Introduction

      This is a book about liberation – about freeing the boundless potential that is shining inside each and every human heart.

      Deep inside all of us is a boundless joy, a potential for true genius, an infinite love, a wellspring of creativity. It’s waiting there, beckoning, calling you right now, inviting you to discover your own magnificence, urging you to plummet the depths of the wisdom within to discover a vast potential that is capable of creating anything.

      Each of our children is born as this radiant presence, as this boundless potential. Unfortunately, through the course of life’s pains and trials, their innate radiance may seem to get covered over – with layers of unresolved hurt, moments of failure, emotional shutdowns. It’s as if we come in as a brilliant, shining light and somehow life conspires to put a lampshade over it, obscuring it. In time we start to identify with all the layers, forgetting that there ever was a greatness within.

      In this book you’ll learn very real and practical ways to take that lampshade off. You’ll learn simple but powerful tools for liberating that shining magnificence.

      This book is full of joy, full of inspiring stories that will speak directly to your own deepest knowing. It is full of real-life accounts of everyday children who have gone on Journeys, freed themselves and taken the lid off their creativity. As we travel with them, we learn how they’ve healed their bodies and we share their love of life as they peel away the layers and unearth their own genius. We feel the poignancy of their easy ability to forgive that which might seem to be impossible to forgive and, through their Journeys, we see ourselves, and we are liberated.

      The truth of the children’s wisdom, the health and vitality they experience and the simplicity of their awakening serve as a model of possibility to us all, inspiring us and giving us the courage to begin our own Journeys.

      This book is also chock-full of practical tools, simple step-by-step process work, everyday wisdom and user-friendly skills, written in what I hope is a down-to-earth style that will encourage you to begin working/playing easily and effectively with your children, starting now.

      It is my deepest prayer that, as parents and guardians of these beautiful souls, we truly learn to partner our children in their spiritual and healing Journeys. I pray that we recognize that our children are, in fact, already free, whole and full of shining potential.

      All that we are doing as partners is helping them to clear away the veils that have obscured that potential, liberating their true selves. We are helping them take the lampshades off their already shining lights.

      Currently, the Kids’ Journey is being used all over the world by schoolteachers, school counsellors and children’s therapists. It is being used in addiction treatment centres, by abuse groups, children’s support organizations and social services organizations. It has been adopted and used by priests, nuns, ministers, rabbis, monks, pastors and swamis from a wide range of spiritual traditions. Most of all, it is being used by everyday mums, dads, aunts, uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers from all walks of life – people like you and me.

      Because there are literally thousands of inspiring kids’ stories to choose from, I have included those that deal with everyday issues – the questions and challenges that beset normal children from all cultures. Each story provides us with a lesson on how to address those issues, and specific tools and process work that are designed to liberate and heal the issue. So it’s the children themselves who are actually providing us with the teaching we need to lovingly partner them in their healing and growth. I’ve changed almost all the names, as I feel children deserve the same respect and privacy that we, as adults, feel we need. In some cases I’ve expanded on the process work to give a fuller explanation and