Are you what happened to you?
 

Hi everyone. I think everyone has experienced one kind of trauma or another. Some people even become identified with that trauma.
In my honest opinion it's who you are now that makes you who you are. Not what happened to you. If you decided to identify with that traumatic event then that makes you who you are.
I suppose what I am trying to say is that I don't think it's what happened to you but it's your own decisions that make you who you are. I think we always do have a decision but who you are now is the important part.
Thoughts?

i dunno. yesterday one of those affirmation things popped up on my cell (I really don't know why I get them lol) and said something about 'you are what you are by the grace of god'. Which kinda said to me, you don't really get to choose everything you are, some of what you are was bestowed by god. And yeah that is something I think about sometimes, this crazy life I have, I am so very aware that if god didn't want me to have it I wouldn't. And yet I do.

Sigh.

As I believe that the "present" is the point of power from which the past and the future are continuously re-created, I'd say that "the past as you remember it" is actually the present-you, it reflects your current inner state of being.

So, your present and your past aren't disconnected, but the causality is reversed.

Thoughts? What a unique topic!!!

Who else is responsible? I believe that yes I am ...with some huge Grace...meaning a gift from God once in awhile.
:notworthy:

True, if my tired brain (it's late) understands it well. And also what Joe Dispenza and Abraham Hicks have been teaching for decades.
But then there's the big 'but'... Everyone has experienced some form of trauma in life and overcoming / letting go of the effects of that is not so easy.
These things create neural networks in the brain and you'd have to un-create these to become a different person, free from those effects. That takes time and a helluva lot of dedication.
Simply saying an affirmation isn't going to cut it, especially not as affirmations don't really work, not the way most do them anyways.
It takes deeper work, daily -hence the dedication- and you have to keep doing.
You can decide in the moment to be different, but with many things that will last 1 hour, or a day, maybe a week, and then you're back in the old program.
You can change that, but again, takes time & dedication and the right approach. If you implement all that you can have very fast results.

You know that it takes so long, and so much work to change ... because that's what you believe and expect. Change is fueled by intention, and impeded by contrary beliefs and expectations.

Most people are conditioned to believe that "no pain no gain", ... That is so untrue, and so detrimental!

This reminds a quote: "Those who sweat look like they are working".

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NOTE: I used here "you" with its impersonal meaning, not addressing anybody in particular.

I think that there is more to it than just making a decision about what we identify with.

A traumatic event makes an imprint, mentally and emotionally and even physically. The imprints of such traumatic events can go very deep, especially the events of childhood. The decision on a mental level to not identify with that event does not remove the imprint. As FairyCrystal said, it may work for an hour or so but the old patterns remain and we end up back in the old program.

And what is this imprint? It is the unresolved impact of the trauma. A part of us has frozen at the moment of trauma, and the effects of the trauma have become locked in within us. Which can affect our lives in subtle and unsubtle ways for years afterwards.

And the solution? To go within and re-experience the trauma, to reconnect with whatever happened and how we responded, to unblock that part of us which froze and has been blocked ever since. This is a cathartic release of trapped energies. We are dropping a burden we may not even have known we were carrying. And so we feel lighter, freer, and a huge sense of relief.

This is more than just making a decision about what we identify with. We can mentally tell ourselves not to identify with a past event, but if we are still carrying the burden of that event then where is the benefit?

Peace

Assuming you're responding to me? Not clear, maybe quote next time.
I know it does as I have educated myself.
And if you read my post you had also seen the last sentence...
It all starts with a decision and then sticking to that no matter what, every day. Many who do the work right -by which I mostly mean Joe Dispenza's 'method' as that is the best, most direct path currently available- see results within a week, others 3 months, others longer.
It could happen fast for all, if it doesn't it's because of what Joe D. says: "You're not that good yet."
The whole thing is simple and logical, so simple that it becomes difficult for us. We like things to be complex and difficult, then we can sink our teeth into it and 'fight' it. Easy ways is not really what we're used to.
But in any case... there are quite a lot of people that have healed from serious disease within a week by going to his week-long.
Some have done this is 2-3 months without going but by reading his book and doing (one of) his meditations.
The other day he told the story of one woman who'd had her thyroid removed. After doing the work blood test showed she was again producing thyroid based hormones. They checked it and she had grown a new thyroid!
When we really set ourselves to it there's nothing we cannot achieve, certainly not concerning healing, and it can happen in a very short time. IF you do it right.

Just like there are people in the world over 120 yrs old, even said there are people of over 200 yrs old alive today!
Not in crazy stress-based Western lifestyle societies though...
And we Westerners would say, "That is NOT possible!!!" Yet science has said a couple decades ago there is no prove whatsoever that we should age and die around 85 yrs of age. Under the right circumstances -which is a non-Western lifestyle- we can live hundreds of years as we then keep renewing our telomeres.

But alas...

I especially made it clear in my post:

If you are speaking in terms of one truly traumatic event in a person's life, you may have a point. You can isolate that memory, deal with it, and move on.

But if you are speaking in terms of long-term conditioning it gets murkier. Children who suffer years of abuse, for example. How are they to make a decision to turn their back on that, if it is all they have ever experienced?

It's rather like telling someone who has suffered incredible loss to "get over it, already." It isn't just a decision, sadly.

This also raises the question of what is meant by being who we are now. We are always who we are now. This may not be the ideal version of ourselves, but it is who we are now.

If ReturningMoon means being who we are free from all past conditioning then that is another matter. I am not sure if we can simply decide to be free of all past conditioning and it suddenly happens.

Living in a state of freedom from our conditioning requires a certain emptiness. And how do we become empty? By becoming aware of all our conditioned responses as they arise and letting go of them. But this is an ongoing process, not a one-off decision.

It is like peeling the layers of an onion. We peel away one level of conditioning and we find a deeper level beneath. And gradually we become more and more empty and we simply respond to life as it happens.

And maybe we can only be who we really are when there is no longer anyone present to be anything.

Peace

Fantastic question......
""I get knocked down, but I get up again, ain't nothing gonna keep me down..""
Lyrics to chubbawumba ......
And SO true.
I got knocked down so many times , and I do mean physically, and everyrime I got up again I was punched back to the ground from the fist of a so called "man".... The father of my baby .
This man will meet his maker and have to answer for his actions but I won't.
I did nothing wrong.
Just one example of the beatings I have had including from my own parents , and the bullying etc etc etc...
And each and every time I just got up and got on with it.
Like any abuse victim I guess I just thought it was a normal part of life.
So in that respect I should be grateful that I grew up with it and it wasn't a "shock" later down the line ....
But I am proud and can PROMISE that I did not grow up the same .
I was kind and caring and did everything in my power to help others .
I am me .
I am not my abusers Thank God .


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I am not what happens to me. I am what I do.

The way I'd formulate it: what I perceive that happens to me is a mirror of my inner state of being.

Imagine an ocean which contains everything that has happened to you and everything you did and thought in this life. Everything you have seen, heard, and experienced. You are standing far inland on shore but a river is there that connects to the ocean. If you are in the river, you are aware of everything contained in the ocean. The river is the thought stream in your mind.

Can you get out of the river and while out of it no longer be what happened to you or anything you have done or thought or heard or seen? I think it's possible. But I think getting out of the river is a very tricky thing. If any part of you, even the smallest thing, remains in that river, you will be connected to the ocean of what happened to you and what you did since the second you were born.

i couldn't have chosen a 'life' like the one I've got, or really wouldn't have chosen it if I'd been told up front about it and given the choice... so... it is the product of everything that has happened to me and the way I responded to all those happenings as they were happening, both good and bad, that got me where I am.

you don't *have* to go to extremes, and still you can find good food :smile:

A lot of new age books and mediums say we chose it in the astral world before we were born. So like we stood around in the astral world with our soul group and our spirit guides and we were like, ok Ariana you will be my spouse and cheat on me...I need that lesson.... Rama you will be my business partner and steal all my money and bankrupt me.... I need that lesson etc.

Looking at it from this identity, from this person perspective, yea no way I would choose things like that. My parents were terrible, I would not choose them. But according to some new age writers and mediums, I did choose them.

that doesn't really work for me either... a more likely reason for all the horrors in my own life is my bad behavior at the end of the last one lol... as i do believe in karma....

It wasn't this "you" that chose your life as you remember it now, and most likely not everything went according to that "you" 's hopes (maybe better, maybe not).

Believing in karma is a way of absolving ourselves from our responsibility for what we experience now, and for our past. What we focus on now, what we believe now, are actually what shape our present, past, and probable future. We have free-will, so we can change anything in the limits of the current probabilities, including probabilities as we go.

As Buddha said:

All of what we are
Is the result of what we have thought.