#59 - The Secret Sauce For What Makes Us Human

By KC Johnson

What is the main ingredient all of us need to feel vitally alive, to feel valued, loved, and whole?  Is it possible that there really is one thing that can enhance all of these needs?  I believe so.  The answer is so simple, yet so elusive.  Perhaps I can make this need easier to understand.

Recently, I managed to attract covid to me.  I could have guessed that something was just around the corner, some healing event, something that could help me reclaim my balance.  First, a little about me.  I am approaching my big 8-0 in a couple years, I have been living with a debilitating partial paralysis for 13-years that leaves me struggling to walk or stand for very long, and being old-school and non-tech inclined, I am getting left behind in this fast-paced, evolving world that focuses on youth.  I had the opportunity to spend time being incarcerated where my present ideas coalesced from my old fears.  Oh, and I have been trying to go back to work, and enduring countless rejections.  I still feel vitally alive, just facing headwinds.

Since I have always lived a life of wanting to help those people struggling with life, I believed I could still be a contributing member of society.  When things have gotten the most messy and complicated for me was when I became too invested into the outer world of self-judgments, fears, and indulging in those fears.  But I also live in the world of universal consciousness, of my soul’s clarity, and of the pure energies of love and compassion.  It is a continual struggle to keep these two worlds in balance.  The more I slide into my outer world, the more my life spins out of control, and the more I need a course correction.  Hence, my ‘delightful covid experience.’

So what does this have to do with our secret sauce?  I have been using this blog as my balancing point.  Sharing these thoughts with all of you has been a dream for a long time, even before I realized that blogging was a thing.  I have had a vision for years of what I wanted to do with my ideas, but I really stumbled around trying to find my footing and direction.

Finding my blog tech partner was the shining light for me, yet it has been grueling trying to understand how this techie world works.  His patience and willingness to share in this dream has resulted in making much progress.  As a result, there have been many articles sent your way to read.  Our many long discussions over a pint of beer and the many wonderful books he has lent to me have clarified my thinking and stimulated many new ideas.  Now that he may be heading into another direction, it is even more important that I find my balance and my slightly altered path.

Beside some of my other challenges just mentioned, my personality twists have been interfering with the growth of this blog.  I still have some resistant thoughts that keep me off-balance.  No, I’m not thinking of going off the deep end, I’m not self-destructive, but the realities I am challenged with have shaken my sense of balance.  My ‘woe is me’ outer world voices keep dwelling on the failures and traps inhibiting my actions, while my universal world voice gets drowned at times that tries to tell me that I can make the things happen for my shaky self that I have been dreaming about.  As a consequence, I have been slowly losing my bearings and feeling as lost as ever.  Being my age, I know that the healing moments are coming, they always do.

My secret sauce is wanting to be loved, valued, and accepted as an important part of this world.  I believe that is what all of us not just want, but need.  To be loved and accepted.  It is the most fundamental need we have stemming from childhood.  My parents loved me dearly, I know that.  But, because of their own emotional needs, they did not know how to show love to me that made me feel safe and courageous.  Quality nurturing builds the foundation for facing the world of challenges and for being able to love others.  Does that sound familiar to any of you?.  Consequently, I’ve spent my whole life trying to discover my secret sauce.

I can imagine every one of you reading this having your own struggles to finding that missing love.  This task is as difficult as is your understanding of the difference between your outer world of judgment and your universal world that is only trying to help you discover how to love without judgment, without fear.  There is no other life purpose that is as important.  Yet, that is a message that is seldom available for us to hear, at any time in our life.  It is the only message that leads to true, deep, fulfilling happiness.  

I’m still trying to fill that childhood hole inside me.  At least I am able to appreciate why I caught covid, it was my healing crisis telling me to not give up.  I just need to reassess things, look at life differently, and make changes that alter my course.  It is my soul telling me that I am starting to wander into the wilderness once again and straying from where I need to go in this life.

A benefit of being a bit long in the tooth is that I have seen repeated over and over my soul presenting me with the opportunity to take the next step.  Seldom is it a direction or a life lesson that I anticipated, but it is always the one I need to grow from.  Fortunately for me, I have learned to not judge these teachable moments, but to just appreciate them for what they will bring me in time.

When you are feeling lost, overwhelmed, in a funk, or depressed about your life, just know that you have your soul voice trying to help you discover how to get back on track.  We need the difficult times to learn from, those times are our guides, just as much as the easier times are.  The more difficult things become, the more we need to examine what steps to take next.  We always need to love ourselves unconditionally, but that happens through our soul and not through listening to our judgmental outer world chatter.  And sometimes we just need to take a deep breath, be patient, and let the new experience appear.

Those judgmental voices are just reflections of our needs going back to our childhood.  They are cries for more love.  They are self-serving, determined to get their needs met, and they are very persuasive.  As long as these childhood-era voices have their needs unmet, our outer chatter will not die down.  But it is possible to make peace with each of them, to love them, and to include them in your daily lives.  Though not as fulfilling as being shown love as a child, it is possible to ease those childhood longings and quiet the judgments so that you can hear your soul voice more clearly.

This requires embracing your childhood fears, pealing back the layers of traumatic experiences, and ultimately bringing your inner child into your adult life.  For me, that process took multiple efforts that included recognizing that I have an inner child, repeatedly hearing the pleas my child was making to me, and eventually embracing my little guy as a valued and loved part of my adult self’s life.  After all, every stage of our life becomes part of who we are now, but for some reason we don’t understand nor appreciate the value of each of our past experiences.

I started my inner change process by simply talking with my little boy, wanting to recall what my life was like back then, and letting him know that I care about him now.  He has a lot to tell me, and once I learned how to listen to him, I began piecing together the reasons for my personality.  We shared once again the fears I was dealing with, the empty nurturing experiences, and I discovered what my little boy was afraid of as we faced life.   Remember, our inner child never leaves us, it is feeling the same pains and fears you feel today.  It is you, and always will be, no matter how much you try to forget those painful memories.

It took time to re-establish a friendship with my little boy and with each of my boy-stages.  After a few years of recognizing that he was still a part of my present life, I began working to help him feel safer, loved, and accepted as a vital part of who I am.  I tried to include doing the things we did back in my early days as a way to build that connection.  Not only did I write about my little boy’s needs, but I began visualizing my little boy being with me.  I can now embrace him easily, tell him that I love him, and work to release the fears we still encounter in my daily thoughts.

My little boy and all of my other boyhood stages of experiences and thoughts are still mine today.  I now know that all of the fears are from having a sense of not feeling safe, not feeling loved.  I know that I am on the right path because as I have helped my little boy feel more love, my fears have melted away and my need to self-judge has dissipated to the point that I can love every moment including the good times and the challenging times.  I am no longer trapped by old fears because they no longer exist as strongly as they once did.  Sure, there are still some lingering areas to work on, but I am way ahead of where I was just a few years ago.

Another benefit of embracing my inner child, including all stages of my youth, and feel the vitality each of the boy stages gave my present self, is losing the need to judge others.   Each of my boys just wanted to feel loved and accepted.  They are the secret sauce I spent decades trying understand.  I started doing this by trying to understand and help others until I realized it was me, my inner boys, who I was trying to understand and help all along.

I wish that I could just embrace all of you and magically transform and fulfill that deep longing within each of you.  But that is a journey each of you needs to take in your own unique way.  Just practice discovering who your inner children are.  I assure you that the journey will be worth it.  And when your circumstances change, as they so drastically did for me, that is the opportunity to refine the love you feel for your inner children who so desperately want your adult love and understanding. 

I doubt that covid would have caught up with me if I hadn’t embracing my ‘woe is me’ thoughts that crept in to my thinking, as well as my boys’ thoughts.  My journey has a ways to go yet.  It also indicates that I have further introspection to do.  I can’t change my future for the better if I am indulging in my past limiting thoughts about my worthiness.  The answers are out there just waiting for me to discover.  I am the creator of my life, so I guess I had better start creating again and help my little boys feel loved. - kc