The way to move forward in your development as a person is
not to reject your previous qualities while taking on new ones. To imagine that
you can separate yourself from your past and simply become a “new man” is to be
deluded. If you want to become who you truly are, you cannot remove one self
(i.e. your “past self”) and become a new self—instead, you must accumulate selves.
When you realize that you still hold many of the same desires today that you did in the past- particularly the ones that you have suppressed and written off as crazy-, you gain access to new stores of motivation and power. Likewise, when you recognize that many of your previous ideas and perspectives - even what you might regard as totally insane, such as the viewpoint of depression- are valid, you can add these ideas and perspectives to your current worldview, and you can thus form a more comprehensive and complete view of life.
Maybe you’ve tried escaping from your past and have regarded your previous self as a poor, confused kook who didn’t understand life. But if you take your past qualities into serious consideration, you will see the true genius that was lurking all along; and, when you thus make peace with your past and own who you once were, you will become the person you have always been, and who you have always wanted to be. In other words, you will become immensely more powerful, you will form an ever-more accurate view of reality, and you will overall enjoy life more.
Personal Experience
For me, re-integration of my past has been largely focused on when I was depressed from the ages of 15-16. When that period of my life ended I initially wanted to separate myself from it, and proclaim that I had become a totally different person. Now, almost four years later, I’m re-connecting with this stage of my life and seeing that I not only am still the person I was a few years ago, but also that this is actually a good thing. By trying to shut out my past, I also turned off a lot of my power and potential.
I likewise blinded myself to some of the wisdom that could be found in my mid-teenage years. Maybe that wisdom was hard to see, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t there. I didn’t realize that at 17; but, to an extent, I do now.
Now, by accepting my past and owning my whole self, I’m on the path to not only accessing my full potential in all regards, but also simply being comfortable with who I am.
Of course, I'll have to find some way to re-integrate my 17 year old self as well. Hm...
The Re-Integration Cycle
This is the basic series of events that follows from re-integrating your past:
Completely accept yourself --> Don’t need to prove anything --> Transcend limits artificially imposed upon you by others --> Take more responsibility for and creative ownership of all you experience --> Make use of and experience your true power.
This isn’t a linear process that happens once: it’s cyclical, and it’s a process you go through over and over again, gaining more power and more self-acceptance with each iteration. When you hit the last step, which is to make use of and experience your true power, you will once again find ways in which you can integrate your past into your present experience. The process thus starts over, beginning with acceptance of yourself and your past.
Note
Due to some technical limitations (my main laptop partially broke several months ago and I’m not yet able to use it again), I haven’t edited this video at all. As such, it ends on a rather messy note. However, up to that point the recording is essentially free of errors. I trust that the last 30 seconds of this won’t ruin the other 50+ minutes. Take it or leave it, baby. :)
Here's the podcast, on YouTube:
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