THE DIVINE CHILD

No matter what life may have done to a person, no matter what she may have done to herself, no matter how profound her psychological wounds might be, ultimately she remains inviolate. Aside from organically based brain dysfunction, underneath all the scars, open wounds, and distortions that mar the psyche, when one breaks through to the kernel, the core of one’s being, it remains whole. In the depth of her Center, the individual remains alive and real, profoundly vital, life-embracing and life-giving.

This deep, central, unmarred reality can express itself in several different ways. One expression of it, and perhaps the truest expression, occurs time and again in the internal lives of people I meet. I have come to call it the Divine Child. As the name implies, it is young, unsophisticated, and connected to God, but in a very unselfconscious fashion. The Divine Child does not say, “I believe in God.” It says, “I am with God. I am of God. My life and my energy are obviously divine, and I accept that as a matter of course.” The Divine Child is basic and primitive. It would fit very nicely into a hunter/gatherer tribal context.

Unfortunately, it does not fit so well into contemporary Western culture. In fact, in many families in such a culture, it does not fit at all. By the time a person is between five and seven years old, and frequently long before then, the Divine Child knows it is no longer welcome in the External World. In order to protect itself from the destructive demands of the External World, it retreats into an internal space in which it continues to live--vibrant, joyful, powerful, but hidden--a gift once glimpsed, but now enclosed in a secret part of the psyche which the Ego can no longer readily access. This withdrawal of the Divine Child has been described as the moment when the light goes out in the child’s eyes.

The Divine Child is not a fantasy or wishful thinking. It is certainly not a form of irresponsible, regressive self-delusion. The Divine Child is an individual’s highest potential, manifested in childlike form. It is a reality, as present to the Ego as the Ego is willing and able to accept. Bennett Braun (1986), a leading theorist in the study of multiple personality disorder (MPD) says, in reference to the “original personality” which I have named the Divine Child, “The original personality is often difficult to locate and work with, but this needs to be done to achieve a stable and lasting integration.”

The Divine Child can be thought of as potential insofar as the External World is concerned, because it is so rarely expressed in the External World. In the Internal World, it is an intact and powerful reality. In reality, it is the Ego that is merely a potential and a largely constructed reality. In right order, the Ego should be a constantly receptive potential that is enlivened and formed by the ground or truth that lives in the Divine Child.

Given a genuine opportunity, the Divine Child will easily come forward; gladly, graciously accepting the invitation to return to the External World. The Divine Child is eager to live, not just in the Internal World, but in the midst of nature and relationships, drinking deeply of the beauty and goodness of life. Those who choose to venture into the hidden depths of the psyche and reclaim the Divine Child are in for an extraordinary treat.

Every human being is very unique. The Divine Child within is even more distinctive than the differences between individuals that can be seen at the level of Ego and body. It is somewhat difficult to describe the Divine Child in general with any precision. It is, by definition, a subjective reality that is never expressed in the same way twice. However, there are some common patterns.

The commonalties to be found in the Divine Child of anyone I have ever seen are crystalline innocence, playfulness, spontaneity, joy, willing trust, curiosity, and a greater interest in experiential learning than in abstract intellectual processes. The Divine Child finds its greatest pleasure in those things that are most life-giving for it. It is also very capable of empathy. Even if it is only a few months old, it can touch the pain of others with great sensitivity. But the major theme that the Divine Child strikes in anyone who touches it is an embrace of the joy of life. The Divine Child is universally sensual. It lives in its senses, and it finds life to be a playful adventure to be fully embraced. The Divine Child knows no shame, feels no guilt, and is constantly ready to embrace whatever new experiences might present as gifts.

The Divine Child is spontaneous. It expresses how it feels with a straightforward honesty that has no room for pretense. If it is displeased or angry, this is immediately evident, and it passes quickly. What the Divine Child wants, it reaches for. But it is not unkind, for it is also quite spontaneous in its affection. The Divine Child does not establish clear boundaries. Because of this, the Divine Child is able to embrace both the joy and the pain of the other.

The Divine Child lives a life that clearly emanates a deep goodness. It is also drawn to the good and the beautiful, which it tends to see everywhere. When children are very young, they can be fascinated by a grasshopper, a blade of grass, or a leaf. They can also be quiet, experiencing the day flowing by. Frequently these qualities are lost by the time children are four or five, but many people can vaguely remember those early childhood moments when they were still this deeply involved in life.

The Divine Child is never jaded or bored by life. It has the capacity to sense things as always fresh. Its openness to the changes in life that are constantly occurring is clean and precise. Therefore, the Divine Child sees the flow of life as a constant unfolding of new gifts. The bored children, who are jaded even though they live in the midst of a plethora of stimulations, are hurt children. These children have had to close down their sensitivity because their own lives have been shut down and enclosed by pain. The Divine Child knows nothing of this boredom. It is alert, open, and always deeply involved, seeing in the most minute of things a very special beauty that beckons for exploration.

The whole child, the uninjured Divine Child, trusts naturally in life. Of course, the uninjured child has known primarily love and reliable support. This Divine Child has had only minimal exposure to the viciousness of life. Thus it feels a deep connection to life. The Divine Child has a sense that life cares about it and invites it into an ecstatic mutual participation. Both life and the Divine Child give the best they have to each other.

The Divine Child is open to letting life flow through it. There is no need to control because life is good. The Divine Child does not have to defend against life or channel it into particular goals. Life is that which embraces the Divine Child gently and therefore the Divine Child feels only a minor need to protect itself.

The undifferentiated oneness that the infant knows with all of its environment, and most especially the mother, is never really broken in the Divine Child. The Divine Child does grow into a fuller sense of its uniqueness, and is capable of perceiving itself as different from the other. However, undergirding that, it knows that it has never finally been separated from that which it loves and which loves it.

The Divine Child is loath to build psychological walls. Even though it may be growing into a sense of separateness, oneness is the central truth. The Divine Child knows this and rests comfortably with this awareness.

Unfortunately, in most instances the Divine Child has had to separate itself from the Ego and the External World for the sake of its survival. It then rests very deep within, because it could not withstand the intrusion of the External World. What the world usually meets instead of the divine child is a broken, hurt child. The hurt child lives according to the dictates of the External World, either fearfully seeking to please or reacting in anger.

Because there are few barriers with the Divine Child, there is no pretense either. The Divine Child is simply who it is, transparent to whomever looks upon it. To live in pretense is to live a barricaded life in which a mask stands between the individual and the world. The Divine Child has little use for masks. It feels that it is perfectly fine as it is, and expects others to see that, too. This may seem arrogant, but actually it is an expression of profound self-acceptance.

The Hurt Child can be considered an expression of what Christianity has called original sin -- the brokenness children suffer at the hands of those who should protect them and against which they have no defense, but for which they must pay with their lives. The Divine Child can be considered an expression of original innocence -- the living internal expression of the fact that we are born whole, beautiful, and good. Everyone is best served when each has an opportunity to live out that original innocence. If it is lost due to the impact of a destructive External World, salvation is found not by appeasing an angry god, nor by detaching from the earthly realm, but by reclaiming the very earthy innocence embodied in the Divine Child. No matter what a person may have done with her life, or what may have been done to her throughout her life, she can reclaim her innocence. She can, once more, become genuine and childlike. The reason she can reclaim it is that she has never fully lost it. It remains alive within her.

Reclaiming the Divine Child is another way of talking about the process of attaining wholeness. Wholeness is a matter of claiming one’s natural inheritance. It is a divine right of human beings to be who they were born to be. Wholeness simply describes a person in the full and balanced possession of her potential. That potential is not just an abstraction that might or might not be attained. It is an active, present, dynamic reality that is best understood and most clearly embodied in the Divine Child.

The Divine Child can be seen as a diagnostic criterion against which a person may appraise the quality of her life. In general, the Divine Child is very similar from individual to individual. Its innocence; its interest in living life in an experiential, sensual fashion; its capacity to live in trust; and its joyfulness and spontaneity are all part of our inborn, natural human endowment. Aside from those who suffer from profound biogenetic disorders such as schizophrenia, everyone participates in this. Nevertheless, each person has a very unique way of expressing that potential. This unique style of self-expression, of living out the divine potential from within, can be seen with great clarity in the internal experience of the Divine Child. The Divine Child is an individual’s private, personal foundation and only worthy life goal.

The first step in reclaiming the Divine Child is a matter of honestly appraising one’s life as one lives it now so that one might make an effective comparison between one’s present life and the nature of the Divine Child. Wherever there is discrepancy, it will point to the need for serious work.

The second step in embracing the Divine Child is a willingness to become more like the Divine Child in everyday behavior. Becoming childlike, even if one is able to do so readily, means relinquishing socially approved goals and external support that the individual, and perhaps everyone she knows, holds in very high regard. The Divine Child may delight in the simple Joys of nature much more than in the adult kind of pleasure that comes from owning a fancy car or maintaining a particular social status. The Divine Child may find it very burdensome to fulfill the requirements necessary to make a large income. It may prefer living simply and having sufficient time to play. Moreover, it will be inclined to be very nonjudgmental. If the individual is willing to align herself with the Divine Child, she may find herself also in alliance with people whom everyone else finds easy to reject. She may also be rejected herself.

Owning the Divine Child, owning one’s basic inheritance, may cost a great deal. If the Ego is unwilling, there is no point in even meeting the Divine Child. Such an encounter would only set up a painful kind of discrepancy that does not get anywhere. Ego willingness is essential. However, even if the Ego is willing, that may not be enough. A person may have honestly looked at her life and the ways it is discrepant from her Divine Child. She may be very willing to live out of the Divine Child, even if it costs her externally. But when she attempts to do so, she repeatedly fails. She may prize the openness and innocence, yet not be able to drop her defenses. She may want to trust, but cannot--absolutely cannot--and when encountered with anything the least bit different or strange, may hide in panic. She may be very angry or profoundly sad, and be unable to do anything about it. In these instances, willingness and honesty are simply insufficient. They are prerequisites for finding the Divine Child, but by themselves they cannot overcome the wounds that life has inflicted.

Many people have been hurt in a profound fashion by life. All the honesty and willingness they can muster will not be sufficient to overcome these people’s scars. In such cases, much effort and energy must be put into healing the Burt Child so that the Ego has the capacity to become open to the presence of the Divine Child. The Hurt Child is, in many ways, the only final path to the capacity for living the Divine Child. Paradoxically, to embrace joy, spontaneity, innocence, and true freedom, the Ego must first embrace pain, fear, deep hurt, and the many dissociated experiences which have had the power of hiding the Divine Child and crushing the spirit. These must be owned, felt, and responded to, before the Ego will ever begin to be able to accept the natural gift embodied in the Divine Child. For some the accumulated impact of continual childhood stress and even terror will so disorder the brain’s natural mechanisms for modulating fear that even after intensive, effective therapy the person will need the help of anti-anxiety medications and a non-stressful life style in order to maintain balance. Within those constraints, however, the person can still live out of the Divine Child’s energy.