The roots and foundation of the TAO Humor Center.
In order to understand the sacredness of the wounded child, you must know that you have also within your heart a holy spark of God, rid your Divine Child.
Inner Child’s Path
Imagine a circle at the bottom (South); your wounded child (WC) is walking north towards the center, and from the East right side your Divine Child (DC) is walking west into the center. The goal is for the two of them to meet and merge together into the Inner Child, “The child you must become in order to enter the kingdom of heaven,” according to Jesus.
In every childhood wound there is a gift of light that has been covered up by the pain and the suffering surrounding it. So deeply buried is that spark that the wounded child tries to rid herself of it, burying it deeper and deeper in her subconscious hoping it will go away. Focusing on happier and more enjoyable activities is one solution. The problem is this buried gift or gifts are what she came to bring to earth, and it will in one form make itself known, maybe in unhappy ways until she decides to find it.
I formed the Pink Flamingo Clown troop in order to unearth our gifts and help heal ourselves. While clowning, I realized that our inner clowns were aspects of our inner child – grown up. Many clowns I had encountered were sending their wounded child out to play. I thought, no wonder so many are afraid of clowns!
I created classes to explore healing our inner clowns.
 12 Steps To Your Inner Child |
 12 Steps to inner child back side of Flyer |
 Left Handed Written Thank You note. |
 Graduation Certificate |
I let other clowns and people who wanted to clown, and friends who wanted to do inner child work, know that I was facilitating this group. This was a time of John Bradshaw and the 12 steps and his book, “Homecoming.” Also, he had many programs on PBS in the Washington DC area.
I chose a book, by * Martha Cleveland, called “Chronic illness and the 12 Steps, A Practical Approach to Spiritual Resilience.” It is divided into 12 chapters, one for each step. The book was easily divided into weekly meetings, and contained a beautiful group meditation that would lend itself easily to my left-handed drawing exercise. I have taken the class on drawing from the right side of the brain. I have discovered that actually drawing with your non-dominant hand causes activating of your right brain, and completely bypasses a linear logical part of the brain going directly to the intuitive brain. The intuitive brain is closer to your heart and emotions, and goes much deeper into one’s subconscious. I had also done some experiential dream work which included artwork, and that had been very helpful to me.
Having been a Reiki practitioner for several years already, I was knowledgeable about laying on of hands healing, and how traumas get physically stuck in the body and how to remove them. I had developed a method I called removing the “original knot,” and realize that the central woundedness of each person is a multi-layer process and may take a long time to complete. However, each step will be progressive in one’s healing.
Since I realized that this work could also be approached through left-handed drawing, that was the method I choose for the groups with the book “12 Steps and Chronic Illness.” We would then share our drawings and experiences. It was amazing how the group energy would often be similar and it became a group healing, each one’s discovery helping the whole. I would encourage the participants to allow an object or place in nature, or such to come to them for further contemplation during the week.
This is how the Pink Flamingo Clown Troop began to heal itself and send happier inner children out to clown. I also used this four question method in my Reiki treatments and became completely convinced that we cannot ever “get rid of our wounded child,” but must embrace her and get her to trust us enough to give us her gift that is buried, thus healing our child into wholeness.
This is how and why I came to realize for myself that I was on the inner child’s path to enlightenment. The inner child accesses the child, emotion, and the Feminine Playfulness. The inner adult accesses the adult, mind, and male parts of us – the serious side. They both are important, and yet as your inner child heals your adult will. But the other way around can take long (and be less fun!)
I had a friend who said to me “well I put my wounded child in a coffin and nailed it shut and shoved it out to space!” Of course this will not work. I discovered that my wounded child is my lynch-pin – even my road to enlightenment.
The Wounded Child has four necessary qualities.
- Emotional honesty: She will really let me know how she feels (good or bad) and will not stuff her feelings.
- Discernment: We have learned how to go back to the original intelligence my child came in with – being able to read energy and know what is really going on, not able to be fooled.
- Courage: The wounded child is the aspect of me that had the courage to incarnate in order to accomplish her mission.
- Humor: as long as I remain in a body, the wounded child is the one who creates the healing balms of humor.
I call this gathering my information from my solar plexus and being able to respond from my heart, body, mind, soul, and spirit in total wholeness. I had to take Aikido in order to begin to learn this, and then build the inner child/three-year-old-intelligence into this experience. It is an essential quality for my clowning, and now for my everyday life.
Upon entering the spiritual world, I find that duality is almost always apparent. Good-bad, sinner-saint, right-wrong, black-white, yes-no, child-adult, male-female, emotions-mind, true-false, real-fantasy, visible-invisible.
For me, this immediately makes me realize that speaking, itself, is almost always of the linear, rational, reasonable mind, which leaves out our higher aspects of soul and spirit which operate beyond words, in higher dimensions. Meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, nature, etc. can be fertile ground for reaching into higher layers of consciousness, even into Christ consciousness. Play can also lead to soul and spirit experiences. Even Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” And in one translation it says, “Fantasy is more important than knowledge.” These are childlike qualities and get boxed in by the adult linear- left brain. Playing, humor, laughing, pretending, imagining, fantasy, experiencing, embodying, are all childlike qualities.
The true inner child who has begun merging her divine and wounded child will not be living in duality, and I have found most outer spiritual practices are dualistic. The healing inner child will be what is called a mystic.
This is what I attempted to create and explore and experience at the TAO Humor Center; ways to possibly reach the mystical child, which I believe we each have and is a key to our wholeness and enlightenment.
It is like my conscious mind is the tip of the iceberg (let’s say 10%) of my mind. My subconscious mind is not accessible with my left brain. The subconscious mind probably includes the collective unconscious of Humanity too. The conscious mind can affirm and disclose the TRUTHS it wants to believe, but without embodying these TRUTHS and knowing in body, emotions, mind, soul, and spirit that it is your truth, it will probably not stick. It must be true for you or it may bubble up in another experience, perhaps in a less desirable way.
It is as if the 90% of the submerged iceberg, the subconscious mind, is snickering and laughing and snorting and saying, “Yeah, right,” and this gift you brought to give to the world is still submerged and trapped in the iceberg under water.
So these are the foundations and roots of the TAO Humor Center; creating and finding ways to uncover our gifts and bring them out into the open.
Then we have a clearer understanding of:
- Who are we?
- Why are we here?
- What did we come to do?
Let’s find these gifts together and enjoy the process. It can be playful and fun.
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* For more information about Martha Cleveland, this is her publishers website:
Hazelden Publishing
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