How Do You Let Go of the Past?

Live and keep your peace. Spring will come, and the flowers will bloom by themselves.

— Chinese wisdom

Everything happens in its own time.

But this isn't about peace. It's about being tied. By invisible threads. To the past. To the mum who screamed. To the teacher who humiliated you. To the grandma who said “you can't.” To the neighbour who drank himself stupid. To yourself, the one who was afraid.

Situations repeat themselves. Same people. You're back in the same hell. And you can't get out. Can't start a “new life.” Because the past is holding you. Like a weight on your shoulders. On your back. In your body.

The body remembers everything. Emotions stay in the body until you give them attention. Not with the mind. With the body. The belly. The back. The throat.

There's a technique. It's called “I decided it this way.” About the events of the past, a person chooses to think: I decided it this way. Circumstances didn't force me. I did. My choice.

The focus shifts. From a passive object. From a victim. To an active subject. To the one who acts. Belief in yourself comes back. Insecurity goes away. Because there is a choice. Always. How to think about yourself. About the world. Better to think positively. Than negatively.

I accept hardship and privation with ecstatic rapture. I crave everything the world has in store for me. I would go to prison, mount the scaffold, for the sake of the experience alone. I never outgrew the infantile belief that the world was created exclusively for me. I am going mad with delight over the sweetest horrors that are bound to happen to me someday. This is the leitmotif of my whole life — the unhindered enjoyment of all the possibilities of being, potential or actual. Fear was banished from my soul forever by the simple fact that today I look back with the liveliest interest and pleasure on those events that once, in the past, seemed to me unquenchable torment.

— Aleister Crowley

Fear banished. Not by effort. Not by prayer. By a simple fact: today I look back on the past with interest. With pleasure. What seemed like torment has become experience.

Looking behind, I am filled with gratitude. Looking forward, I am filled with vision. Looking upwards, I am filled with strength. Looking within, I discover peace.

— Apache prayer

You can always paint yourself a different past. Strange? At first glance. But the past is defined by the present. By your current state. If you're happy now, you think well of the past too. No regrets. Pushkin wrote: “Whatever passes will be dear.”

You can let go of the past. When you become ready. Without rushing yourself. Without forcing it. Not by the book. By the body. By the breath. By yourself.