Food for Thought

The Lost Child.

Many people pray for help, some to Jesus, some to St Mary, others to Saints and Angels. Then there are those who - because of a different belief or philosophy - pray to other deities or use a variety of rituals.

The improvement they expect is not going to come from the outside, and praying to God or his servants is looking outside for change or improvement. Rarely do people think to look on the inside for help; improvement in a personal situation is usually found in the depths of one’s own thoughts. Everything on the outside is an illusion, it’s not sustainable and it will eventually change; let you down like everything else. If you rely on happiness from friends and family you will eventually be disappointed. Whatever it is you are looking for on the outside to satisfy your needs must eventually change. People die, move on and change their personality. Nothing, no-one will stay the same for ever, neither are they there to satisfy your needs. The world and its bounty are not there for your purpose, other people were not born to be slaves to your expectations. The only reliable source for anything has to come from within you.

If you surround yourself with beauty to improve the image of yourself, you will keep wanting more; you will never satisfy your need because love, beauty, satisfaction first have to be found in the heart. Only then can you experience beauty or satisfaction. The satisfaction you experience from your own thoughts will be of real essence. I know this is a situation of relative values and there is a level of need below which no-one should be expected to live, but we all know people who have very little and are perfectly content and others who seem to have everything and can’t find satisfaction. This is what I am trying to say, everything of value has first to be in the heart.

Only when you have love or happiness in your heart will you know love. Happiness has first to be in the heart - in your emotions - if you are to experience happiness. You cannot expect others to be responsible for something that should be coming from within you. If you understand the meaning of loving yourself, you will never be troubled by not being loved even though you love them. I know of a child who was told that if he didn’t do what his mother wanted, she wouldn’t him love any more. The child retorted, ‘I don’t mind, I love me.’ This child will never be dependent on others for self-worth; he has it all within himself. People’s lack of self-worth causes them to look to others or to outside situations to supply their confidence, health, self-respect, love, happiness, company etc.

It is one of the problems of the modern world that we look to others to supply our emotional needs. But all emotions come from within. We should be teaching our children that they are perfect just the way they are, instead of continually criticising them, finding fault, expecting them to do better, teaching them how to blame others for the way they feel. We choose what we feel and when we choose guilt, rejection, unhappiness we have to look inside for the reason. Very often the problem goes back to childhood when our self-respect and confidence was taken from us. If there is one thing that should be above the reach of another human being it is self-respect. Why it is so necessary to make others feel less than good to make ourselves feel better is beyond my understanding. Surely it is a wonderful feeling to see another person, especially a child, improve in happiness or confidence because of some small comment or action on your part. But unfortunately the opposite is usually true.

The change in attitude has to begin within the thoughts of the adult for the child that you are. How to do this? First go back to the child you were. See the child in your mind and memories and, if you can, take the child in your arms and fill it with love. All any child wants is to be loved just the way it is, without having to do or say something to earn love or feel loved. Move into your mind, your imagination, and see the child you once were, still are. Can you hold that child in your arms and tell it how much you love it, how proud you are of that child. If not, why not? The child you were was much too young to have done anything bad, it was only trying to learn about life when the adult was so critical of its every attempt to learn or made to feel guilty about some action of the adults.

If you have a problem with self-worth, depression or loneliness and discover you are unable to hold in your arms - in your imagination - your little girl or boy, or have difficulty telling them you love them or are proud of them, then do the following:

Stand the child you are under a flow of light and let the light of Love wash away that heavy grey cloak of rejection, guilt or whatever else the adults around your childhood made you wear. After a while, you will see and feel the heaviness of the grey, sticky cloak washing away and underneath a beautiful little angel will replace the cold and lifeless child that was there. This is your soul energy. All the adult years that you have been saying to yourself, ‘no one wants you’, ‘you are in the way’, ‘you are a failure’ and worse you have been saying them to your soul. It is your soul that you have been pushing away, abusing.

Once that heavy grey clock of rejection has been washed away with love of your own making, you will be able to take your soul child into your arms with love, respect and happiness. When you have done this, take the child from the place where you grew up and bring them into the present and then, with words from your heart, tell the child, ‘now you are free, no one will ever again hurt you, you can stay with me forever.’ Tell your angel child that it was not born to be or do what others expect, it was born to be free and to live its own happiness in its own special way.

The essential part in all of this is to bring your soul child out of the past and into the now. Your suffering happened when you were little and if your therapy or memory keeps returning you to the past it is like visiting someone in hospital once a week and then - just as they begin to feel better because of your visit - you leave with the promise to return. But in the absence of your presence the hurt, loneliness, rejection return until the next visit. I will never understand why the therapy does not bring the child out of the past into today and into the protection of the adult you are with the promise that they never again have to go back into that dark past.

Finally, you need to tell the child it is time to come home, home into your heart where it will be safe from the hurt of others. You will feel warmth coming into your heart as you fill it with the love of your own soul. When you experience love and respect for the child you are, a wonderful lightness comes over the emotions. A something that is not quantifiable begins to change in your emotions.

We all have a spiritual child and the child we are needs to feel loved and respected by the adult we are. We are all needy for love, the child we are needs to know it is loved, first by the adult it is.

Many of the people I help have no other need than to find the child they are and take them back into their heart. It is not the adult you are who has the problem with loneliness, guilt, fear, rejection and so many other problems, but the child. Learn to love the child you are and it will be so much easier to know the beauty and satisfaction in what you have, rather than searching for it in what others have. In truth, you have been searching for your child, but in the material world you will never find your lost soul. Your soul, your contentment, your happiness, even your love are to be found in the child you lost a long time ago.

Malcolm Southwood.