Children have more than just a desire to be loved; they want to be loved exclusively, without any limits. In other words, every child’s desire for love is unrealistic…Since they seldom receive an adequate amount of warmth and mature love, children remain hungry for it throughout their whole life…Essentially everyone—even the most diligent spiritual seekers—overlooks just how strong the link is between the unfulfillment of our childhood longings and our present-day problems. The inner child isn’t just a nice a theory…
Many parents give great big demonstrations of love, possibly overindulging their children. This kind of pampering and spoiling is often an overcompensation. It acts as an apology for what they suspect, in their hearts, is an inability to give mature love…Children can tell genuine love from the over-the-top mushy love they get instead… If we grew up with strict parents, our rebellion and resentment may be worn on our sleeve. So it’s fairly easy to trace…
No matter how much we might love our parents, unconscious resentments still simmer under the surface…Inside us is this inner child that can’t let go of the past because it can’t make sense of it; so it also can’t accept and can’t forgive. Over and over, the inner child sets up similar conditions, thinking this time it can win…First of all, it is a total illusion that we were ever defeated. So then it’s just as big an illusion that we can now be the victor…
They may not have been as perfect as we thought and hoped they’d be back then. But there’s no reason to now reject them because they had their own immaturities and inner conflicts…Once we’re free of this repetitive cycle, we’ll stop crying over the spilt milk of not getting love the way we wanted it…By releasing the pain we feel now, which is inextricably bound to the hurt of then, we’ll see how we thought we had to choose this situation or admit defeat…
We can turn our painful feelings into healthy growing pains whenever we become ready to rid ourselves of the bitterness and tension we’ve been hiding…Forgetting and forgiving will become a real thing that we won’t even have to think about doing. They will naturally occur…
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Read Original Pathwork® Lecture: #73 Compulsion to Recreate and Overcome Childhood Hurts
