You are who you are today because of your past experiences, both good and bad. However, unresolved pain, trauma or negative experiences often overshadow our current lives and inhibit us from being fully present in the moment and living life joyfully and freely.
Part of our job as humans is to move beyond what holds us stagnant in smallness and allow our lives to guide us toward greater fulfilment of purpose and expression.
Experiences we were not able to process, absorb, and grow beyond are akin to eating something we can’t digest — let alone absorb nourishment from. The substance of it remains a stagnant toxin in our system, until we can finally break it down and render it harmless.
Children seem meant to be born into challenges, and never has there been a moment where the humanly created challenges for ourselves and our planet are more pressing. And yet within us even now lies the potential of true, lasting, and positive transformation.
There are so many transitions in our lives’ earliest, most helpless days, when we have left the shelter of the womb and need that loving attention.
Losses happen and some may leave seemingly devastating marks — yet within the worst suffering, lie the seeds of our greatest growth.
The events of our past continue to affect us for as long as they continue to live in us through our habits, thoughts and emotions.
The journey towards healing the past is a way of taking back what is ours and stepping into present time with clarity, peace, and intention. This process involves understanding these events, accepting them as part of oneself, and integrating them through mindfulness practices, self-reflection, and therapeutic modalities.
Understanding the Impact of Our Past
It is important to understand how our past shapes our thoughts, feelings and behaviors in order to heal it.
Because childhood is the important time when humans need to learn how to survive in the world, our earliest schooling is within the family and environment where we are living. So what we see, what we hear, and what we perceive, is what we literally “write down” within our neural network as to how life is.
This is our initial programming, and it will depend greatly on our own sensitivity and the experiences that we have.
Recognize this: Many of the teachings in our survival manual are so ingrained that they drive our behavior automatically. Despite all the stock we put into our conscious mind’s ability to assess, make choices, and act, this is only part of how we interact with life. Our conscious mind isn’t even that big a part of us — although we tend to ascribe everything we believe we are to it.
Below that relatively small portion of our human operating system is a whole realm of unknown and unconscious triggers, many derived directly from our earliest experiences and assumptions. These silent influences continually direct neurological, chemical, and hormonal signals to be sent throughout our bodies. They use our energy and affect our physical sensations, emotions, thoughts, actions, and reactions.
It appears we humans are meant to be messed around with, to feel the entire spectrum of emotions, to explore and stumble and encounter hardship and stress right from the beginning. To learn about what does and doesn’t feel good. To be indoctrinat- ed into a worldview that reflects the history and experience of the family into which we are born.
As our brains and nervous systems develop, they get trained into set patterns of neural pathways that become our automatic pilot of thinking/feeling/living.
Learning to Let Go of the Past
What the child in us doesn’t realize is that we have grown up since those days. The situation, the environment, the people around us have long since changed — and so have we. Trusting in our own capacity to find personal transformation and growth through anything we have lived, is the first step.
Next, is the willingness to accept — or at least imagine accepting — our past pain or trauma as a pathway for our growth. This takes time and patience — and compassion. And then one day we find ourselves finally able to digest what had previously felt toxic. A deep hurt becomes one more transformative influence in becoming the wise, whole person we came here to be.
In between our first awareness that we need to heal something and the healing, are a series of choices that we can make to help ourselves. These involve working with our nervous system, our bodies, our brains, minds and hearts.
We are teaching ourselves new ways of being that are healthier, more peaceful and loving. We are evolving beyond our origins, elevating ourselves into love. There are various modalities you can bring in to help yourself.
Making the Subconscious Conscious
To live fully in the present, it is vital to bring forth our subconscious patterns and beliefs into conscious awareness. The subconscious mind contains deep-seated fears, traumas and unresolved emotions which often operate at a level below consciousness but have a profound impact on thoughts, behaviors as well as reactions. We can begin identifying these hidden influences by making them known thereby transforming them from negative into positive sources of strength or growth.
Carl Jung said that “Until you make your unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
The process of bringing to light what lies hidden in our subconscious involves looking within ourselves through self-reflection, meditation or therapy. Meditation is a cornerstone practice of becoming aware of our hidden thoughts and emotions.
When we shine light on previously unrecognized parts of ourselves we have a chance to heal, to change patterns, to replace disempowering beliefs with empowering beliefs.
Scientists used to believe that we can’t change our brains, that our neural pathways are locked in for life. This is no longer the case! Scientists now realize that our brains are actually malleable and, with the proper attention, can be altered.
Healing one’s past is a brave and life changing experience that enables us to become wholeheartedly alive in the present tense.
We develop this freedom by recognizing how prior experiences have affected us through mindfulness; learning to work with our bodies and minds; therapy; and self-reflection. In so doing, we not only heal but we also change our external circumstances.
No matter what we have lived through, we must come to see our origins and ourselves in a new light. In the light of wrongs being rebirthed into rights. In the light of radical, compassionate acceptance. In the light of plain and simple love.