Let me ask you a question:
Where is your past?
Consider it carefully. Where is your past?
What is your answer?
When you really think about it, the past only ever exists as memory, memory which can be aroused. And when does memory get aroused if not in the…present?
If I asked you to recall your 18th birthday, where would you go to retrieve it? Would you go to the physical location where you spent that day? Would you be able to locate, in physical form, the 18 yo that you were? Would you be able to replay that day itself in every aspect of its physical/material form? With all the people and things in it? Exactly as they were on your 18th birthday?
Clearly, that would not happen. But you would be able to do it mentally, wouldn’t you? In fact, isn’t that how we recall and, sometimes against our wishes, ‘relive’ our past? By retrieving our memory of it here and now?
Now, here is a most amazing thing. If you can recall your past by memory in this here and now, re-imagining it in all its detail here and now, do you think it would be possible for you to change what you recall, to edit, as it were, parts of the movie that’s playing on your mind-screen and through your body?
The answer is yes, you certainly can. Memory, after all, is encoded as energetic patterns through our neural architecture and bio chemistry. Can patterns change? Of course. That’s how we learn!
But why would you want to do this? Would it be to ‘mess with your mind’? To deny the past? To pretend that what happened didn’t actually happen? To spin out into some unnatural fantasy for kicks?
No, not for any of those reasons. Rather, you would do it to give yourself a fresh chance, a new opportunity, to do what you wished you had done or do something different to what you had done. It is called…
Healing.
It is not our past that hurts us but our memory of it.
You see, it is never the past that hurts us since, after all, the past is nowhere to be found, at least not in its physical form. Rather, it is how we remember our past that hurts us. In other words, it’s our memory that hurts us i.e. triggers feelings of regret, longing, dread, fear, resentment, rage… And memory can only ever be aroused here and now. And here and now presents us with an opportunity to re-write our past by editing our memory of it.
Those hurtful words that you said, those calls you didn’t make, your inability to understand or accept a significant other…all these can be rewritten the way you now, with the benefit of wisdom and love, would have wanted it to be back then. Likewise, with people who have hurt you…you have a chance now to write a different story in the light of Love which is Truth which is Power and which reflects how you would want it to have been.
But it doesn’t stop there. You can, in this way, communicate with those involved in stories from your past, whether they are dead or alive, whether they are part of your current social circles or not. You see, there is only one purpose for this – healing. And when you heal, relationships heal since you are always in relationship!
When you change, all your relationships change. When you heal, all your relationships heal.
This is not a matter to be taken lightly. In fact, some people might feel outraged by my even suggesting that this is not only possible but desirable. Let me say that this is something we need to approach with care, making sure we understand what we are doing, how we do it and why we are doing it. You may not be ready for it and if that’s the case, that is perfectly okay. Trust your natural wisdom and intelligence to guide you. If you choose to do it, however, I would strongly recommend you get guidance from a trusted and experienced guide.
Without accountability, there is no healing
One final but critically important thing: Healing our past in this way does not in any way remove accountability from either ourselves (if we have been hurtful) or anyone that may have acted in a loveless way toward us. Without accountability, healing is impossible. However, what this process does is to restore us to our naturally loving state, one in which judgment, anger, resentment, regret and so on do not cloud our thinking. It is only when we can think and see clearly, i.e. be in a state of love, that we can respond in a way that serves the good of all.
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