Letting Go of Attachments that Keep You Stuck in the Past

When I was a child, my grandmother played piano and organ beautifully. She was a piano teacher, and she lived about 5 hours away from us by car. Somehow, it was determined that I had musical gifts. So one summer, my mother arranged for me to go stay with my grandmother and learn piano from her.

My grandmother had earned a reputation of being quite mean and abusive. I had never spent much time around her, so I only knew what I had heard. When she made the long car ride to come pick me up for the summer, my aunts and cousins all came over to see her while she was in town.

One cousin, a boy about 5 years older than me, decided to torture me with horror stories while others were visiting my grandmother in the living room. He told me how she was going to beat me and starve me and lock me in the closet. I have no idea if this would be true, but I was terrified!!

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When it was time to leave, my mother came to get me out of my room. I was crouched in the corner of the room screaming! No way was I going anywhere with that monster!

I was called a baby. My grandmother sternly told me that I would never amount to anything! No one ever asked why I was afraid. My cousin sneered and laughed from the doorway. Everyone just assumed I was afraid to leave my mom.

I was left with the feeling that I would never amount to anything, that I was too chicken to be successful, that I was a disappointment. I believed no one cared to understand me or why I felt the way I did, and I would not have a chance to explain myself.

My grandmother was so angry – I felt I had better not betray her anger and risk her wrath by becoming successful through another route. I’d certainly better not ever try to play music again.

This incident from more than 50 years ago led to a lot of mental programming that stayed with me through my life. The mental programming stayed intact directing my future responses to life events, all with the intention of keeping me safe.

The role of the mind is to keep you safe. It is hard-wired for survival. Your mind does this by cataloguing the events of your life, ascribing meanings to them, rationalizing and reasoning, and developing belief patterns that become the basis of your operating system.

The mind takes snapshots, movies, soundbites. It remembers what happened, who said what, how you felt about it, and it tries to figure out how and why. It associates your key emotions and nervous system responses with the events and catalogues that too. Then the mind helps you determine which actions are going to keep you safe in the event these pictures or emotions or neurological responses become activated again.

Can you relate this to events from your past? How do the memories of these events affect you now? Perhaps in adult life you stop yourself from going for the things you really want. Then when you feel the disappointment, you go home feeling sad or hopeless, plop yourself on the sofa with a bag of chips or a pint of ice cream and numb out in front of a movie.

The fear of failure and lack of fulfillment are learned beliefs – based on past experiences and hurt feelings. But they stay in your subconscious to keep you safe. It’s all about safety and survival.

No wonder we're attached to the past. The role of the mind is to remember past events and use them to predict future outcomes so it can preemptively keep us safe. Share on X

No wonder we resist letting go of attachments from the past. The role of the mind is to remember past events and use them to predict future outcomes that might bring harm so it can preemptively keep you safe.

However, beliefs can be changed by truth. There is a way to change the programming of the mind, no matter how solid its ideas have become. Because inside you is the truth of who and what you really are – the truths of the Light inside you and the Unconditional Love that energizes the life force of this entire world.

You can access this truth and invite the mind to witness this truth with you. You can reset the imprinting of the body consciousness and cellular programming. You can restore the knowing of your truth and live in service to this truth.

This is the subject of today’s Prayer & Healing Circle. We’ll come together to bring healing to the imprinting and programming of the past, and to restore the knowing of Divine Light, Unconditional Love and Eternal Compassion. We’ll invite the mind to be in service to the Sacred Truths of the heart and soul.

You’re invited to join us. As always, you are welcome to bring your prayers for personal struggles, challenges of and with those you care about, for peace, for fulfillment, and for the health and sustainability of our planet.

Bring whatever is on your heart. Come as you are, receive, heal and grow. Please invite your friends to join us, too.

In the future, if you’d like to join us live, there is time for Q&A and sharing at the end of the call – off the recording.

Hope to see you there next time…