Who have I been?

My friend Thach told me that I need to get present to the person I’ve been so that I can become the person I want to be.  [Feel free to stop and re-read that line again.]  In other words, I need to understand who I’ve been in the past so that I can know why I am the person I am today.  I can’t become the person I want to be until I face certain demons from my past. 

Since we were infants, we have relied on survival instincts.  Even as an new born baby, we reacted to pain stimuli without understanding the cause of the pain.  In our childhood, we learned some lessons the hard way.  For example, after burning your hand, you learned to be more careful before you touch something that might be hot.  Subconsciously, you created a story that went something like, “Don’t touch hot things because it will cause pain.” 

Stories like the one above can be very useful in life if you don’t want a 3rd degree burn on your hand.  However, our reaction to emotional pain can also hold us back and cause us to resist the very things that we want or need.  Painful experiences from our youth can create stories in our mind that prevent us from getting hurt again.  But they can also hold us back as adults.  We may not even know that these stories exist in our head.  These stories are usually not even true – yet they feel very real to us.

For example, I recently realized that I had been carrying around several stories that are like CD’s that’s constantly playing in my head.  As I pursue “full self-expression,” I’ll share them in the next few postings of this blog.