Moving Past Old Patterns Allows Us to Boldly Step into the Future

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

We work and learn and grow and change and then fall back into our old and outworn patterns of being… Can we ever break this cycle?

—

Afraid of one’s self, one’s mind, one’s past and one’s patterns… aren’t we all a bit afraid of lapsing back into the persons we used to be? We work and learn and grow and change and then fall back into our old and outworn patterns of being… What is this? One can never really lapse back into who they used to be, so what is happening here?

Often we align ourselves with who we have been and what we have done in the past. We probably identify ourselves as our past. But everything is constantly changing and we humans in particular have such a great capacity (maybe infinite) capacity to change and be changed in a moment. Does it make sense then to align one’s self with one’s past? Compared to the infinite, yet still undefined, potential of the future, and our natural inclination towards learning, growing, achieving and becoming… no.

It doesn’t make practical sense to identify with our past (good or bad) when we really meditate on what we are and what we could become.

These past patterns, our attachments to them and our identification with them as defining ‘what we are’… as we release the rigidity of our beliefs about ourselves, the possibility of change becomes reality. Our capacity to forget the past (who we have been, what we have done, what has been done unto us and how we have reacted) is an essential part of our capacity to create a new future.

Remember that the potential for change is great, potentially infinite. The extent to which we relax our identification with the past and replace that identification with something greater, that is the extent to which we can continue the process of growing and becoming ever greater. Most of us get caught up on an early formed idea of ourselves (bad or good) and spend most of our lives punishing ourselves for this idea and fearing the punishment of others or praising ourselves for this idea and searching for the praise of others.

It’s probably better to release the idea and to trust the process that evolved us thus far.

This is essentially the maxim ‘keep your eyes on the prize’ writ out in a psycho-philosophical context. Keep your mind’s eye on the goal, on the good (on GOD), on the highest vision available to you. Keep releasing and detaching from all that has passed, knowing that it does not determine what will come to be tomorrow. The past is no more true than the future; this is not a metaphysical weighing of the truth of one vs. the other.

Change is the deeper truth… and identification (the ideas one holds in one’s mind and gives credence to) guides the process in a specific direction.

The process is already and always underway, it cannot be arrested. Aim high and hold your mind steady. Trust the process to take you higher still. 

---

You may also enjoy Sleep Better… A Few Stretches for Bedtime by Carter Miles