Today, I was thinking. We spend so much of our lives thinking about who we were ‘before’. Who we were in the past. For me, I ‘used to be’ a dancer. I ‘used to be happy’ when I was dancing. I ‘used to’ know exactly what I wanted in life.
But what good do those ‘used tos’ serve? They make us feel as though our present moment, our now, is lacking something. Like a part of us is missing, off kilter, or just plain wrong.
Nothing is wrong. Those ‘used to bes’ are an illusion. The past, truly, is an illusion. When you think about the past, are you reliving it? When you imagine something you used to do, are you actually doing it? No. It’s an illusion, created by your mind. An attachment to something that is no longer there. it’s over, done, and gone.
It’s almost like it never existed. An illusion.
Illusion is defined as a deceptive appearance or impression. Our minds deceive us, allowing us to believe that the person we were then, in the past, still exists.
That person does not exist. The dancer, the happy young girl, the person you ‘used to be’. She isn’t there. He isn’t there. You cannot talk to them, touch them, connect with them. The only way they stay alive is through an illusion, an attachment in your mind.
So what would happen if you dropped the illusion? If you stopped living for who you were then, and started living as who you are now?
If, in the morning, you woke up and decided to start afresh? Not as the culmination of everything you experienced when you ‘used to be;’, but as yourself, fully, in this moment, without attachments.
What then?
Can you imagine a world where you aren’t defined by your past? When your future is no longer determined by who you ‘used to be’.
I am not a former dancer. I am not someone who’s life plan was taken away, or who used to be happy.
Today, right now, I am a writer. I am a nursing student, and I am about to take three exams.
Will I be that girl tomorrow? No. Tomorrow I will be someone new, someone different. Someone in the moment.
You see, the concept of ‘used to be’ only holds us back. We believe that we an only reach destination z because we came from starting point x. We believe that the past took something from us, or that we were changed forever.
But it simply isn’t true.
We are here. Now. In this moment. We are constantly changing, constantly evolving. Who we are in the next hour will be completely different than who we are when we are reading this post.
So stop putting yourself in a box. Stop defining yourself who used to be, and start allowing yourself to be who you are now.
No illusion, no attachments, expectations, or resistance. Simply being, experiencing life as the individual you are now.
Caroline Myss, well known intuitive, says: Stop looking to something that is over to determine what happens next.
