Your struggle matters too, but do not let it rule you. Do not let it define you. Do not let it become your entire life. Deal with what you must deal with head on in order to heal yourself, but do not let it hold you back from experiencing the fullness of life and all the magic that life on earth holds for you. Resolve your issues without shame and blame. Accept them for what they are, your truths, so that you may embrace the joy, the love, and the wholeness that wait in the wings for you. Yes, you! The magic is waiting for you too. But you will never know it is there if your struggle overwhelms you. Face your struggle down and free yourself. Let your burden down and let love heal you. Let every breath be a healing breath. Let every breath be a loving, healing breath.
Let your memories show you what you have already done and need not do again. Let them be reminders of what once was but is no longer. Let them show you how to let them go and turn in a new direction. Old or new, memories are lessons, come to teach you how to evolve by noting the truth of them and moving on, taking the energy stuck in them and reusing it anew. Some memories may be as old as creation, yours but not yours, placed upon you simply because you exist. Some may be carried over from past lives, some more recent. Wherever your memories come from find the lessons they carry, accept them, and move on into new vigorous life. In this manner will you be free.
Do not weep over what has passed, but do seek to understand it. Without resentment or regret seek to move on unencumbered by burdens of old. Let the old go so that you may fully embrace the new. Remember, so that you may be free. Be free to move on into new life and new adventures. Be free to find what you truly seek. Be free to let yourself just be. Be free in calmness. Be free in peace. Be free in love. Be free in life. What more do you really seek, except freedom that is meaningful and fulfilling? Freedom that is totally yours because you embraced it, worked for it, and achieved it through your own intent. Intend freedom.
Get right within the self. Rather than turn outward, looking at others to blame or to dismiss as getting it wrong, doing it wrong, or having failed in some way, look to the self. How have you gotten it wrong? What are you doing that isn’t right? How have you failed? Turn inward and investigate the self on many deepening levels as to your personal state. Can you accept the truth and deal with it in an inner way rather than an outer way, with all your feelings and emotions on board and part of the process? It’s time to turn inward and get the self right. As you do that the world outside of you will begin to get right again too. As within, so without. And don’t forget, do so without regret or resentment. Do it out of love, loving the self for all that has transpired and loving life to come. Do it with love.
The inspiration for this blog comes from our neighbor Joseph McMoneagle’s book, The Ultimate Time Machine. His reflections on the relativity of the past, as a “reality” largely based upon interpretation, coincides neatly with the Shamans of Ancient Mexico’s experience of the Wheel of Time.
Changing the past allows completion of the labyrinth…
Recapitulation is an ancient shamanic practice that enables one to change the past. As McMoneagle points out, the past is largely defined by our interpretation system, which is mostly determined by our socialization by significant others since the moment of our birth. Thus, memory is largely colored by a feeling tone and cognitive understanding based on socialization.
When we recapitulate we relive the actual experience of the past with the consciousness of fresh eyes, or a point of awareness from the future, now, that affords a different view. From that new perspective, the past indeed changes. Yes, certain events happened that are the focus of the recapitulation, however, the interpretation of those facts is wide open to change.
Beyond actual interpretation is the feeling experience of the object of recapitulation. A traumatic event of violent proportion may at first be experienced as more physically and emotionally intense than actually previously remembered. This in and of itself changes the past because one is allowed, perhaps for the first time, a fuller experience of what actually happened.
The intensity of sensation and emotion emanating from a past event frequently shifts in recapitulation, to the point that remembering the event actually results in a neutral reaction. This is not the result of suppression or dissociation. The formerly traumatic event truly becomes a content of personal history that no longer casts a trigger shadow over present life. In fact, some horrific experiences in life can actually become transformed into objects of humor.
These are genuine examples of changing the past. The change is in having a much broader experience in all that happened in a way not possible when we first experienced it. We were limited by the level of our abilities at that stage of our development, as well as by the defenses our body and higher self brought into play, such as fragmentation and amnesia, as we simply were not ready to take in and make sense of the event as we experienced it. Now we are freed to know it and be with the past in a whole new way.
Recapitulation, then, is a valid technology to change the past, resulting in a fuller energetic presence in life now. In shamanic terms: we retrieve fragmented energy, parts of ourselves previously frozen in a “past” not fully known. This energetic retrieval is possible, as the past can now release it from the bondage of incompletion. The past is changed and the present is enlivened through this change in the past.
So, yes, change in the past can definitely change the present. Practice recapitulation, see what happens!
