Yung Pueblo:
“Even as we heal our past, it will continue to show up as pathways that lead back
to old behavior, but as we become more attuned to the present, we can shift our
relationship to the options that keep popping up in our mind when difficult things
happen. This doesn’t mean suppressing or ignoring the past. The pull to behave in
old ways weakens over time as we keep choosing to behave in new ways that
honor the present more than the past. How we focus our mental energy can
determine the future of our life.
Without realizing it, we tend to hold on to any tension that may arise instead of
letting it go. One of the great struggles that comes with being human is that we find
ourselves in a process of constant accumulation, deeply imprinting ways of
behaving and feeling into our subconscious every time we react.
Whether caused by a serious external situation that triggers the tension or an
imaginary narrative that starts suffusing our mind, our immediate reaction is not to
bring ourselves back to reality and use our mental energy to regain our balance.
Instead, we get caught in a loop where we throw tension on top of the tension that
is already there.
Most of our reactions are impulsive. When emotions spark, we quickly jump into
feeding them and making them stronger, without realizing that this behavior just
reinforces how we will feel in the future when a similar situation arises. Over and
over again, the mind will see the present through the lens of the past, keeping us in
a state of repetition and slowing down our ability to behave and think in new ways.
Holding on is a survival tactic born out of fear and scarcity. Fear is the craving for
safety. A mind that is dominated by fear is a mind that is still in survival mode.
Even when there is relative calm in our external environment, a mind that lives in
survival mode will adopt a defensive stance and will often explore imaginary
scenarios of what could go wrong as a way to remain prepared. There is nothing
wrong with being mindful of our safety, but all too easily this can devolve into an
extreme, where our anxiety is always on high alert and our nervous system always
activated. Living through fear keeps us far away from peace.” -Yung Pueblo