The Tangled Web of Personal History

Darkness has a hunger that's insatiable
And lightness has a call that's hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it
Indigo Girls

The Tangled Web of Personal History

By Susan Marshall

Personal history is the accumulation of everything that has happened to you up to now. Your personal history not only defines "who you are", but defines how others are as well. It provides a perfect structure in which your beliefs can reside.

Person history is a springboard for predicting how encounters are going to turn out, not only with the people we know but strangers as well. It is the archive of judgement providing evidence of how we are, what we are, how others are, and how others need to be. Our conversations reflect this in comments like –“That’s the way I am... That’s how they are……That’s how I have always done it…..That’s the way the world works.” These attitudes leave little room for experiencing life in its constant metamorphous.

Personal history supports the filter we see the world through. As this filter becomes ridgid with certainty, the distortion of reality increases. It creates limitations, self-importance, attachments and beliefs based in fear. This filter gives a false sense of safety. Our the spirit longs to do things that will fullfill it, and have the freedom to be anything it wants, only to

be held back back by a mysterious, illusive, tangled web that is hard to identify.

Beliefs based in fear combined with personal history create a barrier to awareness about our own self-limiting beliefs. This barrier can be so great, a lens so thick that they can not see what they have created within themselves.

We are invested in who we think we are. We don't want to give it up because it feels too risky. It’s what we know. We know what we like, dislike, want and don’t want. Taking a position of “I don’t know who I am” threatens our identity, the structure we have created as a personal safety zone.

Personal History can be powerful. It can lock us into an energetic web of reaction. It is not uncommon for people to report going to visit their parents or ex-spouses or grown children and very quickly experience old but familiar emotions and feel pulled into well-worn behaviour patterns.

An empowering tool for transformation is dropping your personal history. Giving up your personal history is a step towards living authentically. But what does that mean? Authenticity is just being without anticipating anything. It is being, in the moment, as a clean slate without an investment in who you THINK you are.

Fear based beliefs stand in the way of being authentic. Of course, to change any belief we must first know what it is and in particular, how it feels. One effective technique to find out what

you really believe is taking an inventory of your personal history.

Preparing an inventory is not for the faint of heart. It requires courage and absolute honestly with yourself. It requires that you look at the emotionally charged events of your life and begin to categorize them. What I mean by “categorize them” is to take the events and to observe them as a witness in the 3rd person, reviewing the emotional perspective of the event and what we have decided it MEANS. Once we begin to really “see” our beliefs, our filter, and our interpretation of what life is, life as it is becomes clearer.

Imagine erasing your memory and the iinterpretation of all the events, and experiences you have had - and for the first time tasting ice cream, making passionate love, or seeing a sunset over a breathtaking mountain vista. Memory is the store house of what you have experienced, distorted by the lens of belief and interpretation. What would those experiences be like if you had no memory of them from before?

It is a very powerful and enlightening perspective to notice how things feel right now in this moment, without the judgements of our beliefs based on our personal history. There is a tremendous benefit, a renewal of the vibrancy and freshness of life. Try giving up the judgements about yourself coming from your personal history for just one day.... and open the door to incredible new possibilties.


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