“The study of the past can help us clarify many of our problems, but healing does not occur in the past. It occurs in the present.
There is a current mania for blaming childhood events for our present despair. What the ego doesn’t want us to see is that our pain doesn’t come from the love we weren’t given in the past, but from the love we aren’t giving in the present. Salvation can only be found in the present.
Every moment we have a chance to change our past and our future by reprogramming the present. Even if we learned lessons in lovelessness from our parents, to continue to adhere to those patterns—by withholding our love from them now—is hardly the solution.
Endless investigation of the darkness does not lead to the light. Past a certain point, the discussion always begins to move in a circle.
The only way to the light is to step into the light.”
— Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love
If this is today’s message for you from ‘The Lessons of Love,’ check whether what prevents you from being happy is linked to some kind of disappointment from the past. In its most obvious forms, it manifests as the blame we direct toward our parents or the mistakes our partners made long ago. But it also exists in subtler forms, even for those of us who have already realized that blaming is pointless and that there are only lessons to be learned.
Nevertheless, if we feel bitterness, it is worth investigating where it comes from—does it stem from your current life situation, or is it something lingering from the past, waiting to be resolved in the present?
