The Significance of the Child/childhood from a Pathwork-Spiritual Perspective

From a spiritual perspective it is commonly held that each person born into a human life has a unique spiritual task often referred to as "the soul task". It is held that each person has both a personal task to do with healing some aspect within the self, and a world task that involves a unique gift or ability that they can contribute to the world. The personal task and the world task are usually interconnected.

From this spiritual perspective the events, dynamics and unique, childhood situation is a reflection of the material held in the soul of the human being and the tasks to be fulfilled. These events and people reflect the material that has been brought into this life time to heal and transform. All the particular details of each person's life - such as the physical setting, the level of consciousness of those surrounding the child, the role that each parent plays, the sibling and extended family dynamics, one's cultural group, reflect the soul's task and all help to call forth the soul splits and dualistic misconceptions of the individual.

The painful, helpless feelings that occur for everyone in the childhood experience, help to being to the fore each person's particular dualistic struggle with the true nature of reality. The particular defensive response is usually some version of "me versus the other" - and will have something to do with the issues of love and power.

The painful experiences, and the child's feelings/belief/reactions to these experiences, bring to the fore the soul material in the form or defensive reactions, pseudo- solutions, dualistic splits, images and misconceptions.

The child always believes and experiences the painful events situations as literally of life and death proportions. And in fact a child's system, physically, emotionally and energetically, is rarely capable of tolerating the deep pain of these experiences, so some degree of numbing, disassociation and amnesia is necessary for the child to survive.

As well the child will almost always conclude these events happened only to them and happen because there is/was something wrong with him/her (I'm bad or flawed in some fundamental way) . This results in a basic and deep sense of shame regarding the self. The child concludes these beliefs due to the developmentally appropriate, egocentric perspective of the child, and also due to the child's limited cognitive capacities and lack of greater general knowledge.

The various reactions, defensives etc. eventually cause as much pain and difficulty as the original pain and this will eventually, depending on the person's level of consciousness, unique soul tasks and unique rhythm and pace, bring the person to begin to look for the truth of reality; to seek to bring consciousness to the painful dynamics, and thus begin the journey of healing, which includes recovering the real self and bringing the dualistic misconceptions back to truth and unity.

Also contained in the childhood experience, along with the pain and wounding, there will be the roots of what will support and help the individual to fulfill their tasks. There will be people and elements that reflect the higher self qualities of the child/soul. These positive elements also point to point to the gifts, and contributions the person has to contribute to the world.

For example in my own case I was born into a community of rural people where many had a simple yet deep and sustaining faith. Part of their spirituality was a deep reverence for the natural cycles of life and the value of generations of sacred tradition including the power of prayer. As well I was deeply connected to and sustained by the forces of nature around me.

For both better and worse I lived surrounded by religion, both literally and figuratively - the church was in my backyard and a house of nuns lived directly in front of me; the Catholic school, the hub of the community, was just down the street! In my extended family, a number of people were respected leaders and teachers within the church.

Even though I found my childhood religion stifling and distorted, in many ways, and I choose to leave it and find my own way, the issues of spirituality and religion were obviously a very important theme right from the get go.