Speaking to your Inner Child and Spelling the Patterns ~ Tools for Finding Your Purpose
The exercise presented in this post is part of my class, “Let Your Inner Child Build Worlds.” I am sharing it with you to help you connect to your purpose in life.
I have modified my original exercise to center on self-discovery instead of world-building for writing and art. If you are interested in child work to build worlds, please look out for announcements about my workshops in my newsletter.
Your childself is your purest self, as in, yourself distilled.
From your childself you can learn about the purpose of your existence.
A somewhat blurry photo of little Malachi around age 10. It’s a close-up of their shoulders and head. They have light brown skin and are wrapped in various shades of blue fabric with raw hems. Their hand tentatively clutches the fabric on their chest and they give a shy smile. They have close crop dark curly hair, emphasizing their brown eyes' size. They have aquatic-inspired makeup on their forehead and around their eyes to help them look like a sea dragon. The center design is a shell with blue swirls coming off either side. Splotches of white dots go around their eyes and down the sides of their face. They have a light blue on top of eyelids that extends in a long swirl. They did this makeup themself. In this self, I see my magic and bestial forms that I have softened for the world. I see my connection to the primordial ocean and Mami Wata, a repeated figure in my life.
Much of psychology focuses on the impacts on your childhood and how they affect your development. That is undoubtedly a part of this work. Because that is such an accessible mode of self-discovery and there are a lot of resources about it, I will not be discussing varying methods of trauma and psychological in specific detail besides Active Imagination.
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At the end, we will accumulate the information received into a practice of pattern work.
Pattern work should come with a practice of self-awareness and precaution.
Pattern work has the potential to trigger obsessive behaviors and even paranoia, especially when we use pattern work to make meaning of ourselves.
If you are prone to such mental processes, ensure you have a system for grounding yourself, or do this work with a professional or someone you trust.
Tools of support like divination or even astrology can become mind-altering addictions that can elicit feelings of dependency or control if not handled with a grounded inner self.
Please proceed with deep self-awareness. If you don’t have a consistent, trusted metaphysical or spiritual practice, please proceed with this exercise from a grounded place.
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The inner child work I offer is informed by Black Quantum Futurism’s understanding of cyclical time, which posits that we can influence the future and the past to shape our present.
Your childself is a resource for understanding who you truly are because:
Rawness - Before socializing, society shaped you away from yourself.
Maybe you have never had the privilege of a raw self. That’s ok, too. You can find your inner child even if you could not BE a child. Your childself existed no matter how much your experiences tried to prove you otherwise.
Essence of the Soul - A child, in terms of linear time, is closer to primordial time.
. Primordial time also refers to the time before you were formed when you were only consciousness.
Joy - The joy of your childself is the joy of who you are.
Joy is not as simple as a moment of happiness. Joy is when everything that YOU ARE aligns with what you are experiencing.
With these reasons in mind, we will employ a practice inspired by Jungian Active Imagination to create portals that access our child self.
What is Active Imagination?
I love Chen Malul’s definition:
“Active Imagination is Jung's way of invoking and essentially willing visions from the unconscious into being.”
Malul has a lovely Substack article about Active Imagination here.
While some people cannot visualize in their mind’s eye, it is still possible to engage with your inner child through verbalized thought, or however, engaging with your mind feels natural to you.
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Pre-exercise cleansing of energy:
This is where we take time to acknowledge all that has shaped us into adults and express gratitude for these experiences. Why?
No matter what you experience, out of infinite possibilities, your life is yours. Gratitude for these experiences shapes your mind and heart into one of openness and receptivity.
It is essential to express gratitude for all you have experienced. This means that regardless of the version of you that appears in these exercises today, you are grateful for them and will remain open to learning from them.
If this pre-exercise is as far as you get today. That’s good. That is where you are. Come back again when you’re ready for the next step.
The phrases are written in a collective pronoun to encompass all of your selves everywhere you exist, in all time and reality. If it is more comfortable to say “I” or “I” feels like it does the job of encompassing all of your selves, by all means, use “I.”
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Before the gratitude pre-exercise, say a protection. Your protection should always come before any energy work.
This is a recommended protection for you:
“We are safe and secure throughout our existence as we journey into our consciousness and communicate with our many selves. Only energy with the intention of my highest good and protection may meet me here.”
Next gratitude:
You do not have to say these exact phrases, but it's good to ask yourself why you do or don’t want to say something, even if it's just a passing acknowledgment of your rejection. It’s always good to ask yourself questions.
Deep Breath. Close your eyes. Repeat these phrases as many times as you need.
We acknowledge the breath and life in our body through time and existence.
We thank you
We acknowledge the pain and conditioning that shaped us.
We thank you.
We acknowledge those who could not raise us and those who tried to raise us while raising themselves.
We thank you.
We acknowledge all that made us laugh and all that made us cry.
We thank you.
We acknowledge all that we did not have, and all that was enough.
We thank you.
We acknowledge every opportunity lost and never afforded to us.
We thank you.
We acknowledge the games and play that have shaped us.
We thank you.
We acknowledge the care we had to give ourselves.
We thank you.
We acknowledge the labor and work that has shaped us.
We thank you.
We acknowledge the fellow children who grew alongside us.
We thank you.
We acknowledge where our education benefitted us and where it harmed us.
We thank you.
Continue with anything else you need or what to acknowledge and end with.
We thank you.
We thank you.
We thank you.
Take three deep breaths.
Open your eyes if you have them closed.
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I’ve designed these Active Imagination exercises. After each exercise, I prompt you to write or draw your thoughts and images.
First Active Imagination Exercise: An exercise about about joy. Minimum 5 minutes.
This first exercise is observation only. Watch your childself as you relive memories or imagine fiction about your childhood. If you find yourself becoming your childself in your mind, seeing from a first-person point of view, don’t fight that.
This exercise can be done sporadically or continuously.
What I mean by this is that you can imagine something in its entirety and then write it down, or you can alternate between imagining and writing.
Imagine moments that brought you joy, either watching your childself or being your childself.
You could focus on one big moment or flicker between memories and moments.
Imagine the moments when you felt most aligned with yourself—the most joy.
First Writing Exercise
Write down everything that you have experienced and seen.
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Second Active Imagination Exercise: Imagine how you imagined as a child in play. Minimum 5 minutes.
You’re putting yourself into your child mind. It does not matter if it’s accurate or speculated.
How did you like to play? What worlds did you create? What shows or books did you place yourself into? What did you imagine when you ran through the playground? Where and how did you find yourself fantasizing? What came up in your imagination that frightened you? What dreams did you have?
This could also be about how you engaged with your special interests. To use the rocks example, what enraptured your attention about looking under rocks? What about dinosaurs, machinery, or disco captured your imagination?
You can learn about yourself from childhood joy, but also childhood fear. If you are comfortable, you can take a moment to recall what it was like to be afraid as a child and what you were scared of. Try to focus on fears that do not have an obvious experiential root. For example, if you focus on being afraid of dogs because a dog bit you, that is a fear with an obvious experiential root.
An example of a less obviously rooted fear could be the fear of staring eyes (something I was afraid of). I had no tangible reason to fear staring eyes. Any drawing of anything that just stared at me gave me immense dread, such as the “quiet pet” from Dr. Suess’s book, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.
The purpose of engaging with fear is to identify recurring themes and patterns. Don’t dwell in fear unless your childself directly asks you to. If that’s the case, they may be trying to show you something.
Practice sensory thoughts, such as picking up an object you love to feel its texture or hearing the voice of your favorite cartoon character and responding to that character.
Take the time to be in that space playing pretend or enraptured by what you’re learning about or playing with. Be there now. You are your childself now.
Second Writing Exercise: Record your observations. Was there a particular scene you imagined? Where did you travel to? What sparked in your mind as you learned that new thing?
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Third Active Imagination Exercise: Your childself and the world. Minimum 5 minutes.
This exercise requires balancing some additional elements into your imagined space.
This could be an extension of play, as you bring in other people to play with you, but this prompt is more expansive.
Focus on your childself by being or observing them, and be with them as you imagine how they interacted with others and responded to different scenarios.
These elements could include specific friends, family members, or other vivid figures from your life. It’s important not to be swept up by the personalities of others and instead ground in your childself’s reaction to that person.
Think about friends.
Did you have a best friend? What about them made them your best friend? How did your friendship start and/or end? Feel into those moments.
How did you feel when you saw your friends get hurt?
Think of your family.
What lessons stuck with you from your elders, and how did it feel to learn them?
How did you feel or see yourself as similar or different to your family?
How did your parents live within you and your actions? How did that contradict or affirm what you felt in the core of yourself?
Think about animals.
What was your relationship with your pets?
Do you remember seeing an animal for the first time and feeling afraid? How does that feeling contrast with now?
What animal did you embody with your body and play?
How did you feel about hurting insects? How did you feel about hurting animals? How did you feel to see creatures hurt?
Think about plants.
How did it feel to put your feet in the grass?
What was your relationship with the outdoors, and how did that make you feel?
What flowers were your favorite?
How did you feel when you saw a chopped-down tree?
Fourth Active Imagination Exercise:
Write what you experienced.
How do these moments reveal your childself’s relationship with the world?
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Last Active Imagination Exercise: Speaking directly to the childself. Minimum 5 minutes.
I’m leaving this open for you to interpret. You could go into your imagination as you are now and speak with your childself, or you can be a child speaking to another child version of yourself. It doesn’t matter what their age is, and it may shift as you speak to them. Make note of that too. Be with them and have a conversation. It could be about anything, but the most important thing to do is ASK your childself WHY! Always ask in the collective pronoun “we” to continuously enforce that although you speak to a separate figure, you are one.
All manner of why questions.
Why did that sound bring you joy?
Why did we love the texture of that food?
Why did that book series capture our imagination so much?
Why did we want to be a dragon?
Why did thunderstorms scare us?
Why were we so obsessed with purple?
Be with your childself now. Tap into that childself wonder!
What do you want them to know?
How do they respond to you?
Fourth Active Imagination Exercise: Write that moment down.
Pay attention to where people engage with you in a way that feels intrinsically aligned with you and when it feels harmful or pulls you in an unnatural direction.
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You’ve collected unconscious data as a method of learning about your inner child and rawest self, which are the building blocks for your purpose.
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Final Writing Exercise: PATTERN WORK
It’s summary time!
You will distill the distilled into a description of your purpose in this life.
It’s time to interpret the symbols and receive their message.
That’s right. You have become your own divination tool!
It’s time to identify connections and patterns in your gathered information. However, pattern-keeping looks for you; that’s how you should organize the material.
To look for patterns is to pay attention to repetition.
What are the rhythms of your childself?
Where are the contrasts that confuse you or the ones that intrigue and excite you?
What feels the most potent to you?
These patterns are a map. The map illustrates the core themes, motifs, and symbols that represent you, as every life is simply a story.
What story is contained in the map, and what does it reveal regarding your purpose?
Some of the things you love and fear come from parallel realities that touch you or may stem from ancestors passing down their joy and fear through genetics.
The concept of parallel reality is the idea that, instead of existing in a linear time with a past and a future, all time exists simultaneously. What we experience as “past lives” are parallel lives that exist alongside us, with which we have strong bonds.
The map shows you the worlds, personalities, and realities trying to speak to and through you. What are the connections and contrasts telling you?
Can you simplify it in a paragraph?
Can you simplify it in three sentences?
Can you simplify it in a sentence?
Can you simplify it in three words?
Can you simplify it into a single word?
And there you are.
Guidance for your purpose. It was in you all along.
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P.S. If you have gone through the exercise and want more, repeat this exercise for your entire life. Patterns have always been with you.
What aspects have you returned to from your childhood that were lost in the litter of life?