“In Let Go and Live in the Now, best-selling author Guy Finley brings the great Wisdom Teachings of centuries past into our lives in an intimate, accessible way. Each chapter of Let Go and Live in the Now tackles a hurt that keeps us from experiencing inner peace and happiness.”
Here is an excerpt (published with permission).
How does such a painful image seem to stay in the mind, especially given the fact of how much we struggle to make them go away?
These unwanted images return again and again as they do because something within us keeps recalling them and drawing them to the forefront of our mind.
The truth is we do not have to share a single moment with the memory of anything that we don’t want to, this means there is something in our present nature that actually wants to recall painful past experiences.
Such new self-knowledge lends us the light we need to make higher choices for ourselves, based in conscious awareness. Now we can choose to remember what it is that we want to!
In other words, rather than allowing ourselves to be drawn into battle with unwanted thoughts or feelings that appear by themselves within our hearts and minds, we can do something completely new. We can choose not to focus on what these troubled states want us to since we know that’s the road to ruin.
Instead we will choose to remember what it is that we want above all else — the Light of Truth that not only reveals what has been hurting us, but that frees us from these unconscious conditions at the same time.
The Wise Ones have always taught the great gift of remembering the Living Light and the practice of placing ourselves in its presence before we embrace anything else.
But the elevated nature of this kind of remembrance in the face of our trials requires our deliberate and conscious willing of it. To paraphrase St. Augustine, “My remembrance of thee is truly an effect of Thy remembrance of me. ” This means that everything about Reality is already set up to help us succeed with our new aim.
So, in that moment when you realize that something painful from your past has again pressed its way into you, holding you hostage to a hated image or painful regret, here is what to do: right there, right in that Now, instead of capitulating into that familiar state of feeling yourself to be a captive of what this pain tells you that you must remember (along with all of its suggested solutions for ending the suffering), you choose to remember the Light. Here is a quick look at what this new inner action entails.
Instead of being drawn into a struggle with that unwanted sense of conflict, complete with its cast of supporting characters drawn from your past, intentionally withdraw your attention from that stage show. And at the same time as you close the curtain on it, bring all of your reclaimed attention into the Now.
Come awake to the sense of your own physical body. At the same time observe what thoughts and feelings are pressing themselves into your awareness. While working in the Now, welcome into you a conscious remembrance of the Light, of the whole truth as best you understand it.
The key is to make interior effort based upon bringing your new self-knowledge into a willing watchfulness. For example, when an angry thought flashes into your mind, accompanied by the fiery sensations born of recalling some injustice done to you in the past, instead of remembering the resentments this little image stirs in you, turn the tables on it.
Bring its little troubled life into your remembrance of that greater presence within you that dwells well beyond its punishing power. Work like this whenever you can and, like a pebble tossed into a deep pond, the ripple effects of that past pain will simply disappear into the healing nature of the Now. Instead of a life of endless resistance, you will learn the timeless secret of how to replace any form of darkness with the Light you have chosen over it.
Choose to remember the Light. Let it fight for you. Not only will this Living Intelligence lift you above the fray of all that should be forgotten, but it also will guide you back home to a timeless place in yourself where the past no longer dwells.
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