This week I met with a young man,
only 21 years old, who related to me that he has made so many mistakes
he has ruined his life. He told me that his past was filled with
lies, cheating on his girlfriends and then later cheating on his wife.
After his wife filed for divorce, he immediately began another
relationship and has repeated the patterns of his past. As he told
his story to me, he was visibly filled with remorse, regret, guilt and
shame. He told me his family no longer has faith in him and he
feels he has betrayed everyone he cares about. Since
he had already told me all the things that he felt were wrong in his
life, I asked him to tell me his positive qualities. He could not
name even one.
What he is
experiencing are his past thoughts, beliefs and concepts about life in
general and himself in the particular. Lacking any real sense of
confidence or faith in himself ... he validated his lack of confidence
and faith through others. I explained to him that until he
established faith in himself, he could not expect others to have faith
in him. Since we are all in the One Mind, it is impossible to
experience something in the "without" unless we have
established it "within." In Truth
we are always only experiencing our own ... consciousness.
Guilt and shame hold us chained to the past. No one can move
forward with confidence and faith by holding ideas of guilt and shame in
their consciousness. Positive, forward thinking, cannot thrive in
a consciousness filled with the negative. In
the extreme, guilt and shame can immobilize us ... bring us to a state
of despair and hopelessness.
From the Science
of Mind, we know that what we are experiencing today is the sum
total of our thoughts, beliefs and concepts ... but today .. we can
cultivate new ideas, new beliefs, new concepts and change our
experiences. The Master Mind Jesus stated,
"let the dead bury the dead." He was referring to
the past. We can renew our mind today ... embrace hope ... affirm
confidence in ourselves ... and then today begins the unfoldment of new
experiences.
As we acknowledge that we
must change ... we begin the change. At first it may not be
obvious to those around us ... but as we gain a greater confidence and
feeling of self-assurance and establish this in our consciousness, the
mental atmosphere that surrounds us will attract to us people and
experiences that validate our change. As
Emerson stated, "who you are speaks so
loudly, I cannot hear a word you say." It is this
mental atmosphere created from our consciousness that touches those
around us ... the greater the strength of our confidence and faith in
ourselves, the more we will experience positive results in our life.
Many of us have experienced this at some level but never understood that
it was consciousness.
As we release the past
... we can release all that was part of it ... guilt, shame, confusion,
financial disasters ... whatever it was that we don't want to experience
anymore. And as I explained to the young man ... the past
does not define you ... the past is merely an
experience ... and we can have more of the same experiences ... if we
hold onto the past in our mind ... but, as we release the past ...
we open our minds to something new, something greater ... even perhaps a
seeming miracle or two!
And
So It Is!
Letting
Love Use Me In Its Own Good Way,
Henry
Lee Bates
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