This is a descriptive talk and practice in energetic healing.
The Inner Child.
Welcome my friends,
Thank you for joining me.
My name is Bassam Younis.
Eckhart Tolle calls it the pain body.
The teacher Gurdjieff calls it the chief feature.
It is more generally known to us as the wounded inner child.
By whatever name we may know it,
It is really irrelevant.
What is of importance is that in all cases it represents our inner wounding and it is our responsibility to heal it.
Over the course of this next 30 minutes talk I am going to guide you on an inner journey of deepening in order to help you directly meet your inner child.
Not as a concept but as a sense reality made up of feelings and knots of energy that are aching for release in the body.
Let us begin now.
Take a few deep breaths to begin to ground your attention and your awareness in being in the stillness of this present moment,
The now.
Never mind what the voice in the head saying,
Simply allow yourself to be open and to be receptive.
In other words,
Allow yourself to receive.
And as your breathing deepens,
I would like you to sense the expansion in your body as it occurs,
Followed by the contraction with the releasing of the exhale.
Just inhaling,
Feeling the expansion,
Then exhaling and feeling the release.
All the while feel the beingness of you,
Not as an idea but as a reality,
The beingness of you,
The is-ness,
The am-ness.
You know you are here because you can sense your reality directly.
You are not an idea.
So feeling the being of you while keeping your awareness open.
Now begin to include any sounds in your environment that you may hear.
Just receiving them dispassionately,
Neither liking them nor disliking them.
Openly receiving them and breathing,
The inhale rising to the north,
A slight pause,
Then the exhale follows,
Falling to the south.
Go ahead and repeat,
Inhaling softly,
Deeply,
Rising and slight pause,
Then falling.
Then allow the release of the exhale to feel like a surrendering.
Good,
My friends.
Now you may keep your eyes open or close,
Whichever you prefer.
What we do want,
However,
Is that your attention begins to inwardly turn.
We want to introvert the mind.
Feeling sounds coming,
Going,
But you are sensing within the is-ness of your being.
Some sounds are near,
Others are far.
Whatever the case,
Maybe simply receive them.
You just stay open,
Receptive,
Releasing,
Releasing.
Good.
Now perhaps here the mind may be resisting in some way,
Calling you to be engaged in thoughts.
That's fine.
Don't make a problem of it.
Don't struggle.
Just remain open.
Remain open and allowing.
Even the mind's resistance can be what we call thinking is in fact but a form of resistance.
Allow fear of dropping beneath the superficial layers of self.
There is a saying,
Beneath the surface of my self lies the immensity of my being.
Indeed.
So remain open,
Receptively aware,
And in this state of open awareness,
I'd like you to just listen,
To allow yourself to listen.
There is no effort in any of this.
You simply allow listening to happen,
Openly listening.
You don't even need to understand anything that is being said.
What matters is that you remain open,
Yielding,
Present,
Aware.
Listening throughout as you listen,
Try to maintain a connection with your breathing.
Rising,
Traveling up to the north,
Expanding the body,
And simply releasing.
Good.
The inner child is just a concept,
But the feelings of overwhelm it engenders in us are real,
Causing us to suffer and in many cases to hijack our lives,
To hijack our possibility of joy and experiencing love,
Experiencing peace.
Concepts in and of themselves are fine,
Of course,
But in our work,
What our intention is going to be in this short practice,
They cannot help us.
They cannot help us to recover ourselves.
If I look inside myself,
I do not find an inner child as such.
What I do find,
On the other hand,
Are energies that are and have at some point in my past become knotted up from motion.
It is these blocked or knotted up energies that we call emotions.
Now I understand that they are usually described as energy in motion,
But they are hurts,
Pains,
Jealousies,
Angers,
Sadness and disappointment,
Feelings of abandonment and rejection.
These are knots of energy that need to be released.
They have become stagnant.
It is the sense experience of these energies directly that we are interested in in our practice today,
Finding them,
Locating them within our body,
Within the body itself,
Not in the mind,
Not as an idea,
But as a sense reality,
Expressing some place specifically in the body.
It may be in the chest,
It may be in the belly,
It may be in the back,
The neck,
The arms,
It can be anywhere,
That I can directly discern and feel that's what I am interested in,
That I can be with without rejecting,
Without labeling or justifying,
Simply allowing myself to feel them.
And in order to help me to deepen in this practice,
I ask myself,
What has been the underlying sense of discontent that has been with me throughout my life?
What has been the underlying sense of discontent or dissatisfaction if you prefer,
That has been always with me beneath the surface,
Just there waiting?
It is with me in all that I do,
In all that I hope for,
In all that I pray for.
It is with me in my activities.
In fact,
In many cases,
It is the main driving force behind all that I do.
So much so,
That it has defined,
Oh,
And how I am in the world.
Now,
I may not directly know about it,
But it certainly knows about me.
And I may not know it by name,
But I can feel it as a sense experience.
I may call it sadness or anger or grief.
I may call it disappointment,
Fear and so on.
Whatever I call it,
Again,
Is irrelevant.
What I am interested in is the sense reality of this feeling.
Do I know what it feels like directly?
In other words,
Have I ever taken the time to simply be with it?
Have I ever allowed myself to be with it?
So right now,
I'd like you to ask yourself,
What is the underlying feeling that has been with you all your life?
This underlying feeling of discontent that drives your activity?
Again,
You don't need to know exactly what it is.
We are merely asking,
Inquiring in order to allow something to surface.
What is the underlying feeling of discontent that has been with me throughout my life?
That has characterized who I am,
That motivates my action,
My activity?
It may be a number of different answers will surface.
Good,
That's fine.
But again,
It isn't really what we are interested in,
Is it?
What we are interested in is the sense reality of the feeling in the body that is beginning to surface.
The feeling.
Can you connect with it?
What I am discovering here already is that this overarching pain experience,
Let's call it,
Beneath the surface of my superficial reality,
Is a substantial sense experience of emotional pain that is in the body.
And if I am interested in freedom,
If I am interested in recovering my life,
To allow myself to return to,
Or to even to experience for the first time,
Flow of freedom in being,
A lightness in being.
If I am interested in this,
Then I have no choice but to go there,
To deepen into this place of emotional contraction,
We might even call it,
In the body.
I must go there directly,
I must go there in order to meet it,
To be with it.
And as we progress with this talk,
I am already beginning to feel that this overarching emotional feeling that has been with me all these years,
Could be again sadness,
Anger,
Grief,
Whatever it is,
Is in fact longing for release.
To continue and to begin my connection with this emotion,
I ask myself,
If this overarching feeling,
This emotion that has been with me all these years,
Beneath the surface,
Just there ready to reveal itself,
If this overarching feeling could have a face,
What would this face feel like?
If it could have a face,
What would it feel like right now?
This feeling beneath the surface,
What would it feel like right now?
Would it feel sad?
Would it feel anger,
Resentful,
Disappointment?
What would it feel like?
It doesn't matter if I am right in this,
At this stage,
And it doesn't matter the label,
The name,
What I am trying to do is just to raise it to the surface and to begin to feel it as my own face.
If I was to wear a face that represents that emotion directly,
What would it feel like right now,
Wherever I am,
Wherever you are in space and time,
Wherever you happen to be listening to this,
Sitting somewhere quietly,
Lying down,
Whatever it is,
I would like you to feel the face of that emotion without reserve,
Without righteousness.
Don't worry that you should not be feeling this or that it is unbecoming of you to feel this right now.
It doesn't matter any of that.
Just allow yourself to feel,
To wear the face of that emotion without denying,
Without rejecting,
Without excusing,
Without trying to understand even.
You are simply actively permitting this hurt in the body to have a stage,
To show up.
You are giving it a permission to present without maturity even.
Just carry that feeling,
That emotion on your face.
Allow your face to represent it.
You are letting it surface and you are allowing it to show up on your face.
For me,
It is the face of sadness,
The sadness of rejection and abandonment,
The sadness of fear and insecurity,
The sadness of anger and abuse,
The sadness of disappointment and betrayal.
For me,
It is sadness that is the overarching emotion that has been with me all my life,
That has defined my character,
That has defined my behavior,
That has defined the strategies that I revert to in order to escape this feeling.
What is it for you?
What are you feeling right now?
What is presenting as your face?
Can you allow yourself to feel it?
Can you open to the feeling,
Simply open?
You don't need to do anything about it.
You don't need to excuse it.
You don't need to justify it.
You just need to feel it.
You have been denying it all these years,
An audience as it were.
Still it always manages to find a way of showing up in your life,
Doesn't it?
So here we are not interested in explaining.
We are only interested in giving it an audience,
An intimate audience.
You are to be to it like a parent with open arms to a child.
You see,
In all this we are not dealing with concepts of wounding.
We are wanting to deal directly with the reality of the emotion,
What we might simply call the pain of myself.
It is in my body.
It is now showing up on my face as sadness,
Aloneness,
Bitterness,
Whatever it is.
And as we dive deeper,
We try to be more exact now with this emotion.
What we want is to begin to locate it specifically in the body,
In some part of the body where it is expressing specifically.
Where in your body are you feeling your hurt?
I myself am feeling my sadness on the left side of the back of my neck.
It's just there,
A hot type of tension.
It's just sitting there.
Now it may not stay there,
But that's where it is presenting in this moment.
For you,
It may be somewhere else.
It may be in your chest.
It may be in your belly,
A tightness.
It may be anywhere.
The parent can see the hurt on the child's face,
But where in the body is the hurt that the child's face is complaining about?
Where is it?
Where is it and what expression is it taking in the body?
Tightness contraction,
Heart searing pain.
Whatever it is,
Simply allow.
We are not interested in fixing or treating.
We are simply interested in pinpointing where this particular feeling,
This overarching emotion that has been with me all these years,
Currently in this moment,
Where can I find it in my body?
So there you are.
Whatever you're doing,
Wherever you are,
That's what you're doing.
You are beginning to make connections.
You are coming out of the mind and into your body.
You are leaving concepts behind and beginning to directly feel the sense reality of this emotion,
What is in fact an energy blocked from motion,
Knotted up because of some experience that I interpreted a particular unfavorable way.
But all of this is irrelevant right now.
I'm fundamentally only interested in the physical feeling that is showing up in my body and that is showing up in a specific area of my body.
That's where it is hiding,
That's where it is presenting and that's where I am meeting it openly.
Now what I wish to do is to simply stay with it,
To stay with it and keep this feeling,
This energy,
This emotion,
Company,
Open company,
This passionate company.
By dispassionate I mean simply being with it without judgment.
I neither like this feeling nor dislike it.
I neither refuse it nor welcome it.
I'm just being with it.
It isn't about me right now.
It is about the sense experience of this feeling,
Holding it,
Being with it,
Not wishing it away or explaining it away or understanding it.
Don't try to do anything.
It is weary of you,
This feeling,
This inner child,
Is cautious and suspicious.
You are making the turnaround but it has been a while.
So what to do?
Nothing.
Simply be with it.
Allow it to be with you.
Feel it.
In my case,
As I speak and feel this pain in the left side of my neck in the back,
I notice it beginning to refer,
To move in other words,
To start to travel down towards the front of my left shoulder.
I just notice,
Open noticing,
Allowing my body to be soft,
To breathe without contraction,
Without urgency,
Without impatience,
All the usual ways that I am.
Right now it's not about me.
And as I remain open,
An open observer,
An open witness within which this pain is showing up,
I notice it changing.
I notice it referring.
What are you experiencing?
Is that tightness in your chest still solid as it was in the beginning?
Is that boil in your belly still as it was?
Was there something different about it?
Is there some relief,
Some changing?
Is it still like ice or has the ice begun to fall,
So to speak?
Good.
Whatever the case may be,
And if you are on your own doing this exercise in the future,
Then you can simply stay there as long as you need to,
Just allowing,
Breathing,
Softening,
Observing openly,
Like a parent with open arms.
And if you wish to go deeper,
We can dive even deeper.
So let's go ahead.
I am meeting here my hurt as an energy field in my body.
I am meeting it directly.
I am not labeling it.
I am simply feeling it without judgment.
It is a hurt that has over time become knotted up in me and is now presenting as an energy stagnation in my body.
And I have been feeling it.
I have been making my connection with it.
And in doing so,
I have noticed that it is beginning to discharge in some way,
Perhaps to break up,
To dissolve,
To change,
To dissipate.
I am neither glad nor urgent.
Simply by being with it,
It is beginning to release.
Is it really that simple indeed?
And all I needed to do is to simply drop out of the mind and into the body,
To drop out of concepts into the sense reality,
Simply to feel.
It is this knotted up energy in the body that has been festering there,
Abandoned.
That is the motivating force in my life,
Predisposing me to a certain kind of experience that is alike.
Anger showing up as anger in my life.
Jealousy showing up as jealousy,
Sadness,
A sadness.
All I am feeling,
All I am doing is What Is.
I am not making anything up.
I am simply being with What Is.
I am being with it at the level of energy.
So I have moved from concept to feeling,
The emotion.
Now I am simply calling it and knotted up energy in my being.
So I breathe,
I stay open and receive receptive,
Accepted,
Non-reactive,
Apparent with open arms.
Breathing,
Allowing.
And as this journey takes me into a deeper space of being,
I recognize the relief that is beginning to replace the hurt.
A deep calm beginning to show up,
A relief,
A motion of energy,
A movement,
Return me to flow,
A free flow,
A lightness,
Even a sweetness of love,
A sweetness of trust.
And to dive even further,
I simply ask myself this question that I do not expect an answer for or to.
What is it that is aware of the energy?
What is it that is aware of the emotion?
What is it that is aware of the intellect?
In all cases this awareness is there.
What is it that is aware?
What is this awareness?
I am not interested in an intellectual answer.
I am simply asking a question.
What I am interested in is the connection.
I am interested in the immersion.
I am interested in the intimacy that I am now feeling.
What is this awareness?
And so my friends,
Just a simple exercise and practice in healing in this way where I may usually distract myself from feeling inward,
From connecting what is always there beneath the surface waiting for me,
With strategies of pleasure and what have you,
All of which are fine.
With this practice I can now determine instead to make a connection.
Practically speaking this may mean that I may be outside and something happens that raises this feeling to the surface,
Some event,
Some mishap that causes me to feel the overwhelm rising,
The sadness rising,
Expressing in some other way as an anger or as a resentment or whatever the case may be.
Instead of picking up a drink or putting on a movie or whatever it may be,
I can simply separate myself for a few moments to a place of aloneness,
Quiet if possible,
And simply drop out of my mind and into the body.
And I do that by feeling the reality of my body at that moment.
Where is the pain showing up?
Is it in my elbow?
Is it in my knee?
Is it in my chest?
Is it in my face?
Simply be there with it.
And allow it to surface out of the mind and into the body.
Allow yourself to feel it at the level of the body.
You start with an idea of what happened.
You feel the emotion in the body.
You allow yourself to dive even deeper to the energy that is fueling the emotion,
This knotted up energy.
And you simply sit with this energy,
Softly breathing,
Allowing.
No pressure,
No tension.
And in time you may even be able to learn to do it with your eyes even open.
In the company of others,
You are looking out but you are feeling into your being,
Looking out,
Feeling in,
Out of the mind,
Into the body.
I'm looking out but I'm feeling into my body,
Into those places of tightness and simply receiving them.
Knowing that in due time they will unknot and I will experience a return of flow.
And as the return of flow occurs,
My mind will begin to think differently.
It will no longer be motivated by the pain.
It is now being motivated by the flow.
Lightness in the body begets tightness in the mind and vice versa.
Return to lightness in the body,
Flow begets lightness in the mind.
Our thinking,
Our perspective,
Our perception changes.
We have but to be willing to come out of the mind even momentarily into the body,
Out of the mind and into the body.
No matter how painful the body appears to be at first,
You do this regularly and in time all the energies that have been knotted up in time due to memory showing up as memory,
Actioning our life will dissipate and release.
And as they do so,
Our perspective,
Our thoughts,
The quality of our thinking begins to change.
And that's it from me my friends.
I trust that you have gotten something out of this little practice and I hope that you would be willing to try it.
And with that,
I thank you for joining me and I look forward to hearing from you and to see you again or perhaps not to see you but to engage you in another conversation at another time.
Take care.
Bye for now.
Thank you.
