{"id":2888,"date":"2013-10-16T03:00:08","date_gmt":"2013-10-16T07:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lettinggo\/?p=2888"},"modified":"2013-10-12T21:19:59","modified_gmt":"2013-10-13T01:19:59","slug":"letting-go-of-the-bitter-fruit-of-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2013\/10\/letting-go-of-the-bitter-fruit-of-the-past.html","title":{"rendered":"Letting Go of the Bitter Fruit of the Past"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Question:<\/strong> I&#8217;m unsure about which way to go&#8230; what to do&#8230; to get out of &#8220;wrong&#8221; life that I\u2019ve been in for years. Along with a troubled marriage, I am paying for making the totally wrong choices for myself, being so messed up that I somehow got lost on the wrong road to nowhere but misery&#8230; absolutely not liking even a minute of my present job, crying inside, wanting to do and be New, wondering how to make the leap without getting stuck with even greater problems!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Answer:<\/strong> This may sound like a strange idea to you at first, but the truth behind it holds a great hope for those of us who feel that we are held down or back by past painful choices. Just as good fruit must ripen before we can know its sweet nourishment, so is it true when it comes to &#8220;bad&#8221; fruit&#8230; those mistaken choices made in our past that hold us prisoner in the present moment, whatever their nature. The conditions that we live in &#8212; the nature of our experience in those conditions (moment to moment) &#8212; are an expression of a consciousness that made &#8212; or that continues to make &#8212; the interior choices responsible for creating that reality; of this there can be no doubt.<\/p>\n<p>The key here is to understand the following: when this bitter fruit ripens, and reveals to us where we had unknowingly compromised our own best interests along the way, we must not hate the fruit! The resistance to, or resentment of our situation is misdirection on the part of the very same mind that placed us where we now feel ourselves being punished. Instead of seeing this projected &#8220;badness,\u201d what we must learn to see is the authentic goodness of having been awakened to that actual level of self. For now, by the light of a new awareness, we are not only aware of an aspect of ourselves that made the choices it did, but what wants to protect them by causing us to feel fear should we choose to make a new start.<\/p>\n<p>Welcome and continue to welcome the awareness you have of your growing dissatisfaction with what you are inwardly&#8230; never forgetting that what we experience, as well as attract to ourselves, is the direct expression of our present interior nature. The key to remember here is that the authentic new life we long for is not something we create by imagining something better, or by hating what and where we are; rather it comes to us as we see, with absolute clarity, that we can no longer continue being who and what we have been. The arrival of a new life is preceded by our departure from the old one. And though it seems to take a lot to get us moving, as we see the truth of ourselves&#8230; freedom&#8217;s shore grows closer and closer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question: I&#8217;m unsure about which way to go&#8230; what to do&#8230; to get out of &#8220;wrong&#8221; life that I\u2019ve been in for years. Along with a troubled marriage, I am paying for making the totally wrong choices for myself, being so messed up that I somehow got lost on the wrong road to nowhere but&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":232,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[11,1760,154,1641,1761,24,336,1762],"class_list":["post-2888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fear-fearlessness","category-letting-go","tag-awareness","tag-bad-choices","tag-feeling-stuck","tag-life","tag-new","tag-self-compromise","tag-unhappiness","tag-wrong-choices"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Letting Go of the Bitter Fruit of the Past - Letting Go with Guy Finley<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2013\/10\/letting-go-of-the-bitter-fruit-of-the-past.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Letting Go of the Bitter Fruit of the Past - Letting Go with Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Question: I&#8217;m unsure about which way to go&#8230; what to do&#8230; to get out of &#8220;wrong&#8221; life that I\u2019ve been in for years. Along with a troubled marriage, I am paying for making the totally wrong choices for myself, being so messed up that I somehow got lost on the wrong road to nowhere but&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2013\/10\/letting-go-of-the-bitter-fruit-of-the-past.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Letting Go with Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Guy-Finley-260924340633\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-10-16T07:00:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-10-13T01:19:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@guy_finley\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Letting Go of the Bitter Fruit of the Past - Letting Go with Guy Finley","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2013\/10\/letting-go-of-the-bitter-fruit-of-the-past.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Letting Go of the Bitter Fruit of the Past - Letting Go with Guy Finley","og_description":"Question: I&#8217;m unsure about which way to go&#8230; what to do&#8230; to get out of &#8220;wrong&#8221; life that I\u2019ve been in for years. 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His ideas cut straight to the heart of our most important personal and social issues - relationships, success, addiction, stress, peace, happiness, freedom - and lead the way to a higher life. Finley is the Founder and Director of Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit Center for Spiritual Discovery. He is the acclaimed author of \"The Secret of Letting Go\" and more than 45 other books and audio programs that have sold over two million copies in 26 languages worldwide. His work is widely endorsed by doctors, business professionals, celebrities, and religious leaders of all denominations. Through Life of Learning Foundation, Guy has presented over 5,000 unique self-realization seminars to thousands of grateful students throughout North America and Europe over the past 20 years and has been a guest on over 700 television and radio shows, including national appearances on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and NPR. The Foundation's popular Key Lesson e-mails featuring inspirational quotes by Guy are read each week by a hundred thousand subscribers in 142 countries. Guy speaks four times each week on inner-life principles at Life of Learning Foundation's home in Merlin, Oregon. These meetings are ongoing and open to the public. For more information about Life of Learning Foundation, Guy Finley, and their life-changing messages, visit guyfinley.org. \"Guy Finley is...one of the leading experts at the forefront of human potential.\" -Nightingale Conant \"Guy Finley has helped millions live fuller, more peaceable lives.\" -Barnes and Noble","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.guyfinley.org","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Guy-Finley-260924340633\/","https:\/\/x.com\/guy_finley"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/author\/gfinley"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/232"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2888"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2889,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2888\/revisions\/2889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}