letitgo.ca

Letting go of Wanting to Be Controlled by the Past

If we have a repeating pattern of responding to a particular situation in the same way we always have, it becomes ingrained. Maybe it’s a neighbor who has been difficult or a project that has been hard or even just an assumption about how how the world seems to work. When I expect my neighbor to be difficult it can  become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In our close relationships we have a tendency to think we know the other person and to respond to our story of that person instead of being fresh and open to endless possibilities that can emerge with this conscious, mysterious and incredible being. Something we can do,  is to let go of wanting to be controlled by the past so we can respond freely and creatively to this new set of circumstances and treat  every situation as if it’s the very first time we have ever experienced it: because it is the first time we have experienced this moment! The more we do that, the more we are able to really respond creatively and appropriately to whatever is happening now without trying to reduce it to a pattern from the past.

Most of us allow the past to dictate our present. We live in a whole fantasy world or  story about what was, being the way it is now. I’m not saying that some patterns don’t repeat. But most of us have many experiences that we look back on and we assume it’s going to turn out in that particular way again, so we don’t try anymore, or we avoid the situation, or we just resign ourselves to it just turning out someway we don’t want it to. I know for me that sometimes letting the past run things gets me off the hook for taking responsibility for doing what I could actually do now to make things better. It can be a game plan to keep things small and to rule out possibility and messy change.

If we stay open and fluid we have more choices about how to respond to a situation. Perhaps there will be some fresh response available to us rather than our usual knee jerk reaction. Maybe the habitual reaction is best…If we are open and aware we can still actively  choose that response, but not out of giving our power to the past. 

When I am not reducing the present moment to the past, things flow and grow organically, blooming and blossoming. When I let go of wanting to make the present moment into a facsimile of the past, I am surrendering to the flow of life.

So, a powerful way we can free ourselves is to let go of wanting to be a victim of the past: to let go of wanting to give our power away to the past.

This applies to our own personal experiences in the past and also the cultural experiences we have taken on from our parents or our culture as if they were our own. We can let go of letting the past dictate what is possible now.

The following audio is a guided release, or meditation, to experience letting go of wanting to be controlled by the past, by our stories of the past.

Let yourself get into a comfortable position and allow yourself to take a couple of deep slow breaths.