Letting our inner parents act as mediators and be the ones who in a cultural sense express and convey our inspiration, our spirit in a classical sense, its content and direction, and our soul or the psyche as its manifestation, its vessel, together constitute the structural inner pattern of order our inner person encounters at the personal level of the mind. If a dissonance has arisen between them in the form of their inherent energy being rejected, perceived as intrusive or disturbing, then our inner person becomes inhibited by the critic within us and it is turned against us. It will then not act in their protection and support our psychic integrity but as a critic of the relationships we have with the functioning of our inner family. In our physical world we will then constantly stage this inner dissonance between the persons in our personal psyche as we give expression to the spirit, our inspiration, and try to give it a vessel for its realization. As the critic’s role is not understood, it will have a destructive effect on our way of realizing their influence on our lives. Instead, we will constantly criticize ourselves for our spontaneity and for the psychic content that they convey through us in an external sense. We will also see our own inner critic in others when we encounter it in its transferred form where they are perceived as repressed due to both our own and those around us too strict conventional attitude to our psychic life, where their inherent energy is then not allowed to express itself other than in rational and already generally recognized and accepted forms, or we simply perceive it as not getting the attention we think they are entitled to. That said, spontaneity, inspiration, spirit, contain the important second opinion we need that arises when we allow ourselves a more open approach to both our own and others’ lives, when we allow it to be expressed from its natural state and in its independence to the the prevailing attitude in our psychic environment. Which will make us feel rejected when our inner critic is confused with others. Our original environment for their earliest realization within us then emerges again but now with persons who have nothing to do with it, we unconsciously set them up to carry out the inner relations we have with our inner family in its previously rejected or distorted psychic environment. The inner family constellation will now be replayed, staging its original but as yet undeveloped modes of functioning in the environment we find ourselves in. We want to participate and express our spirit, but our inner critic from our earliest relationships has taught us that it is not allowed to be so spontaneous. We want to be a vessel for the inspiration our relationships give us, but we feel neglected and rejected by the fact that we cannot/were not allowed to participate in them in a spiritual or psychological sense. Our early family ties did not allow it. Our inner critic always gets the last word and sets the agenda for how we relate to our inner family and to people and situations around us. Actually it is not evil but merely undeveloped and a little too spontaneous and impulsive in a way that does not also give space to others for this inner psychic atmosphere and its inherent and inspiring energy. But abused or forced by suppression, this inner critic will always alone be the dominant factor governing the relationship we have with our inner original psychic family, in all those situations where we feel we want to participate fully in an unreserved way both as vessel for others’ but also to spontaneously vent out our own inspiration. That is, without constantly having to experience it as abused, criticized, rejected or ridiculed because it is not something that appears in the generally recognized and external conventional context of our conditioned family. But something that becomes a possibility in the inner state of equanimity which is our general most basic human state of calm and balance of mind. It is from within this place of trust that our compassion arises that we share with life itself. This place has come to represent the deep personal and psychic wound that too few dare attempt to heal in our Western mind. Many of us will do almost anything, lash out by any destructive means and atrocities, both against others and against ourselves, to escape it. That’s as far as we’ve come from what it truly is, and what it has become.
When I was able to separate the importance of my inner family to me, from the experiences I have provided them with in their relationship to my biological family, then I have not only freed them from each other inside me. I have also freed them from their old distorted meaning that has been passed down between generations in the bloodlines I am a part of, and from their original suppression, the fear that having this psychic reality has come to mean, what it meant to all those before me who carried this on, its anguish and silent suffering, the sense of abandonment it entailed. Of rejection, insecurity and the inner loss it implied, also in all those who saw it around them and diligently carried it on, in seclusion and solitude for us, so that we can someday find their right original meaning for us again. When we do this, we grant them all a timeless relief, our spirit and soul can once again regain their original functions in relation to our inner family. Which connects us with them in a remarkably deep sense of consolation. At best, our spirit then ceases to be a sadistic oppressor and our soul its suffering, anxiety and sense of inadequacy.