- The Inner Family Archetype
Every one of us has four internal life forces that are interacting with each other and influencing our way to be with ourselves and with the world. These forces can be in a harmonious or disharmonious relation-ship with one another, causing us to feel connected with our deepest and true Self or to feel overwhelmed from their constant inner dialogue.
These four forces are manifesting in everything in nature, inside and around us, manifesting in spirit as well as in matter, they are the four energies from which the entire universe is made of. We use many archetypes to facilitate our experience and perception of them, the wind directions, North, South, East and West, or the elements, fire, air, water and earth or the bodies, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual………
These four internal forces are also forming our Inner Family with its four inner members: the father, the mother, the boychild and the girlchild.
Our family members have valuable qualities and an important role in our internal life and their function, and their dynamics are important for our own growth, self-knowledge and self-esteem.
Deep in our core, at the center, leaves the Self, our purest energy, a place of universal knowing, of presence and acceptance. When, by showing respect to all the members of the family we are able to reach our core and be in the state of Self, we are given permission to engage with these four inner forces and come into a not judgmental dialogue with them, entering a process of recognition and healing. Harmony is restored and every member of our inner family can find his balanced role back embodying their natural skills and finding nurturing in their inert-communication.
Each archetypical energy has a balanced and unbalanced state, a loving and unloving state. Through their loving state, each member supports us and enable a fluid communication and co-creation within ourselves and with the outside world. Through their unloving state their block our self-expression and sabotage our self-esteem.
The four inner energies
The father: The Inner Loving Father supports us in drawing our boundaries and he teaches us the importance of discipline. He gifts us with protection and direction to life. Our Loving Father teaches us to be honest in our interactions with others and to be true and reliable to our word. He has the qualities of fairness, empathy, organization, he helps us to be firm and he represents the law of cause and effect. He gives conditional love, teaching us autonomy, to be responsible for ourselves, and the ability to don’t take things personal. Conditional love.
The Inner Unloving Father is our inner critic, that voice that criticizes every move we, or others make. He is the dominant tyrant who controls by condemning. He is rigid, intimidating, ruthless, shaming, cynical and inconsistent.
The mother: The Inner Loving Mother gifts us with warmth and nurturance to encourage us on our life journey. She draws out the best in us and helps us to succeed by teaching, guiding, explaining and by giving us unconditional love. She provides the intimacy that exists between a mother and her child and she teaches us to be intimate with others. She is the source of unconditional love that heals every wound. She provides the home and the heart.
The Inner Unloving Mother make us to experience an abandoning and aloof energy towards ourselves as well towards others. She embodied the energy, the mechanism of spoiling and indulging, encouraging you and the people around you into addictions and dependency, like food, sex, drugs, money and shopping—to fill the inner void that comes from the lack of true Loving Mother nurturance within.
The boychild: The Inner Loving Boychild is the embodiment of adventure and action. When our Boychild is loving, he is our inner warrior, fighting courageously and fearless for righteous causes. He guides us into excel (having success) in life, into the accomplishment of great things and the fulfillment of our dreams with vivacity and enthusiasm. He inspires others to follow him into life missions and he is intrigued from science. He needs to accomplish and do better. He makes things happen. He is the saver of humanity.
The Inner Unloved Boychild is an egotistical rebel who is reckless, angry, aggressive and over-competitive. He wants to dominate and in order to get what he wants we will disrespects authority and will deceive, lie, cheat, backbite and steal. He sees life as a game without care for other life, doesn’t matter who get hurt, he blindly pursues his goals.
The girlchild: The Inner Loving Girlchild is pure innocence, she is gentle, caring and forgiving, bringing inspiration, mystery and creativity into our life. She is the artist and at the same time the source of our creative power, she is the complexity and the multidimensionality of life, and mystery. She embodies the concepts of beauty, sweetness, forgiveness, gentleness, innocence. She shows us how to sensitively engage, to listen with our inner voice, how to be sensitive, intuitive, compassionate and harmless and how to connect with the essence of life.
The Unloved Inner Girlchild is the wounded child that experience herself as a victim and who cannot make peace with her traumas and is paralyzed by fear. She loses herself in self-pity, discouragement and resentment. A drama queen, she is manipulative, seducing others into rescuing her.
Traumas and injuries and our effort to try to buried them deep inside, to avoid the pain and the frustration attached to them, disrupt the natural balance of our inner family, forcing each member out of their precious role and into an unloving and disorienting one, making us unable to be in state of Self. The unloving state is not static and could be transformed through awareness and acceptance when we approach our inner family members with respect and gratitude. With gratitude, because this new role that our family member has taken has the task to protect us from reexperiencing the pain caused from the trauma, that life events might trigger again. They protect us in order to make us still able to function and feel safe. The process of connecting with our unloving family members, is a process of engaging with them from a place of curiosity and respect, wanting to learn from them what they are protecting us from, and show them that we don’t need them to hold on into this unloving state. The moment our inner member learns to trust and move into his or her loving state, we are able to allow our inner Self to confront our pain and to lead our life with awareness and spaciousness. The four members of our inner family become our life companions, our allies, each one of them inspiring, teaching and supporting us in his or her unique way. When we learn to know each member of our inner family, we know which one to call for support in any given situation or in any relation.
As in every family, love brings harmony and love transform what is in our way.