The troubles of your childhood you push beneath a thick cloak of confabulation, heart shapes and unicorns, revision, and rationalization: Planetmates reveal forgotten childhood, hope and real transformation, parenting and the unconscious….

“…No one ever thinks, and certainly never expresses, what this fairy tale is really saying about you: That in your treatment of your young, it is you, not “animals,” not planetmates, who, being conflicted, are often cruel.

“No, childhood, especially infancy, is that unseen, unknown land that you, becoming older, seek to put behind you and push below you … happy just that you managed to get through it. You cannot remember much of your childhood, and almost nothing before the age of five. Why? Because you do not want to. You do not remember it, but a part of you is aware that it was difficult. That part pushes your mind to cover up those years, placing them behind and under a thick cloak of confabulation, heart shapes and unicorns, revision, and rationalization.

“On the individual level, your childhood is a perfect Pandora’s Jar — something you fear, something that a part of you knows contains all the troubles of your life, were you to open it. You sabotage yourself this way: fleeing from the past only to manifest it, ever and again, as fate.

“You have forgotten that this myth advises you on a more fruitful attitude toward this time. One which we are helping you to see, by means of these revelations: That is, that in opening the jar, or box, the troubles of the world — your world — come forth, yes. But in the myth, the last thing to come out, the thing lying at the bottom, is hope. The myth is telling you that it is futile to fear and repress your history, your actual one — not the fanciful, sugar-coated version you have come up with in order to push out of your mind the truth. It is telling you that real change and progress can only come about through opening the jar and freeing the darkened impulses, thus bringing them into the light of day, of consciousness, where they can be seen and let go of. And that in doing this process, eventually … not immediately or even soon for anyone … real hope and real transformation can arise.

“Getting back to the nature of your parenting, it is important to realize that however far from ideal nurturing and what is possible in Nature, such care-giving was sufficient, barely, for your species’ survival. On the other hand, such a corruption of nurturing served to infuse and mold the personalities of your children in unnatural ways. And not just unnatural ways, more and more, this corrupted parenting pushed toward characteristics in the child that mirrored the darker impulses of your adults.

“You are probably asking, why would a parent’s attempts to mold a child to make of them something positive and good in the world — however much it might be like oneself — end up manifesting one’s own undesirable self? This question shows how this entire process is not quite being understood. For we have been saying how the parent seeks to make the child into a) something not bothersome or burdensome, b) something engaging and appealing, and c) something that is like what one wanted from one’s own parents, that is to say, someone loving, attentive, and focused on oneself. None of these are about helping the child acquire workable tools for later in life; they are not even about making the child to be like oneself. The fact is that though you tell yourselves that you are trying to make the child into the best person he or she can be in the world — with yourself as the only good model of that — you are actually trying to turn them into something helpful to your psychological woundedness, not themselves. So to a, b, and c, we must add a d, which is related to the ways children are shaped and twisted unconsciously by your adult caregivers and in ways you do not wish, but cannot help.

“Here it is good to remember your saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.” This saying expresses the idea that you wish your children to be something better than you. However, it is meant to be an ironic expression, because it points to the actual fact that children end up being taught just as much, if not more, from example as from direction. The fact is that children end up picking up both desirable and undesirable, effective as well as counterproductive, ways from the parent.

“And the undesirable and counterproductive ways that are found in the adult are exactly reflective of that adult’s early unmet needs and corrupted desires. That is to say, all that self-centeredness and emotional thirst in the adult, which infects their parenting, comes out as negative and undesirable actions vis-à-vis the child or are displayed in the child’s vicinity and are observed by the child. For the adult does not acknowledge his or her selfish or needy intentions regarding the child. No, they are always unconscious, hidden, and unapproved.

“That is why we know you are so resistant to hearing what we are saying right now. For your fragile egos are dependent on this idea that you are unconditionally loving; it is built upon this notion that your giving is pure and magnanimous. You are not aware of how you display and act out your early deprivations in your actions toward your children, so these are unconscious tendencies in you; indeed, they configure your unconscious. And this unconscious is not seen by you, but it is has a huge effect on your child: It is most definitely seen and picked up by them, both consciously and unconsciously.

“So, as it is said, “the child is marinated in the unconscious of the parent.” That is to say, the child becomes, not just what you want it to become, but exactly that which you deny in yourself and so, naturally, do not want it to become as well. You are needy, and this lack of need satisfaction has made you, for one thing, insensitive. And while you wish to raise a child who attends to you and behaves loving toward you, you do it in an insensitive way, for you cannot be other than yourself. Try as you might to yourselves be like your ideal parent, if you do not have it in you, you cannot possibly give it. So, does the child end up being what you want … loving, attentive, and need fulfilling? Or does the child become like you … insensitive, aloof, and numbed down? Well, you know the answer. For the parent cannot teach love when the parent does not know real love….”