What sort of Child Were you poll

Introspection and/or imagination figured in most of our childhoods. Most of us also mentioned being quite shy and introverted. Many felt "different" as they were growing up, and many also described themselves as loners.

The following is a short list of some traits most frequently mentioned.

9 people said they were shy. 1 alternated shy and sunny. Two specifically said they were Not shy
9 people described themselves as loners.
7 described themselves as being "different."
6 described themselves as Introspective
6 as imaginative or creative
6 as fearful and/or abused
6 mentioned being spiritual as children
5 as curious
4 as brats and/or rebellious
2 as quiet

The following are portions of the posts that relate specifically with an awareness of other states of being:

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nothing seemed important because I believe(d) everything wasnt real. Honestly thought I wasnt really there. Thus life was a play, and as far as I was concerned I was the star actor. :)

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I also remember, at three, sitting in the TV room of our tiny house in a tiny town in Arkansas in the early 60s, watching the 5:00 news from a nearby small town. And I remember very clearly, at that tender age, thinking that this was a very small and provincial place that I lived in. I remember feeling very bored and dissatisfied with it in some way. This was with no prior experience or awareness of big cities or wordly excitement. ... I have always wondered how I could have felt that.

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I believe that my early problems relate alot to my past life I have had several visions of being a hated abused child that was stabbed to death at a young age( sounds terrible but I have relived it in many nightmares and visions so had to bring it up) .

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A terrified and abused one. Who's only escape was through the "other side"

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I was fascinated by reincarnation by the age of 10 and also read horror stories like crazy. I knew that spirit mattered, but didn't think church did.

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I remember when I was little riding along in the car staring off at the sky or trees and trying to see every single leaf at once and then trying to be a part of it's essence.

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Also waking up at 3am, opening the window and smelling the early morning air and feeling immensely happy.

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At age two I woke in the middle of the night from a vivid, more real than life lucid dream of this amazing blissful loving light that said I was it's child. Waking, I was pulled away, back through a tunnel and it was immediate and urgent priority to get back there!

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I do remember thinking NO, There is no time! I would tell this to my parents, childishly. They just dismissed me. I felt like I knew more than them, but I didn't understand it at the time, I just felt betrayed and alone. I must've been 2. Or something. Barely could talk. They would talk about time, "this" many more minutes until whenever happens. That I do remember very vividly, the very moment that I lost my sense of now is forever and it turned into the 80's and corporate giants. Don't ask me why. But the energy is the same.

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it was during adolescence that I started observing that I really didn’t want to come to this world of separateness and ended up coming anyway. I also realized that my reactions to the world were reactions to not wanting to be here in the relative realm (that’s how I call our “reality”) and its duality. I’ve been always eager to go back home (what I call the absolute realm).

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More complete excerpts:

What kind of child ?
ehh... nothing seemed important because I believe(d) everything wasnt real. Honestly thought I wasnt really there. Thus life was a play, and as far as I was concerned I was the star actor. :)

Some key words: introspective, clever, mischievous, perma-prozzak, curious, and whatever the word is contrary to 'shy' (brat?).

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I was not quite like the other children around me. Very introspective, quiet, imaginative. When the other kids were out playing tag and hide and seek, I was building time machines, faster-than-light spacecraft and watching the original Star Trek series. By age 10 I was a sci-fi and fantasy addict. My dad read "The Hobbit" to me when I was 5. I would rather stay home and read than do almost anything. While the other kids were studying grammer and geography I was making anti-pollution posters on notebook paper and playing spaceships with my pencils and pens. It got to the point where most kids would hardly talk to me....except of course the other imaginative outcasts. But they all had thier own visions so I was left in blissfull solitude most of the time....
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I had one source of spirituality as a kid; my paternal grandmother would always tell my stories about Jesus and we'd sing some rock-n-roll type hymns together. She had tried about 20 or 25 different denominations and they all gave her the boot for being more devoted to God than to the church. So when K went active as age 21 this was the first thing that cleared: Most of our family considered my granny to be a bit wacked-out, even my dad. But under the K influence I realized she was indeed very close to God and should not be shunned for her "eccentricities"

there you have it: Sci-fi/Fantasy, connection to the Earth, Loner, Spiritual Seeker.

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I was a very shy child, but with the people or relatives who were closer to me very inquisitive, asking about everything. Living in my own world and playing alone most of the time.

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> What sort of child were you?
>
My mother says I was very shy and very serious when playing with other children. I remember this shyness being painful and causing me not to participate often. The shyness has persisted throughout my life, and I can be a real hermit, but I push it away so I can function in the world.

At home as a child, I did "shows" for my parents. My mom wrote in my baby book when I was three "has theatrical tendencies." I also remember, at three, sitting in the TV room of our tiny house in a tiny town in Arkansas in the early 60s, watching the 5:00 news from a nearby small town. And I remember very clearly, at that tender age, thinking that this was a very small and provincial place that I lived in. ...

As an older child (10 or 11), I had obsessions with Joan of Arc and the Salem Witch Trials and the Burning Times. Did a lot of reading on these subjects. Also Sybil Leek and other witchy-type people. Later became obsessed with the subjects of execution, Jack the Ripper, famous horrible murders (Manson, etc.) and the Holocaust. ...
Some of it feels particularly personal, like maybe I actually lived something like it or related to it in some way, and some of the horrible hard-to-look-at stuff, I think, was me trying to jar myself awake.
... I now have this belief that this is what we are "subconsciously" trying to do culturally with horror movies and terrible news stories. We are constantly striving to awaken our compassion, which can lead to deeper awakening. If this makes sense.

... I had a childhood full of familial pain and some joys. I always had a feeling that I was different and that something "big" was going to happen to me as an adult. I became a theater major in college and thought then that the "big" something would be acting fame. Now I think it was/may be something else.

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If you were to ask my parents they would say the most difficult confusing child in the world. Now from my point of view, I was soooooo overly shy and insecure from the beginning I was so shy I couldnt even converse or show affection to my parents they thought there was something wrong with me and asked me many time why I couldnt be like my brothers and sisters. I know they loved but they just didnt know how to deal with me I was so different ...I couldnt talk to anyone or ask ?'s without feeling frightened. ... I hated my childhood when I reached my teenage years all my fears turned to anger and I (even know I was still incredibly shy) found some older friends (I could always relate to them better) and really rebelled ... I have always been somewhat of a loner. ... I am very much a hermit now lol and I am still very shy but am sooooo much different I am really working on healing myself most people would never guess about my childhood. I believe that my early problems relate alot to my past life I have had several visions of being a hated abused child that was stabbed to death at a young age( sounds terrible but I have relived it in many nightmares and visions so had to bring it up) . I feel pretty confident that something past related has caused all this and now my spirit has had so many traumas that it is ready to cleanse itself.

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So: What sort of child were you?

A terrified and abused one. Who's only escape was through the "other side"

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> The difficulties force one to be self directed, and not look for love and > validation externally.
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Such few words with so much wisdom within them Mystress. Your words so very accurately describes what has happened to those of us who were abused during childhood. We looked inside for answers as for most of us had no place else to go. You could not just go to anyone about the abuse, as you had to worry what worse abuse would await you if you did tell anyone. It is no wonder that those with an abusive past became very spiritual beings. It was the only way really to survive the abuse. To all of those on this list that have told their stories of an abusive past, I admire you for your courage in doing so. I also feel it is big part of the healing to finally talk about it after so many years of not being able to share it with \others. Big hugs to all of you that went through this in your childhood!

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What sort of child hmmmm?

I was a paradox. sometimes very shy, sometimes very sunny. There is a couple of things that were always present though.

The first one was that I was very much a loner. I grew up on a farm so there was lots of space to wander. Wander I did, mostly alone. I didn't like the games and stuff of the other kids. Seemed like a waste of time to me.

The second thing was I was a researcher. I don't mean I did well in school, I didn't. School felt more like jail to me than a place of learning. I didn't fit in. I felt very out of place in school.

...for example, when I was 2, I became fasinated with bugs. Lasted a couple of years. By the time I was 4, I could tell you anything you wanted to know about them. Except what they were called.

I could tell you how they moved and how fast, where they could be found. From there it was rocks. Clouds I think cam next. By the time I was 14 I was studying religion and the occult. I had a feroious apetite for new things. I am still like that today.

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I'm amazed at how similar we seem. I, too, was a very serious and solitary child. Quiet, but had a lot going in inside. I was endlessly making up stories and acting. I did theater in school (and some more recently), and always thought I was special somehow. I was fascinated by reincarnation by the age of 10 and also read horror stories like crazy. I knew that spirit mattered, but didn't think church did. (Still don't, not for me.) My father was emotionally/verbally abusive, extremely volatile and out of control with his anger. It led me to internalize a lot of crap that I eventually got out through spiritual/psychological growth practices. I grew up in a rural town, practically lived in the woods during my adolescence, but am not really a nature girl. I always had this endless capacity for make-believe (usually dramatic grown-up stuff, even at age 5, my parents would have been shocked). I was also very ready to placate everyone. I'd do things to be my sister's sweetie-pie without a second thought.

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My Father is an alcoholic, but thank god he was able to control his problem about 8 years ago.
I too feel the same, spirit matters, but church is not so important. What's in you does, not where you go. But I do love the atmosphere of church now...
I am very shy in large groups of people, even if there are a few that I'm comfortable with around. I get to know people well in small groups, and feel much better in that type of situation. I've always loved magical fantasy type books and movies. I remember when I was little riding along in the car staring off at the sky or trees and trying to see every single leaf at once and then trying to be a part of it's essence... I remember thinking what a waste of time... ahh, don't you wish you could go back and relive life with the knowledge that you have now?

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I can't remember much at all about my childhood. Apparently I was a very stroppy baby - yelled a lot and chucked food around etc, but also showed great interest in the world around me. I can remember being a bit of a black sheep at primary school - never really had a best friend and got into a few fights... i can't remember being strongly happy or unhappy - just neutral really. I can remember though getting lost in my own fantasy worlds - making maps of the garden, having my own secret codes and language etc, loving fantasy fiction - CS Lewis etc. Also waking up at 3am, opening the window and smelling the early morning air and feeling immensely happy. I was very imaginative and fully indulged this in drawing, music, acting etc...

I was very sensitive and scared too. It didn't take much to make me cry. I was highly anxious and worried about everything. A key event was getting a kids encyclopedia and turning to a page with a picture of the William Blake painting of the Entrance to Hell, which absolutely terrified me and I never looked at that book again. Interesting since the hell of 'mental illness' has been a big theme of my life.

...got chucked out of pottery club at 11 for being disruptive. I liked to rock boats and shock, more so when getting into teenage years. Two years before K kicked in at 16 I remember getting moody, depressed, searching... everything seemed grey and boring - there must be more to life than this type thing. Then K started and it's been one long firework display ever since.

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Funny how alike we are... or perhaps only the wounded ones are posting?

Snapshot autobiography. Personal Mythology..

Born a week late and backwards. When K. caused me to relive my own birth, I found out why. I did not want to come out... an argument with duality, realizing at last minute that it was scary out there...

During the ego death that immediately followed reliving my own birth, I found myself facing off with hundreds of ancestors... for daring to be different.
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At age two I woke in the middle of the night from a vivid, more real than life lucid dream of this amazing blissful loving light that said I was it's child. Waking, I was pulled away, back through a tunnel and it was immediate and urgent priority to get back there!
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In grade two ADD daydreamer grrl discovered reading was a teacher-approved substitute for daydreaming and fell into books and did not come out. I tended to be an uncoordinated misfit of the type other kids like to pick on, so I tried to hide in pages and be invisible. Especially for dodge ball but also with my parents and three older siblings.

I remembered myself as a quiet child till I mentioned that to my older sister and she laughed in my face and said I had been loud, prone to screaming temper tantrums. This puzzled me. I dug up the memories and discovered they had no soundtrack. I did some research on memories that have no soundtrack and discovered it is a symptom of clinical detachment... like how some people describe a car accident as being in slow motion and quiet... they cannot hear themselves screaming.

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I was also having wicked Night terrors of this great black shadow monster who killed me over and over, and I would wake to see monsters in every shadow. Even if I looked at a blank wall, the microdots would shape themselves into skulls and monsters. Finally I learned to approach her without fear, and avoid being destroyed... but then the dreams got worse, I became her, and had no voice to warn those who feared, not to so they would not get their heads ripped off by me. Awful. By them I had learned to say prayers at night and prayed for "no bad dreams". It worked, so I kept doing it till the dreams stopped... or at least, went unconscious... perhaps it was because I was focusing on praying instead of watching the fireworks.

About 5 years ago, reading books on Shamanism I recognised the players in this drama. Falling asleep, meditating on my 3rd eye had lead to seeing the kaliedescope patterns of the portal to the Dreamtime.. and meeting the Portal Guardian, the reflection of fear... Death. A Preschool child on the path of the Shaman.. sometimes I wonder how I survived.

I spent a lot of time wandering alone in the woods on my Grandmother's farm. Thinking of faeries and imagining I could feel them, ... experiences I kept to myself. In grade 6 (age 12-13?) I borrowed "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" off my hippie teacher's desk. I resonated with the misfit bird and his secret "specialness", and the insight that there could be spirituality without sin or Jesus. It was a tremendous validation and I had a K-experience while reading it, and after... I do not remember it well, only that there was a Divine confirmation, some lost time and afterwards I was in an altered state similar to the Witness... very detached. Birth of Messianic tendencies, LOL.

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Growing up I had a loving family and a ton of freedom. At age 5 I was allowed to be as far as my cousins house almost two blocks away and had to be inside when the streetlights came on.

I consider myself to have a normal childhood.. always running and playing. I was always somewhat overweight and as a result I was self conscious around the chicks when I got older. I finally got a steady girlfriend at age 15 and always had one since.

I missed out on the groovy 60's and I soooo wanted to be a hippie.. but I was to late being born in 1964. By the time I was 12 I was drinking and smoking pot and on hard drugs at age 13. I continued on the drugs and booze until I was in my 20's and my wife ( girlfriend at the time ) had a baby so I had to change my lifestyle to accommodate the baby.

By the time I was about 30 my wife and I was "shopping around" for religion and she got into paganism and I just meditated a lot. She ended up having a strong natural ability and was way beyond me. I am pretty sure that I am not actually a "K Baby". I think that any energy I was gifted with came from her. That is why I told my story into adulthood.. so that I could explain that fact.

Perhaps it was Gods fate that brought us together so that I may learn from her, but whatever it was I am grateful.

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I am another one of the many on the list. I was a shy, introverted, fearful child, and am still to this day. My major feeling is that I have nothng of quality to offer humanity and therefore remain a hermit. I desire to accomplish something meaninful, but cannot get past the child hood fears, and add to that tamy current anger, depression, fear x Z 'cubed'. and here I am, nothing. Cant quite get past that one. I am alive however, for what purpose, I have no clue. Thanks for listening.

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I do remember thinking NO, There is no time!
I would tell this to my parents, childishly. They just dismissed me. I felt like I knew more than them, but I didn't understand it at the time, I just felt betrayed and alone. I must've been 2. Or something. Barely could talk. They would talk about time, "this" many more minutes until whenever happens.... That same energy I felt when I lost my sense of forever has stuck with me and it feels like the world. .
...What I called 'life' was synonymous with what alot of people call 'truth'. Although I realize everyone feels energy, I still feel estranged... there is no way of explaining what I feel, it's far too abstract.. and powerful, there is no way of sharing it other than music.. I always felt the world. And I didn't understand why other people didn't feel like me. It made me feel like I couldn't trust my heart anymore, either that or I was "different".. either way I was different. I was different.. at least in my own eyes.
... I was a loner.
... I did spend many hours and hours humming and chattering my teeth together as drums. My high spirits never gave my parents a moment of