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.Dean may be contacted at [email protected]

His books, Embracing the Self, and Spirituality for Non-Believers are available on Amazon.com.

The material on this website is copyrighted. Anyone who wishes to reproduce any part of it is welcome to do so as long as attribution is given to the author, Dean Schlecht.

The body of this website contains several audio files that are designed to help you, the listener, use Active Imagination as a way to encounter important aspects of your internal world. Each audio file is accompanied with an essay that will help describe the part of yourself that you may encounter in the journey and will explain the significance of developing a relationship with it. The essays are in the same order as the audio files and may be located by scrolling down. I have also included a link to a final essay on love. Love is the spiritual energy that enlivens and transforms our inner lives. Appreciating love's nature and importance is crucial for understanding personal transformation.

Once you complete one of these journeys, you may feel a strong need to debrief the experience. If you do not know of anyone with whom you would feel comfortable sharing, you are welcome to email me at [email protected] and we can set up a time for a phone consultation.

I strongly recommend that you begin with the Journey to the Self and the essay Embracing the Self and Becoming Real, since building a connection with your deep Self is an essential foundation for successful self-exploration and transformation.

Journey to the Self

Journey to the Divine Child

Engaging Parts

Embracing the Self and Becoming Real

Seeking whatever is real or true is the only viable foundation for a meaningful life even though what is ultimately real will always remain a mystery. Denial or ignorance of reality may provide comfort in the short term, but they inevitably lead to a shallow, defensive, ungrounded perspective on life. Being immersed in a delusional or distorted world precludes the possibility of being at peace with what is and enjoying the vitality of a connected, open, receptive life style. When I am invested in maintaining a distorted version of reality, I will feel a continual need to defend my story against potential challenges. No matter how beautiful or idealistic my made-up model of reality might be, it will inevitably be built on a foundation of rigidity and fear.

For example, there are many people who tell themselves that they had a good childhood and that their parents were responsible and loving when in fact the parents were selfish and cruel. This self-delusion may have had important benefits in childhood by allowing the child to maintain a somewhat positive relationship with the parents, thus making the best out of a bad situation. In adulthood this denial of reality may help them continue a more comfortable adult relationship with their parents and a more positive, feel-good life story to tell themselves and others. However, such pretense blocks them from being overtly aware of the root cause of the fear, anger, hurt and emptiness they felt all their lives and makes it nearly impossible to face and resolve these feelings. This denial leaves them in an ongoing struggle with themselves, afraid of their own inner truth and continually striving to hold painful emotions at bay. Others seek to cope with the suffering and meaninglessness they experience in life by investing themselves in belief systems which may provide them security and ready answers in the midst of their struggles. By and large the more threatened a person feels by life, the more rigid a person will be in clinging to the dogmas and practices of belief systems that promise a way out.

The vast majority of people live one or two steps removed from what actually is. This can happen for several reasons. They may be actively denying what is too threatening to face. They may consider their belief systems to be a truer expression of what is than their actual experience. Or, they may simply be swept along by the implicit assumptions of their culture which end up blinding them to anything that challenges those assumptions. In western culture, for instance, there is a common assumption that the analytical mind with its gifts of language and reason is the principal and most reliable way of engaging what is, whereas in fact, the analytical mind can only offer an image of reality, a pale shadow of the experienced world from which it is derived.

A very small minority of contemporary people understand the limitations of the analytical mind and choose to live lives grounded in direct, unfiltered experience. They appreciate their capacity for analysis, language and model making, but are fully aware that these are just tools and in no way replace the value and meaningfulness of the direct apprehension of reality. Although, being fully immersed in their life experience inevitably opens them to the pain of loss, grief and the suffering of others, they know that underneath or beyond that, reality is an ever unfolding loving, oneness. The experience of being intimately connected with everything and everyone precipitates a sense of joy, peace and meaning which is the direct, immediate outcome of fully being with what is without any filters or resistance. These qualities of joy, peace and meaning are not the products of language or analysis, nor can they be fully explained or described by language. They are the natural, universal response to truly knowing what is real. Although those who live this close to reality itself are generally described as enlightened or awakened, an equally apt term for them would simply be “realists”. The principle focus of their lives is to stay as fully engaged as possible with what is at every level.

A commitment to live such a reality based life and the ability to do so are two different things. Such a life will not happen unless a person is willing to live without the mental barriers and filters created by such things as fear, dissociation, denial, belief systems, judgment, etc. that distort or block one’s connection with what is. Nevertheless, that willingness will not necessarily cause the barriers and filters to fall away. Depending upon a person’s life experience, the willingness to release these distortions of perception and the amount of personal transformation and healing that might be required to achieve that release can vary widely. Some peoples’ lives are very comfortable and they feel little inclination to question their life style, beliefs or cultural assumptions. Other peoples’ lives may be quite painful causing them to cling tightly to comforting belief systems and diminished awareness of traumatic history and current suffering. Yet others in similar circumstances, whether blessed with a very comfortable life or burdened with a very harsh existence, may use these very experiences as a springboard for engaging life at the most profound level possible. When they do, they open the door to illusion falling away and finding themselves joyfully at one with life and its divine ground. When or if this happens is not under anyone’s control. The ways that we limit and distort our perception of reality are so varied and subtle that no one can presume to have clear awareness of how such skewed perceptions are compromising our lives. Even if we know, we may not know how to change.

What we can do is decide to seek the truth that lies beyond all models and assumptions, and learn to love unconditionally as our two most fundamental values. Having made the decision to seek truth and love unconditionally we must be prepared to accept whatever that decision might cost. The price can be quite high. Since our story about who we are is one of the models of reality that must be released, it could feel as though the pursuit of the ultimate truth and the consequent relinquishment of models and stories entails the loss of oneself. Although this “story of I” is a made up thing with no more reality than any other story, most people think that it is who they really are and contemplating letting it go feels like a kind of death. Moreover, refusing to accept the assumptions of our culture as ultimate statements about the way things are, or should be, could result in being rejected or ostracized or even worse if the culture is an aggressive one. Finally, living without a belief system or an authority upon which we can depend to teach us the “right” way, leaves us radically on our own. Unless we trust and cultivate an active relationship with our own deepest wisdom we are at risk of being adrift in a sea of doubt and confusion.

The good news is that if you genuinely want to know your personal truth, you will find ample guidance from a profound, loving wisdom that resides at the core of your being. Anyone open to its help will receive it. This is not a belief that needs to be taken on faith. It is a fact that any person can experience for him or herself. This wisdom is far more than mere intuition. It is our deepest essence, an aware, loving intelligence that knows who we truly are, that knows the wounds that need healing, and how to guide past delusions into an open, free life. I know this because I have witnessed the impact of this compassionate wisdom in hundreds of client as they encounter their deep Self in Internal Journeys in my office, and it has guided me personally in dreams and meditation. This Self is an internal expression of the ultimate reality that is the foundation of all existence. It is the presence of God within our own psyche. Initiating an intentional relationship with the deep Self is the beginning of making explicit and actively accepting a presence that has always been with you. How far toward releasing your fullest potential this relationship will take you is unpredictable. How much you are willing to risk and change is always your choice. Even if you are willing to risk everything and allow yourself to grow as much as you possibly can, you still may not be ready or able to release the last vestiges of your need for control or investment in illusions. As long as you are driven in any significant way by control or illusion, they will block you from being your best self which can only emerge when you are fully open, receptive and connected to reality.

If and when all remaining illusion and need for control fall away, you will experience yourself as being one with everything: the external world, its divine ground and the deep Self that led you to this transformation. As you are cleansed of taking seriously any self-identity and no longer have any interest in pursuing the attitudes and behaviors that supported it, you will find that there is no distinction between you and the deep Self and your perception of reality will be from the Self’s or God’s point of view. This awakened state of consciousness may be temporary at first, but eventually, for some, it becomes a permanent state of mind.

The rest (and this includes myself) get to live next door to awakening which is a wonderful place to be. Getting this far is something in which you have a say. You cannot intentionally facilitate awakening, but you can choose to live in a way that reflects an awakened perspective. This means doing your best never to avoid internal or external truth, divesting yourself of ideologies, dogmas and belief systems, relinquishing any critical and judgmental attitudes even toward yourself, giving up comparing yourself to others, or trying to persuade anybody of anything, and being as loving and empathic as possible. As you unlearn all of your self-restrictive mental habits and settle into a gentle, open hearted, kind life style, the freedom, peace and uncaused joy that are the immediate corollaries of awakening will flow abundantly in your life.

Although an external guide or teacher can be helpful and sometimes necessary, especially if there is significant pain and trauma in your history, your principal guide for this journey should always be your own deep Self.

If you feel called to seek the fullest life possible and are willing to let go of anything that stands in the way, now is the time to begin. There are many things that people can do to initiate the process such as keeping a radically honest journal, listening carefully to dreams, or beginning a practice of meditation, but the most powerful, direct action you can take is to begin the systematic practice of Internal Work, what Carl Jung called Active Imagination. The audio file on this website, Journey to the Self, will introduce you to Internal Work and help you meet your own deep Self. Once you make that connection, you will have opened the door to a depth of reality that has the power to take you to levels of freedom and joy beyond your greatest hopes. There is no need to take my word for it. See for yourself and then you will know.

Even though most of my clients who encounter their deep Self through Internal Work are deeply touched by the experience, many struggle with accepting it as anything more than a figment of their imagination. They are concerned that is just a way of telling themselves something they wanted to hear and not an encounter with a reality that transcends the ego. It certainly is a possibility that the whole experience is just an ego generated fantasy. Some people have such a need for control that they are unable or unwilling to let the experience unfold spontaneously, but this is a fairly rare occurrence. I usually ask clients to consider two things about the experience. I ask them first, to ask themselves whether they planned or knew beforehand what the deep Self choose to do or tell them. If not, this is strong evidence that it is functioning autonomously with its own purposes. Second, the best way to judge the validity of an experience is by the fruits it bears. People will know after a few encounters with the deep Self whether it is changing them and the direction that change is taking.

The Divine Child

The Self will not define us. It will, however, give us a glimpse of who we truly are inside and were meant to be before the pain of life and the impact of culture and family caused us to harden ourselves into the defended fortress that we now mistake for ourselves. This glimpse of our original face is what Carl Jung called the Divine Child. What remains, after stories of “I” and mandates from caregivers and culture are peeled away, is a unique, beautiful, innocent, wide-eyed child still longing to blossom and play.

No matter what life may have done to us, no matter what we may have done to ourselves, no matter how profound our psychological wounds might be, ultimately we remain inviolate and unbroken. Aside from organically based brain dysfunction, underneath all the scars, open wounds, and distortions that mar the psyche, when one breaks through to the kernel, the core of one’s being, it remains whole. In the depth of our center, we remain vitally alive and real—nothing lost, nothing ruined. The core remains undamaged, life embracing, and life giving.

In The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Jung offers a rich description of the Divine Child. He says,

The child-motif represents not only something that existed in the distant past but also something that exists now; that is to say, it is not just a vestige but a system functioning in the present whose purpose is to compensate and correct, in a meaningful manner the inevitable one-sidedness and extravagances of the conscious mind.

…the “child” paves the way for a future change of personality. In the individuation process, it anticipates the figure that comes from the synthesis of conscious and unconscious elements in the personality. It is therefore a symbol which unites the opposites; a mediator, bringer of healing, that is, one who makes whole (Jung 1980, 162–164).

Later, in the section “The Special Phenomenology of the Child Archetype,” (170), Jung says,

It [the child motif] is a personification of vital forces quite outside the limited range of our conscious mind; of ways and possibilities of which our one sided conscious mind knows nothing; a wholeness which embraces the very depths of nature. It represents the strongest, most ineluctable urge in every being, namely the urge to realize itself.

Coming into the fullness of my human potential (the only worthy goal of anyone’s life), requires the eager welcome of the child I left behind long ago. She or he is my true voice, the deep source of my vitality. She or he is my joy and the template for measuring what is and is not truly authentic. The learning and coping skills I have gained over the years are not an end in themselves. Nor are they merely meant to serve as aids for survival. Their highest purpose is to give the Divine Child the protection, permission, and opportunities it needs to fully express itself. A life in balance is a life rooted in its source.

When I encountered my Divine Child in internal work, he was three or four years old. He was by a pool of water, curious about the things that lived in and near it. He then began to dig a little ditch in order to observe how the water would flow and build up behind the dams he created. This bit of engineering absorbed and delighted him. He was very content to be by himself experimenting and learning. He welcomed my adult presence, but didn’t pay much attention to me. This glimpse into his world helped me appreciate and respect several things about myself. Curiosity and figuring things out is clearly a core aspect of who I am. My hunger to understand the world is part of my original blessing and to be treasured. The experience also made clear that I have always needed less socialization than most people, but that it is completely okay[SV2] to be the way I am. Later in life, my inclination to isolate had become magnified by emotional wounding. However, a preference for my own company is not pathology. It is my nature.

Encountering the Divine Child is an important moment in anyone’s process of self-discovery. The following is a brief verbatim transcript of a client’s spontaneous encounter with her Divine Child, after considerable internal work in previous sessions with the Hurt Child.

In a session of internal work I had asked her to go to the child most in need of her. When she found the child, she reported, “This is the first child I ever met in our internal work. This is the child without a face.”

I suggested that she ask the child who she is. The child responded, “I don’t have a face, because people make fun of me. I quit having a face so people wouldn’t make fun of me.”

The client then commented, “The child says that she just crawls inside when people make fun of her. She said she quit coming out because it hurt too bad. She stays in her world all the time. She gets what she needs there.”

As the session continued, it became clear that this child was the original self, the Divine Child. The child had been brought into a family that did not respect her and would not attend to her emotional needs. This Divine Child found it necessary to go within, to hide in the internal world. Once she hid within, a different child emerged. This child, who took all of the very early pain, was herself replaced by several other Hurt Children who reflected emotional wounding later on in life. Now that all of these Hurt Children had been reclaimed and healed of their wounds, through several sessions of Internal Work, the original Divine Child reemerged— still hiding somewhat, but nevertheless revealing herself to the ego.

At the end of the session, the client reported, “We’re being real quiet and soft. We’ve been playing ring-around-the-rosy. Kurt seems to feel this is it.” (Kurt is a positive masculine presence in the internal world of this woman and a source of great gentleness, strength, and wisdom.) The final comment before the woman returned from her internal work was, “She is taking me back through bad times. We’re dismantling the fear there.”

This was, for the woman, the most profound turning point in her entire therapeutic process. She owned her Divine Child, but it could not have happened if she had not first dealt with the pain of all the hurt little ones inside.

In another client the Divine Child existed simultaneously with the Hurt Child. Sometimes the agenda for internal work involved the needs of the Hurt Child. In this case, the client would invite the Hurt Child to direct the journey and take the client back into unresolved traumas or repressed feelings.

On other occasions, the Divine Child would take the lead in the internal work, taking the client into an experience bursting with light, beauty, colors, music, and play, inviting her to taste her true beauty, giving her hope and the courage to face her childhood wounds waiting to be encountered in future sessions.

The Divine Child is simple and unsophisticated. It would fit very nicely into a hunter-gatherer tribal context. Unfortunately, the Divine Child does not fit so well into contemporary Western culture. In fact, in many families in this culture, it does not fit at all. By the time a person is between five and seven years old, and frequently long before then, the child comes to realize that the ways of the Divine Child are no longer welcome in the external world. In order to protect it from the destructive demands of the external world, the Divine Child is hidden in an internal space in which it continues to live—vibrant, joyful, powerful, but hidden—as a gift once glimpsed, but now enclosed in a secret part of the psyche, of which the ego is unaware and can no longer readily access. This withdrawal of the Divine Child has been described as the moment when the light goes out in the child’s eyes.

The Divine Child is not a fantasy or wishful thinking. It is certainly not a form of irresponsible, regressive self-delusion. The Divine Child is an individual’s highest potential manifested in the form of a child. It is an authentic part of the psyche, revealing who the person truly is to the degree that the ego is willing to accept. Bennett Braun, a leading theorist in the study of dissociative identity disorder (DID) during the 1980s, said in reference to the “original personality” or Divine Child in Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder, “The original personality is often difficult to locate and work with, but this needs to be done to achieve a stable and lasting integration” (xiv). By “integration” Braun is referring to a person in whom all of the facets of the psyche function in a harmonious unity that is an adult reflection of the original self.

The Divine Child can be thought of as potential, insofar as the external world is concerned, because it is so rarely expressed. In the internal world, the Divine Child is intact and powerfully real. In fact, it is the ego that is a largely fabricated entity. In right order, the ego should be a constantly receptive potential that is enlivened and formed by the ground or truth that lives in the Divine Child.

Given a genuine opportunity and appropriate safety, the Divine Child will gladly come forward, graciously accepting the invitation to return to the external world. The Divine Child is eager to live not just in the internal world but in the midst of nature and relationships, drinking deeply of the beauty and goodness of life. Those who choose to venture into the hidden depths of the psyche and reclaim the Divine Child are in for an extraordinary treat.

Every human being is very unique. The Divine Child within is even more distinctive than the differences between individuals that can be seen at the level of ego and body. For this reason it is somewhat difficult to describe the Divine Child in general with any precision. It is, by definition, a subjective reality that is never expressed in the same way twice. However, there are some common patterns.

Commonalties I have found in the Divine Child of those who have shared their internal work with me are qualities that are easily observable in healthy young children. These qualities include are a strong inclination to live in the present moment, innocence, affection, compassion, playfulness, spontaneity, willing trust, curiosity, and especially joy. The principal hallmark of the Divine Child is a joyful exuberance. Notice how often young children laugh and giggle. They seem to be delighted in life for no obvious reason other than just being alive.

The right brain in young children is much more fully developed than the left brain. Jill Bolte Taylor’s experience of consciousness when her left brain was silenced by a stroke is relevant here. Forced by the stroke to live predominantly out of right-brain awareness, she was able to reclaim the perspective of a very young child, before the defenses and disconnection inherent in left-brain thinking had a chance to dominate awareness. In her book, My Stroke of Insight, she says,

If I had to choose one word to describe the feeling I feel at the core of my right mind, I would have to say joy. My right mind is thrilled to be alive…If you have lost your ability to experience joy, rest assured the circuitry is still there. It is simply being inhibited by more anxious and/or fearful circuitry (171).

The Divine Child is sensual. It lives in its senses, and it finds life to be a playful adventure to be fully experienced. The Divine Child knows no shame, feels no guilt, and is constantly ready to embrace whatever new experiences might present as gifts.

The Divine Child is spontaneous. It expresses how it feels with a straightforward honesty that has no room for falseness. If it is displeased or angry, this is immediately evident, and passes quickly. What the Divine Child wants, it reaches for. The Divine Child does not establish clear boundaries, enabling it to embrace both the joy and the pain of the other. It is inclined to be naturally affectionate and kind.

The Divine Child emanates a deep goodness. It is also drawn to the good and the beautiful, which it tends to see everywhere. I remember watching my daughters when they were very young. A grasshopper, a blade of grass, or a leaf would captivate them. Sometimes in nature they were very still, just taking it all in, experiencing the day flowing by. Unfortunately these qualities of stillness are often lost by the time children are four or five, replaced by words and naming things. Many people can still capture these early childhood moments when life felt fresh and they were steeped in wonder.

This original Divine Child is never jaded nor bored by life. It has the capacity to sense things as always fresh. It is eagerly open to the changes in life that are constantly occurring. The Divine Child sees the flow of life as a constant unfolding of new gifts. Bored children, who are jaded even though they live in the midst of a plethora of stimulations, are children who have been hurt. They are children who had to shut down and withdraw from a world that had no place for them and that in many instances had become dangerous. Wisely, their original child went underground. The Divine Child knows nothing of their boredom. It is alert, open, and deeply engaged, seeing in the most minute of things a very special beauty that beckons for exploration.

The whole child, the uninjured Divine Child, trusts naturally in life because it has known primarily love and reliable support. With only minimal exposure to the vicious side of existence, the Divine Child feels a deep connection to life. The Divine Child has a sense that life cares about it and invites it into an ecstatic mutual participation. The Divine Child is open to letting life flow through it. There is no need to control, because life is good. The Divine Child does not have to defend against life or channel it into particular goals. Life is that which embraces the Divine Child gently, and therefore the Divine Child feels only a minor need to protect itself.

The undifferentiated oneness that the infant knows with all of its environment, and most especially the mother, is never really broken in the Divine Child. The Divine Child does grow into a fuller sense of its uniqueness, and is capable of perceiving itself as different from the other. However, undergirding that is the knowledge that it has never finally been separated from that which it loves and which loves it.

Unfortunately, in most instances the Divine Child has had to separate itself from the ego and the external world for the sake of its survival. It then rests very deep within because it could not withstand the intrusion of the external world. What the world usually meets instead of the Divine Child is a broken, Hurt Child. The Hurt Child lives according to the dictates of the external world, either fearfully seeking to please or reacting in anger. Moreover, because it hurts to feel, the Hurt Child quickly learns to experience the world through the filter of thinking.

Because there are few barriers with the Divine Child, there is no pretense, either. The Divine Child is simply who it is, transparent to whoever looks upon it. To live in pretense is to live a barricaded life in which a mask stands between the individual and the world. The Divine Child has little use for masks. It feels that it is perfectly fine as it is, and expects others to see that, too. This may seem arrogant, but actually it is an expression of profound self-acceptance. I remember when Karen and I took the train to visit my eldest daughter and her family. Her three-year-old daughter was with her when they picked us up at the station. Shortly after we got in the car, she blurted, “I’ll bet you are really glad to get to come see me.”

Nearly everyone is longing to reclaim this self-assurance and simplicity, but few of us know how to get back there. How wonderful it would be to live once again as a sensual, compassionate, joyful, and transparent person without any need or desire for pretension. Most people know someone who has never lost touch with the Divine Child and still live out its qualities in an adult fashion. Most of us, however, have been banished by life from our core, and we don’t know how to get back home because we have forgotten the Divine Child who is the way. One of our most fundamental life tasks is to embrace this child and through it live in harmony with the Self. As Jung said, “The child…is a mediator, bringer of healing, that is, one who makes whole” (CW 9/1 p 164).

The Hurt Child can be considered an expression of what Christianity has called original sin—the brokenness children suffer at the hands of those who should protect them and against which they have no defense, but for which they must pay with their lives. The Divine Child can be considered an expression of original innocence—the living internal expression of the fact that we are born whole, beautiful, and good. Everyone is best served when each has an opportunity to live out that original innocence. If it is lost due to the impact of a destructive external world, salvation is found not by appeasing an angry god, nor by detaching from the earthly realm, but by reclaiming the very earthy innocence embodied in the Divine Child. No matter what a person may have done with her life, or what may have been done to her throughout her life, she can reclaim her innocence. She can, once more, become genuine—become who she was meant to be. The reason she can reclaim it is that she has never fully lost it. It remains alive within her.

Jesus admonished his followers that if they wished to enter the kingdom of heaven they would have to become as little children. In Zen, Kensho, or “seeing into one’s true nature,” requires that “you show me your original face.” Reclaiming the Divine Child is another way of talking about the process of becoming whole. Wholeness is a matter of claiming one’s natural inheritance. It is a divine right of human beings to be whom they were born to be. Wholeness simply describes a person in the full and balanced possession of her potential. That potential is not just an abstraction that might or might not be attained. It is an active, present, dynamic reality embodied in the Divine Child. As Carl Jung put it, “The privilege of a life time is to become who you truly are.” This will come to pass, not because of new learnings, but through remembering your original truth and relinquishing the false, rigid, controlling assumptions that dominate contemporary life and are mistaken for maturity. A truly mature person is one who uses the left-brain gifts of adult consciousness to protect and encourage the full emergence of the Divine Child.

The Divine Child can be seen as a gold standard to compare one’s life against. In general, the Divine Child is very similar from individual to individual: its innocence, its interest in living life in an experiential, sensual fashion, its capacity to live in trust, and its joyfulness and spontaneity are all part of our inborn, natural human endowment. Although those who suffer from profound biogenetic disorders such as autism or schizophrenia may find access more difficult than most, everyone has the potential to approach life with the innocence, simplicity and spontaneity of the Divine Child. Nevertheless, each person has a very unique way of expressing that potential. This unique style of self-expression can be seen with great clarity in the internal experience of the Divine Child. The Self and its expression in the Divine Child is everyone’s private, personal foundation and only worthy life goal.

The Self has one goal - to live fully, grounded internally in ultimate reality on the one hand, and connecting without restriction to the world on the other. The ego is its necessary partner in the embrace of outer reality. Always respecting the ego’s autonomy, the Self will guide and nurture the ego as much as the ego will allow, so that everything false is stripped away. What then emerges is the authentic expression of the Self in the world. Although universal in its fundamental aspects, such as compassion, equanimity, sensitivity to beauty, vitality, and intuitive awareness, the expression of the Self will be colored by the unique combination of gifts and limitations in each individual. The Divine Child is the principal way the Self reminds us of this ultimate destiny that both awaits us and already exists within us, patiently beckoning the ego’s willing embrace. Whatever form the Self takes—Inner Wisdom, loving Great Mother, or innocent Divine Child—they all serve this one purpose.

Parts and Wholeness

We are at our best when we function as an undivided whole. When our psyche is divided or fragmented the internal barriers that create and support the division also diminish awareness of internal realities and cause us to become more rigid as we try to control or keep at bay aspects of ourselves that we are seeking to deny. These rejected parts of ourselves will often develop an adversarial relationship with the ego and will attack or seek to influence the ego in whatever way they can. The more we struggle with our parts the more polarized we and they become, so that both we and our parts evolve into ever more distorted expressions of our true nature.

The vast majority of people are influenced and often driven by parts of themselves of which they have little awareness and over which they have very little control. Consider all the times you have thought to yourself, "That just wasn't me." It may have been when you did something impulsive that was completely out of character or felt driven to do something you really didn't want to do and knew would be harmful to you. Many are aware that after a few drinks they act like a very different person. A significant minority of people are aware that there are parts of themselves that have a mind of their own and sometimes these parts express themselves as voices that talk to the person internally.

If you wish to claim your fullest potential you must be willing to welcome all of your parts, build rapport with them and eventually integrate them. Internal Work is the most effective means available to facilitate this process. It gives you the opportunity meet your parts face to face and get to know them on their own terms.

Dealing with parts, however, is not something to be taken lightly. The drives, beliefs, traumatic memories and painful emotions contained in these parts can be very powerful. Connecting with some parts can have a significant impact on your life and worsen rather than improve your capacity to function in the world. While it is important that you acknowledge and integrate all of your parts, it is equally important that you do it carefully with competent support and guidance. It would be ideal to the have the support of a counselor who is knowledgeable about working with parts, but that may be hard to find. Everyone, however, has an internal deep Self that knows you and all of your parts and how to facilitate a healing relationship with them that will ultimately lead to your reintegration.

Whether or not you have an external counselor, it is important that before any attempt is made to engage your parts you have a strong working relationship with the Self. This is best done by using the audio file on this website, Journey to the self. After you have had several encounters with the Self and feel a strong sense of trust and connection, then following the guidance of the Self you can safely begin to invite forward and work with your parts.

There are a variety of ways to initiate work with a part. Some aggressive parts may almost force themselves upon you when you go into the internal world. If it feels too threatening, you may have to ask the Self to give you a little protection so that you can more gradually get accustomed to the part. Another more common way of determining what part you should be working with is when you feel the destructive influence of a part in your everyday life such as an inclination to compulsively overeat or the presence of fear, anger or shame which are disproportionate to any current life circumstances. The simplest and safest way to constructively encounter such parts is to go into the internal world through using the internal journey process, connect with the Self, and ask the Self to please bring forward whichever part is of greatest concern to you. If the Self judges that you are ready to face the part, it will bring the part forward. If the time is not right for you to work with this part, the Self will let you know and help prepare you so that eventually you will be ready to engage the part. If you do not have any particular part in mind, but want to continue evolving toward higher levels of integration and wholeness, just let the Self know that you are open to any parts or experiences it judges would be best for you, and then let whatever happens unfold.

The great majority of parts are created because of childhood trauma or overly restrictive life experiences that caused us to deny important aspects of ourselves. When we engage the parts that were generated by trauma they will generally present to us as wounded children sometimes in grotesque, symbolic form. They need acceptance and love, as well as willingness on our part to reclaim and integrate their painful memories some of which we may be unaware. Working with the Hurt Child can be very difficult and potentially destabilizing. The guidance of the Self is invaluable here. It is also important that you be as well informed as possible about the process. Be sure to read the essay Healing the Hurt Child which immediately follows this essay before you attempt any work with traumatic history. Two groups I would caution from attempting to work with the Hurt Child and its traumatic memories on their own are those with a history of psychosis or those who have experienced significant abuse and are prone to flashbacks. These two groups require both the internal support of the Self and the external support of an experienced counselor.

The psyche would not have split originally unless it were somehow traumatized. As long as that trauma remains unresolved, integration is not much of a possibility. Parts and the ego may become good friends, but without healing the history, they will probably not be able to join their energies and become a transcendent third reality.

For the process to be successful, the ego must be willing to experience the behavioral, affective, sensory, and cognitive realities of the part. If the traumas that gave rise to this part have already been resolved, dialogue and growing mutual awareness and respect will be sufficient ground for fostering integration.

When the connection becomes sufficiently intense and the traumas that underlie the split have been worked through, integration usually occurs spontaneously—although sometimes the Self will foster a metaphoric process that helps to facilitate integration. The outcome of integration is a new personal reality that transcends both the part and the ego. This new reality is more balanced, open, and fluid than the previous, fragmented self. After an integration there will be increased vitality, a broadening of perspective, and new options that neither the ego nor the part ever had before.

If the historical issues embodied in the Hurt Child are not worked through, no amount of work with any other part of the psyche will bring wholeness. The best that can be hoped for is an absence of internal conflict between parts and the ego. Although the individual may feel more comfortable, if there is less conflict between the ego and other parts of the psyche, the healing will still be incomplete. The person will continue to be controlled by old fears, automatic responses, and distorted early-life decisions. These patterns can only be healed through resolving history, and this is usually best accomplished through working with the Hurt Child.

The Hurt Child

Many people have been hurt in a profound fashion by life. All the honesty and willingness they can muster will not be sufficient to overcome these people’s scars. In such cases, much effort and energy must be put into healing the Hurt Child so that the ego has the capacity to become open to the presence of the Divine Child. Aside from the Self and the ego, the most significant aspect of the psyche with regard to psychological healing is the Hurt Child.

The Hurt Child is, in many ways, the only path to the capacity for living as the Divine Child. Paradoxically, to embrace joy, spontaneity, innocence, and true freedom, the ego must first embrace pain, fear, deep hurt, and the many dissociated experiences that have had the power to hide the Divine Child and crush one’s spirit. Hurts must be owned, felt, and responded to before the ego will ever begin to be able to accept the natural gift embodied in the Divine Child. For some the accumulated impact of continual childhood stress and even terror will so disorder the brain’s natural mechanisms for modulating fear that even after intensive, effective therapy, the person will need the help of antianxiety medications and a nonstressful lifestyle in order to maintain balance. Within those constraints, however, the person can still live out of the Divine Child’s energy.

Most who engage in internal work will encounter various versions of the Hurt Child , usually at different ages. Fear and shame tend to be the predominant emotions of the child, although for some anger may be the principal affect. Clients typically have a wide range of reactions to the Hurt Child. There will usually be some compassion, but more often than not it will be mixed with revulsion, judgment, and fear. Once a person encounters the Hurt Child, it quickly becomes clear that this aspect of the psyche has been driving the dysfunctional emotions, behaviors, and attitudes that have often been a heavy burden throughout the person’s life.

Many people’s initial reaction to the Hurt Child is an understandable desire just to get rid of this crippling aspect of the psyche. The Self, however, will never permit this. The Hurt Child or children must be accepted, understood, and allowed to be themselves and tell their story. The stories may be very painful to hear and at least in part will probably be unknown to the ego. Through this process of loving acceptance and with the guidance of the Self, the Hurt Child can be relieved of its burden and reintegrated as a positive force in the life of the psyche. Once brought to light and integrated, the patterns of self-destructive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that had formerly controlled the ego will fade in intensity and become areas open to choices grounded in a more mature sense of appropriate self-care.

The following client experiences of the Hurt Child help show how the Self guides and supports the ego in being a central resource for healing the Hurt Child.

Eve

Eve had a long history of abuse, both at home, primarily from her mother, and at school from other children. The profound insecurity that she felt because of the distorted relationship with her mother caused her to be a very anxious child, and therefore a ready target for the more aggressive or angry children at school.

Recently in her therapy, she was told by her Self to once more review in detail the suffering that she had undergone in school. She was told she needed to reclaim it because she had previously dissociated it, and in doing so had lost touch with many of her important feelings. So Eve carefully reviewed each of the major forms of abuse or rejection that she had experienced within the school context.

Having brought that back to mind, and feeling once more the pain of it, she was then left with the dilemma of what to do with the material. I suggested that we go through my regular procedure in which the ego is the central agent of healing. Eve was adamant that it would not be suitable for the situation. For the ego to go back and support the child, it is assumed that the ego has matured beyond the pain of the child and can offer a certain amount of balance and perspective, as well as the strength needed to protect the child.

In the case of this client, that simply was not so. At twenty-six , she was still caught up in fear and panic, almost as much as when she was a little girl. To go back to the school as the ego accompanying the child through the abuse would simply mean that they would both be terrorized. This would make things worse rather than better.

I accepted her hesitation, and we let the matter sit for a little while. Eve then had an intuition that proved to be the key for unlocking the healing process. Over the last year or two, she had nurtured a relationship with the divine in which the divine presented itself to her as the Goddess. The Goddess was perceived by Eve as her true mother, in contradistinction to the client’s biological mother, who differed from the Goddess at almost every point.

The intuition she had was that she needed to reenter the school with her twenty-six-year-old consciousness, but with a totally different self-perception. Rather than going into the school as the daughter of her biological mother, she decided to return to the school environment as the daughter of the Goddess. This she did. The following are her own words describing an active imagination experience in which she began the process of healing her childhood wounds within the school environment.

“I was at the edge of the schoolyard with the Goddess, going to kindergarten. She led me into the classroom and left me there, but I could feel her watching everything. I was four, but with most of the intelligence of my twenty-six-year-old ego. I was really nervous about being there, but not having a full anxiety attack. It kept going through my head, ‘Just remember who you are.’ I knew that no one else there knew of my ‘bloodline,’ but I knew.

“Then the boy was there, pinching me. This made me even more nervous. I didn’t know what to do. I knew he was after attention. To tell the teacher would give him attention and he would continue to do it. To ignore him would only make him see me as a challenge, and he would still continue. I considered punching him out, but that would get me in trouble, too. I wanted him to stop. But how? Then I sort of froze the action and considered, ‘What is the appropriate response?’ And then it came to me: ‘I am her daughter. As her daughter, I have available very special abilities.’ So I created a small force field around me, sort of like an electric fence. Anyone who tried to pinch me would get mildly zapped. And I pretended to be totally oblivious to what was happening to him.

“This created for my social personality a mysterious but innocent aura. Not dangerous as such, or labeled evil—just, ‘Who are you, really?’ That sort of thing. Someone not to mess with, as far as being mean to, because it will mysteriously backfire.

“Then I sat in class, coloring and such. I could hear this voice, almost like some sort of tutor, explaining to me that I should be proud of my bloodline. Therefore, I should not walk around with my head down, as though inferior. I should hold my head high. Not superior, either. Just proud of who I am—the daughter of the Goddess herself. And I could feel her physical beauty in me, in my eyes, and in the softness of my face. And I sat there working, feeling strong, and basically secure, feeling pretty, divinely pretty.

“I didn’t feel strong and secure in the sense that ‘I’m the daughter of the Goddess, and if you hurt me she will defend me.’ There was a sense of being able to defend and take care of myself, because of who I was.

“I felt like I had the energy and the ability to really hurt people, like I had special powers. But being her daughter had taught me to do things gently and not to act in aggression. What I did do only hurt, and only mildly hurt, those who were aggressive toward me.

“Now I have a foundation from which to work my way through the rest of the years in school. A foundation of strength and self-esteem and beauty, and the ability to defend myself against my attackers.”

Eve did this active imagination or internal work on her own, with the help of the Goddess and without any intervention or support on my part. The two following case studies are examples of internal work in which I played an active role. They represent fairly typical therapeutic work with the Hurt Child.

Fred

Fred was twenty-six years old when he entered therapy. He had had three and a half years of business experience as an insurance salesman, and had spent four years in the army prior to that. During Fred’s military service, he had completed about two years of college.

Fred’s reason for entering therapy was anxiety. He experienced panic while making sales calls, and the panic seemed to be escalating.

Working in sales had never been easy, Fred stated. But “few things in life were.” Over the last year, Fred had met a young woman he really cared for, and was thinking of getting married. This caused him to take a new look at his career and earning potential. With the prospect of supporting a family, Fred, more than ever, felt it incumbent to succeed.

He had tried very hard to talk himself out of the anxiety and panic he felt before making a sales call. He had also worked with several self-help books, tapes, and deep breathing exercises. He had even been through biofeedback training. None of it had seemed to work, however, so Fred had concluded he should seek out a professional counselor.

Fred was very interested in and responsive to the idea of internal work and the Self. The concept of a whole world waiting inside strongly appealed to Fred, and reminded him of an interest he had had earlier in his life regarding fantasy and science fiction. Fred approached the process of internal work with anticipation.

Soon Fred discovered that the internal world was not interested in helping him become a more effective salesman. The internal world had its own agenda and direction. This increased Fred’s panic attacks. He was at a crossroads. He either had to delve more deeply into the truth offered from within, stop counseling altogether, or seek a form of therapy more supportive of the goals he had chosen at the ego level. Fred decided to commit to the course of therapy before him.

When he first encountered the Inner Child, it was sitting in a park, listening to the birds, and reading a book on science fiction. The child experienced the adult Fred as something of an intrusion. Once the child learned the adult Fred also liked science fiction, a rapport was established, and the child was willing to lead him back into the past. Fred discovered great differences between who he was as a child and how he was functioning as an adult.

Fred’s Inner Child displayed a love for music. The child was delighted when his mother offered lessons on the piano, as well as on grandmother’s violin. Other kids in the neighborhood seemed to gripe about music practice time, but for Fred as a child, those moments were pure pleasure. Playing music offered him a sense of elation. Joy flowed through Fred as he touched the piano keys or ran his bow across the violin strings.

Fred’s father was not so pleased at his son’s musical interests. Fred’s father was currently in upper-level management at the insurance company where Fred worked. He had been an insurance salesman while Fred was growing up. His father wanted his son to display more “masculine” interests, such as football, soccer, arm wrestling, and Scouts.

Fred was not muscular and large like his father. He had a slender frame, similar to his mother. Fred’s father, according to the child, seemed to feel Fred simply needed encouragement or, more correctly, harassment, in order to get going and be a “real boy.”

The adult Fred had come to accept that he couldn’t ever be what his father wanted. Fred learned through the Hurt Child his true nature was almost in direct opposition to what his father wanted. Fred’s talents and gifts did not lie in the area of sports. As a child, he had displayed strong verbal skills and been a good reader, imaginative, and very adept at playing musical instruments.

Fred saw incident after incident from his childhood internally as his Child tried to model what the father demanded. The Child joined the father in a Scouting program, but hated all the trips and noisy sessions with other little boys. The Hurt Child showed Fred times when his father would bring other salesmen to the house and laughingly call Fred into the room in order to force the boy to arm wrestle with one of the adult men. The salesmen and his father would jeer, laugh, and cajole the boy. They presented this sport as a form of play for him, but the child felt shame and ridicule. As an adult, Fred could see how callous this behavior was.

Fred’s Child felt convinced that if he’d just try harder, he’d finally make it. He’d finally get it right. When Fred went out for football in high school, he spent more time sitting on the bench than he did out on the field. His fine motor coordination on the piano and the violin was outstanding; his motor coordination on the football or soccer field seemed abominable. The Hurt Child, as a teenager, died a thousand deaths every time the coach chewed him out for his clumsiness or his teammates made fun of him.

Fred’s mother had been supportive of his love of music, but she did not encourage his interest in science fiction and fantasy. His mother, being a very religious woman, felt Fred’s time would be better spent reading the Bible or other spiritual books.

As it reviewed family history, what the child showed Fred was that, to his father, Fred would never be man enough to measure up; to his mother, he would never be religious enough or good enough to measure up. He explained to Fred that he had bought so completely into the father’s interpretation of what a man should be that it was why they decided to join the army upon completion of high school. Following four years in the service, Fred decided to enter sales in his father’s firm. The Child would have rather played the piano or the violin, or worked in a bookstore or library.

Fred recalled that when he completed his last year of high school, he talked to his father briefly, timidly, about the possibility of a career in music or library science. The suggestion was met with resounding laughter and derision on his father’s part. “Why would you want to do something like that, when you could enter sales and earn big money?” the father demanded.

Fred admitted there was logic to what his father was saying. He wanted his father’s approval and he did want to succeed. He hoped that with maturity and experience he could finally measure up to his father’s standards.

The Child told Fred very bluntly, “Get out of sales! Move to a different state from where your father lives!” The Child wanted Fred to spend four hours a day playing music, and at least a couple hours a day reading books or perusing bookstores. The adult Fred felt deeply frightened. His father’s message about who he should be seemed absolute. It was the only thing he’d ever truly believed in. Could he now, after hearing the child’s story, completely turn his life around? Could he allow himself to become internally directed for the first time in twenty-six years? Could he make a stand against his father and embrace the truth of his Hurt Child?

Fred is still struggling with freeing himself of these messages from his father’s and mother’s introjections. He quit his job in sales and now works in a small bookstore. The young woman he became so serious about is still an active part of his life, and they plan to get married.

Alice

Alice came into therapy complaining of massive bouts of depression. She described herself as introverted and shy. Her periods of depression seemed to be increasing both in time and scope.

Alice had never been to a counselor before. She felt people should handle problems by themselves, or with the help of friends or family. Alice now found friends and family weren’t enough to pull her through. There were days when she could barely get out of bed or take her children to school or get herself to work. She would find herself during lunch hours falling into tears over the computer. Occasionally, during the late afternoon, she would need to leave her desk, go to the bathroom, and cry.

Alice said she had a very good marriage. Her husband was stable and responsible. She had two children, who were above-average achievers, and two pets. Alice believed she had an ideal family. Why should she be depressed, she wondered?

Soon after the crying spells began, Alice went to see the family doctor. He told her these emotions might be due to early menopause and a hormonal imbalance. She took test after test and tried numerous medications. The doctor and Alice both concluded the problem was not going to respond to standard medical treatment. Alice’s physician suggested she seek the help of a psychotherapist.

Alice didn’t know where to begin to find a psychotherapist. She timidly asked one of the secretaries in the building if she knew of someone who could help with depression. From this conversation, Alice had received a referral, as well as sympathy.

Alice spent her first few therapy sessions trying to explain why she shouldn’t or didn’t need to be in therapy: her family life was comfortable, her children were well behaved, her husband was a better person than the husbands of many other women she was acquainted with, and so forth. Why, then, couldn’t she shake this sadness?

It was not until the third session that Alice was willing to do internal work. At first her contact with the Self was tenuous. She thought she saw a light, maybe, or maybe she didn’t. As soon as she tried to make a connection with the light, it faded. Alice’s communication with the Self did increase as she continued to do internal work.

Her first journey to meet the Hurt Child was powerful. It was temporarily devastating to her. The story that she had told herself, and her therapist, was that she had had a very happy childhood and loving parents. Money had not always been plentiful, but she had not really wanted for anything. Alice’s Hurt Child, however, painted a different picture. The Child was discovered balled up in a knot, crying under a tree. It was two sessions before the child was even willing to talk to Alice.

While Alice had not been the victim of an alcoholic home or physical or sexual abuse, she nevertheless had been molded and distorted to fit the family’s values and needs.

Alice had a sister, Betty, who was four years older than her, and a brother, Tom, who was one and a half years older. When Alice had been a very little girl, she and Tom had been great playmates.

The Child showed Alice how she and Tom had both enjoyed the outdoors and other pastimes, such as riding bicycles, roller skating, going to the creek, building forts, and playing cowboys and Indians. Alice fit in very well with Tom’s friends. They did not really think that it was strange for a girl to be playing with them, even one who was younger. If Tom’s friends were hesitant in the beginning, after they saw that Alice could run, wrestle, and ride her bike as well as they could, they quickly forgot their reservations.

The Hurt Child emphasized that Alice and her brother were quite different from their sister, Betty. Betty was always very neat, fastidious in her dress, and extroverted. Betty was highly popular with children in school. Alice’s Child reminded her of the shyness she experienced in the school setting. This was quite different from playing with the boys. Alice always looked at her older sister with wonder. The Child did not like the shyness she felt at school, and hoped one day it would go away. The Child hoped that with age she might become more like Betty.

She was frequently told by both her mother and her father of Betty’s successes, Betty’s prettiness, and what a wonderful man Betty would finally meet and marry. This caused the Internal Child pain and tremendous self-doubt. The Child showed Alice that by the age of seven she had decided that what it meant to be a girl, in the ideal sense, was to look and act like Betty. She did not feel like Betty, however. Being tidy was a bore and a bother. The Child complained to the adult Alice, how could she be tidy and build a fort? How could she be tidy and make wooden boats, or wade in the creek?

The Child showed Alice another important interest she had: animals. Alice could always help other children teach their pets tricks. Whenever one of the pets was hurt, Alice seemed to know what to do to make it feel better.

When Alice was eight years old, her mother spent increasing periods of time in bed, complaining of headaches and low energy. The Child told Alice she did not like this, and it scared her. Beginning at this time, Alice’s mother started to complain that she needed help doing housework and preparing meals. Even though Alice was young, it was clear she had great energy and was quick at learning things. Alice’s mother said that it would therefore be easier for her to step in and lend a hand, rather than Betty, who was so busy in after-school activities. The Child expressed to adult Alice how angry she was about this, and how unfair she felt it was.

Soon Alice had to tell Tom and his friends she did not have time for play. Her mother needed her. When Alice came home from school, there was usually a list of chores awaiting her attention. The child Alice retreated into fantasy, where she was queen and had lots of servants to wait on her. She felt too guilty about being angry at her mother to express it much. As the adult Alice learned, most of this anger was denied and repressed. When Alice was not doing chores, her mother wanted company while she watched soap operas.

Alice was told repeatedly that her mother really was sick. Her father reinforced this message daily. The Inner Child told adult Alice she had wished desperately to be Betty. Not only was Betty pretty, tidy, and popular, but she did not have to work. These thoughts made the child Alice feel guilty and ashamed.

The periods when her mother had migraine headaches came and went throughout Alice’s growing up, but the pattern of Alice coming home from school, preparing dinner, doing laundry, and in general taking care of the family persisted. She only got relieved of her duties when she went to live in a college dorm.

When Alice was a sophomore in college, she met a nice young man who seemed to care for her very much. He was completing his junior year and said that if she would be willing to drop out of school and go to work, they could get an apartment and be married right away. He said he would help her finish her degree later, of course. Alice did not really have a career goal after graduation, so this seemed like a good idea.

Although she and her husband talked about her returning to finish her education, she never did. She started having babies instead. Alice’s husband became a reasonably successful accountant, and Alice began a ten-year career as a secretary. When Alice encountered her young adult self during internal work, she told her that she felt resentment and anger toward her husband for pursuing his life goals, and for seemingly crushing her in the process. She felt like the childhood theme had been played out all over again. Her husband, like Betty, got to do what he pleased, while she got to take care of the family and chores. She showed Alice what a deep level of resentment she had always felt about the whole process.

Alice’s Inner Child began to teach her that the depression she was experiencing as an adult was directly linked to the child’s despair. Alice’s natural gifts suited her well to be a veterinarian or botanist, but her interest in and love of the outdoors had been squelched during growing up. Now this interest only found expression on occasional family camping trips. At the age of thirty-five, Alice felt totally dead inside. Most of her potential , revealed in her Divine Child, was overwhelmingly rejected by first her family and then her husband. Repeating the early pattern, Alice had chosen a man who, like her mother, expected her to live her life to meet his needs.

Alice’s healing is taking place through a slow process of recovering her latent gifts. She has decided to return to college and then attend veterinarian school. Alice has applied for a grant to help with finances and has told her husband she will only work part-time. His response, at first, was resentment, but now he is trying to be supportive. Alice’s children are eight and nine years old, and fairly self-sufficient. The marriage is on shaky ground, but Alice is determined to continue with her plans. She is committed to the process of allowing her authentic nature to live within the external world at last.

Love

The following link will open my essay on love which you may print out and keep if you wish.

love1.edited__1_.docx

Dean Schlecht, M.Div. Spiritual Direction