The Past is a Foreign Country, or is it?

I found this little piece of writing today.  I think the inspiration for it was an ongoing argument with my Mum and my ex too.   That’s all in the past, they would say, just get on with it.

My argument was that until it is resolved or until the deep feelings associated with the past experiences of our  lives are felt, understood and integrated, they continue to extract a cost on the present and we aren’t free.

Anyway in response to that I wrote this little piece

We say the past is a foreign country that we no longer visit, but is it?  Isn’t it always there lurking somewhere in the shadows, its imprints, echoes and memories waiting in the wings, lingering like a whisper on the breeze of our consciousness, summoning us somewhere from the depths of our soul.

I wonder: aren‘t these things that you say to me about the past, just defences against the pain of fully feeling what it’s thunderous difficulty was, tinged as it was with feelings of loss, powerlessness and loneliness.

Yes the past is gone, and we pray that we won’t need to re-visit its most agonising places, but it is always there, its memory lingering reminding us to value the present and free it from the tenacious grasp of the psyches’s repetition compulsion.  While valuing each and every single person who graces it as who they are, unpolluted by the visioning of old ghosts that linger, ghosts who no longer have anything good to give us..

Isn’t it a reminder to value all that we have experienced…..as contributing to our evolution as souls in this precious gift of life which in its deeper wisdom brings the gift of many teachers, and the grace of awareness and healing?

The past informs the present and although its is over it remains a part of us.  Perhaps the need some people feel to push it away is a defence?

What do you think?