Recently I made a profound spiritual trip to Vernon, BC in Canada. Behind me in this photo is the Kalamalka Lake, which means the lake of many colors in American Indian. I was told that this was considered as one of the world’s top ten most beautiful lakes.
One of the many things I’ve learned during this trip is that once the lesson learned it’s time to let go of the memories. Things happen and we don’t always learn our lessons right away. We carry the memories with us until we are ready to reveal the meaning of those experiences. Often times we have moved on in life with lessons learned through our joyful or painful experiences but forgot to let go of our memories of the experiences.
You may find that the more deeply those experiences have touched you the harder to let them go. By choosing to keep the memories, consciously or unconsciously we create emotional burdens to keep us from moving on freely. The physical things that we keep that are associated with the memories enhance the emotional burdens and make them even heavier.
I’ve been contemplating about this after coming back from the trip and suddenly remembered the box that was sealed in my attic. It was a box of concentrated memories. I found it ironic that a box that was full of my past memories had been placed in my attic, a metaphoric place for the future. I took the box down.
All my diaries were kept in the box, two from elementary school, one from middle school, one from high school, two from college, and one from after college. Those diaries recorded the most private conversations I had with my self, and over 90% of them were filled with tears, sadness, regret, confusion, and deep sorrow. A little poem that I wrote at age 12 poetically described how my heart felt broken in a cold winter while watching the big snowflakes falling down.
I felt deep compassion for the part of me who had carried the heavy feelings of a broken heart and felt lost for so many years, and was so released that I had finally been reintegrated with my true self. My past experiences have served me well for the realization of a divine union with my true self and there is no need for me to carry the old memories any further.
With a little sacred ritual I burned my diaries page by page, feeling a part of me being burned like the phoenix. Inside the box was also a strand of my mother’s hair that I had picked up from her pillow before she passed away twenty-six years ago. I smelled the hair, and I smelled her. Tears came to my eyes, but I knew it’s time to cut the psychic cord to set both of us free.
Over the course of three days I add more and more diary pages, old letters, photos to the fire. As I watched the burning fire I blessed the phoenix for her courage to burn and transform herself completely for ascension, and blessed the same for all the people whom I chose to let go of my emotional hold. I felt the joy and pain of the burning phoenix…
It rained over night with loud thunders. I walked out to the patio after getting up in the morning. Everything smelled so fresh after the rain. I looked out at the clean sky and the rising sun while breathing in the freshness. My mind was just as clear and fresh as everything around me. I felt purified from inside out. Some of the things I burnt with tears, and there were moments that I thought I would not be able to let go. But I let it go any way. The profound peace within me was telling me that I made the right choice. I was transformed. The phoenix has risen out of the ashes.
