Holding onto thoughts instead of thinking them and letting go…
Recalling things that happened in the past and stewing about them…
Trying to control emotions by holding on or pushing them away…
Attempting to rewrite the past by obsessing on what might have happened…

Currently I am reading a best seller titled “The Untethered Soul” by Michael A. Singer a good friend gave me. It points directly at some of the reasons I have suffered from my heart and mind by trying to redirect and rewrite life to my liking. Here’ are a few passages from the book:

How would you feel if someone outside really started talking to you the way your inner voice does?

Creating thoughts, holding onto thoughts, recalling thoughts, generating emotions, controlling emotions, and disciplining powerful inner drives, all requite tremendous expenditure of energy.

If you look at the times in your life when you were in love or excited and inspired by something, you were so filled with energy that you didn’t even want to eat.

Have you ever noticed that when you are mentally or emotionally drained, food doesn’t help that much? Conversely, if you look at the times in your life when you were in love, or excited and inspired by something, you were filled with energy that you didn’t even want to eat.

The only reason you don’t feel this energy all the time is because you block it. You block it by closing your heart, by closing your mind, and by pulling yourself into a restrictive space inside. When you close your heart or close your mind, you hide in the darkness within you. There is not light. There is not energy. There is nothing flowing.

We are programmed to open or close based upon our past experiences. Impressions from the past are still inside of us, and they get stimulated by different events. If they were negative impressions, we tend to close. If they were positive impressions, we tend to open.

But closing your heart does not really protect you from anything; it just cuts you off from your source of energy. In the end, it only serves to block you inside.

Do not let anything be important enough that you’re willing to close your heart over it.

There is no possible way I can completely stop grabbing and hanging onto my thoughts. The past is bound to surface and hurt a little or a lot. The future will never stop being something to worry about at least a little. I will always be a re-writer of the past to some extent. However, awareness of the unhealthiness of these practices can help me not get tied up in emotional restraints of my own making.

It’s an unexacting practice being human. Anything new usually seems difficult to near impossible as first. Letting things pass that are not healthy has always been a challenge. However, a little at a time, day by day, things have improved because I began years ago to practice what “The Untethered Soul” points out so clearly: “To attain true inner freedom , you must be able to objectively watch your problems instead of being lost in them. No solution can possibly exist while you’re lost in the energy of a problem”.

I am grateful for my progress and the reminder Michael Singer’s book is to live life with intention.

Pretending something did not happen
that really did happen…
Blaming others and not taking
rightful share of responsibility…
Are just two of the surest ways
to a tormented and tumultuous life.
James Browning