I've done a lot of road tripping the past week going to doctor appointments with my infant grandson and then bringing him to stay with me a couple of days. Driving always gives me time to get into my head and sort things through -- the active thought meditation I described in an earlier post. This time around I got to thinking about my life habits and my weaknesses. I realized that my biggest struggle through the entire arc of my life (which spans over half a century - WOW!) is one of "security". And what that all boils down to is money issues and relationship issues. This realization put me on course to poke around in some scary corners of my mind where I had sent things to live that I didn't ever want to revisit. But guess what came out to play? Yep. It was like opening Fred Flintstone's closet and everything came tumbling out. It was quite an emotional roller coaster as I sifted through old issues that I had poked away rather than face. I realized I had a lot of repressed guilt and shame. As with a lot of people, there are things from my past that are incongruous with my present and made me feel hypocritical in some ways. Needless to say, it left me feeling a bit emotionally raw.
Today I had a good long chat with a friend and he pointed out some really great things. Not all things from the past have to be told, the past is fixed and cannot be changed, and the past is what has shaped us to be the people we are today. So, rather than suppress the past, examine it for what it is and embrace it -- use it for the purpose that it is meant to serve -- recognize that the past has shaped the person that you are today, right now in this moment. Everything behind you got you where you are now. From here, you can review the past, assess it, and then take that information to make decisions now and going forward.
So the bottom line is, the past shapes the now and the now will shape your future. Learn from where you have been and use it to charter where you are going.
And one more thing that I learned: you should be as kind and loving and forgiving to yourself as you would be to anyone else in your life. You deserve it.
Bright Blessings,
~Rayven~
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