Can you let the past go with grace and ease?

“Well, I guess we’d all put in for different pasts if we could,” says a character in the movie Desert Hearts. I suspect it’s true that everyone has events in their past that they wish they could change or even erase. It would be nice if we could have cosmic do-overs and maybe we can. In the meantime, though, how we deal with our past is very important because it has a huge influence on our today.

 What we’re seeing in our current world, personal and collective, is the result of our past thoughts. We live in our past as long as we focus on the way things are instead of how we want them to be. Here’s what I mean.

 Let’s say I want to invent the perfect chair in which to relax. I have a recliner so I start looking at the recliner and focus on how it works. What I’m looking at is the past. It is someone else’s vision of the perfect chair in which to relax. As long as all I do is look at this chair, I am continuing to look at the past. The chair I want to make does not exist in the past.

 After looking at the chair, I decide what elements I want to keep in my chair and what elements the other chair is missing that I want to add. This chair doesn’t exist except in my mind and it stays there until I create it in the material world. Once I do that, it becomes part of my past.

 I hear you saying, “No, it is now part of your present because now it exists in the material world.” This is partially true – it does exist in my present physical world. But where did it come from? Did it just materialize itself from nothing? No, it didn’t. It’'s the product of my mind, my thinking, and my ability to change my thoughts into something physical. That happened in the past.

 So, following this line of thinking, when I look at anything that currently exists, I am looking at the past. If I want a different today, I must not keep looking at whatever already exists. Instead, I have to start thinking about how I want things to be. The more I focus on that, the sooner my present will change to match what I am focusing on.

 What does this have to do with letting go of the past? Everything.

 If you have things in your past that you would like to release, stop focusing on them. As long as you continue to think about them, the longer you continue to support their existence in your present.

 What about people who have done bad things or who have had bad things done to them? Don’t we need to go through years of therapy in order to be able to move on?Therapy and counseling can be incredibly effective tools to help heal and let go of the past and if anyone reading this has a difficult past they simply can’t let go of, get in touch with a good therapist who can lead you through the healing process.

 However, a therapist who wants to keep you in therapy for a very long time could be questionable. As I wrote in an earlier newsletter, a good therapist knows that their job is to get their clients to the point where the therapist is no longer needed. Their job is to do themselves out of a job.

Spiritual teacher Terry Cole-Whittaker made an excellent point about this. She asked the question, “When you are driving your car down the road, where do you look? Do you look at your rearview mirror? Or do you look through the windshield? Sure, you might glance in your rearview mirror once in awhile to see what’s going on behind you, but you focus most of your attention looking out the windshield.”

We have a choice of looking in our rearview mirror and risking a collision or paying attention to what’s right in front of us while we are moving forward. I know what I’m choosing. What about you?

 If you’re having trouble letting go of the past so you can create a better present, and if you don’t think you need therapy (or even if you do), try one of these techniques.

Balloon: Mentally put your past trouble or situation in a balloon, release the balloon, and watch it float away. Some people like to make this a pink balloon but I think the color is up to you.

 Burn it: Write the situation down on paper and then find a safe place to burn the piece of paper. While it burns, mentally let go of whatever it is that’s bothering you.

Flush it: Some people like to write their trouble on a piece of paper small enough to flush down the toilet.

 Bury it or drown it: Mentally put your troubles into a rock or crystal and then bury it far away from where you live or drop it into the ocean, a river, or lake.

 I’m sure you can come up with your own way of letting go of the things that are holding you back. Once you have done whatever ritual works for you, be sure to then plant new seeds, new thoughts, and focus on growing and developing those rather than digging up your old problems from the past. As we enter the last quarter of this year, this is the perfect time to do some clearing of the old and planting of the new.

 You can create a new life, right here, right now. The more of us who do this, the sooner the world will change – it has to because the world is made up of us.

….and have a safe and happy Halloween!

Living in grace and ease,

Krysta