Some experiences and moments in our lives seem to just stick to us like dirty gum on the bottom of our shoe. 

If you’ve ever had an ex you just couldn’t get over, a fight you couldn’t get out of your head, or an experience or resentment that has stayed with you for years, you know what I mean. 

Sometimes we become energetically tied to another person or a situation from our past, and we have to find a way to reclaim our energy and regain our sense of sovereignty. A cord cutting ritual is the perfect way to do just that. 

When you know you’re ready to release, but the old pain, old thoughts, or old patterns keep haunting your mind, and still feel real in your body, these rituals can offer you some freedom. They will help you bring your energy back to yourself and finally move on for good. 

Why we get stuck with old memories or resentments 

It’s natural that certain experiences or people stick with us and are hard to shake. Some relationships transform us and make us who we are, certain memories mark pivotal moments, and some experiences become part of the way we define ourselves. 

If you want to experience the highest values in life—love, compassion, beauty, creativity, joy, and higher consciousness—your brain isn’t the right place to turn. These experiences exist in your awareness, waiting to emerge. The brain cannot give you these experiences, because contrary to popular belief, the brain isn’t aware. It transmits thoughts the way a television transmits pictures on the screen. No one would say that TVs produce the shows they transmit, yet we say this about the brain all the time.

It is pure illusion to mistake the brain for the mind. The basic chemicals in a brain cell are the same as in the skin cells of your big toe, and the functioning of brain cells differs very little from the functions of every other cell in the body. A three-pound lump of gray matter cannot escape its status as a batch of chemicals, and we mustn’t attribute love, compassion creativity, etc. to a batch of chemicals, either. In fact, the brain isn’t even aware that it exists. Until the skull is opened to reveal it, there is no subjective experience that says, “Here I am. I am your brain.”

By “learn as you go,” I mean that each day is an opportunity to take in the good: to help useful or enjoyable experiences sink in and become a part of you. Then when you go to sleep, you’ll be a little stronger, a little more resilient, a little wiser, a little more loving, a little happier than you were when you woke up in the morning.

This kind of learning is not memorizing a multiplication table. It’s emotional learning, somatic learning. It’s becoming more skillful with the world around you and the world inside you. It’s social learning, motivational learning, even spiritual learning. It’s healing from the past and growing strengths for the future. It’s becoming more compassionate, confident, patient, capable, and joyful. This is the learning that matters most. If things fall apart, what’s already inside you is what you can really count on.

What’s in your mind?

The Practice:
Be mind full of good.

Why?

It’s kind of amazing: right now, what you think and feel, enjoy and suffer, is changing your brain. The brain is the organ that learns, designed by evolution to be changed by our experiences: what scientists call experience-dependent neuroplasticity.

Neurons that fire together, wire together. This means that each one of us has the power to use the mind to change the brain to change the mind for the better. To benefit oneself and other beings.

Using this internal power is more important than ever these days, when so many of us are pushed and prodded by external forces – the economy, media, politics, workplace policies, war on the other side of the world, the people on the other side of the dining room table – and by our reactions to them.

Life is often hard. To cope with hard things, to be effective and successful, or simply to experience ordinary well-being, we need resources inside, inner strengths like resilience, compassion, gratitude, and other positive emotions, self-worth, and insight.

Have you ever wondered why things happen the way they do in your life? Have you ever considered that the creation of your experiences, like the creation of everything else, is governed by the law of cause and effect? In this case, the nonphysical law of cause and effect. The physical law of cause and effect governs physical causes and physical effects, such as launching a rocket and landing it on the moon. The physical law of cause and effect is a limited version of the nonphysical law of cause and effect. The nonphysical law allows you to use nonphysical causes to create nonphysical effects and also physical effects. This does not mean that you are not in control of what you create. On the contrary! It means that you are entirely free to create what you want, provided you are aware of how the nonphysical law of cause and effect works. If you are not aware of this law and how it works, you will create, as you continually do, but you will not want what you create.

Where There Is Anger, There Is Hope

I know many of you are waking up feeling enraged, angry, frustrated and disillusioned this morning. Meanwhile, others of you feel this process ended fairly and are probably just relieved that all this Supreme Court drama is over.

In fact, I heard some say yesterday, “I’m glad this is over. It’s time to move on.”

Yes, the news cycle will move on. It always does.

But, I believe the soul of our country is forever altered. So are the souls of all those people who shared their stories. Who confronted long, buried and painful memories. Who testified and spoke up. Even for those who stayed silent, I imagine their souls are also forever changed.

Do you have a bucket list? Five-sensory humans think of physical experiences they want before they die, for example, parachuting, mountain climbing, or going to Paris. The parts of their personalities that originate in fear need experiences like these to make themselves feel valuable. Multisensory humans think of the contributions they can make to others and the world before their souls return to nonphysical reality, for example,  tenderness, compassion, patience, and gratitude. The parts of their personalities that originate in love contribute these things continually, and contributing them brings meaning, purpose, and fulfillment to the personality.