Feeling Groovy About the Past in the Present Moment

“All of the answers are inside of you” is something I tell everyone who attends one of my Serenity Retreats. And I very much believe that this is true. We hold the key to our own uniqueness and individual mystery; to our well-being and happiness. No one else can discover the key for us or give us our answers. We have to be willing to go deep within ourselves (usually with the help of God or a Higher Power), discover the key and begin to unlock the many closed doors and tightly hinged boxes buried inside our souls.

Sometimes we have to consciously work to discover the doors that need opening and sometimes they beckon to us. Since my father died in March, the door to my childhood has been calling me to open it. And I have. I’ve found myself fascinated with the music of my childhood—that of the groovy 1960s. I’ve been listening with mostly fond memories to The Beatles, The Monkees, Donovan, The Grass Roots, Tommy James & The Shondells, and the Doors. I’ve also discovered some groups from the period that I wasn’t really familiar with, but find to be very good, like The Zombies and The Pretty Things.

In addition, I’ve found myself re-enchanted with old episodes of “That Girl” and “The Monkees.” Most every night over the past few weeks I’ve found myself following either the escapades of Micky, Davy, Mike and Peter or Ann Marie and Donald Hollinger. I remember loving these shows as a little kid, and they bring back safe, good memories from a childhood that wasn’t so safe or enjoyable. These shows, along with my love of pop music as a child, provided me with a great deal of comfort when I needed it to survive.

There was an unspoken, unacknowledged addictive chaos in our family and, although puberty was a few years away, the winds of the discomforts it was to bring were already blowing through my soul. Maybe somehow I knew subconsciously that the innocence of childhood was losing its bloom. The petals were beginning to fall and they were revealing a me that I wasn’t able to be comfortable with—and that I wouldn’t be comfortable with for many, many years.

Likewise, they revealed to me a father and a mother that I was less and less comfortable with. School became something dangerous as other children grew into being predators of the pain that they had suffered through in their own families. It was a very scary period in my life; one that I need to face and build a new relationship with if I am to feel free of the baggage I have from that period in my history.

The healing seems to be happening. It’s the first time in my life that I have looked back to the mid-to-late 1960s and really taken comfort in them. It must have been incredible to have been a teenager or a young adult at the time. There will never be a period in music and cultural history like the mod 1960s. And I have no doubt that 1966 was the grooviest year ever in human history.

A friend of mine from across the Atlantic recently lost his father, too, and he said that he has been listening to music from his childhood, in particular the band Bread. There must be something about the loss of a father or parent that causes us to go inside our souls and to reopen the long closed doors to our childhood. I think it’s probably the inherent human need to make right all of the wrongs of the past, in particular with our personal relationships. If you find yourself wanting to take a nostalgic journey into your past, allow yourself to pass through those doors of your soul and allow yourself to build a new positive relationship with the past. In facing the discomforts as well as the joys of those days, you will take back your personal power and allow your soul to shine.