Most of us have been on this journey for a long time.  We have been searching for peace and healing for years.  We have sought out the answers to our pain for years.  We would most certainly call ourselves seekers.  We are driven by something deep inside that won’t leave us alone.  Even when we spend time in denial, we always come back.  But the resistance to our journey is strong and coming from all directions.  Society tells us to plan for the future, to ignore the past, to be as productive as possible, and to pretend we are fine, even perfect.  Our family wants us to stay in denial and keep the secrets.  Our friends wonder why we won’t stop thinking and talking about the past. All of these pressures can set us back on our journey.

But society has the wrong idea.  We think we can leave the past behind by ignoring it, denying it and focusing on the future.  But we cannot create what we want this way.  It is like building a house of cards in an earthquake zone.  It is only a matter of time before our past patterns, cycles, beliefs and emotions come rising up and shake everything to the ground.  We cannot build a new life on this shaky foundation.  We must dig deep and unearth the unconscious residue from our traumatic past.  We must pull it up and out.  Until that happens, we are not making a new life for ourselves.  There is no room for it.  The space to manifest is already full.  And it is manifesting what we don’t want.  To bring in the new, we must let go of the old.  But what does it mean to let go of the old?  Here are some examples I have found in my own life.

Letting Go of the Savior.  If we grew up with childhood trauma, we almost always have inner children hoping for a savior.  This savior might be modeled after someone who existed in real life or an imaginary person.  But these hopes sit in our unconscious and drive most of what we do.  They tell us things like, “Don’t be too successful or our savior might not feel the need to come.”  Inner children are very opposed to the idea that we can save ourselves.  They don’t understand we have an adult self now and can actually make empowered change in our lives.  And if they are too strong in our unconscious, they might have us convinced we cannot save ourselves.  They live in a state of helplessness and hopelessness.  We must come to understand this as an emotional flashback so we can live our lives without the constant search for a savior.

Letting Go of the Parental Relationship.  I am going to start by saying this isn’t always necessary in the most literal sense.  We might not need to completely let go of the parental relationship to bring in the new.  But I will guarantee we need to let go of the dysfunction and lack of boundaries.  Parents will likely fight us on this, but this needs to be done for us to manifest our best life.  These parental relationships in their current form are clouding our energy.  We have contracts with them left over from childhood.  These contracts might obligate us to take care of our parents’ emotional or physical needs.  These contracts might obligate us to take part in their traditions.  They may even obligate us to financially support our parents.  These contracts are upheld by guilt and societal duty, but they are not in our best interest.  These contracts mean we are not free.  We are slaves to our past relationships.  And new, more fulfilling relationships cannot enter our space while we uphold these contracts with our parents.

Letting Go of Dead People.  This concept might be a stretch for you.  I get that.  Depending on your beliefs, this may or may not resonate with you.  And feel free to take it or leave it.  But for me, I have sensed some aspects of my energy being held up by dead people.  My ancestors are most certainly hanging around and I used to think this was a good thing.  I do believe we transmute and transform energy for the generations before us as we heal ourselves.  And when we are on a deep healing path, this might give us quite a bit of spiritual company.  It might feel comforting for a while.  But I am starting to realize there is a point in this journey where I have to send them away.  As long as my traumatic past is living in my energy, I am not completely free to bring in the new.  But there is one significant dead person who I am particularly focused on at the moment: my ex-husband and children’s father.  He needs to go.  I have recently realized I have spent the past 7 years married to a ghost.  He is deeply and energetically tied into my needs for a savior.  And on some very unconscious level, my inner children were still expecting a return.  But a return would only give me a heart attack.  My adult self sincerely doesn’t want that for a couple of reasons.  1) He’s dead.  2) He’s deeply traumatized.  So I have to let go of that relationship in my conscious mind, my unconscious mind and on a cellular level.  There is nothing left to gain from continuing to hold on.  It is time to bring in the new.

So in this time of bringing in the new (yes this is the time), check in with what you are holding on to from the past.  It might be something glaring and obvious.  It might make logical sense and it might not.  It might be something so obscure you have to search through the depths of your unconscious.  But if you aren’t manifesting what you want in life, there is something blocking it.  Find it.  It is your life and you get to remove anything that is not serving you.  You get to say what stays and what goes.  This is your time to grieve and let go of the past.  This is your time to live your new life.