The Power Of The Past And The Power To Choice
When i was a child of maybe 9 or 10 years old, I remember a friend and I laying in bed during a sleepover discussing what out lives would be like when we grew up. We had been exposed to alcoholism, violence, living on the breadline, poor mental health and other negative forces. Yet we laid in bed and talked of nice houses by the river living next door to each other, husbands and children. Never at any point did i think growing up that i didn't choose my life but life could choose me...But can it?
I know that CHOOSE is a word we hear alot. 'You choose your own destiny' for example, but do we?
It is misleading to say that a person chooses to be in a disfuctional relationship or chooses to stay in the confines of their house for fear or outside or any other negative situation you can think of.
Choice implies consciousness- a high degree of consciousness. without it you have no choice. Choice begins the moment you disidentify from the condtioned patterns you have become accustomed too and the moment you become present. until you reach that point you are unconscious, spirtually speaking.
we feel, think and act in certain ways according to the conditioning of our past and our minds.
For example you find yourself in yet another abusive relationship. No choice? bad luck? Bad taste in men/woman? Or is it because the mind is conditioned by our past and always seeks to re-create what it knows it is familier with? Even if it painful, at least it is familiar. The mind always falls back on what it knows. the unknown is dangerous to our mind because we feel we have no control over it. So the mind ignores the present moment and acts out a mind pattern learned in early childhood according to which you were unworthy and deserved to be punished. Of course the partner will also have their own unconscious patterns they have learnt during childhood to cause them to act the way they do which complements their partners.
So what can you do about it?
It is time to learn inner-body awareness thought mediation, yoga and hypnotherapy. It is important to learn the power of now and the meaning of our presence NOW in order to break through your conditoned past. Nobody choices dysfuction, conflict and pain nobody choices to be mentally unwell. They happen because there isn't enough presence in you to disolve the past, not enough light to dispel the darkness, you are not fully here. I remember everytime i spoke to my foster brother i constantly said 'Do you remember when...' and one day he turned to me and said 'I have lived 100 different lives since then and so have you, it is good to reminisce some times but you can't stay there.' I enough reminiscing and didn't see there was a problem with it, and there isn't.. but the more i thought about myself i realised that i did spend more time in my head comparing my fun teenage years to my years in my 30's and that only stopped me enjoying now, I spent alot of time talking about how hard things were as a child and dwelled so much on how much we went without i forgot that i no longer do. it was at that moment that i realised i wasn't fully woke yet and the conditioned mind was still running my life.
if you are run by your mind, although you have no choice you will still suffer the consequences of your unconsciousness, and you will create further suffering, you will bear the burden of fear, conflict, problems and pain, You must learn during your time of awakening to forgive. You need to be fully conscious in order to surrender before you can forgive. Forgiveness is not something that you only seek from others but from within your own mind too. you cannot truely forgive others or yourself until you are living for now thus rendering the past powerless to control your future.
How will you know when you are fully awake and in the present?
When you no longer need to ask yourself that question.
