Father, dear father. Cast your mind back to how your father was when you were a kid. Was he kind, supportive, loving? Or thoughtless, cruel, unavailable? Both? Or something in between? There’s no judgment on how he was, that just is, however he, and other significant males around when you were young formed your ideas about ‘maleness’ and also, created an important archetype within yourself – your ‘inner masculine’.
Father Meditation
Close your eyes, relax, take a deep breath and imagine yourself as a child. Let the grown up you hold the child’s hand, let them know you support them, and find yourself in a comfortable safe place. Invite your father in. Greet him and ask him how he is. Feel free to discuss and say anything you need to. Stay present and support the child, and also allow the child to speak. Gently return to the room.
You have just met ‘the father within’, an important archetype representing work and success (mother represents relationship).
Beliefs that you hold about ‘father’ are also true about anyone that activates your ‘father archetype’. This means, anything that is true for you about ‘father’ will also be true for you about anyone who reminds you of him, for example, any authority or work figure, and importantly, for women, anyone you are having a relationship with.
Notice any males in your life you are ‘having a problem with’. Do they remind you of your father? This includes authority figures, even abstract ones, like ‘the bank’ or ‘my workplace’.
Revealing the Inner Programming
Take pen and paper, relax, breathe, and write down everything that was true for you about ‘father’ when you were a kid. It may take a while! Don’t judge it. For example:
My father is mean
My father is unsuccessful
My father is angry
My father is cruel
My father doesn’t like me
My father doesn’t want me
My father doesn’t love me
My father isn’t present
My father won’t tell me what he wants
My father won’t listen to me
My father is inconsistent
My father is funny etc.
It may fill pages. You are uncovering your inner programming about men in your life, work, success, and for women, about your choice of partner. For men, you are revealing how you may behave in relationship and work. Once you uncover it, you can change it.
Reflect on what you have written. Any ‘faults’ you see in your father will also be your faults, as you will have internalised them. Just notice, and improve. If you are female, try substituting the name of your partner for ‘my father’. Is the programming still true for you? If it is, then you are projecting your inner father outwards and recreating him in your life.
To free yourself, you can change your beliefs about father by acknowledging and embracing them. Simply say ‘I choose to believe…my father is angry. I love myself when I believe…my father is angry. And I embrace it, I surrender*. Do this for each belief that you feel is negative and it will turn it off. You only need do it once. Then the behaviour of the men around you will magically change. If you’re a man, may find yourself changing.
If you keep going with recording these beliefs, you may get to some surprising ones. At the very root you may find ‘I hate my father’ ‘I’m at war with my father’ and ‘my father is at war with me’. Or ‘my father is at war with my mother’. This is a deep root of the archetypes within. Change this, and we will create an outer manifestation of peace in the world.
Interestingly, if you turn beliefs around, it reveals the shadow side. Ie, what we hide from ourselves. Which is fascinating. For example – ‘I am afraid of my father’ becomes ‘my father is afraid of me’. ‘my father cuts me off’ becomes ‘I cut my father off’ etc. Remember that you can also substitute ‘father’ for any male in your life, your partner etc and you suddenly discover what you are doing and choosing to create present situations in your life, which is very empowering as you can then change the beliefs, change the situation.
How come these beliefs about father are still active, even when he’s no longer present? This is because we are relating from our ‘inner child’. So timelessly, all the old beliefs stand. As well as changing the negative beliefs, another solution is to realise this habit and endeavour to relate instead from our ‘higher self’, or the ‘god/goddess’ within. Then we can relate from new chosen truths and not old archaic patterns.
* Thanks to Phillip Arndt for this process.
NEXT ISSUE: Healing the mother within
Jelila is an internationally renowned healer presently in London, offering individual transformational healing, past lives, negative belief clearing, distance healing, and workshops. Tel: +44 7790064891.
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