How can we deal with past hurtful memories?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
How can we handle our past hurt feelings? How to forget those memories? And how can we be strong when those memories also come up? Yeah, when I was in Brisbane, I gave a talk on how to get past our past. So, yes, past memories, which have hurts are there, they will, we can’t wish them away. But the past hurts, they can be of two forms.
If something is a raw wound, then that raw wound, as we touch it, it causes pain. Any touch, contact anywhere causes pain. But suppose that raw wound has become filled, then it becomes like a scar.
The scar is still there, but the scar doesn’t cause pain. So, what is the difference between, at an emotional level, a raw wound and a scar? When we are still emotionally fixated in that, then it is a raw wound. When our emotions are released from that, then it becomes a healed wound.
The scar is there, but the wound gets healed. So, how do we get over those? The first thing is that we have to recognize that the past can’t be changed. It’s a simple point at one level to say, but at our mind level, we don’t accept it.
The Mahabharata says that lamentation achieves nothing except to sap the energy of the lamenter. So, it’s like, say, if I am driving along a road and somebody shoots across my path. I pass a brake and I press the brake and that person goes on and I move on.
And then the other person is going on looking back, glaring, glaring, glaring. How dare you do like this? Well, if I keep glaring there, I’ll meet with another accident here. And then, okay, that’s happened, it’s over.
So, the past can’t be changed. The past can control us only to the extent we let it control us. So, what do we do? We just, we can’t stop thinking about the past, but we can fill our present with more constructive things.
And when we fill our present with more constructive things, then if the mind goes to the past, if we keep the mind idle, it will automatically go to the past and it will make us miserable. So, we fill our mind with constructive things. That’s the first thing.
Second thing is, then when we are calm, we revisit the past and analyze it and process it. Okay, this happened, what can I learn from it? If we learn from it, whatever happened, okay, this person acted like that, that person acted like that, it’s a closed chapter in my life. That person has hurt me, I forgive them.
Forgiveness is not condoning. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that whatever they did was not wrong. It was wrong, it is wrong, but I won’t hold on to it.
So, if we think of forgiveness as saying that, oh, it was not wrong, our mind will repent. No, it was wrong, it hurt me so much. Yes, it hurt me, but that chapter is over in my life.
Forgiving is also not trusting. Forgiveness is for the past. Trust is for the future.
Forgiveness can be given, but trust has to be earned. It’s only when that person shows some rectified behavior, then we can trust them. So, if we understand forgiveness simply as emotionally disinvesting ourselves from that situation.
Okay, that thing happened, that person acted, did like that, but that’s the chapter is over in my life. Now, everything that happens is for a purpose, some purpose that was there. If I can learn something from it right now, that’s good.
Otherwise, in future, what was meant to be learned from it will be revealed. But now, I close this chapter in my life. Sometimes doing some physical activity, you know, writing down our feelings, addressing those feelings, what I have learned from it, and then just, all the emotions that are there, just end it in that way.
Express it, process it, and then end that chapter. That way we can get over the hurts of the past.