ask yourself

…Is this how I actually feel or is this my emotional history trying to recreate the past?

When our self-awareness starts deepening, one of the things we begin to understand is that much of who we are and how we see the world is formed through the accumulation of past moments of intense emotion– moments that leave their mark on the subconscious and predispose us to repeating certain behaviors/emotions that are similar to what we have felt in the past.

When traveling inward there are times when we hit a particularly rocky layer of the mind, a sediment of conditioning that has been so thickly reinforced that it takes patience and persistence for it to soften and release. When we work on letting go of the hardened inner layers there is often an impact on our personal lives - we feel the storms of yesterday or the heaviness of times that have long since passed, there is the feeling of being on the edge of turbulence and disharmony as we open ourselves up to the process of deconditioning. It is the habit of holding on that causes this tension, because of the countless repetition of the same behavior there is a struggle to let go.

The rapid movements of the mind are so subtle that it can feel like we are the makers of our present destiny, when in reality the past is pushing itself into our present, inclining us toward feeling the same emotions and thinking the same thoughts. The way our mental past forces itself into our present gives us little room to decide for ourselves how we actually want to feel and gives little concern to whether or not our reaction comes from an objective observation of how things truly are.

It is when we begin our efforts to develop our self-awareness through an introspective practice - like a form of effective meditation or therapy, that the stories/patterns that are so firm and invisible begin to soften and come up to the surface for release.

The same way we can accumulate patterns, we can also let them go.

Healing is possible.

(Via @yung_pueblo)