THE GENTLE ART OF BLESSING by PIERRE PRADERVAND

Author:PIERRE PRADERVAND
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ATRIA PAPER BACK
Published: 2009-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

UNLOADING YOUR PAST

I would like to suggest you try an exercise I have been doing for years in my “Recreating Your Life” workshops, with people from all walks of life. After a discussion on the past and the meaning of forgiveness and letting go, participants each receive a garbage bag in which they introduce a large stone (or stones) representing something in their past they wish to let go of or forgive: some long-held resentment, remorse, or regret. Often, if the stones are especially heavy, participants can double the bags, so they don’t break!

Then they go off alone into nature, carrying their bag over their shoulder. The Alpine setting guarantees a steep slope for the walk. I ask them to ponder one simple fact: they are the person holding on to the bag, the bag isn’t holding on to them! At any moment, the carrier can deposit the stone(s). With only two exceptions since I started these workshops, every single person put his or her stone down. Some participants have experienced ecstatic moments of liberation after depositing their stone, after realizing that the choice of letting go of the past or holding on to it was theirs alone.

One of the people who held on to the stone had a tremendous grudge against a former companion, who had abandoned her with two children. She said rather aggressively to my wife, “If he thinks I’m going to make him the free gift of depositing the stone . ” Elly gently reminded the woman that she was carrying the stone, not her former companion! Three years later, she came back and participated in the same workshop—and finally deposited her stone.

We all move at our own speed. What counts is that we get there. On the spiritual level there is no fast or slow, because chronological time is an invention of the human mind, not a reality of the physical universe, as British physicist Julian Barbour, one of the scientific world’s leading authorities on time, explains in his book The End of Time. Time is certainly no part of the spiritual universe, which is why some lessons that seem to come very slowly help us much more in our progression than others learned more rapidly.

Why not undertake the same exercise, alone, in nature? (Or at night if it’s difficult for you to leave town.) It can be a very powerful experience. If possible, choose a rugged, uphill gradient. Just try. It will not cost you anything, and it could help you a lot.

Why carry the useless weight called “past” on the path of spiritual discovery, asks Eckhart Tolle in his book The Power of Now, which I consider the most profoundly original book on spirituality to have appeared in the past fifty years. On a spiritual level, our only past is our present oneness with divine Love. And by our beliefs and attitudes, we create our future as surely as we entertain (or let go of) our past. That is why blessing each day

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