I write often about accepting the past as having been a necessary part in our growth to become who we are meant to be. It’s a big subject that can cause a great deal of discomfort for many people.
No one said that life was going to be fair, and there are no intellectual reasons for things to happen the way they do. Life just is what it is.
There are a lot of us who still carry the wounds of days gone by, using them to limit and define who we allow ourselves to be now.
Everyone deals with so many different things. That is why it is difficult to give someone advice or tell them what they should do in any situation. It is impossible to know the entire story of someone else’s life.
We become a product of all of the experiences that have happened to us, from the moment we are born to this present moment as you read these words. The experiences become our story, and the story either moves us forward or holds us back.
What do you tell yourself all day long that is supportive, and what is destructive?
Whatever happened is an experience that no longer exists. Only the memory remains, and that is a story that you repeat to yourself over and over. You can only keep the past alive if you continue to invoke it in the present.
All experiences we have can be learned from and then released. Reliving unpleasant memories is a form of self-punishment that satisfies an unproductive need to feel guilty.
Know that everything you experienced served a purpose in the unfolding of your consciousness, the progression towards becoming an enlightened being.
Know that it is all there to serve the purpose of you remembering who you truly are.
If you are still alive, then whatever atrocities you experienced did not destroy you. You had the strength to survive and now in this moment you have the ability to thrive. Use the challenges of the past to reinforce the knowledge that you can make it through anything.
Experiences come and go, things we label as good or bad happen and then disappear, and it is only in our minds that the stories of these events continue to live. This is where acceptance brings relief.
By accepting whatever has happened to you, you can then move on. Learn from the experience and then allow it to drift away.
Keeping unpleasantness alive in your mind as a story you relive over and over is torture from within. As difficult as it may seem, you can release this noose from your neck and move forward in this moment as a happy person.
Bad things happen to good people every moment of every day. Life is unfair, none of us deserves to suffer, and you are justified in your resentment towards everything that anyone ever did to you that was hurtful.
Now get over it.
You hurt no one but yourself by carrying the pain of the past into this moment. You hurt your beautiful energy, you harm your body, and you poison the time that you have remaining in this lifetime.
Just let it go. Forgiveness does not imply condoning, but it does offer release. Give yourself the gift of peace by releasing all that is holding you as a prisoner of the past.