Conscious Inner Transformation

In Our Orientation in the Present Moment, Aristomenes looked at the benefits of remaining in the present with our back to the future, and facing our past. When we take the time to look at our past, we start to see patterns in our choices and how they have helped or hindered us in shaping the present in which we find ourselves. Let’s look at one of the mechanisms that can be responsible for shaping our unconscious decision-making processes: Facts, Interpretation and Judgments.

Here’s an example: Imagine a little girl, brought up in an environment where her mother and father have an explosive argument in front of her and her father storms out of the house. As he leaves he turns, points his finger at the mother who’s hugging the little girl and shouts, “You women are all the same. You’re nothing but trouble! Well I’ve had enough! I’m leaving!” The father never returns. When the girl grows up she finds herself in short-term abusive relationships where the males keep leaving her. Yet she yearns for a long-term relationship with a man who loves her and treats her well. The repetitious behavior of men leaving her, only reinforces a deep belief she holds about herself that she’s ‘trouble’ and that all men leave in the end.

Imagine at this point the woman stops for a moment to review her life and begins to realize that perhaps not all men leave, after all several of her friends are in long term relationships – but maybe there’s one common denominator – herself. So imagine that she turns away from her nebulous future and instead looks at her past, looking for answers to her continuing unfortunate choices in men. She reviews her experiences, the choices that she’s made in terms of finding a caring partner, and sees a pattern emerging. Through looking at that pattern, she also realizes that deep down she holds a belief that as well as thinking all men are undependable, she also believes that she doesn’t deserve happiness. At that point, she might ask herself, “Where does that belief come from?”

Then she remembers her father leaving and what he said. She reviews her memory and looks simply for the bare facts and remembers that her parents had a bad argument. The father snapped and made a sudden decision to leave. Angrily, he threw a parting shot at his wife. He left and didn’t return.

As she reviews that memory, she remembers that as the little girl, she was huddled next to her mother as her father left, and when he shouted at his wife, she also took what he said to heart and at that moment made an interpretation that had gone into her subconscious to be replayed over and over again. As a child, her Interpretation was “Men leave because I’m trouble”. She realized she had also judged men as bad for leaving. And she had judged herself as bad for causing her father to leave in the first place.

Realizing this at a deep level is one key to this woman using her past as a key to releasing her in the present to make different relationship choices. At this point, she can consciously release the interpretations and let go of those judgments and choose in future to respond in the moment – the here and now – whenever she is with someone. Over time, these new choices will bear different fruit.

At the same time, this woman may well find that as she identifies again with the child in that memory, the strong and mixed emotions that she felt as a child but was unable to process, flood her emotional/physical body. Rather than attempting to suppress them again, if the woman is able to accept them and then release them as she senses them, she is another step closer to being freer to find real happiness in the present (and future).

This simple illustration shows how we can use this powerful mechanism to release more of our past conditioning and become freer in the present to make conscious, life-affirming choices that bring us more joy. Not only that, but as we have actually let go of painful emotions that have weighed us down, along with deeply ingrained beliefs about ourselves, we actually can feel noticeably lighter and more loving of ourselves. I would like to add my thoughts here that because we are resonating differently, sending out different subconscious messages to our environment, we also start attracting circumstances to us that have a different ‘feel’ / resonance to them. The only challenge we have then, is to remain in the present to respond in the present – rather than knee-jerking back to an old familiar reaction.