Create True Peace with Your Past
As we look within our inner water medicine, we can access a broad array of memories. Some come to the surface of conscious awareness in thoughts and images, and others remain unseen within the unconscious but still influence how we feel. The water within the body acts as a recorder, receiving the information of experiences that unfold in each moment.
What has already occurred in life cannot be changed. However, our perception of it can transform entirely. Learning how to work with your water within opens the opportunity to cultivate an inner peace for what you have experienced in life. Imagine that you were able in this moment to fully accept everything that has happened in your life.
How would you feel if the heavy emotions about past mistakes and judgments washed out of your body?
All behaviors that create discomfort and difficulty in life come from some form of wounding in the past. It is a conscious choice if we desire to continue feeling wounded by what has occurred or if we desire to heal. The first significant healing step in coming to peace with the past is deciding to no longer choose to suffer in life.
Coming to the point of making that decision can take patience due to the many ties that can be present, linking the past to various emotions of suffering. Each time you have a memory arise from a past event that is tied to a feeling of depression or anger for example, it creates a very real physical response in the body.
As this happens repeatedly, the body becomes accustomed to those feelings and unconsciously forms an attachment to them. Even if there is a knowing on a conscious level that we do not desire to feel depressed or alone, the body can still crave what it has become accustomed to. These patterns can, at times, even go back generations into your ancestral lineages.
Along my journey, there have been various wounds that formed from experiences in the past. When connecting with my water medicine, my initial approach was to simply go with the flow of how I was feeling. This was helpful for some time to allow my emotions to start moving through my body.
There then came a point of progressing with my ability to work more dynamically with my water within. While working with the elements in the body, we can use the heart to come back to a centered neutral point. I began to use my heart center to be in stillness which in turn allowed me to become aware of the choices that I can make when it comes to interacting with my water.
Aligning with the heart reveals that I am not my emotions, therefore, if I am sinking into an emotion that does not feel supportive for me, I as a conscious being can change how I feel. This practice of coming back to the heart while allowing the emotions to flow creates a sense of non-attachment to whatever is arising.
From this centered non-attached space, you have more options for how you wish to handle what is coming up. Possibly you can notice that the situation is similar to something that happened in a previous chapter of your life. With that instead of feeling frustrated or depressed, you can feel a sense of compassion for yourself.
A significant ingredient in cultivating peace with the past is compassion. Beginning with yourself, remembering that you have always done the best you could with what you knew. When you feel stable in that perspective of your past, you can then begin to extend this compassion out to other people that you have interacted with in your life such as your parents or friends.
After cultivating peace with your past the next step on the journey is to maintain it. When cutting the tyes from the heavy energies of the past, it is important to be aware of stimulants that can bring you back into your old way of feeling. This can come from eating certain foods, connecting with a particular group of people, or exposing yourself to triggering media.
Support yourself to maintain your peace through each choice you make throughout the day. This could mean avoiding refined sugar to reduce hyperactivity in the body or not watching movies to avoid getting caught up in the emotions of others. Continuing with a consistent practice to feel at peace with your past and in the present is a tremendous gift to offer yourself.
During my journey of shifting my awareness to embody peace, I chose to stop watching media. Instead of choosing to watch things, I shifted to a new hobby of crocheting. When I would usually watch something, I switched that time to crocheting and listening to music or an audiobook. Step by step it became easier.
Call upon the medicine of water to support you on your journey of creating true peace with your past. You can spend time with a river or the ocean to ask for guidance. If you feel your emotions are becoming strong or overwhelming, give yourself some water to drink or hydrating foods to eat to allow the energy to move through you.
Using the elements you can embody being the magician of your life by mastering internal alchemy. If you are curious to learn more about this practice you are welcome to explore my course The Elemental Medicine School, a three-month online journey to learn the powerful healing language of fire, air, earth, and water.
