The Child in the Mirror

The Answers We Seek Are Found Within Have you ever wondered why you think, act, and feel a certain way towards everything that surrounds you? I have asked myself this question, and only recently have I been able to put the pieces together. It was fascinating to uncover that the answer we are looking for has been with us from the moment we were born. How is this possible? “Our greatest natural resource is the minds of our children,” wrote Walter Elias Disney, an American animator, film producer, and entrepreneur. Children have minds that enable them to experience whatever they want in the present moment; they are highly creative and always find joy in the smallest of things. They do not worry about what their lives will be like in the next ten years; they just focus on what they have now and go with the flow of life. “Our greatest natural resource is the minds of the children.” —Walter Elias Disney (BOX 1) However, when we grow up, we often find ourselves in situations we cannot identify with. Such situations bring us negative feelings, make us wish for a better future, or make us think about our pasts and how they still affect us today. We get so lost in what is happening all around us that we forget the children we once were. As the American children’s author, political cartoonist, illustrator, poet, animator, and filmmaker Dr Seuss correctly pointed out, “Adults are just outdated children.” Have you stopped to think that adulthood and childhood are but one single state? One cannot live without the other. A child grows into an adult, but the adult is unconsciously influenced by the child throughout their life. How many of us have been told, “You need to grow up”, “An adult at your age should know better”, or “You are way too childish for your age”? Personally, I have heard all three. But I would not change my childlike actions, because when I engage in them, I am happiest and free of all worry. I enjoy dancing around the house on my own, which is exactly what I used to do when I was five. What did you enjoy doing as a kid? Do you still do it today? If not, what or who has stopped you from doing what you once loved? Have you noticed how, as we start to grow up, we are constantly told to behave like adults? We end up pushing aside the child within us because suddenly having childlike behaviours at the age of twenty, thirty, sixty, or eighty is supposedly wrong. However, there is one important factor we have missed. We may forget about our child within, but they never forget us; they are stored in our subconscious minds. Certain behaviours and experiences trigger your child within, but we are probably not aware that this is even happening. For example, when someone shouts directly at you, you either get upset or angry; the choice depends on what you were exposed to as a child. Whether it was my mother or anybody else telling me off, I immediately started to cry because I did not like what I was hearing, and it affected me dearly. This, to me, was strange as an adult because I thought that as I grew older I would naturally develop the capacity to not let myself get emotionally triggered by the opinions of others. Little did I know that it was not the adult that was upset, but rather the child within that was suddenly awoken. You see, when you choose to forget the negative experiences you had as a child, they stay with you forever. They lie quietly beneath the surface until they are triggered by someone or something. I have heard that time is the healer of all things, but I believe that it is not time that heals, but rather how we use that time to practise the healing. In this book, I plan to share my own life experiences, as well as those of others and how their adult lives have been impacted by their child within. I have always wanted to write a book, but I never had an idea of what to write about until meditation came into my life. I still remember sitting in my room in silence with my eyes closed when suddenly the thought of using my life experiences to write my first book popped into my head. The birds outside my window were chirping away, and the words that kept repeating in my mind were “Your life is a book; nothing happens for no reason. Don’t be selfish by not believing in yourself and not sharing with the world what you have lived and learnt.” It is wonderful how many answers you can get when you calm your mind and release it from all thought. Silence is extremely powerful; the answers you need can be found during silence. As Albert Einstein, a theoretical physicist, said, “The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulate the creative mind.” Today we are constantly surrounded by noise, and at times, we find ourselves struggling to find some peace and quiet. Our concentration can be lost within seconds if we are in an environment that has many distractions. The phone rings or a new message comes in, and the mind focuses on the object and not on the task you had at hand. It is possible to switch it off, even if it is only for fifteen minutes a day. This may sound like a long time, but once you start bringing the element of mindfulness into meditation, you no longer notice time. When we are transmitting positive emotions to what we are doing, we do not notice time go by. No wonder people say time flies when you are having fun. “The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.” —Albert Einstein (BOX 2) Until now, it has not been possible to build a time machine, but I think that our subconscious minds are a true representation of this. The subconscious mind is the part of the brain that is not fully aware yet influences a person’s actions and feelings based on their past experiences. We have the power to travel back in time. We cannot change what has happened, but we can change how we review what we experienced. If you had a traumatic experience as a child, you might try to get past that event. However, you are not achieving any results because you are consciously trying to do this instead of digging deeper within yourself. Your conscious and subconscious minds need to work together in order to obtain the desired goal. You cannot just rely on your conscious mind to obtain the results you seek. We are encouraged to practise positive affirmations each morning to build our self-esteem, but if our emotions and thoughts are not in correlation, then what we are affirming becomes meaningless. The same process applies to the mind and heart. If the two are not aligned, you will begin to have conflicting thoughts and feelings. Have you ever been in a situation where your mind is telling you one thing but your heart is saying another? This reminds me of the message behind the ancient symbol for Yin and Yang; life is a balancing act and is most fulfilling when we learn to embrace the opposing forces (good and bad times). Once we master balancing the mind and heart, the result is nothing but goodness. Our thoughts and feelings represent our beliefs and values, but at what point in our lives did we develop them? Some would say it was when we reached adulthood, as this was when we started to pay closer attention to words, actions, and choices. However, with this book, I hope to show you that our values and beliefs were programmed into us from the moment we were born, when we started to gain consciousness, during our teenage years, and even during our gestation.