Releasing Our Past

Jack Canfield's Success Principle #56
I am splitting up this principle and presenting the second half of it first. Tomorrow, I will go back and share Jack's thoughts about how to develop a positive money consciousness. For today, I want to share with you some insights that I have recently learned about the power of releasing our past.

I spent the weekend at a Healing Touch retreat. There, I learned that God's love is infinite. I experienced for the first time what it felt like to fully receive that love from him and from others.

As an incest survivor, I discovered that we expend huge amounts of energy pushing away love. The type of inappropriate love we received as children causes us to develop the limiting belief that love is evil. I now know that some evil people label their sinful actions as love, but God's love is pure and comes to me only for my highest good.

For a long time, whenever I tried to challenge my limiting beliefs about love, I got stuck. The Healing Touch program this weekend took me through specific steps toward accepting God's love. Jack Canfield suggests using something similar known as the Sedona Method to help us move forward. The five steps of that method follow.

1) What am I feeling right now?
We can ask ourselves what we are feeling. As abuse survivors, this may be difficult, because we are told that our feelings are not valid, should be kept secret, or may lead to punishment.

I kept pushing aside my feelings of anger toward my mother for failing to love, protect, and nurture me as a child. Every time I tried to connect with God, these negative feelings got in the way. Through Healing Touch, I learned to allow myself to focus on those feelings, instead of resisting them or reacting to them.

2) Could I welcome and allow it?
In a safe environment, such as a Healing Touch session, we can welcome the intense feelings that were brought on by childhood sexual abuse. We don't react to the feelings at this point. We simply let them come to us and observe what they are.

Sometimes, feelings come to us in the form of symbols. For me, whenever I closed my eyes during a Healing Touch practice session, I saw warm golden light with an ugly patch of dirty fabric overlaying it. In time, I realized that the light was God's pure love, and the filthy rag represented my tattered relationship with my mother. My anger toward my mother was holding the patch in place and preventing me from fully connecting with God.

3) Could I let it go?
When we are ready, we will know when the answer is yes. For a while, it may be no. That's okay.

For months, I could not let go of this frayed patch, because I didn't understand what it was. When I finally realized that the patch represented my mother's lie that abuse is love, I reached a point of preparing for release.

4) Am I willing to let it go?
If the answer to this question is no, we can ask, Would I rather have this feeling, or would I rather be free?

As soon as I recognized that the black patch represented my mother's abuse and the lie that abuse is love, I was willing to let go of the anger that held it in place. I understood that holding onto anger was not doing me any good. It wasn't changing my mother's behavior, and it wasn't altering God's reactions to those behaviors. In fact, holding onto my anger and all of the memories of the past was hurting me, because it was blocking me from receiving the fullness of God's love.

5) When will I let this go?
Eventually, we come to the realization that now is the best time to let go of whatever it is that we have been holding.

This weeked, I decided that it was time to let go of my anger. As soon as I released it, the black patch was consumed by the warm golden glow of God's love. Peace flowed in as I have never before experienced it.

This process of releasing may take time, and we may need help. With perseverance, however, we can all experience God's blessings across every area of our lives.

I am thankful for the Healing Touch practitioners who have guided me through this. If you would like to learn more about the practice of Healing Touch, go to www.HealingTouchProgram.com or contact me at cheryldenton@rocketmail.com.

Today's Challenge
Use the Sedona Method as outlined above to release your past. If you're stuck, search out a Healing Touch practitioner, counselor, or trusted friend to help you move forward without the hindrances of your past.

Jack Canfield, America's #1 Success Coach, is founder of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul© and a leading authority on Peak Performance and Life Success. If you're ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at: www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com