The past, flames, and death

3 Things to Understand to Help You Heal The Present

The light enters where you’re broken

1. The Past Isn’t Dead Weight

The idea that the past is just dead weight we must drop and move on is the reason why many of us are missing out on the chance to transform our lives and that of those around us.

We live in a society that encourages letting go of everything. We want to quickly forget all about the past before we’ve absorbed all the wisdom it holds.

Imagine a child walking to school carrying a backpack full of books, almost leaning back and slowing him down. Would you go up to the child and tell him “Hey let it go. Drop the school bag so you can walk quicker to school?”

No. Why?

Because you know the value inside the bag. It’s full of information and knowledge. Dropping the bag means they’d be missing out on opportunities to learn.

The past, like the backpack, may be weighing you down but it is not deadweight. There is something to learn from it. Until the child has absorbed all the knowledge in the books in the bag, he can’t drop it. He needs it.

There is a lesson to learn from the past that can make you a much better person who will not keep repeating the same mistake but make better ones.

What you need to let go of quickly is the idea that you must let go of the past quickly. When you learn your lessons, it becomes much easier to heal the pain and then let it go.

Committing to learning the lessons and healing the past is 80% of the work because the moment you say you’re ready to heal whatever needs to be healed and you say it with a powerful intention, you are healing and letting go foreal.

Trying to jump straight into the letting go process is not genuine. It is not authentic. You can let it go, but it’ll come back later and bite you in the ass!

Until you’ve understood the lesson the past has to teach you, you can’t just let go of it.

If you let the past go without healing it, you gotta go back for it. For a stone in a slingshot to go far, it must go far back. To be catapulted in life, you may have to revisit the past and grab all the lessons you left behind.

Leaving the past behind without looking at it could be leaving behind little gems of wisdom that you will need.

You can’t let go of the past until you heal it. You heal it by learning your lessons. Then it’s safe to just drop it and walk on faster into the future.

For a stone in a slingshot to go far, it must go far back. To be catapulted forward, you may have to revisit the past and grab all the lessons before moving on.

2. Ego Sees Pain As Flame

We always make the ego out as the bad guy, but ego means well. The ego is a self-protective mechanism. It just wants to protect you and keep you from pain.

The ego sees emotional pain the same way the body sees a flame. If you go up to a flame and you put your hand on it, what happens?

It recoils!

That is a natural protective instinct.

The ego sees emotional pain and trauma in the same way. When you try to heal, the ego goes “No, no, hell no! Stay away from that. It fucking hurts digging into the pain like that!”

So it recoils you and you skip healing because it’s uncomfortable.

It hurts digging into the pain, so we stop. We ignore, we suppress, we repress and we run straight to the letting go part because it is ingrained in our culture.

We think letting go is cute!

Letting go without addressing the issue is not cute. It’s dangerous. It creates a vicious shadow that will sooner or later become the monster under the bed.

Healing the emotional body requires priming the ego. It requires regular talks with your ego. It is not critical self-talk. It is not “shut up, you stupid ego!”

No.

Prime the ego with soothing, loving, and compassionate self-talk coming from a place behind the ego. It is your awareness, your consciousness, your soul, imparting a sense of security and trust to the ego.

Priming the ego means reassuring it that the work you are about to do is necessary and there’s no way around it.

Talk to your ego like you would talk to a wounded child. See it as your super protective friend who does anything in its power to protect you from pain.

Assure the ego and it will calm down and drop its defences. It knows it’s safe and will therefore allow you into the healing space. That’s all the ego needs.

When ego allows you into the healing space, it’s time to be bold because the work won’t be pretty.

Sitting with the past means going inward. Sitting with the pain and the flame is not very comforting.

It’s something else.

It’s like tearing a scab off of a wound that hasn’t healed properly. What happens when you tear a scab off a wound? It hurts! It bleeds again. But you must do it no matter how intense it gets and what emotions come up.

Don’t run. Sit with whatever’s coming up.

Give yourself permission to grieve. Be bold and face your past. Deal with the pain once and for all.

When you fail to grieve, you are repressing your energy system, therefore creating stagnation in the system.

Grieve what you lost. You can’t skip this. The loss of trust. Cry. A lot. Or a little. As those tears flow out, visualize all the pain, the hurt, the betrayal, the disappointment, and all the negative things pouring out.

You don’t know how to cry?

Engage the pain then. Whatever it is. It could be rage. Fury! Someone did something to you. It makes you so angry! You hurt someone and now you feel guilt or shame? Feeling Regret? Sit with it.

Don’t run. Don’t hide. Be bold.

Embrace the pain like you’re embracing a long lost lover. Is it sadness? Loneliness? Engage it no matter what is coming up. It could be the darkest, most horrible emotion you’ve ever felt. You will embrace it.

Why?

Because it is a part of you. All the emotions are within you, so embrace them and then release them good!

Then you’ll be liberated.

Once you prime the ego, the healing work becomes so much easier. An ego that feels safe allows inner work to continue.

3. Life and Death Are Partners

We have a difficult relationship with death, endings and loss, but life and death go hand in hand. Until you get comfortable with death in whatever form it takes in your life, you’ll never be comfortable with life.

If you are not comfortable with death, endings, and loss, you can never heal. To truly heal, you have to be able to allow endings, loss, and death to come and complete themselves.

Death represents the end of something and births are all about new beginnings. Life is healing, but death has everything to do with healing too. It leads to new creation. It brings rebirth.

You can’t have birth, you can’t have gains, and you can’t have beginnings unless you have deaths, losses, and endings.

But how can anyone have a good relationship with death?

Nature brings us the most beautiful examples of how to live in full harmony with life and with death. Spend a day in nature and you will accept death as a part of life.

Look at a tree, for example. You don’t see a tree becoming angry or sad because it is losing its leaves. You don’t see a tree chasing after the leaves it has lost, crying it can’t live without them. The tree doesn’t feel any sadness. It understands that the falling of the leaves is part of the cycles of life and new and vibrant leaves that are full of color and beauty always returns.

And find a snake who’s shedding its skin and you wouldn’t fight over the old. A snake doesn’t freak out because it’s losing its skin. She doesn’t hold on so tightly to the old skin crying out, asking why her skin is being taken away from her. She understands that she has to lose that skin in order for the new and youthful one to grow.

You have to let the old go and make way for the new.

Remain positive throughout the process and understand that healing is not linear. Don’t count the days. Don’t keep track of how long healing is taking place.

Healing can take days, months, and sometimes even years!

Be gentle with yourself and tell your mind, body, and soul you’re proud and keep the end goal in mind and that’s freedom and liberation from the things that weigh you down.

Take responsibility for your pain, heal the past, and let it go peacefully.

Carry the backpack to the classroom no matter how heavy and study the books. Then you can leave it behind once you’ve absorbed all the knowledge. You’ll have a much lighter bag to carry and wisdom that’ll be with you forever.

Note: This article is only meant to provide spiritual guidance and light-hearted content.

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