There are several types of love; the love between friends and family, romantic love, agape love and the love between parents and children. The latter provides the foundation for how one views and experiences love. If a baby is held, nurtured and securely loved, she grows up in an energy field that is safe and accepting. It does not matter if one has money or possessions if there is a secure bond or attachment. If a baby is brought into a field of anger, chaos and coldness, this will be the lens from which life is experienced. This assessment is the foundation of attachment theory. But there is another dimension to this understanding, which is the energetic one. We are not only born into a family, a cultural community and country, but we are born into an energetic field that creates the felt experience of our lives. In a series of posts, I will be exploring what we intuitively know to be true regarding energetic pulls or aversion to others with scant awareness of the power of these energies to attract or repel others.
Since the beginning of modern psychological thought, the first five years of life are considered to be the most important in shaping a person’s cognitive, intellectual and emotional well- being. The formation of the energetic base of our being begins in utero as the baby grows in and absorbs the mother’s energy field. The old adage of the importance of not upsetting a pregnant women is actually old wisdom rather than silly superstition. Over the years I have worked with people, as both a psychologist and healer, whose life began in a field of grief or trauma from a significant loss or traumatic experience that the mother suffered while she was with child. How each child reacts to this field of grief or trauma varies as some absorb the energy of despair or panic laying the foundation for a life of sadness, depression or anxiety. Others feel that it is their job to compensate for their mother’s distress, even sending part of their pure energy to the mother while absorbing the grief and pain in its place. Fortunately these energies can be healed and transformed, but first we need to be aware that they are there and to realize that there are thousands of people who have the skill and knowledge to do this healing work. These energies can also be transformed by the existence of loving and caring people in the child’s life, whose own ability to gradually emerge from the shroud of grief and suffering enables them to be able to love and experience joy, providing the child with the foundation for a sense of resiliency in the human spirit.
In this time when so many suffer from depression, anxiety and addiction and are crippled with anger, frustration and despair, it is imperative that we begin to rethink the care and attention we give to the early years of a child’s life as a way to break this cycle. When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the remote jungle of Borneo, the people had little in regards to basic comfort, food or hygienic conditions, but the children were loved and cherished. They embodied a sense of internal peace and tranquility that is rarely experienced in the West. The children were constantly held and played with and participated, at an early age, in the daily tasks of living. When discipline was needed a sharp Heh was spoken, the child immediately stopped her mischievous behavior and within moments was cuddling with the disciplining adult. In over two years, I rarely witnessed a break in the loving energetic container in which the children were engulfed. In order to heal the wounded souls of so many, we must put time and resources into healing those in distress and reawaken to the importance of a loving container for the smallest and most vulnerable among us.