Hi KP,
I think many could relate to your post. I like how you said your inner child encourages you. Maybe that could also be understood as your 'higher self,' the part of you that knows your strengths, vast potential, and source of personal power. That's the message I heard in the dialogue you presented. Or, more likely, your Inner Child and Higher Self have aligned purposes, which is awesome by the way! I would go for it, especially if that is the case. No stopping you now! :D
Like the inner child, the higher self is an abstract concept to try to grasp if you haven't been thinking in those terms. If you have, feel free to skip to the end:
One explanation that has helped me understand these terms a bit better is from Freudian dream analysis. Freud asserted that when one dreams, and there are different people in the dream, that they are all essentially aspects of the dreamer projected out onto the dream. They all come from the mind of the dreamer, and so they all represent the dreamer herself. He doesn't really elaborate right away on that logic. Other psychoanalysis techniques have elaborated further, say for example, Carl Jung's archetypes. But for now, just take it for what it's worth.
In some dreams, there can be no processing of the information of the dream later without application of this form of analysis. The other characters are acting out the internal dramas of the dreamer rather than representing their own person or external symbols. Thusly, our inner child or higher self are symbolic of how we act out internal dialogue or debates in our conscious minds or during waking hours. That is one layer of understanding. Some might say that the higher self is the soul, the part not earth bound; quantum physics might say that only a fragment of my soul is living out my existence within this set of dimensions in this particular time and space, so my higher self might be the rest of me, not bound in the here and now. Without the Freudian definition of dream theory of other selves as a first step, the rest would blow me away.
So your point about the inner child dialoguing with you about the job application and mustering up the confidence to submit it is a perfect illustration of the internal dialogue possible on so many levels.
In John Upledger's Cranio-Sacral technique, there was later expansion of CST to include locating the "inner healer." This would appear to the client as various nouns. In one client, the inner healer appears as a dolphin leaping around the sea; in another, it appeared as a person. The more human it appeared, usually, the more the client could dialogue with it as you have done with the inner child.
I have not had the chance to try his techniques with a therapist locally. I am in the Northwestern US and his clinic is in Florida and more on the East Coast. But I strongly suspect that I would find it helpful. Instead, I am still trying to find my inner healer.
In one dream, she appeared to me as a lovely, sophisticated Jamaican woman, a classy dresser, who held vast knowledge about the universe. She first appeared in my dreams to illustrate the benefits of patience. Then, later she appeared to tell me to avoid drinking milk for a while in order to heal my digestive system. So, her healing is not just for the physical plane, and I think that is normal. The Inner Healer can heal anything that needs healing within a person's whole being. That is my take on it.
I think it would be insightful to have the Inner Healer and the Inner Child make an appointment. :laugh:
