How and why does our past affect us now, in our lives now?
By emptychair
@innertalks (23742)
Australia
November 14, 2017 8:56pm CST
The enemy is not the past. It is our view of that past.
This is the view currently being held in our mind's eye of it, and this includes too, how we think that the past has affected us in that it has stopped or prevented us from living the life that we wanted to live, and so we blame the past for this.
This will almost always happen for most people because they do not know what they want to do, either in the past or now, and so they take on this blame or guilt, blaming the past for them being as they are now, but the truth is that they are there now where they are now because they ended up there, by their not knowing where else they could go to, or where else they wanted to go.
The first step in life is to work out what interests you in the sense that it matches your plan, and its gift, given to you to best work out that plan from God in this life.
When you adapt yourself to local truth, (i.e. the truth of this current life) it matches your inner truth, only when the plan is in alignment with your gifts.
How do you determine what your God-given gifts are then?
Do not look for them to try to uncover them with your mind.
Just slip into your heart whenever you can, and you will see/feel the shining love in the gift there, and so then take that gift, open it, and let it be the guiding principle in your life for you, as this gift matches your mission or spiritual goal, always.
What do you think about how our past affects us now?
4 people like this
4 responses
@121266lulu (350)
• China
15 Nov 17
Our past affects our behavior. For example, if I have a bad relationship in the past, I cannot trust a man easily like before.
4 people like this
@innertalks (23742)
• Australia
15 Nov 17
Yes, that's true.
I am suggesting that we examine this effect more closely.
If we cannot trust a man easily now, do we want this to continue for us, or not, in our future life?
Can we determine which event, or which man, it was that most strongly made us think in this way?
Can we change this thinking, so that we do not see all men as being untrustworthy, anymore?
Maybe our gift is about trust, for example. (Or our goal in this life, might be to gain the better understanding of how to trust others more.)
When we close ourselves down from trusting others, because of a couple of bad experiences, we move away then from living, from our living, from our true gift, and we stop being fully our real self then too, even if just a bit, as well.
@dgobucks226 (37621)
•
23 Nov 17
@innertalks I think the thinking changes through example. When one meets someone who provides a good relationship we become less negative about relationships as a whole. If it worked for me then not all relationships will be bad.
2 people like this
@innertalks (23742)
• Australia
23 Nov 17
@dgobucks226 That's true, what has provided us with something that works for us we tend to move towards again, and generally something positive moves us towards the positive end of the scale too.
And yet with added awareness of what is happening here, when something negative does happen, we might see that it would try to push us to be more negative about relationships as a whole then too, unless we negate this push by seeing rationally that this does not necessarily have to happen.
We can influence these influences, in other words. We can change our unconsciously acquired view of the past.
2 people like this
@Ithink (10106)
• United States
15 Nov 17
I look at it as the ripple effect, everything you do have done does effect you in some way. However it is up to you, to get away from the past and make yourself a better person. The ones that drive me nuts are the ones that are like late 20's and older that want to blame everything wrong in their life on their parents. You have been an adult for how long and still blame all that is wrong on your childhood. Drives me nuts!
3 people like this
@Ithink (10106)
• United States
16 Nov 17
@innertalks I agree with that too, everything has an effect (ripples) to everything else.
2 people like this
@innertalks (23742)
• Australia
15 Nov 17
Yes, I think the ripple effect affects the individual like that, but on a wider scale it works throughout the Universe too, everything affects everything else.
1 person likes this
@Shiva49 (28390)
• Singapore
21 Nov 17
We need to think and ponder often.
Obviously we have to put in effort to survive here but we should never overlook the inner voice even though it may lie dormant. We have to find ways to tap its thirst for love, its feeling of oneness with the whole creative process.
I feel we need to elevate our thinking and action and not get pinned down by the usual challenges that everyone faces though many will feel they are unluckier than most. We all need to get up soon after the knockdowns and take them as part and parcel of life. Time heals but we should add our own momentum to it - siva
2 people like this
@innertalks (23742)
• Australia
21 Nov 17
Knowing truth allows truth to know us in that living from it brings us closer to it, and we all innately know truth, but we often push it away by our wanting something else instead sometimes.
We more often want our own version of it laced with greed, want, and other negative conditions that only distort our view in life, and of truth too,
1 person likes this
@innertalks (23742)
• Australia
22 Nov 17
@Shiva49 Yes, the unending wheel of karma, as they say in the East, keeps spinning for us, as long as we pedal its bike, of greed and deceit.
1 person likes this
@Shiva49 (28390)
• Singapore
22 Nov 17
@innertalks Yes Steve, "all that glitters is not gold", but most fall prey to greed and deceit.
Then that obsession takes over our life goals distancing us from the truth that is patent and obvious.
We still go around in circles of self deception - siva
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@dgobucks226 (37621)
•
23 Nov 17
Our past does affect current behavior. I think past choices can affect it also. We are a product now of the choices we made back then. We might reflex on them from time to time and say what if... Sure it is wasted negative energy, but that's part of human nature. Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda... I find your statement about God given gifts interesting. Did God pre-program our gifts or do we have control over developing skills on our own? Does God pre-program our path to life or do we choose our own path? What are your thoughts on this?
1 person likes this
@innertalks (23742)
• Australia
23 Nov 17
The bible talks about gifts and talents.
Here is a verse from Saint Peter's first letter, chapter 4, verse 10.
"Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms."
The bible also tells us that God knows every soul before it is born, and that they work out (together) a mutual plan for the soul, based around particular gifts of the spirit, and other gifts of the other bodies, (Some claim we have a physical body, an emotional body, and a mental body, as well as our soul) which will allow the human self to best have the chance to express itself through these gifts for God, for themselves, and in connection to other souls, and humans too.
We all have different talents, or gifts then which can be strengthened and worked on, and so we can live our own unique life, by our living more through these talents than wasting them, and not growing them, acknowledging, and utilising them.
With these talents, we are to bear good fruits for God, as the bible also puts it.
1 person likes this
@innertalks (23742)
• Australia
23 Nov 17
@dgobucks226 Yes, and some for various reasons have not yet owned or recognised their own talents.
When I was at school, for instance, I hated writing, I hated the subject English. I was hopeless at it.
When I felt compelled to write a letter to my mum one day when she was on holiday in England, I just wrote the one line to her and to my Dad, "just a line to say all's fine."
Now forty years, later, I enjoy writing, perhaps I had an underlying talent there for it all along.
1 person likes this
@dgobucks226 (37621)
•
23 Nov 17
@innertalks Thank you for the wonderful explanation Steve. It does make sense to use those gifts for good as God would want us to. God has given us all unique talents whatever they might be, some use them, others for whatever reasons choose not to.
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