Spirituality and Childhood Abuse

Spirituality and Childhood Abuse

Children have few protections. Cognitive development and the ability to think critically comes with neuron growth (provided that is not inhibited by abuse and/or neglect) starting around 11 years old with some variation based on individual environment and genetics.  This means that before this neuron growth, children have no mental capability that could help them either understand abuse or protect themselves. Abuse is experienced directly as “I must be bad” “There is something wrong with me” and “I am not worth loving.”  Because there are no cognitive filters, these beliefs become imprinted as “truth” especially if the abuse happens in the pre-verbal years. Abuse that happens in the pre-cognitive years can rarely be treated successfully with cognitive therapies as the experiences happened before brain development necessary to address issues cognitively. Spiritual, energetic and body therapies are needed in addition to talk therapy. What does all of this have to do with Spirituality?

We all have Guides and Protections, just most people ignore them, especially when life is good. Earth plane happiness tends to make people forget Spirit and cultivation of inner energies. Most people are shut down and turn to Spirit only when they are in excruciating emotional (or sometimes physical) pain. Then people turn to Spirit desperately trying to open up the channels that will allow them to  escape uncomfortable emotions or situations and now want to “feel” or connect with Spirit Guides, Higher Self, Creator. Children of abuse and/or neglect learn at an early age that life on Earth is terrifying, unstable, and filled with pain and fear. Typically their only “escape” is to leave their bodies and travel to the higher planes. In severe cases of abuse, there can be dissociation and sometimes so extreme that the person is fractured for this life, never to be whole in any way one could consider functional, while others might create multiple personalities to deal with the fractures and try to hang on to some essence of functionality.

Children of abuse are whisked away by their Guides to other planes of existence. These children learn to “leave” and their only real and reliable relationships are with non-physical beings. They develop strong psychic powers in order to protect themselves from the unpredictable irrational onslaughts of sick or cruel adults or environment (such as growing up in a war zone, or experiencing a natural disaster such as an earthquake or tsunami). They can become masters of “prediction” because they were forced to be predictive as a child as a way to evade the dangers that threatened them via adults and/or their environment.  Sometimes they also excel in healing powers as a way to “calm down” or shift their hostile environment. These are emergency Spiritual interventions to keep the child body alive. However, abuse has its consequences and if not addressed as an adult Spiritual Gifts become unbalanced, a crutch, or an unhealthy means of escape from responsibilities and/or feelings.  Unhealed shattered children grow up to be ungrounded adults who seek to escape reality via Spiritual practices, and/or drugs and alcohol, and usually are control freaks as well. Having learned early on that the physical world is not a safe place they will turn their over developed Spiritual Gifts towards control even going as far as excelling in black magic (energies used to control people and events, based on fear rather than trust in Spirit).  

Spiritual Gifts are worshipped in the USA. If you are a psychic or healer or magician of some sort you become a kind of celebrity and people are enthralled with talent. There is quite a “market” for psychic fame, even in local neighborhoods. This leads to people putting their trust in someone because of talent, without any investigation into the person his/her self. Adults with unhealed, unrecognized childhood scars have no idea how to live a balanced life or how to be in balanced relationships with other people.  You will see people like this justify everything they do based on the information they get from their Guides, however remember their Guides came in to save these children from pain and destruction.  As adults, now with some safety in their lives, these wounded people don’t even know the right questions to ask their Guides in order to learn how to become balanced. And Guides cannot control people, cannot force those in their care to learn maturity, to learn to trust again, to learn how to set boundaries rather than run away or take defensive and protective actions (such as shutting down, dissociating, “leaving”). Talented unhealed psychics and healers will continue to unconsciously use people to maintain the alternate realities they had to build as scared children. They don’t know any better and cannot help themselves from continuing on with patterns that saved their lives as children.  Without cognitive abilities, children make up their own rules and stories about how life works. With no safe adult or community to address these stories or model healthy earth plane behaviors, these made up rules and stories stay in place with the adult version of the wounded child. Not only do these wounded talented adults often mislead and hurt others, the saddest part is their personal lives will continue to be a painful mess as the wounded adult continues to live by the ungrounded, outdated rules and realities constructed by them as children when they were in danger and pain.

We did not incarnate to escape being here. As children Spirit can save you, however you did come here to face and live your life as a human, in the country and era you chose to experience. If you came here to experience abuse, that also means you came here to face it, not hide it, forget it, ignore it, or escape into your world of Guides.  While many people have to learn to open up to Spirit, wounded adults need to accept the task of healing themselves, get grounded, face Earth challenges in a balanced fashion, develop faith and give up being a control freak as well as using their “talents” to try and control everything so they can create a false sense of security and safety.  I have yet to meet a human, including avatars, medicine people, shamans, Sikhs, witches, people who channel, etc who has been “excused” from their human lessons, from facing and working with the consequences of their choice of childhood experiences, and from learning their human lessons. Balance between Spiritual Talent and your human life is necessary to have a nice time here on Earth.  Your talents have nothing to do with the quality of your life…. they are just talents  (like Van Gogh, Mozart and so many other geniuses whose talents did not improve the quality of their day to day living.)  Don’t be one of the psychic celebrities whose inner life is misery, obsessions,denial, and loneliness while projecting a public façade of serenity and “happiness.” That is a very sad and painful way to live—the way you were forced to live as a child victim. That childhood behavior became your recipe for survival when you were a helpless victim. It is no longer either functional or appropriate. Break free from the chains of the past. Dare to live, perhaps for the first time. Find a new balanced way to live, with Spirit and with your Earth Life Path. You will not lose your talents; you will however gain a life.

Journey on.