May 2024

Ah, life is certainly made up of seasons—the beautiful and the challenging. Here we are moving into another season that will surely bring both the sun and the rain as growth begins to spring up around us from all sides.

I have been thinking a lot about the secular nature of life and its seasons and how we as humans get into such deep patterns and habits of existence. I have found that when presented with difficulty, trauma, or loss we tend to go to our habitual tendencies of protection to cope, and hopefully process to get through. For many it's fight, for others it's flight, and my go to is freeze. As I begin to enter into a new season of life I have been ultra aware of the habits or samskaras that I fall back onto and the thought processes that potentially hold me back from learning and growing amidst new life and experiences especially when I see a recurring pattern.

In light of this, I have been thinking about a new concept for myself. Allowing for past experience to inform but not define my current and future experience.

I believe as humans we have our experiences and we allow them to define who and why we are the way we are. “This situation happened to me so I am now this way because of it”, “I failed at this attempt so I am now I am a failure”, “I was hurt in this relationship and now all future relationships will suffer” and so on. When a new experience arises that is similar to a past experience we become triggered and fall into the mindset that we are defined by what happened in the past and have habitual reactions instead of present awareness of what is.

My mantra this month is to observe this unfolding and pause, to remind myself that past experience does not define my present self. That the past is here to inform, to shape, and give perspective.

Whether it is my relationship with my physical body or my communication in relationships, if I lean too much into the way things have unfolded in the past, I deny myself the opportunity to learn and gain knowledge from what is presenting itself in the moment. My teacher always said that problems are designed for our edification. Can we look at each situation as an opportunity to inform our growth process as opposed to being hindered by what has come before?

My offering this month, as the new season becomes more and more present, is to allow ourselves to become more aware of how we use the past as defining for our present. Can we shift our perspective and work to move from a place of observing how the past can inform and not define? For me, this way of thinking gives a sense of freedom. Freedom that I do not have to be bound by what once was and have the choice to use the information from the past to make the best decisions and choices for my life as it unfolds

Peace,

Margot