Thanking the Past

While On the Soul’s Mysterious Journey

Photo by Erwan Hesry on Unsplash

I was having a challenging week due to some personal stuff when I happened to pick up a notebook I received a couple of years ago while attending a weekend workshop with my husband.

In the notebook, I found this note I had scrawled:

“You’re going to be working with me on this project. It’s called Life.

It’s going to be challenging. It’s going to get messy.

It’s going to take experience, wisdom, and resilience.

You’re going to want to give up at times because learning can be frustrating, but listen…

I’ve got you.

I’m the best teacher in the universe because I’ve been there.

Plus, I’m all-knowing and all-powerful, so you really should listen to me, you puny humans.

Now get to work.”

A pretend note from God.

I had to crack a smile.

The note was kind of funny.

Then I found another entry. It was the product of a writing exercise in which we were asked to answer the question, “Why do I want to go on living?” Here’s an excerpt:

Why Do I Want to Go On Living?

I want to go on living because life is an amazing, magical, unfolding gift. This is the landscape of discovery and creation. It’s beautiful.

I also want to go on living because I’ve got so much more to learn here. There are lessons in everything. Exploring Creation is like reading God’s love letter to us. Yet, while walking through the valleys and low places, it can be so hard to see and feel His presence.

We humans have crafted tortuous mazes for ourselves and others. We have used the gift of imagination to create some terrible things. And then, there are simply the harsh realities of nature. Cold, storms, noxious chemicals and other elements which threaten our fragile bodies.

But God is still there.

God is woven into the threads of the fabric of our existence.

He is “the fabric of our lives.”

In God’s love letter of life that we are walking through, His messages are so personalized. His words are so full of love, hope, grace, and peace. He speaks through synchronicity and silence.

So, I want to go on living because I am loved by God. God put me here. God gave me this body. God gave me this life. God gives me every experience. How can I judge His gift? Who am I to reject any part of it?

I needed to see that reminder.

I wrote it during a painful time in my marriage.

Some lessons are more difficult to accept than others, but those are the lessons we probably grow the most from.

This piece of writing resembled an idea I had just been listening to in the car that day, by one of my favorite spiritual teachers, Michael Singer (aka Mickey).

Mickey says you should never reflect negatively on anything that has happened in your past, but say “Thank you.” We came here to this planet to have experiences, and life is a series of experiences.

When we resist, instead of relaxing and releasing, we start to carry around weights (samskaras) with us and attract experiences that trigger the same thing we resisted in the first place.

The essence of spirituality, according to Mickey, is to surrender when these things come up. To sit back in the seat of the Self and observe mental phenomena like a little parade happening. Don’t get wrapped up in it. Don’t take on more “stuff.” When your “stuff” comes up, let it go.

He says if you keep doing this, eventually you will experience the peace that passes understanding, God, enlightenment, or whatever you want to call it.

I’ve found Mickey’s teachings to be very helpful over the years. I pull them out when in a rough spot, and they quickly remind me I can practice immediately to find space and freedom. Letting go of your stuff isn’t comfortable or easy, but it is possible.

Christian Translation

This translates quite readily to the Christian walk (not surprising as Mickey probably quotes Jesus Christ more than anyone else in his audiobook, “Living From a Place of Surrender”).

Trusting Jesus and having faith is a huge part of the Christian life, and we are encouraged to lay our burdens at the feet of Christ.

In the Catholic tradition, you can do this by participating in the sacrament of confession, where you examine your conscience, share in confidence with a priest, are assigned a penance of some kind, and are absolved, with the commitment that you sincerely commit yourself to avoid sin in the future.

Is “sin” something entirely different than “samskaras” or even “evil spirits”? I have a sense that they are all somehow connected.

Anything that weighs our soul down is not of God. And it must be seen and released within ourselves. Jesus taught that it is not our job to remove the “sawdust” from our neighbor’s eye but to remove the log from our own eye. Yes, we can be helpful; inevitably, we will be because that’s how life works. We run into the people who will teach us our next lesson (and vice versa).

But we are set free by relinquishing the illusion of control and our attachment to the burden of sin.

And that is our own personal journey of soul growth.

We can relinquish the attachment to our pain, stories, fears, and many other things. Sometimes when the pain is quite acute, this feels impossible.

Think of how much God loves you and how precious you are to Him.

God doesn’t want our souls to be weighed down. Our experiences happen for a reason. We don’t have to understand why, right now. We can use our experiences to let go and let God.

We can see this life as a purification process, trusting that our souls will learn and grow from this human journey, in ways we can’t fathom.

Certainly, the series of experiences that have brought you to this moment are worthy of thanks.