I Wish I Could...

Spiral Note Book:  I Wish I Could...

December 1, 2008

I can't even count how many times I have either heard somebody say, or I have said myself; "I wish I could go back and live my life over again knowing what I know now."  I have been giving these words a lot of my attention and thought lately, especially with a new year approaching.  I think about my life and how I have transformed my life over and over again with the power of my mind, my will and my heart.  My thoughts have concluded in a very bold statement and challenge.  I propose that we can live our lives over again, knowing what we know now!

As I make this bold statement I realize it might bring up all sorts of ideas that may be distracting from the idea which I am presenting today.  For clarity I will say that I am not talking about "time travel" and I am not talking about being physically reborn.  I am not even talking about being spiritually reborn.  I am pragmatically speaking about a conscious experience of re-living and re-experiencing moments in our lives that were pivotal in how we have become who we are today.  These pivotal moments might be a traumatic experience that caused us to step back from our own power.  It might be the loss of someone or something very dear to us that redirected the course of our lives.  I could explain a variety of specific types of trauma to prompt your thinking, but I believe if you ever had one, or more, you already know what I am talking about.  I'm talking about that pivotal moment still hanging around inside of you.  It is a moment that has stayed with you and thus created a life imprisoned by the experience.  If you will search your inner world right now you will find this place right where I said it would be.  Here in you, now.  Go back in your mind.  Take a journey to the youngest place you can remember since your birth that was so impactful as to cause you to say, "I wish I could go back...."

We can relive our life through a real experience and reap the benefit of creating the changes we long to make in order to have the life we dream we can have.  We can rewrite our stories.  We can create and change the characters that played the parts in these pivotal moments.  We can!  And wouldn't it be wonderful to have the life we want and to walk away from the life we feel was forced upon us by experiences that may or may not have been out of our control?

Well, I have pondered through my musings in regards to this particular wish I hear over and over and over again, just what it might take for an individual to really do such a thing.  It would take a lot of courage and dedication to pursue this journey of transformation.  It would take persistence and perseverance.  It would require our full presence and attention.

Just think about it in fantasia terms.  Through some kind of magical or scientific discovery we really could travel back in time to the exact moment where our lives ventured off in a direction that caused wounding and pain, or grief and regret.  In this modern day it is not so difficult to imagine such an experience since there are so many movies and novels written about the fulfillment of this wish.  Now in this time travel we could finally take the path that was once untraveled.  We could experience and then create a new path that would bring us back into our lives today as the whole person we absolutely know we are deep inside. 

There may be monsters and dangers we hadn't thought about.  There may be more pain or grief along the way.  And of course there are still those things that will always be out of our control.  This is true especially in regards to other people and how they play their parts in our lives.  Just like the genie in the bottle granting three wishes, we cannot make anyone fall in love with us or send to, nor bring back someone from death.  As in any fantasy there is no guarantee how the fantasy will translate in the "real" world upon our return.  This fantastic journey has no certainty of outcome.

The question becomes, will we take the risk.  Will you take the risk?  Would you really take that first step back into the past?  Into the abyss of uncertainty?  I'm guessing that if I were only suggesting an internal process and not a physical experience, maybe a few of us would agree to this odyssey.  However, I am suggesting both an internal process and a physical experience of that process.  As with the fantastic journey, the same is true for this journey, there is no certainty of outcome. 

This journey is a journey of hope, of faith and great love.  It is a deep, unlimited love of oneself that finally says, "I have had enough!  I will not live life anymore!  I am going to live way, now!!"  Making this profound statement and truly meaning what we say with all our hearts, goes beyond a will to live.  Taking this journey is a will to live well!  Instead of creating a Last Will and Testament for our passing from this life on planet earth, we are creating a Will of Experience to define the life we have now.  This Will is an internal and an external expression that will change the course of your life.

We as humans are gifted with an unlimited imagination.  Our imagination is infinite, a creative genius that lives in every single one of us.  I believe we can use this imagination to overcome any limitations we perceive as insurmountable.  Our health and quality of life depends on the connection we have with our creative source.  It depends on our willingness to allow our own creative energy to bring transformation into our lives.  We are born creative and this creativity can and will create a pivotal moment today that can redirect the ship of our lives in the direction we were born to sail.

This creative source within us is pure, innocent and complete.  Somewhere in our early days perhaps we began to hide our creativity.  We buried it deep within us and even deeper as we grew into adults.  Just look at how few adults really live creatively.  Adults tend to live in an "adult" fashion that is defined by our family, our culture and society.  Our creative source does not like to be defined or confined.  The incredible truth is that our creative source is still there!  This source is even more pure, more innocent and more complete than it was at our birth because of the experiences and challenges of our living.  You will find this creative source any and every time you connect with your desires, your passions and your dreams.  This source is your essence.  We can go back to any pivotal moment in our lives and depend on this creative source that has travelled through time with us.  Every moment and every experience of our lives is stored within the container of our existence and we can re-express and re-live any of them fully in our minds and our bodies as if...  As if we could go back in time and relive our lives over again, knowing what we know now.