Dear Christina, how can I let go of the past
and move forward with joy? Well the truth is, you can't really let go
of anything until you master one key skill, and that's exactly what I'm going to teach
you in this video. Let's do this. Hello beautiful soul. It's good to see you. This is Christina Lopes, the Heart Alchemist,
here to help you open your heart, heal your past, and live with purpose. If you're new to my videos, don't forget to
hit that subscribe button, so you never miss my weekly videos going forward. This week, I got a question from a viewer,
and it was about letting go of the past and how you move on move forward with joy. But, before I get into answering this question,
I want to define a couple of terms in the question, so I want to get started with this
video with the definition of a couple of terms. The first one, I got myself some nice colored
paper. The first one I want to talk about is the
past. So, what does this viewer mean by the past
when she's asking a question. This is a very general question, so she didn't
really give me a lot of details, so what I'm going to do is, I'm going to define the past
in very broad terms so that it can ... maybe you can identify with some of these scenarios. So, right off the bat, we know that what she
means is that the past is something painful, right? Because if it weren't painful, you wouldn't
want to let go of it. So, we're talking about painful past experiences
and here are some scenarios that you may fit into. So, the past could refer to childhood abuse,
any kind of childhood trauma that you endured. Maybe you had narcissistic parents or parents
that abandoned you, something happened to you in your childhood that was traumatizing
and painful, and you've carried that with you into the future. The past could also mean a relationship that
broke apart in your life, and you're having a lot of difficulties letting go of that situation. The past could be just something painful that
happened to you in adult life. It doesn't have to be in childhood. It could be something painful that has happened
to you that caused just so much grief and pain in your life and you don't know how to
let go of that. But, the past can also mean, and I want to
put this in here, because this happens to all of us. The past can mean that it was something that
was done to you, but the past can also mean something that you did to someone else. So, maybe you've deeply hurt someone else
and now you don't know how to make amends. You don't know how to go back and change the
situation and you're feeling with a lot of shame. You're dealing with shame and grief and all
these kinds of things, because it was you that did something to someone else. So, these are all scenarios of what the past
can be in your life. So, I wanted to start off there. If you don't fit this scenario, that's okay,
no worries, there's probably something in your past that you also wish to let go of,
and so this video will still be pertinent to you even if I haven't hit your situation
perfectly. Okay, now to the second term in this question
that I want to define, and I'm bringing my little paper, it's the let go part, okay,
let go. Now, the reason that I'm harping on this one,
and I'm going to go into this one really deep here is because the concept of letting go
has been really ingrained in our culture, and it's been ingrained in our culture because
it's attractive. Letting go of something is really attractive. If I come up to you and you're carrying this
horrible weight, and you can't walk, you can't move, there's just so much weight on you,
and I say to you, "Hey, why don't you just let that go?" And, you drop the weight out of your hands,
suddenly you're lighter. So, the concept of letting go is very attractive
for us, especially for the ego, because when you can let go of something, you're not bothered
anymore. So, this has been, this concept of letting
go has really been something that's ingrained in our culture all around the world, and here's
the thing. Letting go, seeing the concept of letting
go in this way that I'm just going to drop something and it's gone, it's kind of an illusion,
all right? And it's a painful illusion. It's been very painful for us to, over the
millennia, consider letting go as something that is a natural progression. That's exactly, "Oh yeah, something really
painful happened to me. I could just let it go. There it is, it's gone." That's not really how it works, and it's caused
so much pain for so many of us, this idea that letting go is as simple as it looks. It's not. So, we all love the idea of letting go, because
there's an underlying assumption here that I really want you to see. This is going to be really valuable for you. The assumption behind the idea that we can
let go of something, the assumption behind it is that, that weight has no value. It's only negative. It's just dead weight. It has no value to you so why don't you just
let it go. This is a false assumption. This is a false assumption, so when you're
looking at your past or some kind of painful experience that happened to you or that you
did to someone else, when you're looking at your past through this lens, that it's dead
weight, that it's only harmful to you, you're never actually going to get there. You're never going to get to the letting go. So, I'm going to give you another image to
show you that letting go, it's not really like dead weight that you just dropped. I'm going to give you another image. So, imagine that you're looking at a kid going
to school. Let's say they're in middle school or whatever,
and they have a back pack full of books, and they're walking into school and you notice
that they're almost leaning back because they have so many books in their bag, and the bag
is so heavy. So, would you go up to this child and say,
"Hey, just drop your backpack and go to school without it." Would you ever say this to a child? No, no you wouldn't. Why? Because you understand the inherent value
in that backpack. In that backpack, it's full of books, books
that that child needs. There's a lot of information and knowledge. There's a lot that the child can learn from,
that's in that backpack. So, you would never tell a child to let go
of their backpack and just go to school without it, because they would be missing so many
opportunities to learn and evolve. So, this is the image that I want you to start
taking forward, when it has to do with your past. Your past is not dead weight, and this is
why so many of us have a really hard time letting go, because we think that our past
is just dead weight and that we have nothing to learn from it, and therefore, we can just
let it go. So, I struggle with this concept a lot with
clients. I would say that of the so many clients, probably
hundreds by now that I have worked with closely, 90% of them, I would say, come to me and when
I start talking about the past with them, they will automatically say, "No, I've done
a lot of work on the past, I think I've let everything go." And, lo and behold, as soon as we start to
work together, we find out that in fact, what they thought they had let go of, it had not
been let go of truly, and it was precisely because of this. It was because people were working really
hard to let something go without learning the lessons and without understanding what
the experience caused in them. You see, it was like they were trying to let
go of the school bag, not understanding that the information in that school bag is so important. So, this is important for you to understand
is that your past is not dead weight that has no value to you. That's not true. And, until you understand this, you won't
be able to let go of it. I've also worked with a ton of people, and
people send me emails about this all the time, where they say to me, "I'm working really
hard to let go of the past. I'm working really hard to forgive a certain
person for what they did to me, and I just feel like I'm working so hard at this and
I can't do it. I don't know how to do this." And, what they're doing, this is actually
really natural because this is why the concept of letting go is detrimental to us, because
here's what's going on. I made another little drawing for you. Letting go is a natural byproduct of healing. So, you can never let go of something that
you have not healed. So, here's my little figure, okay, so here's
the past and what people are trying to do, what so many of us try to do, and I did this
too in my life, is we are trying to go from the past and we're trying to jump over healing
and get to letting go and forgiveness. This is not possible, okay? So, I'm going to add an arrow here, a more
important arrow. The way to get to letting go, is no work at
all. The process of letting go is no work at all,
because here's what you do. In order to truly let go, you have to go through
healing. Okay? So letting go of the past is a natural byproduct
of healing. You cannot let go of the past if it has not
been healed. So, from here on in, in this video now, in
the second part of the video, I want to focus on healing the past. That's what the question should be, okay? The question shouldn't be how do I let go
of the past and move on with life, the question should be, how do I heal the past? How do I heal the past? Because unless I heal the past, I will never
be able to let it go, because it's not really dead weight, it's a book bag. It's a book bag, you see? If that kid going to school, full with his
book bags, if he had, for example, photographic memory, and he took the books out of his book
bag and he started reading them one by one and he memorized everything that's in the
books, then yes, he wouldn't need the books anymore, and he could throw that backpack
away, you see? So, it's the concept of you must heal. You must heal the past. You must understand it. You must heal it, and then letting go, it's
no work at all. It just happens by itself. Forgiveness is not work at all. If you're finding yourself working at forgiving,
it's because you're trying to bypass the step of healing. Don't bypass healing, okay? If you concentrate on healing, forgiveness
and letting go, it comes naturally. Forgiveness is actually one of the easiest
things to do, if you do the work of healing. If you don't do the work of healing and you're
trying to jump over into the letting go and the forgiveness phase, it's too premature,
then you can't really forgive and you can't really let go, because the healing work has
not been done. Now, here's and important question that I
want to add to the mix here before I get into more details on how exactly we do heal the
past. The question is, out of curiosity, why do
you think all of us at some point in our lives try to jump over healing and go right into
the process of letting go and forgiveness? Why do we jump over healing? Why do we bypass healing? Well, there are two reasons, and in explaining
these two reasons, this is going to help you really process and heal this whole process. It's going to help you understand this better. The first reason that we try very hard to
jump over from the past into letting go without going through the healing, is that our egos
are protecting us, or trying to protect us. So, I want you to think about the ego as a
self protection mechanism. There's many more facets to the ego, but just
for the purpose of this conversation, I want you to think of the ego as a self-protection
mechanism. So, the ego sees emotional pain and trauma
in the same way that your body sees a flame. So, think about this image. If you go up to a burning flame, and you put
your hand over it, your body is going to force you to recoil. Why? Because that flame burns. It's hurting you and as a self protection
mechanism, you're body recoils your hand, okay? This is natural. This is a natural part of our protective instincts. But, here's the thing. People don't realize this, but the ego sees
emotional pain and trauma in the same way that your hand sees a flame. It will attempt to recoil from it, because
emotional pain, especially for empaths, and if you're watching this video and if you follow
me, more likely than not, you are a highly sensitive person, you are an empath, and an
empath and highly sensitive people have a tremendous amount of difficulties processing
and healing, at first, before they learn how to be powerful empaths. At first, it's very difficult for us to learn
to heal and process pain because when we're trying to heal, our egos are going, "No, no,
no, this is painful. Stay away from this. Stay away from this. Recoil. Move. Red flags. Ding, ding, ding." So, the ego is constantly trying to protect
us by avoiding anything that's painful. Any kind of inner emotional state that's painful,
your ego will recoil from. This is why, this is one of the reasons why
we try and jump over the healing phase, because the healing phase is not comfortable. It's not comfortable for an empath, for a
highly sensitive person and so the ego attempts to protect us by recoiling and running away
from the healing phase. This is why so many of us try to jump over
and go to the letting go, because letting go is much easier, isn't it? If I can just, "Oh, here we go. I just dropped that weight. On I go. My life is all figured out." Do you think that that's really how it works? Now it's not. No it's not. It's just an illusion, and this is why we
struggle for so many years with this whole idea of letting go and of forgiving. And, this is why, sometimes we get really
annoyed. I'm sure this has happened to you. It's happened to me for sure, where you're
going through a really hard time and you go out for coffee with a friend, and you say
to a friend, you start talking about the issues that you're having and all of this, and what
does your friend say? They just turn to you and they say, "Why are
you still holding on to that? Let that go. That's not good for you. Just let it go." You see, so many people tell us to let go
of things because it's ingrained in our culture, but as you know by now, you cannot let go
of anything until you have healed it. So, that's the first reason. The first reason for why we try to bypass
healing is because the ego is trying to protect us because internal emotional pain is really
painful to the ego and to an empath just like your hand being over a flame would be very
painful. The second reason why we try to jump over
healing and right into the forgiveness and letting go phase, is because we have a very
difficult relationship with death. Now, what the heck does this have to do with
healing? What does death have to do with healing? Everything. So, we have a really difficult concept, not
concept. We have a difficult relationship with death. We have a difficult relationship with endings. We have a difficult relationship with loss,
and all of these facets, all of these facets are a part of death. And, until you become comfortable with death
in whatever form it takes in your life, you'll never be comfortable with life, because life
and death come hand in hand. And, if you're not comfortable with death,
if you're not comfortable with loss, if you're not comfortable with endings, then you'll
never be able to heal because in order to heal, you have to be able to lose. You have to be able to die, and you have to
be able to allow endings to come and complete themselves, okay? Because you can't have births, you can't have
gains, and you can't have beginnings unless you have endings, loss, you see? So they're always dancing hand in hand and
one of the key ways that we know how to have and learn how to have a wonderful relationship
with death is by just looking at nature. If you spend just a full day in nature, you
realize what it means to be comfortable with the cycles of life. So, a tree, you don't see a tree becoming
depressed when her leaves start falling off in the autumn. The tree doesn't feel any kind of sadness
in this, because the tree understands that the falling of the leaves is part of the cycle
of life, the cycle of birth and death, and birth and death. And so, you don't see a snake, another example,
you don't see a snake freaking out because she's losing her skin. She's not. She's got to lose that skin in order for the
new one to grow. So, nature brings us the most beautiful examples
of what it feels like to live in full harmony with death and with life, with endings and
with beginning, with loss and with gain, okay? So, that's the second reason why so many of
us try to bypass healing, even if we don't know it, is because we're very uncomfortable
with death in whatever form it takes. Ending is death, a loss is death. So, in whatever form it takes, we are inherently
uncomfortable with death. We don't know how to deal with it. And so, this is the second reason why so many
of us bypass healing and get into the letting go phase prematurely. But, now that you know the two primary reasons
why we generally do that, then the resistance will stop, and it'll become much easier for
you to do the healing work that's necessary in order to naturally let go and forgive. So now, on to the second part of the video
and that is, how do I heal the past? So, we've put the letting go part aside, and
now we're going really deep into this question, how do I heal the past? And, I'm going to give you my four step process
that I use in letting go and healing and in processing my own past experiences. So, the first step in the process of healing,
is, committing to healing, okay? So, the moment that you say ... I would say
that this step is probably 80 or 90% of the work, okay? Because when you say, "I commit to healing
whatever needs to be healed within me," when you say this with a powerful intention, you're
finally letting go of the idea that you can run away from your past, that you can run
away from the healing process. You can't. Sooner or later, we all realize that trying
to jump in prematurely to letting go and forgiveness, it's not genuine. It's not authentic. We can't actually do it. And sooner or later, all of us realize this. This is why so many of us spend years, and
years, and years carrying the past and trying to let go of it and trying to forgive and
doing all these different techniques to forgive and to let go, but we can't really do it and
it's because we haven't done the healing process correctly. So, in this first step, this is easy ... maybe
not easy, but it's simple in the sense that all you have to do is, you have to say to
yourself, "I will not bypass healing anymore, no matter what I have to see. If I have to sit with this pain, if I have
to sit with my past for hours, for days, for weeks, for whatever, for months, it doesn't
matter, I commit to healing whatever needs to be healed within me. I commit to healing this past experience whatever
it is," for you, "I commit fully to healing it." Not to letting go of it, because again, remember,
letting go is a natural byproduct. You don't even need to do anything. I commit to healing. So, once you make that conscious intention
to commit to healing, that's 80 or 90% of the work right there, because that means that
you are not longer going to bypass healing no matter how painful it is. The second step is one that's not talked about
a lot, but I really have come to consider this one of the most important steps in the
healing process. And, that second step is, priming the ego. I call it priming the ego. Now, what does this mean? I actually learned this through experience. So, I learned this when I found out that I
had been molested as a child. It took me over a year before I actually started
the healing process. It took me over a year, because when I found
out that I had been molested, it was during an Iowaska ceremony. I worked with plant medicine. It was during an Iowaska ceremony, and I remember
coming out of that ceremony and I thought, "Okay, this is done with. This is good. I found this out, great." And so, I spent a year bypassing the healing
process. I wasn't doing this on purpose. I thought I had let it, you see? But, what ended up happening was, my life
fell apart, and I came to a point where I realized that I had actually not done the
work properly. I hadn't done the healing work properly. And, why hadn't I done the healing work properly? It was because my ego had started firing those
red flags saying, "Danger, danger, danger. You're not going to go into this space. You're not going to go into the pain of this
sexual abuse because it's too much. It's too much." And so, the ego had started red flagging and
it had tried to bypass the healing. And so, what ended up happening was, I came
to a point in my life where I literally fell down on the floor and I said, "I commit to
healing," so I did step one. And then what I did that was super ... this
was crucial and this is a crucial step for people who have any kind of past trauma, especially
in childhood. So, if you have an ego that is controlling
or if you have an ego that formed early in your childhood as a response to trauma, this
is particularly important for you, but this is important for everyone, really, because
whether you are traumatized as a child or not, the ego tends to be a self protective
mechanism no matter what. So, what priming the ego means, is that you
are going to start reassuring the ego that the work that you're about to do is necessary,
and that it's for the benefit of mind, body and soul, okay? So, this priming the ego is, you're going
to bring in so much love and compassion and you're going to offer the ego a safe space. Okay? Now, when you start doing this, when you start
priming the ego, and there are various ways of priming the ego. I used a lot of self talk, and I still do
use a lot of self talk when something painful comes up that I need to deal with. So, I'll use self talk. I use a lot of mantras. I love to use mantras to prime the ego, and
what I'll say is, I'll just start soothing self talk. I'll say something like, "Everything is okay,
I need to do this work. This work is for my highest benefit. We need to heal. This is necessary." So, I will just keep talking, and some spiritual
teachers ... Alan Watts, one of my favorite philosophers, if he were alive today, he would
say that mantras and self talk is just basically the ego talking to itself. I realize this and that's okay. But, to me, the way that it feels to me is
that self talk and mantra is actually coming from a place behind the ego. It's your awareness, your consciousness, your
soul imparting a sense of security and trust to the ego. So, I don't really agree that self talk is
the ego talking to itself, but that's a whole other video. But, for the purpose of healing, just trust
me when I say this. When you do this process of priming the ego,
you're healing work becomes so much easier because the ego drops its defenses when it
knows that you are giving it safety security. That's what the ego needs. The ego needs to feel safe. An ego that feels safe allows the inner work
to continue. Okay, so whatever you do to prime your ego,
it could be self talk. It could be constant self talk. On some days, I would talk to myself a lot,
a lot of loving. The self talk is loving. It's not critical. It's not, "Shut up stupid ego. What are you doing?" It's none of this. It's very compassionate and loving self talk. So, it's things like ... you talk to your
ego basically like you would talk to a wounded child. So, you would say things like, "Everything
is okay. We need to do this. This is necessary. This is for my highest benefit. I'm going to live a joyful life after I heal,
so we have to do this, okay?" So, you keep this self talk. The more that you talk to the ego this way,
the more it calms down and the more the ego calms down, the more it lets you go into the
healing space. So, that's step two. The third step of the process is probably
the most difficult, especially for highly sensitive people and for empaths, and the
reason that this third step is difficult is because empaths and highly sensitive people,
we have a lot of difficulty sitting with our emotions and with our emotional turmoil because
it's just as painful. Emotional turmoil is just as painful to an
empath as actually putting your hand on a hot flame. People don't realize this, but inner turmoil
is extremely painful to highly sensitive people and especially empaths, which you probably
are. So, this third step is probably the most difficult,
but it's necessary. The third step is, sitting with the past. What does this mean? Sitting with the past means that I've done
step one, I'm allowing myself to go into the space of healing. I've done step two, I primed my ego, so now
my ego is quiet, it's calm and it's trusting, and now I go in. I go into the wound. I go into the past painful experience and
as soon as I go into that wound, it's like taking a scab off of a wound that hasn't healed
fully. When you tear the scab at, it's going to start
bleeding again. So, as soon as I go into that very tender
place that so many times I thought I had healed, but I did not, as soon as I go back into that
place, all of this is going to start coming up. Emotions are going to start coming up. It's going to get really intense, and I must
learn to sit there in it. I have to sit in my pain. I have to do something that so many of us
resist. I must grieve. I must grieve. This was one of the things that I resisted
for over a year when I found out I had been molested. I thought, "I'm just going to let this go. All is well. Let's just let it go." And, I did this for a year and then when I
finally fell to my knees and I said, "Nope, I'm doing this. I'm going to heal this pain." When I allowed myself to connect with that
pain that was still very tender, it was still there, and I allowed myself to grieve what
was lost, so much was lost in that experience for me. I remember grieving the loss of my innocence
because when you're sexually abused, you lose your childhood innocence. It is lost. I sat there and I grieved the loss of trust. From that moment on, when you are abused by
someone you love, you lose trust in everything, in everyone around you, in life. I lost trust in God. From that moment forward, I had a very problematic
relationship with source energy for many years, and it was because of this, it was because
of this loss, but I had never grieved this loss. This was very, very painful loss. I needed to grieve. You need to grieve if you have anything in
your past that you need to let go of. You need to grieve, and this is what step
three is. So, when it comes to sitting with the past
and grieving, I use a technique or a strategy that I call the double Es, okay? And so, the strategy is this. You're going to engage the pain. You will engage the pain, whatever it is. It could be rage at something that someone
did to you. It could be anger. It could be just, you're just so sad. It could be deep sadness. It could be loneliness, whatever it is that's
in the mix of this past painful experience, you're going to engage it. That's the first E, engage the pain. Don't recoil. Don't pull away. Don't look away. Don't pretend that you're doing the healing
work when you're not. No. Engage that. And, one of the ways that really helped me
engage was, I sometimes personalized pain. So, when I was trying to heal trust, I would
talk to trust as if it were a person. So, sometimes personalizing your pain really
helps in engaging with it, because then you can start having a conversation with your
pain and that really helps in the healing process. So, the first E is engage with whatever's
coming up. No recoiling, no ignoring, engage with it. The second E is embrace it. Whatever comes up, it could be the darkest,
most horrible emotion you've ever felt. It doesn't matter. You are going to embrace it because it's a
part of you. It's a part of you beautiful soul. It's a part of you. All that rage that you could be feeling, that
sadness that you could be feeling, whatever happened to you, whatever has happened to
you, and when it's coming up, you must please embrace it, okay. Please embrace it. It's a part of you. It's not outside of you. It's within you. Embrace it. So, these are the two Es, engage with the
pain, and then embrace the pain. Embrace it. It's not going to kill you. It's not going to hurt you. It's being processed and it needs to be embraced
and loved as you're doing this healing. And, remember this, to fully grieve, you must
be okay with death, okay? So, this goes back to what we talked about
a little while ago. You must be comfortable and accepting, not
just comfortable, accepting of death as a part of the cycle of life. So, whatever happened to you, you must grieve
it and you must be okay with death as you grieve it. So, maybe it was a relationship that disintegrated
and you have to grieve that loss. Maybe it was the loss of your innocence, childhood
trauma, you have to grieve that loss. Maybe it was something that you did to someone
else. Maybe you did really hurtful things to someone
else. You have to grieve that loss also. So, grieving is very connected to death and
you must become accepting and comfortable with death in order to continue this healing
process. I'm going to add a side note here because
I get so many emails and many, many of my clients reach me because they're having relationship
issues. So, I'm going to put a side note here and
the side note is that when we go through separation with romantic partners, with partners that
we have a very strong soul connection with, so I get a lot of emails from people who are
twin flames, for instance, or have really deep soulmate connections. These people, when they come to work with
me, they haven't gone through the grieving process, and there's a particularly reason
why they haven't gone through the grieving process during the separation is because when
you have a soul connection, especially a twin flame connection, when you separate from that
person, if you separate from that person, your ego is resisting the grieving phase. Why? So many people say this. When I start to work on the grieving process
with a twin flame or a soul mate, they'll say to me, "I don't want to go there. I don't want to grieve, because if I grieve,
I'm afraid that what grieving means is that I'll never come back together with that person
and I love them so much. They're my twin flame. I want to reconcile with them," or, "They're
my soul mate. I want to reconcile with them. So, I don't want to go into any grieving,
because that would mean they would never come back. That would mean it would just be the end." So, this is one of the most difficult processes
that I have to go through, and you may not be a twin flame, but you may have a very strong
soul connection with someone and this may be the past that you're trying to work through
and let go. Regardless if you want to come back together
with that person or not, you must grieve, okay? And here's why. Because, even if you come back together with
that person, you and that person will not be the same. So, in essence, the death of the old has already
occurred whether you get back together with that person or not, so you must grieve. You must grieve the loss of the old so that
then you give the opportunity for the new to come in. So, if you do come together with this person
again, you're going to be two brand new people coming into a new connection, essentially. So, if you're in this situation right now
where you're separated from a deep soul connection like a twin flame or a soul mate connection,
you must still go through the process of grieving, and please do not resist this because if you
don't go through the grief, if you don't go through the healing of the past, you can't
create a future with this person or with anyone else, okay? So, that was a side not, just particularly
for people who have strong soul connections, because that's the majority of my clients
and it's the majority of people that I get emails about healing in the past has to do
a lot with romantic relationship, especially with connections like twin flames and soul
mates. From an energy perspective, and I'm an energy
alchemist, so I want to give you the energy perspective of this. When you do not grieve, what you're doing
is you are repressing your energy system, so you're creating stagnation in the system. What you don't grieve, what you don't process
and what you don't heal, stagnates, and energy hates to be stagnant. Energy wants to be on the move, constantly
flowing with life. It's like a big river or an ocean, it's always
an everybody and flow. So, when you don't grieve, when you don't
go through the healing process, you are stagnating your energy and this is why so many people
come to me and they say, "I thought I let go of my past, but I still feel stuck." And, they'll use this word a lot, feeling
stuck. Well, you feel stuck because the energy of
the past is stagnated in your system and you've got to be able to free it. And, that's what the grieving process does. That's what the sitting with the past does. So, this step three, although it's the most
difficult step probably in your healing process, it's, I'm not going to say the most important,
but it's crucial. It is crucial that you follow this third step
and that you learn to grieve. You learn to accept death as part of the cycle
of life and that you learn to accept and grieve loss, endings, all of this so that then you
can start to make room for the new. The process of grief, this third process,
the process of sitting with the past, grieving it, engaging it, embracing it, this process,
I get this question a lot. People say to me, "I've been doing this for
years and I'm just tired of this. I just want to let go of the past. I'm tired." I get this a lot. So, I'm going to leave this here for you. Don't count the days, please. Don't keep track of how long step three is
taking you. It can take hours, and this is the good news,
this is the good news. So, I'll give you an example from my own life. I just yesterday, I'm shooting this video
right now, and just yesterday, I was actually going to shoot this video yesterday but I
couldn't. Why? Because I myself was processing through a
past experience that I thought had been healed and it hadn't, and it just came up so quickly
and so intensely, that I literally sat on the floor and I was sobbing for a good two
or three hours. So, I wasn't able to shoot this video yesterday. I shot it today. And, here's the wonderful thing about creating
mastery as a spiritual master, as an energy master. When you create mastery at doing this, the
healing process goes by faster. So, today, 24 hours later, I have completely
different energy and I have healed that issue that just yesterday I was toiling in, okay? So, this the thing. This is what I want you to stay positive about. What used to take me years to heal, now is
taking a mere hours or 24 hours, and it's because once you learn to do this process
of healing, you learn to move the energy, it becomes easier. Your energy then goes up. It keeps ascending, it keeps ascending. The more your energy ascends, the easier the
healing process is, okay? So, stay positive about this. Initially, sure, this healing process step
three, sitting in the past, it can take days, weeks, months, sometimes years, although years,
I don't think. By the time you're watching this video, and
if you've been following my videos, if you're part of my community and you've been learning
from all the other videos, you're not in a place anymore in your life where this is going
to take years. But, it may take days, weeks, or months. This I will say to you. It may take months, and that's okay. You have to be okay with that, all right? So, stop counting the days that your healing
process is taking and just commit to it, one day at a time, with a lot of love and compassion,
because at the end of the healing process, you're going to be a totally different person
with so much light and so much to give and so much love and so much energy, okay? It's worth it, trust me. Now, the fourth step in the process is my
favorite, okay? And it's called Tonglen. Now, what is Tonglen? So, Tonglen is a Tibetan Buddhist practice
that I learned from one of my favorite spiritual teachers, Pema Chodron, and Tonglen is a beautiful,
beautiful practice that's a bit counter intuitive, especially to westerners, okay? So, I'm sure that you've probably been to
a meditation class or a yoga group or some kind of situation where you walk in, and the
instructor says, or you've probably heard this before. The instructor says, "All right everybody,
let's breathe out the negative vibes and let's breathe in good energy. Out with the negative vibes, in with good
energy." I'm sure you've heard this somewhere, especially
in personal development circles. We all want to breathe out the bad vibes and
breathe in good vibes. Tonglen is exactly the opposite. So, in Tonglen, why I love this practice,
and it has helped me so much in healing, is that what Tonglen asks you to do is precisely
the opposite. So, with Tonglen, what you to is, you begin
to recognize that your predicament and your pain, it's not only yours. So, I'll give you an example. With my past sexual ... healing the sexual
abuse that I had as a child, I would sit there and I would say, I would close my eyes and
I would say, "Somewhere on this planet out of seven billion people, somewhere on this
planet, there is someone else going through exactly the same pain that I am right now,
at least one person." The odds are really high that out of seven
million people on this planet, at least one person is going through the same pain having
had the same type of experience as I had, and you sit with that. And what that does is, when you begin to recognize
that your pain is not really just your own, because sometimes when we're trying to heal
pain, we contract a lot. It's like we have blinders on. We can't see anything around us, because the
intensity of the pain, it's so intense that we kind of contract into it. What Tonglen does, the first part of Tonglen
is, it shows you that in fact, you're not the only person on the planet that's suffering
from this, okay? And so, what it does is the moment that you
recognize this same pain in someone else, even if you don't know that person, the moment
that you recognize that, you expand. Immediately, your chest just comes out, and
you're like, "Oh my gosh, there is someone else on this planet that's going through the
same pain that I'm going through right now," and that immediately open your heart to compassion
and empathy. And then what you do is, you say, "I am going
to breathe in that pain and that sorrow from others and from myself. I'm going to breathe that pain in. I'm going to take it in and then I'm going
to breathe out love and compassion and kindness and empathy towards any soul that is going
through the same issue I am, including myself." You see how beautiful this is. You make yourself this beautiful, big, spiritual
being, who not only is healing for self, but now you're healing for others and it's so
beautiful. This practice is so beautiful and it has helped
me heal many, many wounds. And, I know that it's probably helped heal
many other people around the world, because every time I do this practice, you're affecting
change on someone else. They may not know you. They may not know you're doing this Tonglen
practice, it doesn't matter. You're still helping to heal them. So, in Tonglen, this is fourth step. This is the step that I recommend to everyone. Do this practice. Sit in your pain, recognize your pain, then
recognize that someone else on the planet is probably going through this at the same
time as you and then you're going to breathe in the sorrow and the pain that you feel and
that others feel in the same situation and you're going to breathe out loving kindness,
compassion, empathy, okay? And, this practice, that's why it's the fourth
step in the practice, this is a wrap up. This is a wrap up. When you finish doing Tonglen, if you could
do it every single day until you feel like the healing process is over, but this fourth
step is so beautiful and it's such a beautiful loving way to help yourself heal, but also
the planet. And now, I want to hear from you. What painful past experiences do you feel
like your still struggling to heal and to let go? Let me know in the comments below. And, if you have a question that you want
me to answer on my weekly videos, leave them also in the comment with the hashtag, ask
Christina. Don't forget that hashtag, because that's
how we find the questions to shoot these videos. And, don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube
channel here, or head over to my website where you can take my five minute heart quiz that's
going to help you understand if your heart is blocked and what you can do to open it. And, if you enjoyed this video, check it out,
there are more over here for you to watch. I love you beautiful soul. I am out.
