Tag Archives: past

"We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it."  AA textbook

"Never limit your view of life by any past experience." Ernest Holmes

Statements such as these teach us that we should not base our current lives on what happened in the past.

It is tempting, I know, to look at something that happened in the past and tell ourselves that we will never do THAT again, because look what happened!

If we do so, we limit our future.

What if instead we looked at the events of the past as stepping stones to our next greatest and highest good?

All those shitty things that happened are not something to be ashamed of.  Shame and guilt only keeps us in the problem.  Fear and attempts to prevent it from happening again only keep us in the problem.

Instead, try to view it from a different perspective.  If we look at those things as necessary for our greatest good, then we can thank them, do our grief and forgiveness work, and move on.  This is why this particular promise is stated after completion of the 10th step in the textbook.  There is work to be done before we can stop blaming ourselves for past events.

In New Thought, we are taught that God is everywhere present, all good, all the time.  This means not that we should put our heads in the sand and declare that all that bad stuff was really good.  It means that we take a look at it and glean the nuggets of wisdom from them; therein lies the good.

So...we take a good look at our past, without shame and blame and condemnation, and use it to move into our greatest good.

How has your past served you?  I would love to hear your thoughts.

_____________________________________

Puchase the book from Amazon!

Sign up to receive notification about future posts from the right side if you are on a mobile device, and from the bottom if you are on a computer.