Unwanted life lessons repeat themselves again and again. Why? Because we keep talking to ourselves about them.
Whether they happened two minutes -- or even 25 years ago -- we talk to ourselves about things we regret or feel guilty over. In fact, the mind almost never stops talking. Something triggers a thought that is the left over, undigested energy of an event that was meant to be assimilated and integrated at the time it first happened. That undigested energy now reappears because it seeks integration.
Every event brings a revelation that is intended to be integrated on the spot. The energy is digested and something new is born in us -- a deeper understanding that wasn't there the moment before. But instead, we reject these revelations of things we would rather not see about ourselves. And so the integration doesn't occur, and that undigested energy persists, only to resurface later.
Whenever we find ourselves in the throes of something we regret from our past, our attention has been placed on an old painful image that, by its reappearance in our consciousness, draws us into yet another conversation about it. We believe that by thinking about painful past events we can arrange the pieces into something that better matches what our minds tell us that event should have looked like when it first occurred. But changing the past in this way is impossible.
By being mindful enough in the midst of that useless dialog, we can ask, "What is it that is reminding me of this problem?" It isn't joy that reminds us. We are reminded that something is wrong by an influx of negative emotions like fear, worry, regret, or anger that promise that thinking about these things will put them right.
Something in us that knows all our trigger points brings up these painful memories and engages us in a conversation to restore the peace that was taken from us... by what? By our own thoughts! We are trapped in inner conversations that tempt us with the promise of resolving the conflict inherent in the conversation itself. And resolution never comes. Instead, those bitter memories return to haunt us again and again.
If we can become mindful of what's talking to us and reminding us that something's wrong, that awareness gives us the power to free ourselves of these self-harming inner voices -- and resolve the past in a way we never expected.