Our Unhealed Past Forces Us to Become the Victims of Our Lives
We cannot shake the past – it is part of who and what we are – and yet life conspires, I think, to inspire and even force us to always transcend and transform it. When we can’t complete the past we have no “room” to freely and wholly move forward, which profoundly and multidimensionally hampers us.
A Native American saying roughly translates out as “When you travel, travel light.” Carrying a dead and unhealed past around in the depths of our heads, hearts and guts amounts to an ongoing stress response just waiting to be “relit”. When that happens, we can be quickly shot into “flight or fight”, and become the terrible victims of our own impossible lives.
Are You Willing to Claim Your Inalienable Right to Let Go of Your Past?
The key to releasing our past is to come to such a great understanding of its challenges, themes and opportunities for growth that we can accept it. As this occurs we recover our inalienable right to let it go and get on with the force of returning to being fully, completely and synchronistically present with our internal and external environment.
It is only then that we can create what we truly desire in our lives, and that we can really grow and extend ourselves to support the greater good. Our past inspires us to own it, and then release its hold on us.
We Really Are Called Upon to Heal Our Conditioned Woundedness
Here is an excerpt from the chapter titled “Releasing the Past” from my Centering Tools Journaling and Guided Meditation Workbook:
”When I talk with clients about releasing the past I’m really asking them to release faulty conditioning patterns from old experiences of woundedness which frequently stem back to childhood. These patterns condemn the individual to recreate round after round of experienced fear, hurt, and pain as the soul’s effort to heal and release. It is these patterns which profoundly shape experienced reality and prevent one from seeing new opportunities, taking risks, and continuing to evolve. I believe we have a great fear about releasing the past, due to a core fear that we must not erase where we came from or we might erase ourselves.”
When You Love Your Fear, You are Released
The key to releasing the past is to become aware of what in the past you are still afraid of, and release those fears. Here is a journaling exercise in the same chapter to help you accomplish that, and transform yourself:
“It has been said that the only way to heal a fear is to love it. In ancient times a healer would discover how to treat a disease by experiencing it, allowing his or her own body and mind to journey through the healing process as a critical working experiment. Perhaps this is the reason we are drawn to repeat mistakes, knowing at ta deep level we are attempting to heal them.
Look at your list of fears (an earlier journaling exercise in the same chapter). Taking each item on your list, write it down in the opposite way. For example, if you wrote, “I am afraid of men”, write, I love men”, and so on. Focus on loving this person, place or thing, rather than being afraid of it. Now take a few moments to read this new list you have written, and record your feelings and insights.”
An Acknowledgment of Your Real Worth
We are meant to come to our own center of compassion, from which core healing of body, mind and spirit gently, overwhelmingly flows. From there, we lovingly and consciously forgive ourselves and all that is connected to the wound, the fear, the related past.
Smiling, evolved, clear, we set ourselves free to be more greatly – and offer this hard-won gift to others for healing, empowerment and development. The miracle is, it all becomes about acknowledging worth.