that we needed. But do we believe that at a feeling level? Explore how you talk about yourself as a child? Do you say I was a handful to raise or something like that? I feel the first step in inner child healing is to address this issue at a feeling level.

Do you feel you can connect with your inner child? If so, do you take some time to listen to your inner child? Do you express love to your inner child? Do you say that you are precious and lovable? Do you say that I am here to take care of you now and that you are worthy of love and don’t have to try to earn it?

I feel that inner child healing is the first step in healing. In time you can focus on understanding why the adults in your life did and said what they did to you. As that happens you can begin to accept and even forgive them. But often just going to forgiveness can keep the inner child from deep healing. It is a process that takes time and you deserve support as you go through this process. I encourage you to do some writing and meditating about your inner child and how it fits in with your spiritual development & healing. Integrating your inner child creates a sense of wholeness in the now. Focusing on and accepting all of you will help you to be your true self in the Aquarian Age.