Healing the Past While Staying in the Present Moment

Keeping your energy positive in the present moment is a powerful tool to shift your life. When you stay in the present moment, while combining action with positive intention, you plant seeds for a positive tomorrow.
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Keeping your energy positive in the present moment is a powerful tool to shift your life. When you stay in the present moment, while combining action with positive intention, you plant seeds for a positive tomorrow. Spiritual teachers have long taught us to live in the present moment, yet the painful past still pops up to interfere with our "in the moment" mojo as we return over and over again to past hurts. Ignoring the hurts is not the answer either.

It doesn't have to be a serious hurt to drag us into the past; even a seemingly small event like a parking lot dent can keep your thoughts in the past. Whether judging your own actions or someone else's, spending time in the past takes away from the positive contributions you make in the present moment. It is only in the present moment that you can create healthy change in your life.

What if you had a tool to start healing that past hurt while staying in the present moment? The Blessing Meditation is such a tool. As a way to stop obsessing about the past, this meditation can be practiced when your mind starts to drift back to times gone by.

Try the Blessing Meditation now. Think of a time you felt love. It could be love for a child, animal or even a loving time of gratitude. I use how I feel toward Spirit when looking at a beautiful sunset.

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Bring that feeling of love into the present moment and actually feel the love deep in your heart. Allow the love to grow in your heart until it is so big and feels so strong that it cannot be contained. Imagine the love rises up out of your heart and forms a golden ball of loving light.

For our example, remember when you first saw the big dent in the car. See the setting as if it is in the distance, like at the end of a hallway.

Now in the present moment, focus on that loving feeling and send your golden ball of light down the hallway toward you car. As it reaches it, see the golden ball of light bathing the past in the love you are feeling in the present. Intend that the loving ball of light sooth the situation in a way that is for everyone's highest and most loving good. You do not need to force the loving light onto the situation, you don't need to forgive the person who hit your car or pretend that you will never think of it again. As a matter of fact, it will most likely take a few blessings for the loving effect to become stronger than the upset.

When you go back to the past over and over again, you relive the energy that accompanied the memory, whether it is guilt, shame, anger, or regret, bringing that energy into the present moment. With the Blessing Meditation, it is as if you are repaving the road to your memory with love, shifting the energy of the memory. This technique does not take place of therapy if that is warranted, yet it helps to change the energy surrounding the memory. It becomes easier to deal with the emotions that accompany the memory, allowing you to work through the hurt. It also brings you back to the present moment and surrounds you with love rather than hurt, empowering you instead of leaving you with the feeling of helplessness.

The next time you find yourself thinking of the hurtful situation, immediately come back to the present moment and do the Blessing Meditation again. Your memory will now have both the loving energy from the last blessing and the love from the present to empower you. The more Blessing Meditations you do, the greater the loving energy invoked. Eventually the loving energy will become stronger than the hurtful memory.

This Blessing Meditation is a gift for both the receiver and the giver. Every time you bless the past or future, you are surrounding yourself with that loving energy in the present moment! Try the Blessing Meditation right now. Surround yourself with loving energy and start soothing your soul today!

You can find more meditations like this in Soul Soothers: Mini Meditations for Busy Lives.

Cindy Griffith-Bennett, author of Soul Soothers: Mini Meditations for Busy Lives and co-author of Voyage of Purpose: Spiritual Wisdom from Near-Death Back to Life.

For more by Cindy Griffith-Bennett, click here.

For more on meditation, click here.

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