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Composting The Past So It Fertilises Your Future…

In talking about ‘conscious evolution’ - moving from unconscious to conscious choice, I mentioned the idea of ‘composting the past’ so it can fertilise rather than inhibit our future. This is a highly relevant and complex topic and one I am personally very passionate about because learning to see all of life as relevant and connected to everything else in a context of a miraculous and ever-evolving universe is to see ourselves as active and integral players, warts and all, in the dynamic mystery of life - with no-one and nothing left out - including the tough times we are in for at present.

This article explores the mindset or ‘view’ that helps engage in the divine alchemical process of turning lead (our ‘crap’ experiences) into gold (insight and action aligned with that insight)…hence the ‘composting’ metaphor. It deals with our mysterious ‘inner space’ - that which fuels our actions in the world and is the source of our fulfillment (or not). When we successfully compost the past we have more energy available to thrive in the present and invent the future as conscious co-creators.

During our lives we all have experiences that lift us up and we all have experiences that can pull us down. In continuing with the gardening metaphor, when we learn to ‘compost the crap’, that which pulled us down can be used to lift us up! By cultivating a view that everything can be useful we can use ‘crap’ to ‘fertilise’. Any experience can help us learn and grow into more aware and compassionate people. The point is not to eliminate ‘compost’…or suffering. The challenge is to see it as natural and even sacred in our process of life and learn to use it to cultivate wisdom and an enhanced quality of life. Too often our wounds and suffering become our Achilles heel as we get stuck in ways of thinking and being that do not lift us up (this is so for the individual and the collective).

Time can help the composting experience and it doesn’t seem to work best by itself. When we activate and accelerate the process with a little conscious attention we heal ourselves faster. This requires a willingness to truly treat our wounds so they can be integrated into our Being just as scars are part of our skin.

Left to itself lead will toxify an environment. It is poison. So it is with our inner environment and unresolved issues. They are part of our lives and will influence us whether we want them to or not.

There are many strategies and therapies that can help compost the past and more seem to emerge every day as we seek to face our monsters and tackle inner climate change.

One very powerful and effective tool anyone can use is ‘REFRAMING’ or ‘changing the view’. A ‘frame’ is a mental view or way of seeing something. Reframing gives you a new view of the same thing. Changing our view or the way we see something changes our experience, of ourselves or a situation. Consider the ‘old’ idea (born of the existentialists) that we are all just insignificant blips with no real influence in a mind bogglingly vast universe - that we don’t really matter at all. That view or ‘frame’ makes it easy to treat self, others and the environment as if none of it really matters at all – a cop out indeed and one more and more people around the world intuitively feel can’t be right. A different and fast emerging view (reframe) is that we are all potent vessels of potential that have the capacity to co-create in partnership with the divine evolutionary impulse – in every single moment. A new view (even as it is as old as we are) is that we are made of the rarest stuff in the universe, that our planet and everything about it is sacred and that there has never been a time where it was anything but sacred – we just have times of forgetting!

By reframing crap experiences or aspects of ourselves we don’t like we can compost them and let them lift us towards a future we desire rather than one we feel we need to ‘settle for’. By asking more of ourselves, lifting our sights to a ‘higher’ place it becomes possible to see things differently just as we do when we fly, or when we are in the stands rather than on the ground at a sports event. The key is to learn to look at ourselves and our circumstances in ways that assist our growth and evolution rather than inhibiting it.

Our views must change before anything else can change. It’s our views, our frames, that hold reality in place. In this way we really do create our own experience of reality. It’s ‘the view’ that facilitates the ‘do’ i.e. perception informs action which always has consequences.

When you have successfully reframed something it feels different. You will feel lighter, something has been composted, the weight of the lead has lifted, transformed, and you are left with the gold, the treasure. We cannot change the facts of our history... but we can change the way we view them. With a new view comes a new reality. Like magic, the world around you will seem different yet it isn’t the world that has changed, it is your view, and You. This is divine alchemy at work!

To allow your past to hold you back somewhere in time long gone is to keep yourself out of the present, bound to past moments and a reality that is gone. It’s as if bungy cords were tied to your feet….you attempt to move forward and your ‘lead’ pings you back. Reframing can release those bungy cords and allow a gold rush of life force back into your life.

Explore the experiences that have up until now pulled you down and seek a new view, a reframe. Reframing is not an invention, rather a description of what we do anyway when we change our perspective. I am suggesting we find reframes more consciously so as to accelerate our growth by unleashing hitherto trapped energy. We all have patterns of thinking that have evolved out of our interpretation of life. These patterns, or ‘views’, or ‘frames’, fuel our behaviour. Change the frames, and behaviour and consequences will naturally change too, to fit the new reality. Reframe the past so you view your history as one great weaving of experiences, all of which have helped shape you. Compost the crap and use it to free up the energy you will need to deal with the present and fertilise the future.

So look at the layout and fundamental structure of your ‘garden of consciousness’. Do your weeding, keep what nourishes and uplifts you, compost the crap (with expert help if you need it – this is where a competent therapist or guide can help), plant new views and watch your life flourish.

Your life is your business, and, you are part of the whole. You matter as we all matter. We are told by virtually every commentator that we are living in times of unprecedented crisis and challenge on many fronts right now. Things are speeding up no question. It’s our human tendency to wait for crisis to make changes. We don’t need to, but if that’s what it takes then dig deep and you will find resources you didn’t even know were there. It is in a crisis that we find what we are really made of. We can’t go back in time and change what is here and now, all we can do is change how we see it. So as soon as you can, accept and bless the crises we are currently experiencing as a planet and as a species. They are opening us up to let go of the views that has got us here so we are free to co-create some vibrant newies. As Leonard Cohen so deftly says “There’s a crack, a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in”.

Amanda Fleming
p: +64 21 357753
e: info@amandafleming.co.nz
a: PO Box 56064
Dominion Road
Mt Eden
AUCKLAND