Look at your life. Every grandiose aspiration and tiny little bad habit. All of it is the sum of the life you have lived, and your reactions to that life. That is neither good nor bad … it just IS. It’s what is so.

So when you scrutinize different elements of how you are living your life … you don’t have to beat yourself up about them. They are simply what is so. If something works, continue on doing it. If it doesn’t work? Then perhaps you could look into what exactly is needed to begin changing that aspect.

This is the conscious work I have been doing of late. Sifting and sorting through my habits, and then digging underneath them to find the root of what is behind them. It sounds kind of painstaking, and it is actually … but I am finding a slew of current every day behaviors that are rooted in things that go WAY back to my childhood. Even though I am not LIVING in my past, literally … I am. Until now I had thought I had already worked through all of these things … released them to God through forgiveness and meditation.

I have found though that I am living in a present full of habits and behaviors that were LEARNED in my past. My brain and body have memorized what emotions and chemicals to release when each one of those habits are engaged in … and suddenly I am right back in the very same emotions from my childhood … just attached to a current day situation. More often than not my internal reactions are NOT equal to the events today … because the events going on today for me are nowhere near what they were for me as a child.

Some of you may have had wonderful childhoods … and if you did I am truly happy for you. It would be wonderful for everyone to experience such a thing. I had happy early years, but from age 11 on my life was full of death, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, verbal abuse, and physical abuse. I am not saying that in search of consolation … it simply is what was so in my life. Those events comprise who I am as a person today … and you know what? I am pretty damn happy with the person I am today! 🙂

So many of the wonderful things in my life that I treasure wouldn’t be here at all if I hadn’t experienced the life that I did. I have no regrets.

What I am finding through doing this conscious internal work, however, is just how much I still live in the same emotions from all those years ago. Those events no longer take place in my life … but the emotions live on through the habits I developed. Back then I didn’t know any better … and those habits actually kind of made sense for who I was then. They protected me in some way.

If all of this doesn’t completely make sense, I will give you a couple of examples from my life and show how they have evolved into different forms in my current life:

* As a child who experienced abuse virtually around every corner … my greatest fear was of being blindsided by some horrific event. So I began scanning 24/7 for anyone who would potentially be a threat to me … and I avoided those people.

* As a child I also ate foods that gave me comfort … they ultimately gave me comfort because I got to choose what I was eating and that made me feel in control. It was something I could lose myself in and not worry about the next awful thing that would happen to me.

In the first instance, it really is pretty simple to see how that stayed around. Because of my 24/7 scanning I began making instant assessments about anyone who came into my life. If any alarm bells went off in my head you were a threat and simply avoided. Who knows what those alarm bells could have been triggered by though?? Who knows how many wonderful friendships I missed out on, or opportunities I sabotaged all for the sake of perpetuating a habit that began in my childhood. Something that made me feel safe … but ultimately was sabotaging me. So now I go around with my head up, making eye contact and smiling at people with a heart WIDE open … sounds kind of simple, but when I first started doing it I literally felt like I was going to be attacked every time.

In the second instance, my use of food as a way of comforting myself … to feel like I had control … morphed into multiple areas: throughout my college years that turned into sexual promiscuity, alcohol consumption, drug use, and basically experimentation with anything that appealed to me. If I wanted it, that was enough … I simply did it, and that made me feel like I had control over my life. It made me feel that I was safe, even though I quite literally put myself into very dangerous situations as a result. So now I consciously go about looking at what is behind my desires … am I doing something simply because I enjoy it, or am I doing something to simulate security?

Even if you didn’t have a childhood full of abuse … I bet you can take a look at some of the things you do today and if you dig deep enough you might be able to find that they are rooted in some deeply seated event in your psyche. Even though you’ve moved on in life … those emotions, fears and reactions still live on. Take one thing that you feel embarrassed or ashamed about … and see if you can go internally wherever your emotions take you. Some memory most likely will unfold. Don’t shut it down … allow it to play out in your mind.

When you are done … open your heart to God and invite Love into that place. Ask for healing deep down into this ancient wound. Over time this kind of work will allow you to be free of these self-sabotaging ties to emotional events from our past. God wants us to be free to receive and give Love … everywhere, all the time. We can’t do this though without freeing ourselves of these fetters from bygone years.

Sometimes something as simple as letting go requires some work … work to discover what you didn’t even know you needed to let go of.

Peace and Love.

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Religion4All is an idea: that every human being (no matter their race, religion, sexuality, social status, lifestyle, or any other possible factor) is LOVED by God; just … as … they are.

We all are loved by God, and NO religion or person has a monopoly on it. Every single person on this planet is loved equally by God … SO many are cut off from God because they are told they don’t belong. God loves everyone … we ALL are beautiful creations … we don’t need to cringe when we hear the words “God”, or “religion”, or their judgments … God LOVES us all!

There is no requirement to change in order to be LOVED by God, or to LOVE God. God is LOVE, and LOVE is God … period. There is no one who God loves more than anyone else … there are only those who choose to LOVE more … to love God more, and consequently then to love each other more. In doing so, we grow closer to God … and know God.

By opening our hearts, and minds to God (free of boundaries like religion, or social trends); by LOVING God … we are exactly where we are meant to be. If we maintain that openness, never allowing any person or event to make us close our hearts, we will be guided by God to be who we are meant to be.

In that space of openness we can then live a life of LOVE, and be guided to where we are meant to be … forever in LOVE.

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