A grownup is a child with layers on. ~Woody Harrelson
Lately I have become more aware of the time-imposed layers that color our view of reality. It seems that we add more filters, templates and layers as we get older. At the core lies our most pure and innocent experience of reality. At the center lies our inner child. It apparently doesn't disappear, but just gets covered over and sealed off by our psychic armor. The armor is often necessary to protect that vulnerable and most tender being at our core.
How can we reclaim that inner child? You might think this is a silly or even inappropriate endeavor. After all, we have bills to pay, children to care for, careers to advance, and other adult responsibilities. However, how are we to have more healing and understanding in our relationships, communities and world? I think reclaiming the child is a start.
We have to do some mining. We must time travel a bit, back to our past, and remember where we started. What were our hopes? Where were our hurts and disappointments? What have we feared? This can also be applied to our more recent past. Either way, by time traveling, we start to see where we have built our armor, and for what reasons. Therapy is a great place to do some time traveling. After all, we need someone to guide us toward these vulnerable places, because we will not likely go there alone.
The gift of this mining is pure gold. If we are willing to travel back and really feel our past hurts, we may eventually find that pure inner child we have lost over time. The fresh eyes we regain are worth the difficult journey. After all, it's easier to feel alive, free and loving if we are not wearing 20 pounds of psychic armor.
What keeps us from the freedom of seeing the world as a child? What have we piled on top? Status, belief systems, defensiveness, emotional distance, ambition, perfection projects, resentment, and the list goes on.
How can we let go of this armor? In addition to therapy, I find spirituality and mind/body practices help. Most religious and spiritual practices have an element of letting go. Whether you surrender to a higher power, meditate, or both, you are giving yourself to the process of undoing.
If God is a loving and all-knowing God, than we don't have to be afraid to open up fully to him. After all, he already knows what is deep in our minds and hearts. By opening up and surrendering our armor before God, we can start to heal and let go. This is not, of course, a simple releasing of everything all at once. However, the more time we spend pouring out our hearts and minds in prayer, the more strength we'll have to live from that place in our daily lives.
Meditation, yoga and certain forms of exercise are also great forms of release. As we focus on the breath and postures, we are centering the mind. Our layers can then be seem more clearly, as our awareness becomes fine-tuned. Yoga has been called meditation in motion. Like other forms of meditation, it focuses the mind, allowing it to settle and then release the unnecessary holding patterns. In addition, yoga helps to release body tension. Some body tension is simply physical holding, however much is also emotional holding. In fact, they are related. In meditation, we increase our awareness of thoughts and feelings without reacting to them. Meditation is a wonderful ally in the process of letting go of that which doesn't serve us. After all, we can't let go of what we don't understand. Both yoga and meditation also illicit the relaxation response. This in itself helps us to let go. After all, if our body/mind is in a constant state of fight/flight (as it often is in our hurried modern world) none of this deeper stuff is possible.
I like the following poem by yogini Danna Faulds:
Lay the Armor Down
Arriving back from the fields
of battle, bruised and bolder,
we are beholden to no one
now. Losing or winning-
the reasons for the war fade
quickly in the memory.
We've forgotten that these
suits of armor are not our
second skins. Smiling, we
set aside the shields and
swords, remove the face
masks, begin to peel away
the layers of weight and
protection. When, finally,
we cast our armor to the
ground, it feels as if our
bodies grow and straighten,
swell and lengthen upward
toward the sun. We run,
light and unencumbered,
and stretch the stiffness
from our joints. Rolling on
the grass we laugh as awkward
limbs remember freedom.
When at last we return to
where we started, without a
second glance we know that
we've outgrown the suits of
armor. We won't fit inside
those too-tight shells again.
Why would we even try?
Peace,
Alli
