Creating Safety Despite Scarcity

This talk is taking you on 4 paths to safety for your Inner Child. You can expect contemplative and thoughtful narration, metaphors, thought prompts and an inner adventure.

Gratitude to wu yi for making the photo on the illustration available.

Transcript

Welcome.

In this talk we are going to explore how to create safety for our inner child in a world where we often experience scarcity or danger.

As if there wasn't enough material for us to weave the nest of safety for ourselves,

For our inner child,

Not even mentioning our close people that we might actually want to protect and nurture.

So before we explore paths to safety for our inner child,

Let's reconnect with the idea itself.

Let's stop and take a breath and ask ourselves,

What is inner child for me?

If you're just listening and nothing is coming up,

It's okay.

And if there is a brightly burning answer,

It's good.

Take this moment to articulate it.

And if there is something in between,

Like a gentle feeling,

Sensation,

Idea that cannot be quite shaped in words,

This is also fine.

I will share mine.

For me,

My inner child is this version of me,

Or a filter,

Let's say,

A setup of my system,

A way that I can show up in the world,

My most vulnerable,

But also most pure and creative self.

When I think of an inner child,

I explore the concept of oneness,

But also non-duality.

We are one,

And yet we can be split into multiple pieces,

Which is not just black and white.

Yeah,

We are still one,

But we are sometimes lost in our expressions.

Every version of us,

Every day that we wake up,

Every mood,

Every personality trait is a different way to show up in the world.

If you've ever created a CV,

A resume for work,

I hope no one is triggered by those words.

You know that you pick components of your life and you put them together to form sort of a character that you can play,

And your inner child in this way is also a character,

So it is still you,

And you are one,

But you cannot show up at every moment with your full self,

Because then you would expand uncontrollably and unstoppably,

And you would even transcend your human form.

If we really pursue this idea of oneness,

Then we transcend even this human body and organism.

So this is why we separate ourselves into different roles.

Our first and most obvious form is our physical form,

And then we have all those emotional,

Mental expressions and archetypes that we show up in in different situations.

So inner child is one of those archetypes for me,

And when I work with my inner child,

When I say work,

I mean practice.

When I practice intentionally with my inner child,

I even separate myself into two different archetypes.

There is a parent me and a child me,

And the parent me is trying to give safety and encouragement to my inner child and provide healing.

As many psychological and spiritual methods go,

This is the way to heal some of your trauma.

And we have even had practices for inner child work at some of my sessions online.

But here is this dilemma that I have encountered.

If my adult self is at some point unable to access this security that a parent should transmit to their child,

Just like real parents often cannot access it in life.

That's why we,

As we grow up and go on a healing journey,

We decide to reparent ourselves,

To give ourselves this safety that we were lacking.

But what if we can do no better than our actual parents did,

And we also as adults are confused and lost?

We don't know all the answers,

We have fear and anxiety.

Where do we take this strength?

And now at this level,

We cannot say,

Okay,

Let me just stop here for a bit,

Take a breath and go to talk to my inner child first,

And then I will provide to my actual physical child.

Because here is the thing,

You're already talking to your inner child,

And you even don't have energy for them.

Do you have such instances sometimes?

Because I think that I do,

Or sometimes this stops me from the work with my inner child.

So this is how I came to explore the topic of creating safety for this precious,

Beautiful little girl that I hold inside.

And for you,

It can be any other precious little being that you imagine when you imagine your inner child,

When you put your hands on your heart or on your solar plexus to tap into the purest and most innocent and gentle version of your personality and self.

This beautiful being deserves all the love and care and safety.

So when I'm lost and I cannot provide for this little darling treasure inside myself,

I go to the great mother nature to receive from her.

This is my first path.

I find safety in nature,

In peaceful places,

A city park,

A forest field in the countryside,

A walk by a riverbank,

And of course,

Sitting by the sea,

Listening to the sea,

Or braving mountains or hills,

Whatever form of nature is accessible to you.

This is all this great oneness and the mothering energy of nature is enormously vast and accessible to us if we walk barefoot.

If we exchanged our energy with her,

With the earth,

With the elements,

If we just immerse our hand in the waters,

If we hug a tree.

And this beauty,

Like a fairy tale,

Is sometimes also elusive.

Because when I go into nature physically,

And I expect to receive,

I often am disturbed by the presence of human interference.

Or if I go too deep in nature,

I encounter her more dangerous signs.

And I fear the great mother,

Wild animals that may cross my path and I will not know what to do.

Yeah,

As a child of civilization,

This is my experience.

So the safety that is environment given cannot always be found if the environment that you are in is not 100% safe.

Well,

When can it be?

I haven't included in my list of paths to share today,

A path of creating a beautiful,

Safe space within your home,

Even though this is actually the path I walk most often.

But I wanted to explore things that are completely free and accessible,

Things that come from the natural world,

Our essence,

Not things that we need to buy,

You know,

Like a set of candles or a fort to be able to afford the rent in an apartment that,

If you are blessed with,

That can provide this safe space.

Which I wish to everyone,

Because I think that this is what we deserve as people,

To have this space where we can live in peace and come back to our resource and recharge.

But this is a different conversation,

The habitat that we have.

But nature is present everywhere,

Polluted or not,

But underneath all of our noises and disturbances,

It is still the same nature,

That is still always open to us as her children,

But with all the love and care that she has for us,

Like an animal,

Like a being of matter,

She can also be harsh or just,

Not even cold,

But not always providing the comfort for us and softness,

But sometimes providing hard surface for us to land on and learn from our mistakes and bruises.

So,

Of course,

In her most secret and beautiful corners,

The level of charge that you can receive is beyond comparison to anything that we can generate ourselves.

But in the moment when you don't feel the safety in the environment,

A second path that you can turn to is actually your own body.

Our bodies are our nature.

Our organism is a universe.

So,

In the essence,

Your body and all the processes,

Seen and unseen,

That go on inside it,

This is a miracle and a world of itself,

A world that lives by your rules and through your vibration.

Yeah,

I was uncertain,

Unsure to use this word vibration,

But let's say melody,

Color,

Vibe,

Yeah,

The expression that you have.

I don't want to put it in some linear scale and say that,

Oh,

If you have like high vibe,

Then your body and the world that you live in will be,

You know,

All rainbows and butterflies,

Because it just doesn't work in this way.

But there is your uniqueness,

Yourself,

That you project inside and outside.

So,

Inside,

You are replicating yourself through your DNA,

Through your cells,

And in the same manner,

Outside,

You're living traces of yourself.

And all of that ecosystem of you that goes beyond your physical body is the world that you are creating.

You're the one oneness,

The being of this world,

And you are expressed in all the different processes and micro components that you have.

So,

This world of you can provide safety to your inner child when the path of nature even feels unaccessible or too dangerous for some reason,

Or maybe not pure enough from the disturbances of human world.

Yeah.

So,

In this case,

When you turn to your body,

There is a question,

How can I create the universe and the world of my body in form of the most innocent,

Beautiful,

Healing,

Loving,

Caring nature that I may not always see when I go out of the door into the world?

But when I go in into my world,

How can I make sure or at least try to see this purity that I long for and the safety that I long for?

And just like in the great mother nature,

In our own world,

In our own world,

We have pollution disturbances,

We don't always feel pure or safe for ourselves.

But the level of control and influence that we can have on ourselves is much larger than we as an individual can have on the whole earth,

On the world.

So,

It is the same path to walk,

To be in physical contact.

Just like you walk on the grass,

You can massage your feet with your hands,

You can hug yourself like you would hug a tree,

You can breathe.

And the air that enters you can be a point of focus.

If you cannot sit on a riverbank or on a beach and breathe the beautiful sea air,

You can breathe the air that you have around you and concentrate on the air as it passes through your body,

The environment that it encounters within and the qualities that it has while it travels in your lungs.

This is the power that we have to shape the nature of our being and to bathe in it and observe it and to offer it as a sanctuary to this beautiful inner child that resides in our cells.

Now,

The fourth path,

Oh,

Sorry,

The third,

Actually,

The third path that I have taken a note of is actually connected with what I began with,

The feeling of scarcity,

Sort of a deficit.

So sometimes I don't feel safe or luscious in my own body because I feel that I have either too many or too few sensory stimuli that can influence me in positive or negative ways.

So it can be lights,

It can be sounds,

It can be shapes and textures and the presence of other beings.

So in a supportive way,

It could be relaxing music or holding some,

You know,

Stones or wooden objects.

In a disturbing or irritating form,

It can be loud noise,

Constant buzz of some stuff in the house,

Like a fridge,

I don't know,

And so on.

And even the shapes and textures and the lighting of the space that I inhabit,

My living space or the space where I work or socialize,

Any space that I am in,

It can be supportive or disruptive for my inner peace and the wellness of that nature inside.

And I mentioned that when we are blessed and abundant enough to create this sanctuary in our home,

For many of us it can be a source of support,

As it is for myself.

But sometimes we don't have enough resource,

So we don't have time or money or space to populate our house,

Our nest,

To weave the nest,

To populate it with some little objects that we can rely on for support,

Like cushions or small sources of light that create this softness.

And this is why I am exploring the idea of this third path to safety,

Which is the minimalistic path,

Sort of ascetic path,

Path of scarcity or deficit,

But not in a bad way,

Not in a way opposite to abundance,

But more in this minimalistic way,

Where we don't have things that we would go to for support,

Like coping mechanism or,

Yeah,

Some comfort things.

We can also explore the idea,

Oh,

How good it actually is that there are no things that I need to react to,

No thoughts or sounds or objects,

And in that lack of interaction I can rest.

I have taken a complete informational detox for one week.

I have been blessed and I'm grateful for this possibility that I've had around the holiday season,

And I found that it was a good company,

But I didn't lack any informational stimuli.

And since then,

I've often been just taking a few moments or even a couple of hours in complete darkness and silence,

Or maybe with a candle,

Single candle,

As a form of recharging after my day.

I feel that my body is asking for this to remove even pleasant music,

Even pleasant talks and podcasts or practices,

To remove them and just to unload all my senses,

All the sensory load,

You know,

To take it off.

But of course,

This begs the question what to do if our environment is so stressful that not only doesn't it provide supportive stimuli,

But it provides disruptive ones.

As I mentioned,

All those buzzes and,

Yeah,

Maybe unpleasant shapes to look at,

And the go-to response of our inner child or inner animal even would be just to dissociate from it,

Detach and fall into some form of a depressive state.

Because the world is kind of hostile to you in this moment.

What can you do when you find yourself in some unpleasant,

Noisy desert with your beautiful inner child to protect and nurture?

What would a parent do?

And in this case,

The only path,

That fourth and final path that I have noted is the safety that comes from our integrity.

A sort of path of honor and truth and love,

Which is the ultimate truth.

When everything else fails,

We still have full wholeness in ourselves,

Full oneness with the divine love.

And as difficult as it is to connect with this feeling of integrity at some point,

It is always there.

So we may fear things,

Things may threaten us,

But at any given moment,

Actually,

We are.

We exist,

We stand on the ground,

And the weight of us speaks with power and integrity that is enough for us to show up in the role of a protector for our inner child.

And even when you don't know,

As soon as you admit you don't know and you stand in the confusion,

In a hurricane of your own confusion,

But you stand as firm as you can to provide some stability for your inner child to rely on.

You know,

When you travel in a crowded bus that goes on some bumpy road and everything is moving and shaking and people are just falling on one another,

And if you travel,

Let's say,

With a child,

The only thing that you can do is to hold on as hard as you can and let that child hold your hand,

Because the child doesn't even have the possibility to hold some railing,

Some form of support,

And even the weight of your own body as an adult is larger,

You have more stability due to your own weight.

So you're kind of a pillar of support for your child,

Or your inner child in this case,

And the weight here is a good thing.

It is the presence,

The contact with the ground,

The affirmation I am.

Nothing else,

Yeah?

Not that it is good or everything is going to be all right,

You cannot know that at any point,

But the affirmation that I am here,

I'm here,

And this is me,

Fully in my integrity,

I will be true to myself.

If there is confusion,

I will say openly I'm confused.

If there is scarcity,

I will say we do not have this.

If there is a challenge or a danger,

I will say this is trying to hurt us,

And I will do what I can to protect us.

I will be reacting to this with all the integrity and love that I can master.

And this thought and this path somehow holds this unbelievable power to liberate you from the fear you can have inside,

Because fear,

I think I have a talk about that,

Fear is a ghost,

It's an illusion,

It's a phantom,

Because we fear something that hasn't happened yet,

Even if it's about to happen,

Yeah?

Like there is a dog barking,

And we obviously fear the dog,

Or maybe some of us don't,

But most people would be afraid,

But in that point in time when the dog is barking at you,

It is not biting you,

It is just barking,

And this is completely healthy and right that your body and mind are signaling to you,

Hey,

There is danger,

So there is this signal of alert,

Yeah?

And alert is real,

Alertness and preparedness to respond,

This is real.

But the feeling of fear,

The feeling of what if,

What if it bites me,

It is this constant illusionary imaginative computation of our mind that does not exist,

It is just a thought,

It doesn't exist in any material form.

What if it bites doesn't exist,

A bite may exist at a later point in time,

Maybe at a very,

Very near point in time,

And the pain that it can carry is real,

So the alert and pain,

They are real,

But fear is not.

Fear,

It's just this imaginary bridge between the alert and the pain,

Yeah?

It connects the dots with this dashed pencil line,

It sees that,

Aha,

Here is some something,

Some stimulus,

And most probably it will have this effect,

The mind tells us,

That's what the mind is designed to do,

And it suggests,

So it creates this kind of bridge made of small conspider webs,

Illusion,

And this is fear.

What happens when we step on this bridge is that we fall down because it is not happening yet,

And we fall into the pit of fear,

Destructive spiral that only takes our attention away from the actual response that we need to be creating in a situation of danger,

Or maybe from the power of our mind to assess how real this danger is,

Maybe there is no danger,

Maybe there is just an email,

You know,

Alert popping in your,

On your phone screen and no dog or tiger is about to attack you,

Yeah?

So we all know this,

We all try to overcome this,

I don't think it's realistic to overcome per se,

Because this is what your mind will be always doing,

And we should thank our mind for this,

But in the language of this path of safety,

Don't step onto this illusionary bridge of fear,

Stay in your awareness right now,

Awareness of possible danger,

Awareness of unpleasantry and discomfort,

But don't go into a future,

Negative future that hasn't happened yet,

Because this is the ultimate unsafety for your inner child,

Dragging them into the world of illusionary immaterial danger that may happen,

Where you don't have your body to rely on,

Because in the future,

You don't have this beautiful universe of your body,

Your body is only in this present moment,

And while your mind can travel further and predict the future,

Your body cannot go there to support you,

So your place of safety is right here,

Where your body is at this point in time,

This is what integrity also means,

Not only moral integrity,

But also the integrity as a wholeness of your being,

This can provide when everything else fails.

So,

Thank you for traveling across those dangerous,

Adventurous,

Exciting paths to safety with me and with my inner child,

Let's take a couple of moments to come back to our own presence and safety right now,

After we have explored fears,

Dangers,

Alertness,

Let's come back to the place where we are,

Take a breath into our body,

Maybe move your fingers,

Toes,

Or neck,

Shoulders,

Just coming back to your body,

We have walked four paths,

The path of nature,

The path of our inner nature,

The path of abstaining from stimuli,

And the path of staying in integrity and presence,

Even when there are negative stimuli all around,

So,

I wish you many blessings on your paths,

Wherever they may be taking you,

And I thank you for joining me in this talk,

Until next time.

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