I am bogged down in a financial and personal morass created by extremely poor decisions and excesses in the past. I fear that the whole mess makes it impossible now to absorb and realize the truths that can transform my life. I feel there is just too much damage, and my life will be forever marked by my mistakes.

You are not alone in the sea of troubles facing you, but one must know what to grab onto… and what not, when floating on troubled waters. There is no quick fix to your woes, any more than there’s a way to quickly repair a broken bone. The healing we all need begins, in earnest, with realizing that something is, indeed, “broken” within us. The more clearly we see this need, the sooner we stop injuring ourselves again and again by identifying with highly familiar but wasteful thoughts and feelings. Present problems created by past waste have to be cleaned up… so just understand that while there’s no escaping certain unpleasant things that you’ll have to endure, these trials can have great benefit to you if you agree to their lessons instead of resisting them. Nothing in our lives “sticks” to us — problem people or painful remnants of a squandered past — that isn’t first attracted there. The key is to realize that before our exterior life can change, we must die, inwardly, to these parts of us that are secretly attached to what makes us ache. Persist with your wish to be free. Nothing can stop you from becoming new as long as you grow, daily, increasingly weary of dragging yourself along. I know that doesn’t sound too much like an authentic encouragement, but… I assure you it is the truth… and nothing is brighter, more right than what is true.