Letting go of the past – Do you know whose past you are letting go of?

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Letting go of the past, do you know whose past you are letting go of?

By Jacki Smith

I can place a pretty sure bet that you start thinking about family, family gatherings and your reaction to them.You either are obligated to attend a gathering of the clan and you, or feel abandoned and isolated from family. We idealize (or demonize) what this gathering would look like and like every other member of society have a reaction to the holidays. You try and try to create a new paradigm for yourself around this, but you fall back into that old pattern.

I have a nice big fat reaction to family and/or friend gatherings. In past years it would cause huge anxiety and I would either overcompensate from guilt of not wanting to be there or have so much trepidation I would refuse to go. Oh, how I hated the holidays. I had such a big issue around impending holidays that I even chose a husband that doesn’t celebrate holidays or birthdays… at all… ever (after 20 years he has not budged on this).  When I look at this from the 30,000 foot view I realized it all works together forcing me to heal this issue.   

Into the Akashic records I went!  For full disclosure, I don’t think I went into the Akashic records for this issue.  If I remember correctly, I went into the records for a food issue and found myself smack dab in the middle of some family legacy issues that needed to be addressed.  Needed is not even an adequate word to describe the urgency of me dealing with this issue.  What I found waiting for me was a filter that I was viewing family and friends and that was causing a lot of disconnected and abandoned feelings.   This filter was not even of my own making!  I was trying to release something that was mine, but what I needed to clear was not something that I created, it was something I inherited.  

It was not my past I needed to let go of, but the collective past of my family that was attached to me. Family Legacies can also be called a family curse, but that implies this energetic discord was placed upon your unwitting and innocent ancestors.   A Family Legacy is the collection of belief and energetic blocks that build generation upon generation until it is so restrictive to your personal growth that is defines you in uncomfortable ways.   In the book Hauntings; Dispelling the Ghosts Who Run Our Lives by James Hollis he talks about how the complexes, or issues of our parents are the lens we initially view our own life through.  If we remain unaware that we are running our lives based on the complexes of our parents, they become our own adult issues and then are compounded by the new complexes that are created through our own experiences.    It is when you clear or let go of the issues of your parents and ancestors that you can begin to heal your own jazz.

In DIY Akashic Wisdom: Access the Library of Your Soul, Patty Shaw and I talk about Family Legacies.  In chapter 10, “The people that we meet on the Akashic street” we talk about a spiritual pattern that you inherit along with your DNA.  These legacies can be filled with gifts, talents and strengths, but can also be filled with beliefs, thought forms and even contracts of behavior that are not good for us.   It is amazing how much nature and nurture combines to create YOU!  You are an ever growing and evolving being that is like no other.  It is when you consciously choose to move through life, connect with your divine spark and live today to its fullest that you can see the miasmas or dysfunctions that keep you anchored into unconscious drama that limits your joy.    

When I looked at the Family Legacy surrounding my holiday experience, it didn’t go back very far.  It went back to a place where the only thing that mattered was appearance.  We all must maintain the appearance of a happy, beautiful family.  This was not new or earth shattering or even unique to my family, but there it was trying to drive a bus that was not willing to go there (that bus being me).   

Since I had been living my life in a conscious way to bring love and joy into my life, that family legacy was the opposite of what I was going for.   No wonder I would melt down and become a complete wreck over what to buy as gifts, wear for gatherings and how we presented our own little family to my greater family of origin.   I even saw how my husband broke free of that belief and that I needed his stubborn refusal to participate in that legacy to break free of it on my own.  I had to let go of my mother’s complexes before I could heal and rewrite my own experience.

Once I cleared what belonged to someone else’s past I was able to heal the immediate discomfort I came to my Akasha to look at.   My food issue came in to play as the replacement of honest emotions and nurturing feelings with food.  That was the easiest part of the healing; now I needed a new belief to be embodied and a way to incorporate this healing into my everyday life.   My new belief is that we create our own holidays and they are not dictated by the calendar.   I also decided that I would participate as much as I wanted to in the family gatherings and no more.  Once I released the guilt, I felt free to create my own traditions. Now my family and I have Thanksgiving Lasagna, Christmas Tacos and spend the day together playing, relaxing and disconnected from stress.   If we decide to go to a family function it is because we are interested in it – not out of obligation.

It is one of the most empowering experiences to go through the Family Tree Meditation on page 137 of DIY Akashic Wisdom.  It is additionally empowering to add in ritual once the mediation is over to anchor in this new belief. I do what I call the Belief Anchoring Ritual and of course I use a selection of Coventry candles.

I start with an Uncrossing Hoo Doo candle or a Needed Change Blessed Herbal Candle and a piece of paper.  I have a terrible memory after any healing work I do so I light the candle that helps release any residual energy and write down what I cleared.   This way if it starts to come up again I will see the details that may need to be healed after the fact.  

I then get a clean sheet of paper, select a river washed stone or crystal, light a Stability Blessed Herbal Candle, a Heart Blessed Herbal Candle and a Fertility Blessed Herbal Candle and write down my new belief.  I do this as bullet points so I can post this paper and quickly reference it in times of stress. I then read through that list and create a new affirmation that embodies the new belief and place it on my mirror so I can recite it every time I look at myself.    I carry my stone with me and think about this new belief that I have.  This helps me remember to incorporate this new way of being in my waking life and to remember it in times of stress.   It is those stressful times that we will unconsciously revert to the old behavior.  It takes 7-9 instances of making a new choice before it becomes your new habit.

Take a moment the next time an old unhealthy behavior comes up and ask it; are you mine or do you belong to someone else’s past.  Sometime what you need to let go of didn’t belong to you in the first place.