So many people today are bitter, broken-hearted, or just plain angry because of what happened to them while growing up. The reasons for their resentment or regret are as countless as are the number of unconscious people who unknowingly create such pain in the lives of those they hurt. But nothing that happened yesterday—as horrendous as it may have been—has authority over the present moment and its new possibilities.
We may sense the truth of this spiritual fact but have been unable to put its power to work in our life. Here’s what to do whenever we find ourselves wrapped in the flames of that burning house called our painful past: Get out of it!
Here’s the “how” part, although each of us must see the following truths that help free us from ourselves.
The true present moment cannot burn anything, let alone your immortal Self; it is the strange allure of reliving the past that punishes those unwary enough to wander back through it, searching for some resolution that can’t be found there.
Any sorrow, resentment, or anxiety brought over and into the living now can only be an echo of some event now past. Try to see this liberating fact: no pain from the past can make itself present unless the mind, asleep to itself, is deceived into revisiting the painful memory of that misery.
Nevertheless, in the same moment this negative image (replete with dark emotions) is recollected, it is resisted by the same sleeping mind that resurrected it! This reaction makes the unwary a victim of nothing other than having sleepwalked into the stored memories of his or her own unwanted past, and though the pain is real, no doubt, it is a pain born of resisting a dream whose dark content creates misery for anyone caught in its realm. This brings us to a key idea for those who wish to leave a conflicted past behind . . . [to be continued]
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