Free fom the Past

By Joey Lott

Do you feel burdened by your past?

Current culture conditions us to believe that we're indelibly scarred by the events of our past. If we've had past experiences that have been harmful or traumatic, then in many cases, no matter how much time has passed, we will still today be struggling to deal with those experiences and the personal impact they've had. We can often feel ourselves to be completely enslaved to our past.

In Joey Lott's 'Free from the Past' we learn that, however great our bondage to the past may seem, we have the ability to free ourselves by the simple act of exploring the present with open curiosity.

How can I free myself?

Lott demonstrates that there is a deceptively simple strategy that each of us can use to discover our own personal freedom from the past. He offers a series of straightforward exercises that can be practiced in order to set foot on the path to attaining this freedom.

No gimmicks.

No expensive gadgets.

Just a simple exploration of the present moment.

Does it really work?

Each and every one of us is different, but the simple strategy outlined by Lott is one that any of us can follow, and the results can be absolutely liberating.

"Whatever we remember having happened, regardless of how horrific or even how wonderful it was, in this present moment it is just a thought."

Lott teaches that we can find complete freedom in the present not by trying to get rid of anything, or change anything, but by simply exploring the present moment through direct experience. Whilst this may not be quite as easy in practice as it first sounds, he's fully aware of this and addresses all of our usual, subtle strategies of resistance, effortlessly dissolving them.

"Sometimes I suggest that it’s as if you’ve been running from a terrifying monster your whole life..."

Are you tired of running? Are you ready to face the monster? Download your copy of 'Free from the Past' today!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joey Lott
• Release date: Nov 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781540194480

Book preview

Preface

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For decades, I was unwell. I was tortured by incessant, unwanted thoughts and feelings. I engaged in exhausting rituals, such as counting or checking in an attempt to quell the unpleasantness, driving me to isolation. I agonized over what to eat and ate very little. I feared what others thought of me. And in shame, I tried to hide what I thought of as my unacceptable nature from the world.

In other words, I was fairly normal – just more normal than average.

I searched for answers, feeling that I was unable to bear the suffering any longer. I looked wherever I thought there might be solutions, whether that was through religion, spirituality, drugs, exercise, meditation, alternative culture, pop psychology, or self-help.

I didn't find any answers. In fact, the harder I tried to find answers, the worse things got. I grew depressed, but I kept on searching for some remedy.

Finally, I gave up. Or, to be more accurate, perhaps I should say that giving up happened. Or, put another way, I surrendered. Yet, like a prisoner surrendering to the enemy, I still viewed myself as a separate self who, though temporarily helpless, held out hope that he might one day escape from the enemy to whom he had surrendered.

But, by chance, somehow, in the state of surrender, no matter how imperfect and dualistic it may have been, curiosity awakened. It became evident that much of what I had conceived of as life had been little more than unquestioned assumptions. I had never bothered to peer beneath the surface and ask whether or not anything is what it is believed to be.

And so began the undoing of all that was believed. The great discovery, which came on slowly and subtly, was that whatever is simply is, and no belief is required. When all belief is discarded as unimportant, then the simple, unassuming clarity of what is cannot be denied.

The unobscured clarity of what is doesn't change anything. It isn't something special. It isn't any different from what is right now. It is just that it is discovered that what is cannot be understood or categorized. Nor can it be denied or avoided. There is only the immediacy and rawness of what is perfectly obvious right now. This is it.

And this is freedom. This is peace. This is true surrender because it is not someone surrendering to something else – it is simply surrender, which is happening for no one, to no one, and by no one. True surrender reveals that there is only ever true surrender. It never could have been otherwise, but belief wove a fantasy that was mistaken for reality. That is all.

So strangely, suffering dissolved. And despite