The "Wounded Inner Child" Is an Egoic Figment of Your Imagination - The Little Prince Series

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The "Wounded Inner Child" Is an Egoic Figment of Your Imagination - The Little Prince Series

Daily Insight from the Story ofThe Little Prince

It can come as a shock to realize that we don't have a "wounded inner child" after all. People have a difficult time coming to grips with this very different way of understanding themselves.

One person lamented, "Even if I don't have a wounded inner child, I can't help feeling insecure. It's just the way I am."

"Is it really the way you are?" I probed. "Or is it simply the way you've grown up picturing yourself and feeling about yourself? I'm proposing that your insecurity is nothing more than achildish pattern of thought that wasreinforced in childhood instead ofoutgrown."

There's a world of difference between beingchildlike, in the sense of true to the essence with which we were bornwhich the story of the Little Prince seeks to reawaken in usandchildish.

Getting the point, the person I was talking to wanted to know, "Then what do I do about my insecurity?"

"Your childish way of seeing yourself ought to have been left behind with childhood," I explained. "But your parents didn't know how to help you outgrow the baby stage of feeling you need someone to take care of you. Instead they fostered a sense of inadequacy. So it's up to you to do it for yourself."

"How can I do that?"

"You have to discover your strength. You've got a well-learned script in your head that tells you how you need to betaken care of. But beneath the way you've learned to think of yourself, there's a strong, resilient, competent essence that's rooted in the divine Presence. It's about becoming aware of this, then living from it moment by moment."

It's a simple matter of "rewiring" our brain. Studies have shown that the neural connections that make us feel insecure can be unhooked. We can then connect the synapses in our brain in a more positive way.

Does this sound complicated? Actually, it's not. When we begin paying attention to our essence, the way we are connected up starts to changespontaneously. Existing connections get disconnected and new connections are formed. As this happens, we begin to experiencefaith in ourselves instead offear, power instead of insecurity.

So what should you actuallydo when you feel insecure, hurt, put down, inadequate, or wounded?

If we want to get past feeling insecure, or any of our feelings of inadequacy, we have to become aware of how we reinforce our insecurity with endless mental chatter.

It's as if we had a tape in our head, churning out anxious thoughts that play through our brain continuously.

When the Little Prince talks about pulling the shoots of the baobabs as soon as they appear above the groundas soon as we become conscious of themhe's saying, "Pay attention to these thoughts and you'll be amazed how you tell yourself you can't do' something, aren't ready to face up to' an issue, or daren't speak up' for yourself."

We grow up not bycomforting ourselves, but byconfronting ourselves. Of course, it needs to be done in a caring and compassionate manner, in the sort of way Michael Brown advocates in his wonderful bookThe Presence Process, now in a revised edition.

It isn'tsupport we need from others, which just intensifies our sense of weakness, but self-inquiry that causes us to self-confront.

This means that when we become aware of a way in which we baby ourselves, we see where the pattern came from in our childhood, then we stop acting as if we werestill a child. This is how we pull the baobab shoots up.

Instead of seeking support for our childish state, so we can stay an emotional baby, we begin relating in a mature manner. Weshow up for ourselves as the adult we now are, coming from our inner being instead of from our external, wounded ego and its flip side that Eckhart Tolle calls the pain-body.

Our essential self has never been wounded, victimized, damaged, or hurt in any way. Only the ego has ever experienced these things, which is what has given rise to our pain-body.

We'll see how this works in practical terms tomorrow.

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