The Fifth Gate – Section 4
Begin to reconcile

Well now we come to who you were as a child. Naturally, much of who we were as kids came about as a result of who our parents were at time. Can you picture how their beliefs influenced what you believed as a child? Did you think life was fun? Did you believe you’d have a lot of opportunities to be the person you wanted to be? background were different from others? How might they have been different? How did you feel you should be towards other people? Truthful, loving, law-abiding, generous, kind? Maybe you believed you should be the opposite of those values. Don’t think just of what your parents said, but also what they did. Was there conflict between their words and actions that confused you?
Did your parents show you that men and women have positive roles in each other’s lives? Did they respect each other? Did they teach you that you could feel secure and happy? That you could do what you wanted to do and achieve what you wanted to achieve because nothing stood in your way? How did they show you love? Was it giving or controlling? How much control did you have over any of this?
We’ve come a long way. We’ve covered a lot of territory and the histories of those that had the greatest influence on our lives.
We’ve looked at our childhood and discovered much. With all that you now know, ask yourself if it is really your fault that you started life with any of the attitudes that later contributed to your problems? I know I don’t have to say this, but in case you’re wondering, the answer to that question is no. And you can stop believing them now if they caused you fear of any kind. You can change what you believe because now you have the correct information that informs your mind and spirit and ultimately your behavior.
Try to see yourself as your parents’ child. As your parents’ child you had absolutely no control over their influence on you. Don’t move ahead until you have seen this aspect of yourself clearly, no matter how long it takes. You had no power over how you were brought up nor over how you grew up to be who you are now.
Your personality might be the way it is because you rejected those values. Could it be that those values no longer fit in the world that you live in. You get to choose. Choose well.
Make a list of all the things about your parents that then became a part of you were when you were a child. The way they resolved conflict, the way they withheld their affections, the way they were always too busy, selfishness, compliance or lack of boundaries and values. Examine each one and see clearly that you had no power and therefore no responsibility to or for any of that. It’s not your fault. Repeat that to yourself as often as you need until you see all of this clearly. Become comfortable with why you are who you are.
Think now about your siblings. Did you have any? Were you an only child? Did any of your attitudes towards them or their attitudes towards you cause you anxiety or shame? How did your parents treat all of you, did they play you against one another? Was there unhealthy competition between you because of your parents playing favorites? Just remember, like we learned in the previous exercise, none of this is about you. You had almost nothing to do with your parents system of managing you and your siblings as children.
Maybe they sent you mixed messages about who you should be, saying one thing, doing another. If you felt fearful or manipulated, this is not your fault. Very few parents are consistent all the time.
Did their motives confuse you or mislead you. All your life as a child, you tried to do your best to do what you thought was the right thing according to what you understood. Take your time, reflect. Be thorough.
You have visited and seen the lives of those who raised you in a historical sense. You will need to be able to see them as the natural consequence of the events, beliefs and what you can know about their feelings as their own personalities developed over time. Their years from before your birth up until your adolescence are critical.
Who they became after your teen years began will probably not matter as much in understanding yourself. You were dialed into your behaviors and patterns by then.
It must be stressed that you shouldn’t want or need to judge your parents, only to understand them. We simply want to understand if they were cheap, unashamed, uneducated, fearful, abused or bad-tempered, whether there were circumstances that continued to shape their own personalities and fed their own fears and insecurities. We can’t judge them because the past is unchangeable. You are not responsible for any of it. We’re just trying to understand because, like it or not, the world into which you were born shaped who you are. The world into which they were born, shaped who they were as they were raising you.