The Metaphorical Children Of The Body And Mind Want To Love Because They Are Children Of Love
In the context of the understanding, loving parental presence of the Loving Aware Self, that we are and for which we have no evidence, is limited in any way. Therefore, we can choose to experience as if it were the container of all phenomena with nothing missing and no separate environment; there are two metaphorical children. The metaphorical "inner child" is the intelligence we refer to as the body that naturally loves to enjoy many sensations. Her metaphorical elder sister, the "inner adolescent", is the intelligence we call the mind, which also loves to analyse, plan, envision, explore, and relate with others as her form of play too.
However, when the Parent, the Loving Aware Self, is not consciously present and providing the context of loving understanding for her inner children, as a result of being so focussed on them, she forgets herself and inadvertently lends her reality to them. The Loving, Aware Self ignores her genuine nature and now only thinks of herself as thoughts and feelings of her children. The adolescent mind, in particular, thinks of herself as the real Parent and a Self in her own right and no longer just a metaphorical function of the Aware Loving Parent. Less rationally, even the child body assumes a sense of being a self in her own right too, and no longer just a metaphorical function of her Parent.
Being effectively parentless sets up a tense relationship between the children, who are now trying to be the Loving Aware Parental Self they are so painfully missing. Acting somewhat like an inexperienced adolescent who has been left to care for a younger sister whilst her Parent goes out, she tries her absolute best to protect her little sister with her only tools: thinking and beliefs.
In this situation, believing herself to be the Parent, she only has one way of understanding life and looking after her sister: through the mechanism of thought. Using thoughts, she tries to stop her younger sister from getting further hurt by controlling her little sister by thoughts. She tries to achieve this by pouring forth ideas that inform her younger sister she is inadequate and that a dangerous world "out there" is threatening and will devour her. This has the desired effect of stopping her younger sister's body in her track and curling up in a contracted protective ball.
With only the context of limited thought to understand herself, She defines herself as limited to a mind and body. She reinforces the belief that she and her little sister are separate from the Universe and under threat as they are no longer complete. She wraps herself in knots by pouring forth stressful and unfulfillable mental strategies to control the environment, which she believes is separate and controllable even though it is neither. All this does is cause her and her little sister to curl up and feel like a contracted ball, tight, solid, unpleasant, and full of fear. It's not her fault; it's the only strategy she has. She is, after all, only a teenage mind who is not the Parent and not mature enough to run the family.
She longs for her Parent to return and prays it will happen soon. But where is her Parent, who she fears has left her and her little sister? She looks everywhere and cannot find Her. She blames herself further, and the two children sink into shame-ridden contraction. She intensifies her search, believing that if she could "improve herself", somehow she could become the Parent. She embarks on an arduous process of self-development in the belief to become at least a better older sister and hopes one day to be the Parent she berates herself for not being. She searches everywhere and tries everything sincerely to be a better elder teenage sister and be that Parent. She attends endless talks with people telling her how to be a better person. At times she feels she is getting somewhere; at others not.
She and her little sister stumble on, trying to find security and relax into love where they can. Unfortunately, all the places they rely on for this disappear at some point, and they then return to their insecure state. All this time, the elder teenage sister calls out for her Parent. She cannot understand where she has gone and feels endlessly forsaken. She knows she and her sister have had moments of calmness and love, but they seem relatively fleeting in the grand scheme of things. Is this how life is? She cannot believe that in her heart. There must be a solution to this impermanence and insecurity, and she desperately wants her little sister to enjoy her life free of such fear.
She could not see that it was only her belief that the Parent had left her causing the problem, not because she had. Because of the pain of her condition, she could only think, "Something must be wrong" – "I must be wrong". But her conclusions were false. She could not see that even her negative thoughts were not wrong – they were part of the natural flow, and even the painful feelings of her little sister were not wrong – they were part of the natural flow. She didn't realise that she had bought into the belief that she and her sister were somehow separate children and entities no longer held in the safety of the natural flow of life because of the pain they were experiencing. She had been so focused on the pain she had forgotten that she was always and will always be the natural flow that was the Parent. She had forgotten she was the Parent as she was and was not the teenager or the child. All she had to do was take a moment to stop and stand back from her thinking and feeling and remind herself that she was the Loving, Aware Parent that surrounded them. As she did this, she remembered that She was the Loving, Aware Parent looking at herself, for she could find no evidence of any other separate aware self in her experience.
She realised she must have only believed herself to be those children because she had forgotten herself! Suddenly the penny dropped, and she saw that this experience of suffering had been nothing more than a "forget me not" she had left to remind herself should she ever forget. She smiled as the psychological torture she was aware of collapsed, and she fell back into the peaceful, loving centre of her heart.
Now, remembering herself, she could let go of any need for such identification with thoughts and feelings, for she recognised that they were just part of the spontaneous flow of her Loving Awareness. She could see the difference in experience between believing to be the children and making them seem real, contrasting with the experience of realising that She was the Real Aware Self.
She knew this powerful experience would never leave her, even if momentarily she still, for some reason, sometimes thought She was the child. She knew she would quickly remember the path to being her Loving, Aware Self from this point. In this way, her beautiful children, the body and mind, would always assume their correct place in her heart. Instead of making them take the weight of being herself, she understood them as expressions of herself. In this respect, these metaphors of experience she may call her children were part of her "Universal Family", with which she can courageously and lovingly enjoy the world's beauty. Even more miraculously, she knew that her immediate children were not the only children in her family and that there was a whole global community of minds and bodies in this Universal Family of hers.
