Closing Our History Books

Yesterday, my fellow practitioner, Lynn and I made our monthly pilgrimage to the California Rehabilitation Center at Norco, where we shared the Labyrinth with the inmates there. We love these visits, because we receive so many spiritual gifts each time.

The inmates of Norco with whom we work are hungry to rehabilitate themselves. Our Labyrinth workshops offer them yet another tool to do this. We have many inmates who repeat the labyrinth workshop every month and others who come for the first time, skeptical, yet open.

Most recently in a workshop on letting go of negative beliefs that I taught there with my husband, Patrick, I met an Arab man who spent many years fighting on the Gaza strip. He carries the guilt of killing many people in war, he says, and he cannot let go of this. He was in a place of deep self hatred. He became a nurse so that he could serve what he said was his penitence for all the lives he took. Yesterday, after our labyrinth walk he wrote a beautiful essay, stating that he had been looking for Allah on the outside his whole life, and now he had found that Allah had wedged a place inside of him- a place that was love. The healing has begun.

I tell you this story, because I am realizing how easy it is for many of us to unconsciously create our lives from our history.

When he told me he could not let go of what he did and what he has felt, I told him that he acted from what he knew at that time. He can now let go of that history and create a brand new present by forgiveness for himself, especially.

What a great gift this man gave me! How easy is this for any of us to do when dealing with past hurts? And, yet we must if we are to evolve. We cannot change our history. We must close our history books and with love and forgiveness if we are to move on. This means to stop living in the past. We must live in a brand new present every day.

I am exploring this concept of blessing our history more deeply in my talk at the NoHo Arts Center on Wednesday, October 14 at 6:30 PM. www.nohonewthought.com

Love,
Rita