Let It Burn

Notes On Your Past

Before reading, check in with yourself and your surroundings.

Do you have the capacity for a release?

If so, follow along with me here.

If not, save this and return to it during a quiet moment.

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Our past, unresolved, unfelt will call on us time and again.

We can dodge the call.

We may answer, listen for a moment and then hang up prematurely.

We may watch as it rings, catching our heart race each time only to falsely soothe the alarms… again and again and again.

Unresolved internal regret first shows up physically.

It may feel like a headache around certain folks, or stomach cramps in certain environments.

It may feel like nausea, like tightness in our chest, like muscle aches, like our bones are stiff and moving around the world in our present day is heavy. Each step, weighted with sand.

Unresolved past experiences then show up emotionally.

It may feel like sadness, like anger, like silent rage in the morning.

It may feel like guilt, like carrying a cemented brick that pulls on the depths of your beating heart.

Unresolved experiences then show up spiritually, mentally.

It may feel like sleepless nights with circling thoughts of “could have” / “should have” / “what if…”

It may feel like hopelessness towards others, towards the future, towards the world.

Unresolved, these moments seep into all that we touch. These moments bleed onto new conversations, unique interactions. They shape our perceptions and sit in the depths of our chests inhibiting us from creating something different in our lives. They come with you to dinner with a friend, or mate. They sit next to you at the movies. They hang from your lips as you half-smile at the grocery cashier. They fill the books you read and dash onto your boiling pasta water like sprinkles of memories, imprinted and riddled.

The moments we’ve lived create home in our physical and energy bodies. They pitch a tent. They latch on. They try and stay for good.

Do you know where you are operating from? Your internal landscape?

When you have a conversation or experience something for the first time, who is navigating this experience?

You, in present day? Or You from years ago? Who is taking steps into your future?

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Will you answer the phone this time?

Imagine in the center of your mind, what you’re holding onto.

Imagine stealing, lying, betraying.

Imagine behaving in a way of ill intent. Imagine lashing out.

Think of what broke. What fell. What was lost.

Hold these moments, hold these experiences in the core of your abdomen. Feel them. Breathe into them. Let them burn throughout your body and sit with the heat that accumulates through your senses.

Bring into your awareness that you are a human being, living life on this planet for the very first time.

Like your neighbors, your friends, your parents, your sisters, your brothers, your children, your partner.

As these moments burn, feel them all the way through. Send them love. Send them compassion. Send them acknowledgment. Send them care. Send them thanks - thanks that you experienced what is available on this Earth.

There is no joy without mercy. There is no hope without loss. There is no love without pain.

You were sent here to live each of these moments, wholly, presently, with conscious awareness.

Some moments are made for us to expand. Others are simply made for us to feel.

Feel them. Remind yourself you are safe to feel.

Hold in your mind’s eye, the version of You that experienced these past fragments that linger.

Send her love. Send him love. Send them love.

And release.

With a full exhale, exhaust the flames.

Breathe life into the new.

Allow the sensations to drift from your core and out of your limbs. Imagine the experiences dispersing throughout your system and out of your body - out of your soul.

Let these moments release from your spirit. Send them into the vast open spaces around you - with gratitude, with bravery, with silent reverence for their existence.

As autonmous beings, we hold the authority of what governs our minds, our days, our focus.

As autonomous beings, we say what lives within.

The truth is, unreleased, unresolved, unforgiven moments seep into the corners of our bodies like thieves in the night. They rob us from connection, from amending, from creating new with the time we have left.

Let that shit burn, child.

Feel all that you were meant to feel and then let that shit burn.

Kiss it farewell. Melt a wax candle with self preserving freedom and stamp it on the letter you never sent, the letter your still writing in your mind’s eye.

Mail it. Free it from your psyche. Release what holds you back from life.

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Repeat this practice as many times as you need, in order to feel what you’re holding onto all the way through so it can dissipate like smoke in the night sky… blown from the mouths of all of us who are learning, growing, evolving, shaping, trying.

You are deserving of the space.

You are deserving of the peace.

You are deserving of the blank page to write a new story.

Answer the phone.

Hear the cries. Listen deeply, listen well. Refrain from response other than intentional presence. Refrain from explanation, from suggestion, from deflection.

Now hang up the phone.

It doesn’t have to ring again.

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Steady as you go,

K

*all photos are my own