This past Tuesday, December 29, there was a Full Moon in Cancer. Generally, with the lunar cycle, the New Moon is the time to set intentions and plant new seeds that you want to see come to fruition in one month or six months' time. The Full Moon is the time to prune back and release ties or attachments that do not serve your intention or are blocking you in manifesting.
I love that the Full Moon fell directly before the end of the year. To me, it seems like the perfect opportunity to let go of habits, self-limiting thought patterns, attachments, and — sometimes — relationships that are standing in the way of showing up as your best self. While many resolutions are adding new behaviors, I find that releasing some can be just as fruitful.
Yesterday, during a meditation with my teacher and friend, Jasiri, I realized I had been holding on to past versions of other folks within my being. I held onto them in memory networks and, when their memory was recalled, it elicited negative responses: fear, sadness, frustration, and anger to name a few. I came to understand that the way I was holding on to these people in my own energetic bodies didn’t serve me. In my healing journey, I've learned that, while experienced trauma is not the fault of the victim, it is their responsibility to heal. Help and support in doing so are incredibly valuable (therapy, breathwork, yoga, etc.) but, simply put, no one else can resolve an individual’s own trauma (and associated response). So, when I recognized I was holding onto trauma in the form of resentment or anger, I decided it was time to release a few things. I felt that I had a choice to either practice working with these memories as if they were intrusive thoughts (check out my blog post on working with those) or, I could start to re-write their memory in my mind with a different association — love.
Using either the aforementioned techniques, I feel that this process will be not only in service to myself but also to the people I was remembering. That is to say, I would rather not have a version of me preserved in someone else’s being with pain or sadness, but in love. So too, I would like to preserve versions of others in love.
Memory and pre-associated responses are powerful tools that are used in our evolution to preserve our existence. They can help us to recognize dangerous stimuli that we need to avoid in order to stay well. Though it should be worth noting, that in preserving a negative memory of another person in an effort to protect oneself from further harm, trauma, or pain, we may end up harming ourselves with that negative energy. I think there’s a balance and it will be different for every person.
So I will leave you with this: what energy can you release — or begin to release — as we move into the new year? Here is my resolution: I am releasing outdated versions and memories of people that caused me pain. In that release, I am filling in love.