Excerpt from Truth: The Trap of Childhood by Shaman Ross Bishop

The Trap of Childhood

By Ross Bishop

Let me ask you a question - How many people do you know who had childhoods that you would consider to be difficult or painful? Did you? Most people feel that they did.

Does it not seem strange that although most people love their children, that all over the planet, from culture to culture, belief system to belief system, no matter what we do, we end up creating emotional problems for our kids? You would think that for all the love we have that we would do a much better job of raising them!

That is because childhood is a setup. Emotional pain and discomfort is designed into the process. The whole system exists to put us on the dark side of the issues (Misunderstandings) we carried in from the past. You see, we don’t come into this life with clean hands. We carry the pain and memory of our unresolved experiences with us.

For some people the trauma they suffer in childhood will be extreme, such as in physical or sexual abuse. For most others the experience consists of insults to dignity - messages that they are not good enough, that they are not lovable, that they are inept, etc. For others there will be the silent devastation of the closed emotional door from a parent who is unable to express love. These encounters may not be as traumatic as outright abuse, but repeated over a number of years, their impact can be severe.

These experiences are an extension of the unresolved events from our past lives. The feelings of fear, powerlessness and inadequacy held in those unresolved memories flow into the present. These are the forces that drive us to live from the ego. This is also the “stew” of emotional pain from which the soul will fashion our enlightenment.

The interesting thing about childhood is the way young people process emotional pain. When a child is involved in a difficult situation, it is preordained that the child will blame herself for the problem. Psychologists theorize that this is because kids do not have the capacity to rationally process adult behavior. A child cannot sit there and say “Well, mom has repressed sexual issues and dad has not dealt with his anger, so that’s why they act toward me as they do.” A child simply and painfully assumes responsibility for creating the pain that she feels.

The process of the child blaming herself is confounded by her natural tendency to view parents as godlike. Since parents are perfect, any problem must originate with her. “The love I need is not there, and my parents say that they love me, so whatever is wrong must be my fault. This must be what I deserve.” That could drive anyone crazy much less a child with limited coping skills. This is The Misunderstanding. Even in extreme situations like sexual abuse, the child will assume complicity for what happened. And all of this will conform exactly to the pattern of emotional wounding from her past lives. She will typically react by feeling that if only she were better, if she had done more, if she were smarter, etc. mommy and daddy would have given her the love she needed. This of course, is a self-defeating, self-image destroying, downward spiral.

It is interesting that if you ask adults to identify why they feel unworthy, they are unable to do so. They will tell you about dysfunctional behaviors and attitudes, but have no clue as to what it is that supposedly makes them unworthy. If you ask a person why they are limping, they will tell you about their sprained ankle. If you ask that same person how they know that they are unworthy, you will get words, but they comprise the psychological equivalent of a blank stare. This is because there can be no explanation. Feelings of unworthiness have no legitimacy. They are based in the assumption of culpability made by the hurt child many years ago. They arise from The Misunderstanding. The person certainly feels unworthy and the feelings, although ill founded, are real and must be respected.

During the creation of The Misunderstanding, the child will feel scared and lost. Conscious of it or not, she will separate from the Creator. Her ego will kick in and take over, filling the perceived void as a protective response. These feelings will lodge in the subconscious and as she matures, they will color everything she feels, thinks and experiences.

You doubtless have several inner children who hold the feelings of unworthiness generated in your past lives and recreated in your recent childhood. These aspects of your subconscious connect directly to the roots of your power and take over when you are threatened or afraid. This is the ego as protector and it will remain on station until you become more intimate with your soul and learn that you cannot be harmed. The Shamanic Journey Process that will be discussed in Chapter 7 is excellent for working with the issues held by your inner children

The experiences of your childhood molded your beliefs. They determine how you see yourself and others. As we develop, we learn that we are different from the beings and objects around us. Understanding these differences leads to the creation of a sense of self. “Mommy is like this” (different from me) and “Daddy is like that” (also different from me) and “I am like this.”

These ideas deepen and develop over time. They are vital for a child. They become the Rosetta stone through which we understand people, life and the world. Our beliefs about who we are, about who others are and about life are some of the most valuable and useful resources we possess as we grow up.

Differences lead to the creation of boundaries. Your idea of “dog” contains concepts that are different from those you hold of “cat.” There is a boundary around what is “dog” or “uncle Henry” or “spaghetti” that sets each apart from the other. These rational concepts create a sense of stability and security about the world. We get a feeling of protection from the uncertainties and vagaries of life that can overwhelm the mind of a child. Dogs are dogs, tables are tables, and the two do not intersect.

With everything sorted into categories, a child can then get on with the important matters of life, i.e. like growing up, with a sense of confidence that the rug will not be constantly pulled out from under them. Try to imagine a concept like "dogcat." It bends the mind. That's why we opt for certainty and familiarity.

Definitions and categories are by their very nature flawed. Nothing in the universe is fixed. Everything flows in and out of everything else. Things cannot be put into neat compartments, especially people. The moment you put a definition around something, it changes and that puts the definition into conflict with the way things really are. Put a label on Aunt Mary and the definition will be partially wrong. By her nature, Aunt Mary is not bigoted or crabby. That is just the way she sometimes acts. Maybe she even acts that way most of the time, but it is still not who she is, and that is where categories and definitions conflict with life.

Contributing to the category problem is that we do not see people; we see our perception, our impressions, of them, and that is controlled by what our experiences, fears and training have conditioned us to see. If a dog attacked you when you were a child, you will probably see dogs differently than people who had loving experiences with dogs. Thus it is with our people experiences, too.

We live in a culture that is founded on the creation of categories, labels, definitions and identification. Open any textbook of biology or medicine and you will find creatures and illnesses defined by types, categories, structures and classes. So long as we hold these as the fundamental basis for our understanding of life, we will be seriously limited in our ability to go beyond a certain rudimentary knowledge and truly understand the world around us.

The dilemma is that in the egoic realm we would be unable to function without categories. Without them, life would be chaotic. We forget that the definition, the map, is not the territory, as Gregory Bateson used to point out. When we cling to the definition, then we no longer embrace the thing. This suits the ego perfectly because the ego exists through differences and conflict. If a person grows up to hold herself as unworthy or defective and other people as better than she (or the reverse), she will interpret and create her entire life experience according to those structured false beliefs.

If a child learns to live from the fear of being hurt, she will create rigid mental structures for herself in an attempt to create a sense of safety and security. The more unstable her inner world, the more rigidly attached she will become to her structured view of life. She can become lost, confused and angry when life and people do not respond as she needs them to. She can actually experience shock if her categories are challenged.

To the egoic rational mind, these categories and constructs are reassuring and can even be seductive. We must understand that a categorical mind is a closed mind. It does not flow with the ebb of the universe.