Your past self is and always will be a part of you. How can you evolve into your best version while hating a part of yourself?
We are not a whole being, a unit. We believe that we are a singular being, but it's not the case.
When we are born, we are born whole and authentic. But soon when we are socialized as children, we are taught ways to be that aren't intrinsic to our nature. We are punished (emotionally, verbally or physically) for displaying traits, emotions, needs, beliefs and behaviors that defy and don't align with the external rules. We are threatened with being abandoned and unloved if we stay true to ourselves. So the only choice we have as children who are dependent on their parents for survival is to simply conform. And socialization is only one way that puts pressure on us to embrace inauthenticity. Traumas and wounds teach us that the world is an unsafe place and so we close off. We have no choice but to "decide" to only show what keeps us safe. We cope. We adapt. We deny reject and disown what we learn is not helping us belonging and safe within the community we are a part of.
his is how our consciousness fragments - the aspects, traits, emotions, behaviors, beliefs that are approved of or will keep you safe navigating the world are taken over by the ego and are shown safely to the world. This is your personality/identity.
But the aspects of you that are disapproved of & that you were taught are the opposite of ensuring belonging, love and safety will be cast far away from your awareness & will go into the subconscious or even deeper, into the unconscious. They become the shadows.
This is a highly unconscious and conditional process. It is not done from a sovereign place, it is done so as to run away from the excruciating pain of being ostracized and unwanted. It is done to help you survive.
As a child it was the best and most intelligent move you could make.
These mechanisms, beliefs strategies for self preservation and coping were insanely accurate, intelligent and good for you when you were a child and all the aspects that were cast in the shadows was serving you in being able to adapt to your environment.
The problem is they're no longer serving you as the adult you are right now. They prove detrimental to you now. They keep you in a loop of self sabotage. But just because they're no longer good for you it doesn't mean they're inherently bad, wrong. Their intention is never to purposefully guide you down the path of pain.
Nothing that is happening within you is ever trying to actively hurt you and everything is convinced that it is serving you in some way.
All these highly subconscious limitations were the ones that kept you surviving according to a very real paradigm that your mind has set in stone for you as a guideline for how to navigate life as a child.
That means that no past version of you was intentional about leading you into pain.
Healing what keeps you from becoming your truest version is not found in rejecting, criticizing and hating the version of you that brought you here. Quite to the contrary, what will bring you closer to embodying your truth is falling in love with the past version of you. Why?
You cannot hate where you have been been & where you are and move into where you would love to be.
It's simply not how it's done.
What needs to happen is you need find approval and acceptance for your old self. It kept you surviving. It brought you here to the point of where you understand you want more from this life.
If you blame yourself for choices you wouldn't make today, for example, remember that you were convinced you had better alternatives back then and so you did what you thought best with the level of self awareness (or the lack thereof) you were capable of. The choices made from a place that wasn't true to you - i.e. being inauthentic - were simply the best way in which you understood to guarantee your belonging and safety within the community.
But one thing I can tell you- it is only when you begin loving your journey to arriving here that you are actually ready to step into the better version of you. It is only by holding compassion for all the aspects of your consciousness that did their best to assist you that you free yourself from the chains of the past and become whole.
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