How to Deal With the Past and Heal It Once and For All

The past may be heavy but it’s not deadweight

I. Understanding The Past

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 drop your school bag so you can walk faster to school?”

No. Why?

Because you know the value of what’s inside the bag. The bag is full of knowledge and information. Dropping it would mean they’d be missing out on learning opportunities.

Until the child has learned all the knowledge in the books in the bag, he can’t drop it. He needs it.

The idea that the past is deadweight to drop and move on is the reason 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.

While the past may be weighing you down, it is not dead weight. There are things to learn from it.

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

II. Learning From The Past

The past teaches you valuable lessons that can make you a better person and prevent you from repeating the same mistakes.

You have to let go of the notion that you need to just let go of your past. When you learn your lessons, it is much easier to heal the pain and then let go for real.

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

Trying to jump straight into the letting-go process is not authentic.

You can let it go, but it’ll come back later to be dealt with.

Until you’ve understood what the past has to teach you, you can’t just let it go. If you let the past go without healing it, you’ll have to go back to it.

You have to let go of the notion that you need to just let go of your past. You can't let go until you learn from it.

III. Dealing With The Past

The stone in a slingshot has to go far back in order to go far. If you want to get catapulted in life, you might have to look back on the past and take all the lessons you left behind.

If you leave the past behind without looking at it, you could be leaving behind gems of wisdom you’ll need later.

You can’t get rid of the past until you’ve dealt with it.

The ego would want to leave it all behind right now and move on. The ego is a self-protective mechanism. It wants to protect you and keep you from pain.

The ego perceives emotional pain the same way the body perceives flame.

When you approach a flame and put your hand on it, what happens? It recoils! This is a natural protective instinct.

The ego sees emotional pain and trauma in the same way.

You try to heal and the ego says “No, no, hell no! Stay away from that! It hurts!” Because of this, you recoil and skip healing because it’s uncomfortable.

Generally, we ignore, suppress, repress, and go straight to the letting go part because it is ingrained in our culture. We believe that letting go is cute! However, letting go without addressing the issue is dangerous. It creates a vicious shadow that will eventually turn into a scary monster under the bed.

If you leave the past behind without looking at it, you could be leaving behind gems of wisdom you’ll need later.

IV. Healing The Past

When you want to heal your emotional body, you need to prime the ego.

Talk to your ego regularly. This is not critical self-talk, but soothing, loving, and compassionate self-talk that comes from a place behind the ego. Your awareness, your consciousness, and your soul provide your ego with a sense of security and trust.

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 his power to protect you from pain. Assure the ego and it will calm down and drop its defenses. It knows it’s safe and will therefore allow you into the healing space. That’s all the ego needs to allow you to sit with the past.

Sitting with the pain and bringing your hand near the flame isn’t very comforting. It’s like pulling a scab off an old wound that’s not healed properly. When you take a scab off a wound, it hurts! The wound bleeds again. But no matter how intense it gets or how intense the emotions are, you must do it.

Allow yourself to grieve. Face your past with boldness and deal with the pain. When you refuse to grieve, your energy system becomes stagnant, so you should grieve the loss of trust. You can’t skip this step.

Cry. A lot. Or a little. While you are crying, visualize all the pain, hurt, betrayal, disappointment, and all the negative things trapped inside you pour out of you.

Having difficulty crying? Engage the pain. It may be feelings of rage. It may be fury. Someone has hurt you. You feel so angry. You feel guilty. Feeling ashamed? Feeling regretful? Sit with it. Do not run. Do not hide. Be bold. Embrace the pain like you’re embracing a long-lost lover.

Whether it’s sadness or loneliness, you’ve got to embrace it. It could be the darkest, most horrible emotion you’ve ever felt, but you’ll embrace it. Why? Because it’s part of you. All the emotions are inside you, so embrace them and then let go.

Sitting with the pain and bringing your hand near the flame is like pulling a scab off an old wound that’s not healed properly. It bleeds again. But no matter how intense the emotions are, you must do it. Allow yourself to grieve. Face your past with boldness and deal with the pain.

V. Letting Go of The Past

As humans, we have a difficult relationship with death, endings, and loss, however, life and death are intrinsically linked. Until you accept death, no matter how it manifests in your life, you cannot truly enjoy life.

Death represents the end of something and births are all about new beginnings. 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.

In the same way that life heals, death heals too.

Death leads to new creation, and it paves the way for rebirth. You cannot have birth, you cannot have gains, and you cannot have beginnings unless you have deaths, losses, and endings.

But how can anyone have a good relationship with death?

Nature offers us the most beautiful examples of how to live in harmony with life and death. A day spent in nature will teach you to accept death as part of life.

Taking a tree, for example, you don’t see it becoming angry or sad about losing its leaves. You don’t see a tree running after the leaves it has lost, crying that it can’t survive without them. It understands that the falling of leaves is part of the cycle of life and that new and vibrant leaves will always emerge, which will bring color and beauty to the world.

If you found a snake that was shedding its skin, you wouldn’t fight over the old. Snakes don’t freak out when they lose their skin. They do not hang on so tightly to the old skin, crying out to understand why their skin is being taken away from them. For the new and youthful one to grow, she must lose the old one.

Make way for the new by letting go of the old.

The healing process doesn’t follow a linear path, so don’t count the days and don’t keep track of how long it is taking. Healing can take days, weeks, 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, which is 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 no matter how heavy. Allow yourself to 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 last a lifetime.

© 2022 Kimberly Fosu. All rights reserved.

Note: This article is only meant to provide spiritual guidance and lighthearted content.

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