So, I ran into a giving, nurturing part of me today, and the part of me who wants to understand things asked the guy to explain how giving works on an inner level. I thought I’d share what I learned for anyone who wants to explore their own inner world.

As I understand it, it works like this:
Any “item” that’s visualized can be imbued with certain feelings – love, courage, even stuff like negativity. The item, imbued with these feelings, can be given to other parts of you. Once received, the given part of yourself can “use” the item, and in doing so, gain access to the feeling it was imbued with.

I’ll give a couple of examples. Say that you imagine that a nurturing part of yourself makes a dish of food for another part of yourself, and this was done with a feeling of love. That other part of you receives that feeling from the food.

Or, the item could be a sword. A sword can represent confidence in something. So if something in you has a close connection to the feeling of justice, they can probably “make” a sword of justice, which can be used by inner warriors to fight for just causes.

It works in the same fashion as a metaphor. In fact, you could say items ARE metaphors. The food is a metaphor for the love a part of yourself wants to share. The sword is a metaphor for a sense of confidence that you utilize when fighting for something. Any imagined item can be imbued with meaning.

And remember that inside of you, metaphors are dynamic. They can change as your feelings change. And as your inner world changes.

The same is true for any aspect of the inner world. A landscape can represent an emotional state. A character can represent a certain part of yourself, perspective, or way of approaching the world. And substances, like water, or items, like swords, can represent a certain feeling.

We experience this day-to-day as well. It’s sort of like how you can see a word, like “love”, and it can evoke a little bit of the feeling of love in you, just reading the word. Or see a painting and get a feeling from it. Or see a present and think of the person who gave it to you.

The idea is that what you visualize as your inner world becomes more clear when you let the things you see represent the feelings that are there inside of you NOW. Knowing a little bit about how this works will let you better navigate that inner world, and test how those dynamics work. I find that as one develops one’s own system that makes sense to them, it begins to seem more and more familiar to the system of meaning we already use, constantly.

Anyway, to those who use this info to explore themselves, enjoy the adventure!