Loving Awareness

past lives and releasing pain

Posted by matthew on July 28, 2006

This one is a bit more personal, bringing my own journey. If you don’t relate to past lives, that’s fine. Call it hidden memories, it amounts to the same thing.
Yes, in the last month it feels like my life has turned inside out. Not in a bad way, but where theres a very shifting priority in terms of how I live my life. The relationship I that was starting didn’t; gradually a lot of pain came up and became front and center. [I don't really like going into the details, as it's easy to take sides and look at it from a "whose fault it is" aspect, which I'm totally not about] However, there were a couple of experiences over that time which had a major influence on me; and with both of them images, thoughts and feelings arose that made me feel that a lot of what I was feeling was past-life related.

As a side note, I generally like looking at past lives (if nothing else, past life regression mp3′s are relaxing!), with one important caveat. Any thoughts we have on it are only as worthwhile as how they applicable they are to our lives now. This really is a fundamental tenet to any practical course of change. There are many interesting diversions; learning about lives in Atlantis could be one of them. I’ve received channeled material many times (you can look back in this blog to see a few transcripts of reference to past lives), but each of those only follows under the category of interesting until it is personally validated and incorporated. This, to me, is such a fundamental attitude to have; to validate everything. It’s the only way lessons are truly learned.

A few weeks ago, I was feeling extremely dark, depressed, and hopeless, full of self-criticism and self-loathing. I had no idea why, and decided to head away alone for the weekend. Of course, when you’re in that state, it’s incredibly hard to be present – your entire being screams that you shouldn’t go there. In addition, if there’s any masochism in looking at the state, such as “I should experience that, it’s good for me!”, then it just reinforces itself until escaping behaviour kicks in again. However, that weekend, I started to get real flashes of what seemed to be a past life experience. I felt incredible guilt at killing someone deep inside me, not at all related to anything in this life. I don’t think I meant to at all, but I got a feeling that I’d had a certain arrogance and got careless while being a doctor – and when I saw what I’d done I condemned myself. Deep tears came to my eyes at feeling this, and I felt something let go.

When I’m crying, I always want to make sure I’m crying because I see some new Truth. It’s quite possible to cry out of despair, or pain; but these aren’t the transforming release that comes with deeper tears. What I call “true tears” have more to do with seeing love (such as love for one’s self) anew, seeing’s one mistakes and realizing how perfect everyone is anyway. Knowing these things philosophically is one thing, but seeing them can be so overwhelming that tears come. How many things we build up in our lives based on mistaken beliefs on how little we’re worth or how weak we are that we need to wall ourselves away?

The next time you relax in the sun and enjoy its warmth, remember that this sunlight is actually love. Love isn’t abstract or philosophical. It is as physical as you and me. The light from the sun gives life without expectation. It brings joy without condition. It simply shines without any other agenda. It can be blocked temporarily, but it is not bothered by this one bit.

It’s no coincidence that tears came when I was sitting in the sun (with a view of the lake and the mountains) based on that statement, is it? Nature is such a wonderful place to open up in, because there’s so much free flowing energy without any blocks involved. This is another way of describing love.

Another incident came soon after, with a very final ending note to any hopes of a relationship. It too brought up images and overwhelming feelings that made me think it was past life related, related to being a woman abandoned by a man and essentially left to die. In any case, that doesn’t matter very much; what matters is that after sitting in it, journalling my expression of it (with an incredible amount of pain), I both went through it and saw a lot of buried pain influencing my life. Simply seeing it for what it is also gave me more courage to be allowing of it in every moment; it’s the fear of pain (and fear of fear) which is more unbearable than the pain itself for me. And as I do that, I also get more affirmations, self-love, and momentum for my journey. Loving love is just as self-perpetuating as fearing fear.

Looking into pain isn’t noble for its own sake. To think so is masochism. Looking into what is inside pain and fear is only beneficial because at the center of it, there is always a mistake or misconception. It could be about the world, or it could be about one’s self. (as if there’s ultimately a difference!) Releasing pain literally means releasing the worldview that’s at the center of it all. It doesn’t have to be a rational world view – a frightened kitten hiding in a closet has its own worldview stored in its body. But it is there, and the only way to get beyond it is to give it full attention. Nothing magically changes in this world. Real change always happens through full, conscious attention, always in the present moment.

The events of the last month have brought an even greater conviction of the paradox of pain : that one’s greatest pain is also one’s greatest strength and salvation. Without it, we wouldn’t have the impetus to grow and look into ourselves and realize how we are creators of our own misery. Everyone on this planet is full of mistaken beliefs. In fact, it’s my perception that in order to evolve to a higher vibration of awareness, one has to totally let go of all beliefs and perceptions one has. This is because everyone’s beliefs and perception is in some way mistaken and wrong. This idea of ‘mistaken’ isn’t the same as saying we’re failing a test; it’s merely saying that if we’re in a limited state of consciousness and have things to learn. Sometimes merely fixating on words is a great mistake. No matter how holy the words, they’re just words, and are absolutely nothing compared to direct experience and perception. This is why, when growing, we always let go of something, and never add. We let go of crutch after crutch until we can dance on our own.