Here is an opportunity to look with compassion on the contents of your heart. As dawn clears shadows from night, your directed light erases darkness cast over things too hard to examine, too precious to discard.

Clutching memories, places, things, or old versions of ourselves wrapped in anger, projected resentment, or fear makes stumbling blocks of what could be distilled wisdom. We’ve done a lot of holistic housecleaning in 2020, not all of it voluntary and some of it painful. Now, we have a chance to go through our spiritual and emotional storehouses to alchemize and reclaim.

Childhood can be so painful we shut away that whole time of our lives – together with innocence and wonder, whole cities and towns, and whatever love or goodness hurt and flawed people were able to share with us. This happens with divorces, job endings, and broken friendships, too.

Removing toxic people and harsh times from our lives doesn’t mean giving up our experiences. Releasing and stepping back from those who cannot or will not change, pollute our energy, or hurt and attack us with dis-eased minds or low-vibration beliefs is powerful compassion for self, radical acceptance, and opens the door to cleansing forgiveness when we scatter outrage, shame, and bitterness to the wind.

We can curate our memories. We don’t have to throw out entire chapters of our lives. We can remember the good in people even as we accept their (and our) limitations. We can keep lighthearted moments, old jokes, and our personal stories without being disloyal to our self-respect and desire to heal. Complete healing comes from dealing with things completely.

Today, I reclaimed a card deck I haven’t touched in years – my Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards deck from Doreen Virtue. After she became a destructive religious zealot, repudiating her life’s work while hurling hateful, ignorant accusations at the spiritual community, I cut off anything with her name on it. She made a U-turn into fear, rigidity, and paranoia, and I wasn’t going with her!

But of course, I don’t have to. My spiritual connection, ministry, healing work, and wisewoman journey can’t be assaulted by what anyone else does. Doreen Virtue may have put all her work on the garbage heap, but that doesn’t prevent other people from salvaging what was good and useful.

So, I reclaimed a deck, using it as a tool to bring Sacred Feminine guidance into today’s energy. I drew cards for Isis and Ishtar – with the simple messages that past life issues are at play, and self-love requires setting boundaries with others.

Past lives – and past living in the current lifetime – are at the surface for all of us when challenged to alchemize our pain, reclaim what rightfully belongs to us, and develop a mature identity. Whether a past lifetime as a Christ follower accused of heresy or a healer burned at the stake, or a current life childhood in a painfully dysfunctional family robbing your history, the past exists for our growth and development. We can pluck the gold from the rubbish. We don’t have to lose it all. Life is not a zero-sum game.

Boundaries mean consciously choosing how far to let anyone’s energy penetrate, if at all. Remembering doesn’t have to be an exercise in self-torture. We can still love and pray even where we have let go. We can acknowledge and share what’s meaningful and helpful without raking over the dung. Looking back doesn’t mean going backwards if we can use our hard-won spiritual wisdom to illuminate what was and manifest higher today.

The sun is out. Cleanse your past with radiant light. Take back what belongs to you as the rest evaporates with the dawn.
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Elizabeth S. Eiler, Ph.D. is an eclectic writer and the published author of three books about spirituality and metaphysics. She is an ordained minister, spiritual teacher, and healer. Her current works in progress are an epic fantasy novel and a poetry collection.

Singing Woman: Voices of the Sacred Feminine
Swift and Brave: Sacred Souls of Animals
Other Nations: A Lightworker's Case Book for Healing, Spiritually Empowering, and Communing with the Animal Kingdom