Make Peace with Your Past to Heal Your Present
Let go and live a life of freedom
The wound is the place where the light enters you-Rumi
Do you find yourself struggling to forgive your past and let it go? It means you are trying to bypass the steps of healing. When you concentrate on healing and forgiveness, letting go comes naturally.
You must heal the past and understand the lessons it’s trying to teach you. And then letting go is no work at all. Healing work has to be done.
Let's look at two important keywords. The Past and Let go.
The past
The past is something painful. If it wasn't painful you wouldn't want to let go of it, right? Here are a couple of scenarios.
- Childhood abuse or trauma.
- Narcissistic parents. Parents who abandoned you. Parents who died.
- A relationship is torn apart.
- Painful things that happened even in adulthood.
It could be something done to you or something you did to someone else which you cannot change and has left you with guilt and shame. Not everybody will fit in these scenarios, and that's ok.
Letting go of the past
The concept of letting go has been ingrained in our society. We think it's attractive, as Christina Lopes, puts it. When you let go of something, you are not bothered by it anymore, right? The thought that you can let go of something and it's gone for good is an illusion.
It is not as simple as it sounds. The weight is dead and has no value, so why don't you let it go? This is a false assumption! Let me prove to you why.
Imagine a child walking to school carrying a backpack full of books, almost leaning back. Would you go up to the child and tell him “Hey drop the school bag and go to school”? No. Why?
Because you know the value in the bag. It is full of information and knowledge. Dropping the bag means they'd be missing out on opportunities to learn and evolve. The past is not deadweight.
There is something to learn from it. There is a lesson to learn from it. What did the experience teach you?
You can’t let go of the school bag because the information in the school bag is important. It's crucial to understand this.
Your past is not deadweight that has no value. Until you've understood the lesson, you can't let go of it.
Letting go of the past is a natural byproduct of healing-Christina Lopes
To truly let go, go through the process of healing. You can’t let go of the past until you heal it.
Why do people bypass healing?
1. The Ego
The ego is a self-protective mechanism. It is there to protect you. The ego sees emotional pain in the same way your 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, no”! “This is painful”! “Stay away from this”!
We skip healing because it’s uncomfortable. The ego tries to get out of there and run straight to the letting go part. People encourage us to let go because it is ingrained in our culture.
2. We have a difficult relationship with death
Uhm, what the heck has death got to do with healing, Kimberly? Let me explain. For the sake of this article, we are going to refer death to mean endings and birth as beginnings. It could also be literal.
Death has everything to do with healing. We have a difficult relationship with death, with endings and with loss. Until you get comfortable with death in whatever form it takes in your life, you’ll never be comfortable with life. Life and death go hand in hand.
Death leads to new creation — rebirth. If you are not comfortable with death, endings, and loss, you can never heal. To heal, be able to allow endings, loss, and death to come and complete themselves.
You can’t have birth, you can’t have gains, and you can’t have beginnings unless you have deaths, losses, and endings.
How can anyone have a good relationship with death?
Spend a day in nature. You will realize how to be comfortable with death. Look at a tree, for example. You don't see a tree becoming angry or sad because it is losing its leaves. The tree doesn't feel any sadness. It understands that the falling of leaves is part of the cycles of life.
Another example is the snake. A snake doesn’t freak out because it's losing its skin. She understands that she has to lose that skin in order for the new one to grow.
Nature brings us the most beautiful examples of how to live in full harmony with life and with death. With loss and with gain. With endings and with beginnings.
Now that you understand why we do this, the resistance stops. And it becomes much easier to do the healing work, forgive and finally let go.
How do I heal my past?
There is a 4 step process to healing the past
1. Commit to healing
This is 80% of the work because the moment you say this with a powerful intention, you are finally letting go. Of the idea that you can run away from your past. From the healing process.
Trying to jump straight to the letting go process is not genuine. It is not authentic. Many of us spend years and years carrying the past. We can’t find peace because we haven't done the healing process correctly. Don't bypass healing.
2. Prime the Ego
Healing the emotional body requires regular talks with your ego. It is not a critical self-talk. It is not “shut up, you stupid ego”! Please don't do that.
It’s loving and compassionate self-talk. See your ego as your super protective friend. It will do anything in its power to protect you from ‘unnecessary’ pain.
The ego doesn't like pain. It wants what it is familiar with. It will choose the easy way every time. It will try to bypass healing. Talk to your ego. Especially if you have a big ego that formed early in life because of having to grow up too fast. The ego gets controlling because it needs to protect you and keep you safe.
Priming the ego means reassuring it that the work you are about to do is NECESSARY. And for the benefit of the mind, body, and soul. Offer the ego a safe space. There are various ways to prime the ego.
- Soothing self-talk
Note that this self-talk is loving and 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. Talk to your ego like you would talk to a wounded child. Assure it and it will calm down and allow you into the healing space.
- Mantras. Say things like,
Everything is ok. I need to do this. We need to heal. This is necessary. This is for my highest benefit. Make up your own.
Once you prime the ego, the healing work becomes so much easier because the ego drops its defenses. It knows it’s safe. And that's all the ego needs.
An Ego that feels safe allows inner work to continue.
3. Sit with the Past
Sitting with our emotions is the most difficult. Especially for empaths. Emotional turmoil is as painful to an empath as putting your hand on the hot flame. Inner turmoil is extremely difficult.
Sitting with the past means going inward. Going into the wound. Going into the past painful experience. Doing this is like tearing a scab off of a wound that hasn't healed properly. What happens when you tear a scab off a wound? It bleeds. Again.
It gets intense and emotions come up. Sit with them. Many of us resist, but you have to sit with your pain. Give yourself permission to grieve. You can’t skip this!
When you fail to grieve, you are repressing your energy system, therefore, creating stagnation in the system.
Grieve what you lost. 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? Do this instead
- Engage the Pain
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
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 it, then release them, for good!
4. Out with the negative vibes. Breathe in good Energy.
Recognize your pain isn’t only yours. Someone out there right now feels the same emotions you are feeling. Sit with that thought for a bit.
Recognize you are not the only one suffering from that type of pain. The moment you recognize that same pain in someone else, even if you don't know this person, you expand.
Pain causes us to contract. It closes our hearts. The moment you expand, it opens your heart to compassion and empathy. Here is what you do.
Breathe in that pain and sorrow from others, and yourself. Breathe out love and compassion. Kindness and empathy, towards anybody going through the same pain.
What happens when you do this? You make yourself this big, beautiful, spiritual being who is not only healing for self but for others as well. This helps heal many wounds within you and many other people. You affect change in someone else.
They may not know you or that you are doing this, but you are still helping heal the entire planet.
Understand that healing is not linear. Don't count the days. Don't keep track of how long healing is taking place.
Remain positive throughout the process. Healing can take days, weeks even months. Be gentle with yourself and tell your mind, body, and soul how proud you are for taking a step towards living a life of freedom and peace.
Is there anything from your past you are going to heal and let go once and for all? Let me know in the comments I’d love to hear from you.