Letting go is hard for you. Something in you is determined to hold on, as if what you hold onto is a precious diamond. Even a precious diamond cannot be held onto forever.
Everything in the world is a symbol. Keep the symbol, and let go of the attachment.
If someone loved you and gave you a diamond, you had the experience of receiving the diamond. The diamond was a symbol of love. Keep the love lively in your heart. The diamond is not crucial. It is a symbol. A diamond is a token.
Most of your attachments are to that which serves you not at all. Quite the contrary. You held on tight to that which did you no favor in the first place. Childhood memories, for instance, are impressed upon you. Everyone you meet is your mother or father or someone from back then who treated you a certain way, perhaps even mistreated you in some way, and you assort the dynamics of your life into the same pattern, whether it graces you or not.
You may go so far as to keep all the tokens from childhood as if you cannot part from them, as if they ennoble you now, as if, they belong to you, and you must have them or – or what, beloveds? What would happen if you did not keep your baby shoes? What would happen if you freed yourself from hurtful memories, if you let go of the hurt, if you could accept yourself as innocent? Even those who hurt you, they too were innocent. They were acting out, just as you act out.
Patterns in life are not to be set, and they are not to be handed down from generation to generation. You cannot go back and change the past. You have to let go of it. As you let go of your attachment to the past, you are letting go of the hurt. You are letting go of your reaction to it. You can’t rewrite the script. You can, however, rewrite its power over you. You can rewrite your reaction to it, not by dint of will, but by realization. Those who may have hurt you are not holding on to their dominion over you now. You are holding on to their dominion over you now.
You came out of it. You live now. You are no longer the helpless child. Whatever disasters befell you in the past, they are present only at your say-so.
In years past, there was a hurricane. Where is the hurricane now? There was a tidal storm, and now the storm has gone into the garage of the past. The storm was just doing what storms do, and now you are out of the storm. Its effects do not have to gather on you now.
A human being today present in your life may consciously or unconsciously remind you of your wicked stepmother. I say wicked stepmother here as a convenience. And now this offending person before you, a mere token of your wicked stepmother who had power over you, unleashes the wicked stepmother in you. Yes, in you. You could not please your wicked stepmother no matter what you could do. Cinderella could not please her wicked stepmother. Now what happens is that through your life, when you see your wicked stepmother in another form, you become the essence of your wicked stepmother. You will not be pleased no matter what. You find fault no matter what. The headline could read: “Innocent victim turns into essence of wicked stepmother.” You have done this time and time again. And, now, no more. Park the past in its garage, and walk away a person freed from the past.