What did your parents DO, not say?

by Lian Brook-Tyler

What did your parents DO, not say?

One of the many challenges we have culturally when it comes to understanding our inner world, and especially that of our inner child, is that we focus so much on what is most obvious and conscious - for example the words we remember someone used - we can miss what happened decades ago (and is maybe still secretly happening in patterns that echo their origin) in more subtle or water-you-swam-in ways, especially if they were non-verbal or preverbal.

As Jung said in his essay The Psychology of the Child Archetype in his book The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious:

“Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.”

But it can be very difficult to recognise the experiences we were immersed in and most educated (and shaped and wounded) by, particularly as we have a whole cast of inner characters whose very job depends on preventing us from remembering them, and this is why we benefit from approaching it in indirect and non-verbal ways… in other words, speaking the psyche’s own language.

Dream work, shamanic journeying, divination, ritual, movement and dance, myth and story, nature connection, drawing and painting - all of these (and many more) are ways we can converse with and explore our inner worlds.

As we journey deeper with the Inner Child in this month’s UNIO Mythical Quest, the revelations and realisations are coming thick and fast, even for those of us already long and deep in this work.

There’s something about focusing on a particular aspect of ourselves for a dedicated window of time, especially when questing with a group of others doing the same, that brings a potency and intentionality to the work that allows hidden wounds and gold to be brought into the light that otherwise might remain lost to the dark corners of our psyche.

So coming back to the title of this post… “What did your parents DO, not say?”… this, and conversely “What did your parents SAY, not do?” and many other enquiries, when attended to with curiosity, compassion, devotion and attention, following the call deep into our dreams, our bodies, and twilight liminal spaces, can show us the way to remember and re-member ourselves into wholeness.

All my love,
Lian

P.S If you join UNIO before the end of December, your first month is free, as a Christmas gift from us to you...

Mother and Child by Gustav Klimt

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