Hi beautiful people.
I’m starting a new small series on the topic of Breaking Karmic cycles. This series contains 3 parts.
- The past is the past is the past: How to move on from your past
- Life is not a crisis: What to do when you are tired of your own drama
- Breaking free from your Karmic Cycles
The past: A story we love to tell. Or a story we love to hate. Either way, as long as we keep digging into our past, we’re stuck. Because life doesn’t happen in the past. Life happens now.
Why do we look into the past?
Why is our past so mesmerizing? Why does it draw us in with so much magnetism?
I think we look into our past for a few reasons. It may be because we are looking for reasons for why we are the way we are today. Or perhaps we are gazing longingly back at “the golden years” of our lives. Or maybe we are unable let go because we still feel bound by tremendous guilt, rage, denial at that which has transpired in our lives.
Whichever your reason for going back, one common thread that ties us together, is that the way our life is today, and the way we are today, is not bright, intense, or fulfilling enough to keep us here. So we go back and we search for answers, we search for reasons, we search with regret for moments that may invoke sparkles of hope or happiness within us. We believe that something we find in the past will allow us to live a better life today.
Karma vs Freedom
The past has happened. Now it’s just a story you tell others and you tell yourself. You did what you knew best, what you thought was right and appropriate, you did what you thought would bring you happiness, and so did everyone involved.
But you can learn from it.Maya Angelou says “When you know better, you do better.”And you are learning from it, even on levels you may not even be aware of right now. The past changes us at a very intrinsic level, even without us consciously digging into it.
We are who we are because of the past. That is the power of Karma. But that is not freedom.
Freedom is having the power and intelligence to break free from the cycles of Karma, and to live with more choice.
If the type of teenager we were is because of what happened to us as a child, and the way we are now because of what happened to us as a teenager, where is the freedom in that? When can we be the way we are because of how we choose to be, because of who we are?
Of course sometimes it is necessary to sift through the past. It would be foolish not to. Perhaps to get some information about a particular situation or a particular person. Suppose there has been a person in your life who has had a strong pattern of being deceitful – that kind of information from past interactions helps you make a better decision as to what kind of relationship you would like to have with this person today. So looking at past experiences for certain information is useful. But being deeply identified with your past, is not useful and can only hold you back.
Do I need to know what my past life was?
What is the point? If we are having enough trouble keeping up with and managing this life, why bring in another life into the picture too? Knowing these things won’t improve the way you live this life. What we need now is to create enough space and distance between us and our past, not get closer to it. This space and distance will enable us to start making different decisions and master our life today.
Maybe once this has happened, looking into your past lives might be beneficial. But until then, we have work to do.
The great thing is that everything you need to learn about life is available for you right now. You don’t need to live life in rewind, in slow motion, or paused. All we need to do to overcome our past is to make us into the brightest, most alive version of ourselves right now. If we can do that, then whatever has happened in the past will not be able to move us. But if we don’t live that way, if we live meekly, without having tapped into the power of life, then we will drown in our own past.
Our stories of the past
Our past is nothing but a story we tell. If you need to make a story out of it, at least make it a good one. At least make it a story worth telling. At least make it a story that doesn’t frighten you, or depress you.
The golden years
We often look back longingly at different periods of life and believe they were the golden years of our life. We look back on our childhood and think “I was so free then! I was so happy and I played all the time and I was truly happy.”
But we forget that childhood had it’s own set of problems at the time. We had a fight with our friends, our parents were angry at us, we failed a test at school.
We look back on being single “That was the best time of my life, I had no worries or responsibilities, I only had to focus on myself. I was young, full of energy, attractive, I had a great social life with so many friends. Now my life is so different.”
But when we were single, maybe we complained about being alone, we felt empty from a string of meaningless relationships, we were reckless with our bodies, and we were dealing with other issues.
We look at when we were in a relationship “I had someone in my life and I really loved him/her. It is so sad that it didn’t work out. I wish it did because I really did love him/her. We had so many great times together and he/she always made me laugh and took care of me. It was so nice to have someone who loved me/ who I loved.”
But when we were in that relationship, we were depressed, we fought about anything and everything, we cried on a weekly basis, we wondered if we would ever find someone who would really love us.
Make this your Golden Year
We often miss things because they are over and we look back with rose-tinted glasses. We look back and things become golden. But if something feels golden while you are going through it – that is wonderful, and you have given yourself the possibility to make it into something beautiful. If it becomes golden only once it’s over, then this memory serves no purpose other than holding you back.
They say the grass is always greener on the other side. But you know which grass is greener? The grass that is watered.
The most important thing you can do for yourself is to find value in what is in front of you right now, and not for what it once was.
Try to live as though you are in the golden year of your life. This is it. This is all and everything. If you live this way, day by day, then your whole life will become Golden.
Forget about memory
Our karma works in such a way that we make whatever we are given into whatever we know how to make it into.
If we only know how to make copper, then if someone gives us gold, we will make it into copper. Because we don’t know how to work with gold. We only know how to work with copper. This is our Karma. Months, years, lifetimes of making copper. That’s what Karma is – processes that are taking place without our lives purely out of life memory.
When we live our life with this as our main force in place – we live life in circles. The same lessons coming back over and over again. The same struggles. The same patterns. Going round and round. Ugh. Get me off this ride.
And then there is another force we can live with. Intensity. Life. When this is the most powerful force within you, it cannot turn into anything as it is already in its absolute form. It is a force that is unaffected by memory, karma, mind or body. With this force leading you, you can push forward, you break cycles, you live differently, you transform.
If you want to get off the memory train ride, you need to do the inner work to make your life brighter and more intense now. When you become a more powerful person in the present moment you will create more space between you and your past. When this happens, we can finally become who we are and choose how we want to live.I am grateful to you for giving me the space to share the lessons I am learning.
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Malavikaxo
