dreams Darkness peace past future

This Is Exactly Why You Can't Find Peace

( words)
*For representational purpose only.

I was told, don’t be angry, don’t be selfish, don’t be mean, and don’t be greedy. 'Don’t be' was the message I internalized. I started to believe I was a bad person because sometimes I was mean and sometimes I got angry and sometimes I wanted all the cookies. I believed that to survive in my family and in the world I would have to get rid of these impulses. So I did. Slowly I shoved them so far back into my consciousness that I forgot they were there at all.

              Excerpt from the Book, "The dark side of the light chasers", by Debbie Ford.

As I read these lines in the first chapter of this book I was reminded of my own childhood. I recalled how so early in my life I stopped demanding and asking for things I wanted. Instead, I started to adjust myself in accordance with what I got. Instead of going for my choice I would go by the choice of other people in my life. The choice was there within but I never voiced that (maybe I didn’t feel worthy enough to voice my demands).

Was I afraid to be rejected or to be ridiculed or did I know that my plea would not be granted?

I would do that, for which people will appreciate me. I stopped voicing what I wanted and what I thought was right for me. And then slowly, I do not even remember when it became a habit.

Instead of making efforts to get something I rather believed in praying for it or for some miracle to happen. I did not make an effort because a part of me learnt that you will not be given what you want, rather you will get what other people in your life decide for you. So the point of making an effort was gone because I strongly believed “I can’t get what I desire”.

So I stopped demanding, I stopped dreaming. Instead I started to wish. I started to pray. I started to feel that I didn’t deserve what I wanted.

I thought maybe I didn’t know what is right for me? I doubted my needs. I invalidated all my feelings and thoughts. Because I thought I didn’t know how to think the right way. I was being led to believe that people around me know better than me and so I also stopped rationalizing my needs and desires, instead I shunned them all as useless.

How many of us are still doing the same thing with ourselves even today. We have become adults but have we really come out of our childhood, the childhood pain, the childhood learning that is not allowing us to be mature adults.

Isn’t it that today also we are carrying the imprints of our past? Whatever we deduced about ourselves and our life back there in our childhood, we are carrying the baggage of all that with us today also. How can we even expect our present to change when we are yet not done with our past?

Someone told me back then not to get angry and even today, here in our present we are still struggling to control our anger. Someone told you in your childhood, not to voice your opinion, and even today we are doing the same thing with ourselves. Someone told you that you don’t know what is right for you, and even today you are not sure what is right for you.

Life is not going to change, if we close our eyes to our past.

The deepest answer to our present problems lie in the past, which we don’t even bother to get back to. Spirituality or healing is just not about getting in touch with the peace within; it’s about embracing yourself completely with all your light and darkness.

We can’t be at peace ever unless we make peace with our past.

We have to undo those patterns that we created long back in our tender age. We have to undo those learnings and values that are creating hurdles in our freedom and happiness.

The only way to heal your life, to heal yourself, is to embrace yourself fully in this moment. Accept yourself as you are. Look at yourself from your eyes, not from the eyes of others. Everyone has different perceptions and views about life. You are not here to live someone else’s perception. You are here to live your life the way you feel is right.

To truly embrace ourselves, deeply and completely, one has to go back to the past. Understand the patterns being created there, resolve them and then create a new and empowered way of thinking.

I believe, a person who truly wishes to heal, grow and evolve should be proactive in understanding himself/herself rather than defining yourself from the viewpoint of others or what we have learnt wrongly about ourselves.

We all have the right to desire, to dream, to create a life of our own choice. Instead of the clueless struggle with the present, it’s better to understand first what is there in the past that is creating this friction today.

Our present is the outcome of our past. And our present is the past to our future. If we are still struggling with the past today, we will be struggling with it in the future also. It takes a lot of courage to speak the truth with yourself and to go back to the past.

The ghosts of the past will haunt us till we don’t kill them.

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