“When I stand before thee at the day's end, thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing.” - Rabindranath Tagore
Why Letting Go of The Past Is So Hard
Once you begin to observe your mind and learn to become less identified with it, one of the main things that will startle you, is that you will become aware of all the unnecessary mental garbage we all carry inside us. This can be quite frightening.
These are unconscious tendencies and thought patterns that until now were silently operating below your conscious awareness. They dictate your day to day experience. These internal dialogues that we have carried for years have become deeply ingrained into our minds and bodies.
They actually alter our physiology and have become burned impressions in the neural pathways of our brains. They are known as engrams in the medical field. An engram is a physical alteration thought to occur in the living neural tissue in response to stimuli, posited as an explanation for memory.
In eastern traditions this is known as samskara and is responsible for ones karma. Healing memories is healing and clearing your karma.
These mental stories we carry become our identity, we mother them, we love them, even if they cause suffering. We may not be aware of it, but at a deep level we receive pleasure from many of our internal dramas. They become our most intimate addictions.
We don't want to lose them because then we lose a part of us (what we believe to be us), and we don't have anything new to replace it with. If we lose them we don't know how to deal with the emptiness.
Healing Memories
We need to go through a physical and mental cleanse, to loosen up and break free from these mental impressions. Once they become loose there is the possibility of dropping them.
The best is learning to be with your silence, with your emptiness. It's like wiping the slate clean, hitting the restart button, and relaxing into just “being”. It is a beautiful feeling when you don't have the urge to go or do something else. Whatever you are doing at the moment is complete in of itself.
Three Step Process To Loosening and Healing Your Mental Scars
1st Physical level (Cathartic meditation techniques): This could be any intense physical excercise like yoga, but I prefer to do cathartic meditation. This is what the Indian mystic Bagwan Shree Rashneesh, better known as Osho became famous for. He developed what he called “Dynamic” meditation techniques, which incorporate an initial intense cathartic process. This process was intended to throw out all mental and bodily tensions which are a direct hindrance to falling into meditation. The people of Buddha’s time lived much simpler lives and did not carry all the unnecessary junk that modern man now carries. Cathartic meditation techniques will help cleanse the muscle memory.
2nd Mental Level: Talk it out, everyday like a ritual. This will help you cleanse your brains memories. Talk about it like you are an impartial observer, just narrating the movie that is your life. Just seeing and describing it without judging whether it's good or bad. If you can do this you have already changed your relationship to the memory. The act of observing has changed the observed. You have put some space between you and it. If you begin to judge it, this means you have become identified with the memory and will only make your relationship to it stronger.
3rd Level -Laugh and Cry: This is reasonless crying and reasonless laughing. The effects are amazing, you will feel as if your consciousness is being cleansed. This helps loosen up your forgotten memories, your deep rooted conditioning.
Doing all three daily as a ritual for a month, will have an immense impact on your system. You will feel your system become loose and light. I know everyone has busy schedules but the more time your are able to devote to these practices, the more beneficial results you will gain.
- Morning: 1 hour heavy physical catharsis. This could be dynamic mediation, yoga, running, any type of heavy physical exercise.
- Noon: For 1 hours do nothing but talk about your past. Go as far back as you can.
- Evening: Crying or laughing for 1 hour for no reason. At first this might seem hard, artificial, and forced. Quickly you will get a knack for it and once the laughter begins it will take you with it. It's quite a beautiful exercise. Now you will relax into bedtime feeling light from the laughter or relieved from the crying, or a mixture of both.
Some of the benefits you may receive from healing your past:
- Release from addictions.
- Release and relief from many of the traumas you have accumulated since birth.
- Healing emotional wounds.
- Phobias
- Tiredness: Physical, mental, and emotional blockages.
- Physical diseases: Many happened only from psychological disorders caused by the mental engrams in your system.
We live in crazy hectic times, so it's of the up-most importance that we regularly cleanse ourselves. I hope that my short article assists you on your journey to inner and outer fulfillment.
If you have any personal insights you would like to add, please join the conversation below and leave your comments.
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