The Past Revisited Forever

In her blog a friend recently posted a piece with the title: "Why is it so &#%$ difficult to leave the past where it is?" Laura had some wonderful insight in her blog (Check it out LINK)

I figure, too, everyone should have their shot at answering the question. Do you have an answer?  

Here is mine:  

Why is it so &#%$ difficult to leave the past where it is?
Because the past is right here.

It hasn't gone anywhere. It's where it resided when it first transpired, and it will forever be there. 

And it will forever be here for us, whenever we need it.

Like a movie that is always running in a back room, we can visit it. We can go into Theater 1 and observe our first date and what a mess that was, and then into Theater 2 and see that punt that we ran back for a touchdown right there in front of our dad. Then Theater 3 for the laugh attack when driving our girlfriend cross country relating funny tale after funny tale. And also Theater 4, the last day you saw your mother alive, as you kissed her on the forehead as she lay there on the hospice bed.

It's all there. It doesn't go anywhere. We won't be able to leave the past behind because it is what has formed us into the person that we are. It resides in an infinite storage house called the "subconscious mind." From this humoungous storehouse, from these rows upon rows of theaters, we can access what is needed at certain times.

The main questions about our past we must ask include:

1. Are there aspects of the past that bother us? 
2. If so, why?
3. Does it make us happy to review the movie of our past? 
4. If so why is that?

Since the past definitely happened, and since it won't - according to this writers' theory - not actually go anywhere - what can be done to make peace with all that will be with us for the rest of our lives?
 
I recall many times in my work in the "healing" field, working to regress clients back into the "past," as well as times of my own healing being regressed back there. In my regression various memories would pop up in order to be observed, confronted, felt, integrated and transformed into my own oneness of experience - beyond good and bad.

In what could be termed a sacred embrace, we can call forward that aspect of the past that still hides in the shadows of acceptance and sit face to face with it. And simple BE with it. And cry. And scream. And feel what could not be expressed the FIRST time it came around. Did you get hurt? Did someone break your boundaries? Were they in fact obliterated? Were you ignored? Did someone overlook you? Were you witness to some heinous act of crime, rape, murder? Did you get hurt?

The more harsh the past, the more we want to "let it go." But what is this "letting go?" Can we truly erase those life experiences? Or is it more healthy to find safe, non-judgmental environments where such experiences can trickle up to the surface in order to be encountered ... where we can sit face-to-face with a past we have been hiding, where we can feel all the emotions surrounding it and express the sentiments that have, as yet, been left silent.

As Laura so eloquently suggests in her post, we can re-frame the negative aspects of the past by using them in a learning opportunity: gaining a lesson, finding a way to use it to help others, holding it in a sacred place of rich history.

Such re-framing is indeed healing for the soul, which is infinitely wise enough to know we do not "let go" of the past. We don't let it go because it is a gift to our personal growth. It will also be with us forever ... positive in minds that hold it positive and embraced into a positive for those who can see the past in a way that rounds out a soul's sojourn.

And the final reason we don't leave the past where it is?
Because the past is right here.

James Anthony Ellis is a writer and producer who uses his past to write a bunch of plays and movies and stuff, happily. He's found at www.LegacyProductions.org.