|
Today's
Quotation:
You don't realize that if you stop looking
backwards craving the love and
acceptance
which you didn't receive from your parents, then
you might
open your eyes to
what is available for you now. But
you won't let go. If only you could see that
looking back into an incomplete
and imperfect
past, with regret, blame, guilt
or resentment is keeping you
from the treasures
that await you here now.
The past has gone. You
cannot rectify
something that is no longer with you.
Leonard
Jacobson
|
|
Today's
Meditation:
It's so hard sometimes to let go, and part of the reason for
that is that it's very easy to hold on to things from our
past that bring us down. The setbacks and painful
events in life seem to stick in our minds longer, seem to
pop up in our memories much more often whenever we're faced
with any sort of problem. Perhaps you were abused as a
child; perhaps you lost everything when you took that risk;
perhaps you were fired from a job for completely unfair
reasons. Yes, these things might have been awful, but
holding onto them now and focusing on them isn't helping you
at all in your right here, right now.
When we're focused on that relationship that went bad five
years ago, we're sabotaging the relationship that's a part
of our life right now. When we're thinking about that
man who cheated us in business ten years ago, we're
sabotaging our business relationships now. There's a
skill to learning our lessons from negative situations and
then moving on, rather than holding on to the pain and the
fear and allowing it to continue to harm us for as long as
we keep it.
"But it wasn't fair," we say, and that may be
true. "But it hurt," we say. "But
they had no right to do that," we say. And no
one's going to argue with you about these points.
Often we hold on to them because we feel a certain
self-righteousness, because we want others to see us as a
victim so that they'll sympathize with us. But if
you're unwilling to let these things go, then they're going
to continue to hurt you--and it's no longer the other person
or persons hurting you. Now it's you, yourself,
causing the pain that continues to hold you back and keep
you down.
The hurts of our past belong in our past. The lessons
from them are invaluable tools in life, so we can bring them
along in our lives, but let's leave behind what needs to be
left behind, because only when we let go of such things can
we move ahead in our lives.
|
