Thoughts on Inner Child Work

My Initial Doubts

The spiritual and New Age community has long highlighted ‘inner child work’ as one of the most important aspects of our healing journey.

At first, I wondered: Why always the ‘inner child’ and not, say, our ‘inner 22 year old’? It seemed like I had more difficulties and unprocessed emotions from later in life than in my first 10 years or so. And even if I didn’t, what made the fact that I was younger/smaller necessarily more sacred?

This focus on childhood made me doubtful. I wondered if it touched on mistaken ideas of innocence – tapping into a version of self not yet sullied therefore implicitly locating our current selves as broken (rather than making the connection that we were as perfect then as we are now). I also diminished it as simply an easier access point to self-love (because kids are so cute!).

But I’ve been committing to it for about a month now and it has been a total game changer.

Why They Are So Important

Working with my beloved Life Coach, Lindsay, I asked why the Inner Child is so important – so important that she sees her Inner Child alongside her Higher Self when she does her own healing work. What came forth was this: the inner child is the crystallization, or finalization, of your pre-birth agreements come manifest in this incarnation. That is, it is when the karmic patterns you chose to work with have, in a way, fully rolled themselves out – integrating into you and your life here as a human being. Explaining it to her, Spirit used the words ‘frozen in time’. Though we recognize that time, in a linear sense, is a 3D concept, the Inner Child does seem to remain the age at which that crystallization took place.

This magical arrangement speaks to our multidimensionality as humans. The Inner Child shows the perfection and fruition of the plan – reflecting your soul’s desire to experience certain wounds for karmic and learning reasons thatultimately fuel your purpose in this life. They continue to exist within your energy fields (in the 5th dimension, like the Higher Self) as living energetic beings. Thus, they represent the perfection and sacredness of your wounds in the 3rddimension as gateways to the 5th dimension; they are calls for our healing and spiritual growth. As I understand it, they are alongside the Higher Self in importance because of this special role.

The Higher Self symbolizes the part of you that has never been wounded and remains totally aligned with Spirit. It is the un-incarnated aspect of the finger of consciousness sent forth by your soul to Earth. It guides and loves you unconditionally, reminding you of your divinity and inherent connection to Spirit, to All That Is.

The Inner Child, however, speaks to the divinity of the incarnated 3rd dimensional being itself. It is you. It is you at the age where you completed the necessary karmic pattern integration for your life here and thus began your soul-as-human journey in earnest. It shows that your wounds are perfect and intentional. It also shows that not only are you being taught, guided, and loved from, for, and by your perfection and perfected state (Higher Self), but you have a responsibility to teach, guide and love yourself (your Inner Child), not despite of – but for your perceived ‘imperfections’.

These ‘imperfections’ (your sacred wounds, your intentional karmic patterning) are, of course, actually perfect. They are perfect because they are your chosen teachers, too. They serve your soul’s growth by exposing you to situations thatchallenge you. In healing our painful feelings, we grow in our understanding and compassion, learn how to honor our emotions, realize loss is an illusion, and eventually, realize that only Love is real. (Eventually…!)

The Spiritual Synergy We Share

This all speaks to an exciting collaboration between the Inner Child, the Higher Self, and us in the incarnated form:

Firstly, as incarnated beings, we serve as informants to the spirit world regarding how Spirit manifests in the physical under certain challenging conditions (for example, our certain spiritual amnesia here!). On Earth, we have complicated emotional bodies and a capacity for analytical thought that has, as I understand it, furthered Spirit’s understanding of itself and of Life and the diversity of creation. In this way, we are teachers to Spirit and our Higher Selves, and our lives fulfill the wish of Spirit to experience, grow, learn and expand.

The Higher Self, of course, also teaches us in the incarnate form: it guides us, communicates with us, and has the capacity to course-correct if we go too far astray. It is there for us whenever we call on it as a source of strength and love – a memory of who we truly are.

Likewise, the Higher Self can work with us – in the 3D, incarnate form – to re-parent and connect with our inner child. Thus, both us in the incarnate and our Higher Self teach and help heal the Inner Child, who subsequently informs Spirit more deeply about the nature of existence, healing, emotions, and love.

On this point, my Life Coach has shared that she has learned so much from her Inner Child’s wisdom that she sometimes finds herself asking, ‘Who’s teaching who?’.

The spiritual cooperation and entanglement between these beings is really beautiful and exciting to me.

And when you consider it, it makes sense that the Inner Child has such a sacred role. I’m starting to get just how essential it is, and how this synergy demonstrates our multidimensionality: we are perfect and we are healing; we are children and we are eternal; we are teachers and we are learning; we are loved unconditionally but have a responsibility to love and heal ourselves, too.

Also, the more we love them, the more we love ourselves, and the more Life seems to love us, too. I’ll probably write more about this burgeoning relationship I’m having with my Inner Child, but for now, I so recommend that anyone who was once avoidant or skeptical of it gives it another try.