What haunts your days and nights? Memories are the ghost of your present time. Remembrance of places, events and people. Overwhelmingly you are haunted by the slip-ups and the errors that you have made. Perhaps there was bullying or cruelty of some kind stuck there in the past to overshadow your present and make it very unpleasant, if not downright psychologically painful.
What happens when you are so caught up in what is going on now that those memories have no power in the moment to haunt you? What happens when you forget yourself? You feel happier, of course. You have, for an instant of time, thrown the monkey of the past from off your back and enjoyed the present moment.
The past, however, clings to you like the goo from a sticky honey bun. You turn around and there it is. Stealing your present time happiness with its shadows of doubts and misdeeds. Would that you could rid yourself of such specters. It can be done. Here's how.
Detach yourself from the past. Live in this moment. Every time a thought about the past presents itself to you, say to yourself, "I live in this moment."
The past may have very useful information for you. How to drive. What foods not to eat because you have an allergic reaction to them. What people to avoid because they are toxic to your system. So you don't give up the past entirely. You don't live as if it never happened.
You do live as if you live in this moment. That thought could not be accurate. This is the only moment that you really have. The past is now only a series of electronic trails in your mind. The more resolutely you hold on to those electromagnetic trails, the more power you give them to rule the present moment.
Say to yourself, "I live in this moment. My memories are only that - just electromagnetic trails in my mind." When you do that enough times, you will build new pathways in your brain that are much more free of the past. "I live in this moment."
When you have detached yourself from your past and live in this moment, then happiness of the exterior kind will flood into your consciousness. When you unburden yourself of past events and things and even, sometimes, people, you will find much more happiness. I call this exterior happiness because it has to do with that which is outside of you.
While exterior happiness is important and real for you, interior happiness is of greater significance. When you find and possess interior happiness you will know that you are accepted just as you are, no strings attached. In a sense you have detached from everything else and become attached to The All There Is.
The All There Is does not care what is in your past. The All There Is never holds your past against you. It accepts you as you are - in this moment. Here, then, exterior and interior happiness intersect and you find both kinds of happiness. Total, unconditional acceptance while living in this moment is the highest form of happiness.
Lose the memories in terms of them haunting your waking minutes. Live in this moment through complete and utterly condition-less acceptance.
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