Our past history rarely sits pretty with us. It usually gets us into more trouble than we think we actually bargained for. We either are living out repeats of our personal history or running from our past while still trapped inside it. There's no escape until our past history no longer exists for us. Until then, disregarding past history looks irrational, reckless and extremely unrealistic.
When something happens to us or we do something that overwhelms us at the time, we store the incident away as emotional baggage. We keep the overwhelming feelings out of our rational thought processes where they bog us down every time we try to reason with the memories. We live in fear of repeat incidents, alarming accusations, dangerous exposure or drowning in guilt. We keep the entire mess in denial where it is unthinkable, unmentionable and unrelated to others in our lives. We live confined by very strong feelings that tell us we cannot change, we will fail when we try, we must stop hoping and we already know what happens every time this comes up.
As we go on new adventures, explore other avenues and change our immediate situation, we get a different sense of our past. We can face it with some power, confidence and resolve. We find we can accept it as simply what happened and let it define who we are for now. We take the convincing evidence of the incident to establish the facts of our life. We identify with how we survived it. We predict were we can succeed and where we will hit a wall.
We're now in a position to look forward to the future, to set goals and make plans. We can put our past behind us and move into our life that awaits us when we steer carefully. We get a sense of destiny and direction in our discoveries. We see something on the horizon to chase after with new found ambition. We know we are more than what has already happened to us.
As these pursuits unfold, we succeed at superficial pleasures. We find we can win at other's expense and take advantage of others without immediate consequence. We enjoy all the problems to solve, people to fix and changes to make happen. We get ahead, make progress and take pride in our accomplishments.
In the midst of all these advances, we will be haunted by our past history once again. Our baggage will be opened at the worst times. Our hot buttons will get pushed when we are trying to be cool. Those lingering ghosts from our past will darken the sunny situation. Our superficial pleasures and shallow victories will turn against us like a storm of bad karma. It appears we cannot put our past behind us for good until we completely let go of what happened and how it defined us. We feel very heavily burdened by so much to take back on ourselves, to take responsibility for and to take to heart.
When these changes happen, we realize we are not running the show here. Something larger is orchestrating the timing, sequence and content of our lives. We begin to go through a change of identity, like a caterpillar getting enveloped by a cocoon. Previous facts of our life are highly suspect and likely to be thrown out entirely. We're finding there's more to life than meets the eye. We start adding an unforeseen dimension to our experience. We begin to live deeply.
In the depths of our past history and continual reenactments, we claim our prize. We find our saving grace. We discover buried treasure at the bottom of our sea of despair. We realize we been cultivating gifts that were there all along, hidden for safe-keeping and blossoming with perfect timing. We open our baggage and find the wealth we will give the world. We realize how to make a gift of ourselves.
Upon these realizations, our past history is decidedly unreal. It appears like a bad dream we've awakened from. We have no more use for the fears, limitations and assumptions that our past history imposed on us. We see how living in time is an unfortunate situation and living in the mysterious now is delightful.
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