One of the most profound transformational programs I have ever done was the Landmark Forum. Some of the key messages of the Forum are: ....There’s no meaning intrinsic to events that happened in our lives. Humans act like “meaning making machines” and construct the meaning of everything in our lives. There’s “what happened” and there’s “my story about what happened”. Assuming these two things to be the same is the source of much pain and conflict. If we don’t “complete” the past, we bring the injuries and complaints of the past – i.e. the meanings that we have created – into the present and the future. In that case, we are literally “living into a future” that is polluted with the complaints and baggage of the past. Completing the past consists of: forgiving ourselves for what happened (even if it wasn’t our fault), and forgiving others whom we have been blaming and “making wrong” for their roles in past events; and consciously choosing to let go of stories and meanings that we have previously attributed to those events. If you are interested in hearing more about the Landmark Forum, I would love to tell you about it.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 01:09:19 +0000