For a true spiritual cleansing and renewal, you have to ‘let go’ of your past. Now I’m not talking about amnesia. I’m not suggesting you forget your past. Not at all …

What I’m talking about is letting go of the labels, judgements and emotional charges around your personal history. If you’re carrying around emotional ‘baggage’ about your childhood, your first marriage, or the trials, tribulations and traumas of what happened any time before this NOW, then you’ve got some spiritual cleansing to attend to.

But How?

The question is, how do you do it? Well, there are a number of ways, actually: psychotherapy, prayer and ritual are all methods for getting free of a painful past. but what I want to look at today is a combination of two seemingly different approaches:

  • Spiritual Surrender and
  • Mental Modification

By spiritual surrender, I mean calling for and fully intending with your heart and soul to make peace with the past. By Mental Modification I mean changing your habits of thought.

Old Skool ‘Healing’

When we look at old skool, psychological systems of ‘healing’ the past – psychotherapy, Gestalt, and support groups that focus on the ‘problem’, to name three – we see a sort of never-ending rabbit hole of digging up and then rehashing (called ‘processing’) the pain.

Now, if you want to spend 10 years ‘healing’ from childhood abuse, then by all means, go ahead and get on the Freudian couch. But if you want to truly cleanse yourself spiritually of the mental and emotional limits on your greatness, then you may want to try a different approach.

Spiritual Surrender

Alcoholics Anonymous has it right with their 2nd & 3rd steps: “I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.” And “I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand Her/Him.”

With this recognition and surrender – in an AA context or any other -comes access to your greater, spiritual nature. And you don’t have to surrender addiction only. You can surrender your pain, your fear that what happened before will happen again. You can surrender your unforgiveness of someone who’s hurt you in the past, your anger, resentment or even your negative thoughts.

The way I like to do this is by stretching my arms wide, lifting my heart center toward the heavens and simply saying “God/dess, I surrender [insert past pain, fear or mental worry here] to you. I ask and intend to be free of this and to live in appreciation, HERE and NOW.”

Mental Modification

We’ve got lots of tools these days for changing our thoughts. The widespread knowledge of the Law of Attraction was quickly followed by plenty of teachings on how to change your thoughts so you can change your life.

Whether you want to go on regular ‘rampages of appreciation’ a la Abraham-Hicks, use EFT Tapping (highly recommended!) to literally ‘cleanse’ yourself of old emotional junk, use Neurofeedback, NLP or a daily dose of Mindfulness Meditation (also highly recommended) there are plenty of ways you can do a permanent behavioral ‘data dump’ of any pain from your past.

A Powerful Combo

When you combine the spiritual with the behavioral, you create a powerful, ‘two-pronged’ approach to spiritual cleansing. Spiritual surrender allows you to tap the power of the Divine or your Higher Self (both/either of which exist well beyond the confines of any human-experienced pain) with practical tools to change the way you think about the past.

My personal combo which seems to work best are surrender and EFT (although meditation is a constant that serves all aspects of my life). If you were to create a ‘two-pronged’ method for spiritual cleansing, what would you do? Leave a comment to let me know.

Dawn DelVecchio is the author of our sister blog, The Healers Way. The mission of the Healer’s Way is to be a resource for healers and all others. This healing community of over 25,000 healers engage in dialogues to explore the latest information on alternative healing, energy healing, and the healing of humanity.
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Dawn DelVecchio is a writer, traveler, speaker and coach. She's been living a life devoted to spirit and purpose for more than 28 years. As the author and host of DawnDelVecchio.com, and a guest contributor to a number of personal growth blogs, Dawn shares insights, tips and practical tools for you to live a life of greater purpose, happiness and abundance. She is the author of the forthcoming book, Unlocking your Prosperity: 7 Keys to Healing your Money Mindset & Fully Stepping into your Calling.