Lose Interest in the Pain of Your Past
There is no moment in which everything around us isn’t beginning. In fact, if the various cosmos – from the greatest to the least – had a slogan, it would be this: “In with the new, out with the old.”
This celestial principle of regeneration is not only ceaseless in the world around us; it is always at work within us, as well. We are renewed every moment, from the inside out. Now let’s see how this one truth can empower us to let go of any lingering pain of the past, whether from three seconds or thirty years ago.
We understand that the whole universe never stops changing, and that we are each a part of this greater whole. Science confirms this finding; every cell in our body is exchanged within a period of seven years. No part of who we once were remains the same; every element is replaced with something new. These findings hold many self-liberating revelations, but none more important than the following:
Since real life renews itself every microsecond, then whatever moment our mind keeps pointing to from our past can’t possibly be the real reason for our present pain. We must look elsewhere for whatever stands between us, and our right to be released from the pain of our past. Which brings us to this:
Within us lives a lower nature that vigorously insists on remaining the same. While it would have us believe otherwise, this false self resists all that should, and would naturally change within us. It clings, tenaciously, to images of pain of your past experiences that it has stored away, even as it cries out, claiming that it can’t escape their attending pain.
For example, perhaps we’re sitting at home having a morning cup of coffee, or walking through a supermarket. Our mind is mingling with all the available impressions, and merrily we float along in their stream. And then, unbidden, comes a certain thought, triggered perhaps by an image or familiar-looking person that “catches” our eye. In a flash, though virtually unconscious to us, that impression triggers a string of associations with some old, emotion-laden image from our past. The next thing we know is that we’re knee-deep in a struggle to escape the suffering of that negative memory. But, what we can’t see in this same moment, and that we need to, is this: the part of us wrestling with that pain from our past is a very familiar sense of self that can’t exist without the past it says it can’t stand! As the famous cartoon character, Pogo, once said: “We have met the enemy, and…he is us!”
Our knowledge and awareness of this unconscious nature is the key to our power over it whenever it attempts to deceive us into reliving its life. The clearer becomes the following new understanding, the nearer we are to the freedom it brings: this lower level of self must have something to resist in order to exist. Add to this fact that this false nature has no power of its own, that whatever strength it has to cause us suffering it must borrow from us, and the power becomes ours; not to push away this pain or, for that matter, to “do” anything at all about the past upon which it is blamed. Ours is the power to give this pain, and the level of self responsible for it, nothing but our awareness that the time has come for it to be made into something new.
Key Lesson: Any pain of your past must pass the moment you lose interest in it! Stop looking at what you don’t want to see, and soon you’ll see it no longer.
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About the Author
Guy Finley is the best-selling author of more than 40 books and audio albums on self-realization. He is the founder and director of Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit center for self-study located in southern Oregon where he gives talks four times each week. For more information, visit www.guyfinley.org.
