History DOESN’T always have to repeat itself

jim1537 — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 20:16:13 +0000

It’s easy to fall back on the old cliché in our lives that history always repeats itself because as human beings, we often do just that. However, it doesn’t always have to be a matter of continuing the “same old song and dance” in our journey as we indeed can change things for the better where we forge new patterns, pathways, and outcomes.

Yet, putting in the effort to transform our journey is not only about psychologically breaking old habits that we’ve manifested in this lifetime, but also entails understanding from a spiritual/metaphysical perspective the tremendous amount of karma (both good and bad) that we’ve brought into this incarnation from our past lives. We can either repeat history, or ultimately, move our journey into a different direction where wondrous, new chapters can be written by us.

Our “History” and Karma

Most of us understand that the events which happened in our past lives have a tremendous impact on what is going on right now in our current incarnation. Regarding former incarnations, we carry over the karmic consequences (both good and bad) of our actions into subsequent lifetimes, including the one we’re living in currently. What is referred to as being “lesson driven” means that our lives can change once we’ve learned a particular lesson. If we’ve spiritually agreed to go through something, we will have to experience it, and the way we handle it determines if our lives move in a better direction or not.

If something is karmic, lesson driven and you’ve spiritually agreed to go through it, you won’t be able to stop repeating “history” until and unless you complete the agreement. Think of it like school: If you didn’t pass mathematics in grade 11, “history” would keep repeating itself (meaning you’d have to take this academic course again until you passed it). Then, you would be able to manifest a new path by moving toward getting your diploma and graduating.

Furthermore, if one doesn’t complete the spiritual lessons/agreements/karma they’ve agreed to, it is likely that they would create even more karma, and therefore, have a deeper, harder and more complex set of lessons to deal with in the future within this lifetime or subsequent incarnations.

In his most recent prior physical lifetime, Dominic was a man who was selfish and inconsiderate where his wife Sharon and their two children were completely victimized by his lack of caring for them. In that lifetime, when Sharon got sick, he abandoned her and walked out on his kids because he didn’t want “the hassle” of having to take care of his wife. After Dominic left, Sharon became gravely ill, died, and his kids were devastated. So through Dominic’s actions, he created a tremendous amount of negative karma that irrevocably damaged his family in that prior incarnation.

In his current incarnation, Dominic, his former wife Sharon and their two kids all reincarnated together in the exact same type of family unit as before: Dominic as the father, Sharon as his wife, their daughter and son as the children. This is because all four souls spiritually agreed to resolve this negative karma. Dominic came into this lifetime with the same selfish tendencies as before, yet with the spiritual intention of getting past his old behaviors and not repeating “history”; he was still resistant to paying off his karmic debt to his wife and kids because of egotistical attachment to his past selfish behavior.

Yet, Dominic still wanted to manifest his dreams of being rich and successful, except his karmic agreement stated that he wouldn’t be able to realize his dreams until and unless he paid his karmic debt to his wife and children. Then, and only then, would the door open for him to manifest the success and wealth Dominic wanted and he could write a new chapter of his spiritual/karmic history.

Even though he struggled with changing his old ways, Dominic ultimately did resolve his karmic debt with his wife and children through loving and supporting them emotionally, financially and in daily life. This ultimately allowed Dominic to once and for all stop repeating history and change not only his, but everyone’s journey for the better.

The history of past life patterns

We often hold onto patterns and personal attachments for more than one lifetime. If we look at how stubborn some people are that we know in our current lifetime, it shouldn’t be a surprise that we not only carry behavioral qualities and beliefs throughout our current physical life, but with us on the other side and subsequently into future incarnations.

Cheryl had been a Christian religious zealot in her last two incarnations. This prevented her from being able to write new chapters in her journey as she couldn’t accept others for who they were as she was steeped in judgment and condemnation of others. This created illness in Cheryl’s body, as her rigidity in outlook, attitude and words made her stiff with chronic, debilitating, crippling arthritis.

In her current incarnation, she carried the same attachment and beliefs as she did before. It was familiar, felt comfortable, and with that connection, she was convinced that the wrath and judgment of a vengeful God was her motto to live by. So whenever she perceived others as being wrong or committing a sin, she fell back on the familiar pattern of condemning them. So in the same sense that we speak of people hitting their heads against the wall, that’s exactly what Cheryl was doing again. And she started manifesting the same health problems as she did in her two prior incarnations where her joints and entire body once again became debilitating stiff.

This lifetime, however, was different because her higher self was looking to transcend and rise above this pattern as she was looking to grow and turn over a new leaf. Yet, the key was in letting go of the old attachments and beliefs that had been so familiar and comfortable to her from deep within. That would be what she’d have to do in this lifetime to not keep repeating the same old negative history.

Through being receptive to her higher self, she started growing one step at a time by becoming less judgmental of others. Over the years, she reached a point where she no longer felt compelled to be the judge and the jury regarding other people’s behaviors and started accepting everyone for who they are. This relieved the crippling health problems that had been created within her through condemnation and judgment of others. Cheryl’s acceptance of others literally opened her energy within to receive the new blessings of a healthy flexible body.

As with Cheryl or any of us, there is no rule of thumb as to when one would let go of an attachment, and therefore, move toward changing our personal history. We all have the free will to hold onto something as long as we wish. No two souls grow and evolve at the same rate, so there’s no mathematical number that indicates how long anyone will stay at the same level of consciousness. Some people hold onto something for a year, while others may stay attached to something for countless lifetimes. As with Cheryl’s case, it took about two and a half lifetimes to bring about the transformation needed so that she could forge a new direction. It was well worth her effort, as she freed herself and healed her physical body in the process.

Programmed for history to repeat itself

Sometimes there are patterns and dynamics within a family which program us to repeat history. This can be done by the reinforcement of what our family teaches us, and/or by the beliefs we adopt based on what we’ve observed and experienced.

Hugh’s father Hank died from a heart attack at the age of 56, out of the blue and without warning. This happened when Hugh was just 15 years old. This experience had such an impact on Hugh that he started to believe the old mainstay: like father, like son, and would frequently tell people that he, too, was going to die of a heart attack at the age of 56 just like his father did.

As the years went on, his belief never wavered, and the programming along with the power of Hugh’s spoken word caused history to simply repeat itself: At the age of 56, Hugh dropped dead of a heart attack one day in his back yard, just as his father had, also out of the blue and without warning. Yet what Hugh went through was not unusual as many of us “pick up” our programming through our families and just carry it out.

Violet grew up in the years of the great depression, where her family was deeply impoverished. This experience programmed her to hold onto the belief of poverty, and even though Violet became financially well-to-do through marriage at the age of 30, she continued to always “cry broke.” Even though she now had money through her husband, Violet would frequently speak of going to the poor house and she lived with the constant terror that someday, her future would be an impoverished one.

Because of Violet perpetuating this programming through her belief and words, she did eventually lose all of her money. Widowed at the age of 65, Violet died with barely a penny to her name at the age of 81.

With both Hugh and Violet, history repeated itself through the programming that first started in their childhoods, and was continued through their belief that this was just the way life is. It was as matter of fact to them as the sun rising in the morning.

Old programming, (even when it’s not positive), is comfortable like an old shoe. It can be hard to let go of something, even when it’s not good for us that makes us feel complacent.

The familiarity and comfort of old patterns in this incarnation

Experts such as psychologists and psychiatrists believe that within our current lives, we adopt beliefs, patterns, and emotional attachments. This can start as early as our toddler years, and continue through our moment of death. However, it’s usually thought of that we “pick up” these things from early childhood.

When children get too much of an unhealthy type of TLC (tender loving care) and attention from getting sick, it creates an emotional feeling that being ill means receiving nurturing, comfort, and pampering.

When a child carries that emotional pattern into adulthood, illness becomes a misguided way of still attempting to seek comfort, TLC and nurturing. There are certain adults who “enjoy” being sick as they’re caught in the old formula of “sickness = comfort.” Over and over again, they recreate the same scenario of getting sick like a repetitive tape loop as this type of person starts to manifest illness when they’re stressed, or when they want comfort. Often, the actual health issues become worse as the same behavior mechanisms that tie into staying home from school when you’re 7 and having mom‘s chicken soup with sniffles also apply to manifesting a deadly cancer at age 49.

Tammy was 23 when she went through her first serious relationship break up, and the way she consoled herself was by overeating as a form of comfort through replacing the love she had just lost with food. At that time, she was thin, but gained twenty-five pounds from about six months of overeating.

Then, as her life progressed, she never really noticed that any time her love life was in turmoil, or that she was stressed in general, Tammy would turn to food as a source of comfort. This pattern kept her weight going up and down over the next twenty years until she became seriously obese at the age of 43. Tammy reached a point in her journey where she felt that she had hit rock bottom, yet had no idea what to do. It was like she woke up with the house on fire, but had no way to put it out. She finally realized that she kept repeating what had become a dreadfully hellish history, but didn’t know what to do about it or how to fix it.

The crisis point of wanting to stop repeating history

Most of us go along with the choices and patterns that we feel comfortable with (regardless of whether they’re good or bad for us and others) till we experience a crisis point in our lives as Tammy did.

The term “crisis” can have a terrifying implication in our daily mundane lives such as when a loved one is in the hospital, seriously ill and potentially near death. However, in spiritual terns, “crisis” indicates that a life altering crossroad is occurring in someone’s journey which can lead to ending an old, negative pattern and bring about a positive, fantastic change. With that motivation we receive from a spiritual crisis point, we seek to stop repeating history and transform our lives in the right way.

For Tammy, she used her weight crisis as the motivation to turn things around. She looked back at when she first started overeating, and immediately recognized the reason of why, when and how it all started. This gave her the clarity to see that she had been using food as a crutch and source of comfort for twenty years. With that in mind, she made the commitment to stop perpetuating the same old awful song and dance by breaking the old pattern of overeating for comfort. It’s wonderful to know that Tammy did lose the weight she needed to and permanently redirected her relationship to food.

Yet, unlike in Tammy’s case, we often see how many of us struggle with being able to bring about the meaningful change we desperately claim that we want even when we’ve reached a crisis point in our lives. We are passionate about wanting to write a whole new chapter in our history, but we can’t seem to do so at all, not matter how hard we try.

The survival conflict within and our defense mechanisms

If something isn’t karmic, lesson driven, or spiritually agreed to, then we can indeed stop repeating history by changing ourselves — yet that isn’t always as easy as it sounds on the surface. It’s usually that our own ego, defense mechanisms, and emotions are in the way of the blessings we seek. In reality, we are often quite conflicted as to the change we’re trying to make, where one part of us wants to stop repeating the same old negative historical patterns (usually our higher spiritual self), while conversely, another part of us (usually our lower self and negative emotions), fights tooth and nail to keep the old, dark, familiar patterns alive. That is because we’re receiving an internal payoff from our own negativity and have attachments to it.

I’ve seen countless people go into therapy, meditate, say affirmations for years and even decades, yet to no avail. Why is that?

The key to changing our history for the better is that our thoughts must be simple, unified and possess oneness of intention regarding what we’re trying to manifest. You must understand that you have to become one within yourself and in a complete state of harmony with what it is that you’re trying to attract – all the way down to the subconscious mind. “Getting it” mentally does little if anything to change history for the better at all. It’s like the cliché of talking the talk, but not walking the walk. You have to “get it’ emotionally, which is much harder to do. Think of this process like a freight train: the engine is the conscious mind and up front; all the cars after that are like the various emotional bodies and defenses within; and last but not least is the caboose, which is the subconscious mind.

Sandra was a woman who had innocently fallen in love with David, her high school sweetheart, when they were both 17. Everything appeared idyllic: they married when they both turned 21, he was studying to become a lawyer, and they planned to have a child once he passed the bar exam.

Yet, through the years, David’s personality shifted, and who he became wasn’t positive: after passing the bar, he started making a lot of money as a corporate attorney, his ego swelled, and he started becoming abusive: first emotionally, then physically. This all started to occur when Sandra became pregnant after they were married for three years. After she gave birth to their daughter Sasha, it was typical for David to tell Sandra that she was undesirable, ugly and at times when he was stressed, he would often hit her.

So after fifteen years of marriage, Sandra and David divorced. Sandra, now 36, proclaimed that she was ready to meet the love of her life. “Out with the old and in with the new!” was the triumphant motto Sandra often said. She sounded determined, positive, and up about what she wanted.

Except there were some serious problems: Yes, in her conscious mind, she wanted to be loved. However, emotionally and subconsciously, the last thing she desired was to be in a loving relationship. There were three core issues preventing this: First, she was terrified of commitment. From a survival level, commitment meant being cheated on, abused, and treated horribly. This makes sense, because it was all Sandra experienced. Since it’s all she knew, this fear was branded deeply into her subconscious, which worked to keep all viable candidates who could love Sandra away. This was clearly designed to protect her from getting hurt again. Additionally, Sandra’s self esteem was so battered in her marriage that emotionally and subconsciously, she came to believe that she deserved to be abused. Lastly, because David stopped making love to her long before they were divorced, she wanted passionate, wild sexual excitement because it had been missing in her life for so long.

With that, Sandra attracted the type of men she truly wanted emotionally and subconsciously: unattainable, abusive, and sexually passionate. In a perverse way, she was getting exactly what she wanted, except that it all came from her lower self and dark emotions.

She made the same mistakes that I’ve seen countless people do: It is falsely presumed that if you want to manifest something in life, you just have to affirm it, visualize it, and want it. “Go for it!” people proclaim. “Move forward with your life!” are the types of slogans many declare.

It is just not that simple. Often, we are in complete conflict internally with what we claim we want. That must be addressed or history will most certainly repeat itself like a broken record playing over and over again. It is like a house: if the foundation is crooked, it doesn’t matter how you decorate the penthouse.

So what did Sandra do? Instead of truly coming to terms with her situation which is what she would have needed in order for her to transform her journey in the right way, she decided to just be one of the many people who talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk. Sandra refused to look at the underlying issues that kept bringing in the same type of man into her life. Stubbornly denying the real problems and issues within, she kept affirming and pushing for the lover that never came, because she wasn’t really willing to do what it would take to turn things around for the better.

A new chapter of history can be written

As we see with Sandra, we all need to make sure to not get caught in our own traps, but sincerely work on “getting it” emotionally and subconsciously. That takes absolute sincerity, a deep emotional commitment and working to understand the conflicts within and coming to terms with them. Don’t merely look at what you’re saying; that doesn’t take hardly any effort at all as most people can easily talk the talk.

Look at what you’re feeling, as most people operate from the emotional level (regardless of whether their feelings are healthy and loving, self-delusional, or dark and harmful to themselves and others). Be self-honest about what it is that you feel – acknowledge all parts of your emotional bodies, not just the parts that are self-flattering and only validate what you want.

See it all: The good, the bad and the ugly! Look at your lower self, ego and defense mechanisms. As everything we go through affects who we are, stop and ask yourself how did your past hurts change you? You may not want your ex-lover (just as Sandra didn’t want her ex-husband David back either), but it isn’t that simple. Sandra’s marriage and divorce caused her to shut down and lose parts of herself. In your own situation, what has caused you to short circuit your blessings? We must become an open channel to receive what we’re asking for by removing what is in the way of the good we seek. It’s about understanding that whatever dualities are within you must be resolved. We must become like a crystal clear pure glass of refreshing water.

Here are some simple tips and guidelines:

1-Decide in clear terms what your goal and intention is. It must be based on your higher spiritual self, as your dreams need to align with the path of you highest good, which will enrich not only your life, but others’ as well.

2-Acknowledge how you feel, including all of the conflicting emotions about your issue. Be self-honest.

3-Look at what blocks and barriers are within you that stand in the way of what you’re seeking. Work toward letting them go.

4-Move toward your dreams by never building on any emotions and choices that take you away from your goal, but build on everything that moves you toward what you want. If the goal is to quit drinking, don’t go to bars or be in situations where alcohol is being consumed. If you want a romantic commitment, don’t waste any time with those who don’t share the same dream.

5-As they say that Rome wasn’t built in a day, stay the course and realize that it takes time to “get it” emotionally and subconsciously, and then, when that happens, change will occur for the better.

6-Do this with utter sincerity, gratitude, and inspiration.

Here are some simple don’ts:

1-DO NOT feel that you’re running out of time and in a hurry because that delays manifestation even more.

2-DO NOT be defiant and angry as that will prevent you from manifesting anything good.

3-DO NOT feel like you’re a victim because it blocks you from connecting with your blessings.

4-DO NOT have a defensive attitude toward your growth and resentment about your situation as that will short circuit your goals and dreams.

5-DO NOT feel that life has been unfair to you because that belief will absolutely keep the same old negativity continuing.

As we look at our lives from a higher perspective, we see that as human beings, we often get caught up in the belief that history always repeats itself. In reality, it doesn’t have to, yet it takes more than merely a capricious, half-hearted effort to bring about the wondrous changes we seek.

It isn’t just about saying, “I want what I want and it better happen right now!”

Once you’ve identified the problems and construct the right plan, you must stay the course – don’t deviate from it as that is a sure-fire way to trip yourself up. Make every day a moment in time that moves you closer to your dreams and not further away from them.

With the simple resolve to heal the issues within and remove what’s in our own way, we can truly become open, and with that, ultimately manifest our heart’s true divine desire. Then, we don’t have to keep repeating history anymore – as a brand new wondrous chapter not only begins to be written, but becomes the foundation of a fruitful future.

This is done through feeling and building on the inspirational fire within; it is the belief that a better day is truly ours to come — and we need to be continually grateful that it is an established fact in divine mind. Remember that at this moment, it already IS written in the heavens as a new chapter of your history; therefore, it can manifest in the physical world where all magical things are possible. Welcome it with open arms and make all parts of you: your conscious mind, words, thoughts, emotions, choices, and ultimately your subconscious mind unify into a complete state of clarity, belief, purpose, and oneness of intention. Then, it is yours.

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History DOESN’T always have to repeat itself