Making Peace With Our Past

Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about the importance of becoming intimate with your personal history. I'd like to share a quote by Robert Augustus Masters from his book, Spiritual Bypassing. He says, when transcendence of our personal history takes precedence over intimacy with our personal history, spiritual bypassing is inevitable. To not be intimate with our past, to not be deeply and thoroughly acquainted with our conditioning and its originating factors keeps it undigested and unintegrated and therefore very much present, regardless of our apparent capacity for rising above it." So to me, this is a powerful reminder that the work we're doing in mindfulness and meditation is not about denying our past.

It's about becoming intimate with all the dimensions of who we are so that we can experience the fullness of ourselves with presence and not be subconsciously controlled by our past. When we try to circumvent or rise above the messiness of our life without making peace with it, that's spiritual bypassing. And this can be tough because it's not that we should be dwelling constantly on our past. But my suggestion is, if you feel things from your past are often coming up in an emotionally charged way and you have to exert a lot of energy to not focus on them or keep them suppressed, this may be a reason to bring them into your awareness for greater healing. And then you can ask, is this something I've made peace, peace with yet? And if not, Is this something I'm ready to do? We often need to make peace with our personal history before we can let go of it.

So bring this into your awareness today. See how you relate to it. And see where you are on the journey of making peace with your personal history. Thank you for your practice. I'll talk to you in the meditation and until then, take care.