How great, happy, loving and kind would our children be if we managed to flood their belief system with POSITIVE messages about themselves? Instead, we regularly feed their subconscious with the 'you are not good enough' messages, hypnotising them into believing that they are their failures and mistakes...
Do you realise how you shape your children?
We are massive contributors and co-creators of our children's reality mainly because we shape their perception of themselves. Typically, our own warped picture about who WE are gets passed on. Do you understand how your parents shaped you? Are you in touch with your Inner Child, his/her's aches and distress?
The ORIGINAL, loving part of your Inner Child is what remained unchanged since your birth - the joyous, curious and fearless you. This uninhibited and free-spirited side to you, unaltered by parental and social conditioning, comes out to play when you are totally in the moment. At those times you feel trully HAPPY because you are free of your polar opposite: the altered, more RESTRICTED part of you often refered to as your Shadow, your Ego, or a False Self. I call this side of me the Hurting Inner Child. Hurting because of my painful childhood experiences which left me handicapped, thinking that I wasn't enough for others to love me. As a result of my beliefs I felt powerless and fearful, responding to life mostly with anger.
Unless we manage to identify and heal the bruised part of ourselves, we can never truly grow up into EMOTIONALLY HEALTHY and happy individuals.
The degree of our conditioning varies. We get shaped by education, by religion and culture. However, our carers played a crucial role as we were the most vulnerable whilst spending time in their company, observing their behaviour towards themselves and others. They have therefore FORMED 1/ the base for our belief system (what is OK and what isn't, on which we build our understanding of life) and 2/ our first relationships (with the same and opposite sex ). They taught us BOUNDARIES, they modeled UNCONDITIONAL LOVE for themselves and towards us, CARE and respect, or the LACK of thereof...
How much one drifts apart from his or her original Self depends on emotional health and maturity of their parents. Emotional health is the result of healing of one's childhood emotional traumas, and its level is directly connected to the level of one's SELF-AWARENESS. If one isn't aware of his or her wounds, she or he grows up into an insecure, immature adult.
Yes our children inherit ALL our 'possessions'. The house, the car, the money, together with our insecurities. We pass on our pain, together with our maldaptations to life. And our wealth, which is meant to keep them going on the outside, becomes irrelevant because they are STUCK WITHIN: they are stopped in their life tracks and repeatedly knocked down by their discontent Self, feeling rejected and scared...
They spend all their money on surrounding themselves with inauthentic others, buying their love and approval because we failed at re-parenting our Inner Child like our parents did. We haven't taught them what money can't buy: true love, self-worth, wisdom, respect, and inner peace. We haven't taught them because we weren't wise, peaceful, nor truly happy ourselves. We've mistaken respect for CONTROL, and love for SELF-SACRIFICE. We modelled self-rejection, self-abandonment and self-betrayal by not listening to the cries of our inner child.
Having dismissed our inner calling, we abandoned our talents and sacrificed our happiness to please others. Which is why we feel deeply unfulfilled seeking to find fulfilment THROUGH OUR CHILDREN. Our self-resentment then reflects in the amount of anger towards them whenever they deviate from OUR ideas about THEIR life.
We say 'But that is what my parents done to me and I turned out OK!' Really? So why do we plan their life for them? Because we are scared they will screw up like we did? When exactly will this perverse kind of justice come to an end?
Firstly, we must authentically review our own childhood by looking at our parents through the eyes of compassion and forgiveness. We must see them as 'grown up children' who, even at their best, made many mistakes. We weren't born with a manual and their only guide was what they knew from home. Yes, we are grateful they have done better than their parents did but they must come down from the pedastal we put them on! Otherwise we have no chance to see their weaknesses, learn from them, and grow into people they would be truly proud of. Our parents want to see that we are wiser and stronger than they are, but most importantly that we love them with all their flaws.
Be wise! Instead of expecting your parents to change (a useless and draining exercise), use your energy to shed your own UNWANTED INHERITANCE and become the unconditionally loving parent to your children. To truly support our children's growth, we must accept responsibilty for our Inner Child and heal her/his wounding first. We must understand and overcome the belief in our inadequacy, unloveability, and powerlessness. To reverse our karma, we have to stop seeking acceptance elsewhere and love ourselves in ways our parents have only wished for...
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Copyright © 2017 Michaela Patel