No one wants to be a victim of one's own past. If I hold on to the past, I can drop it. I can let it go. Like an object in my hand, I can just drop it. However, the problem is that the past holds me. I am helpless. When the past holds me, the past and I are so united, so identical, that the past itself becomes I. It seems to hold me hostage.

In my igorance and innocence I subjected myself to hurt, guilt, and, therefore, pain. I remain associated with these memories. Some of these memories may not be vivid, but they form the very I. I find myself helpless in letting go of the past.

If someone holds me, I can seek someone else's help to free myself. Here the one who holds, the held, and the holding itself are identical. I have to either plead to myself or to the Lord.In this pleading, imploring, there is submission. There is an acknowledgement on my part that I am helpless. The submission of my helplessness to the Lord is real prayer.

This prayer, implying an acknowledgement of helplessness and submission to the Lord, is what brings about the conversion of letting the past go. In the submission is the acknowledgement. The completeness of the acknowledgement takes place in the submission and the submission takes place when I pray, consciously pray. Prayer is not a technique. It is an action, no doubt, but it is not a technique. It is born of an acknowledgement of my helplessness.

Lord, help me to let go of the past. Let me not try to change what I cannot. When I blame someone, I do not let go. I want to change what I cannot change. In blaming, there is no acceptance of a fact. There is an attempt to change what I cannot. O Lord, let me not blame anyone. What has happened is a fact. It remains a fact. I cannot do anything about it.

I do not have remote, resentment, or anger. O Lord, let me not try to change what I cannot change. May I have the will to back up my desire, to fulfill my will. May I have adequate effort to change what I can. May I have no cofusion with reference to what I can and cannot change. I implore thy help.

I bring Isvara, the Lord, into my life when I recognize my helplessness, uncertainity, and incapacity to order things as I want. There is uncertainity with reference to the fulfillment of my wishes and desires. There are limitations of strength in terms of will and capacity to make the necessary effort. There are limitations in terms of knowledge and resources. There is an absence of freedom in my mental life. Recognition of all this makes me acknowledge my helplessness.

This recognition itself reveals a degree of maturity. I seek further maturity by invoking the grace, the invisible, the intangible something that makes things possible. I invoke that grace, the grace of the Lord, to accept things that I cannot change. Our sorrows, agitations, and anger leading to depression, all stem from not accepting and understanding the past,

O Lord, I have blamed a number of factors: people, situations, time, places, society. Perhaps all of these have helped me to come to the point where I can pray. I realize that no one is to blame, nor do I blame myself. What I cannot change may I gracefully, totally, accept.

I can change my attitudes and work for the necessary understanding. I can bring a better order to my personal life. I can make whatever effort is necessary. O Lord, may I have the will and effort to change what I can. May I know what I can and cannot change.

More often I lay waste my powers and my time to change what I cannot change. And when I have to change what I can, I am already tired. I am impoverished in terms of will, energy, effort, and the capacity for effort. May I have the knowledge to know the difference between the two: what I can and cannot change.

Find out, one by one, what you want to change. One by one, list them.

I wish my father had a different attitude. I wish my mother had a different mental make-up and more personal discipline. I wish I had studied more. I wish my home was a real home. I wish I had understood the value of values. I wish I had been more disciplined. I wish I had heeded the words of advice of so and so. I wish I had not met this person. I wish I had not done a particular action. I wish I had done a particular action. I wish I had equipped myself with some skills and better titles. I wish I had been born under another astrological sign. I wish I had been born a male. I wish I had been born a female. I wish I had not been born at all.

How many resentments and useless wishes!

O Lord, help me understand intimately the uselessness of all these wishes. Help me drop every one of them.

As an individual I see myself as a victim of my past, I honestly acknowledge the fact that the past holds me and determines my mental condition. I see myself as a hostage of the past. I acknowledge this fact and I also acknowledge my helplessness. If I can help myself I will not be the victim of the past. Depressions, fears, anger, self-criticism, intolerance, hatred, unhappiness - if I am not a victim I will not have any of these. These conditions reveal my helplessness. They do not happen without the past. If I can help myself I will not have them.

Once I see and honestly acknowledge my helplessness, I can seek help, I seek help not at the altars of the world. I have sought there before. I now seek help from a source I look upon as a being of all knowledge, of all power, whom I call the Lord, Isvara. I establish a contact, a relationship with Isvara through prayer. As I child I went to my mother or father for help. Now, as an adult, I go to the source of everything. Freely I go to the source. I am not shy. I ackowledge my helplessness. I seek help through prayer.

I pray for the strength, the clarity, the serenity to accept gladly, gracefully, what I cannot change. When I blame a situation or person for my being what I am - mother, father, friend, boss, death, poverty, society, political/ economic systems, my stars, health, institutions, schools, colleges, media, or music - when I blame any one of them, I must know that I do not accept my past. In blaming there is resentment of a fact. There is rejection of a fact. But a fact is a fact. My rejection does not alter it. It only adds to my confusion.

In order to accept gracefully what I cannot change, I blame no one. I blame neither the situation nor myself. I am not to blame. I let go of the past. I totally accept all situations and people who have come into my past, who have perhaps contributed to my past, who have caused my past. At this stage, I may not appreciate why these people did what they did. I may not appreciate their problems to be what they were, what they are, but atleast I do not blame them because I accept my past.

Whatever has happened is a fcat. I cannot but accept it. My rejection does not change the fact or negate it. I accept gracefully and blame no one. All that I seek is the maturity, the clarity, a space in myself from where I gracefully accept what I cannot change.

I also seek help for adequate will in order to bring about changes, desirable changes - in my attitudes towards people, towards money, towards the future, towards my health, my body, and my skills - healthy proper attitudes. If I have to bring about any other change or if I have to apply myself in order to learn more:

O Lord, please give the unflinching will, the will that holds against all odds, an unflinching will to change. May I also have the knowledge to know what I can and cannot change, knowledge that helps me to accept what I cannot change. Once I know something cannot be changed, I accept it. And once I know I can change, I can do what has to be done. May I have this knowledge.

The basis for any form of prayer is not one's helplessness; it is the acknowledgement of one's helplessness. The key to an efficacious prayer is realizing my helplessness. Prayer is born naturally when I realize my helplessness and also recognize the source of all power, all knowledge. If both of these are acknowledged, prayer is very natural.

If everything is in order I need not pray. All prayers have their fullfilment in keeping everything in order. If everything is in order, prayer becomes redundant. My prayers have been already answered.

When I am helpless, I seek help from any person I can. When the helplessness is in terms of my incapacity to let go of my past or to let the future happen without my being apperhensive, then no outside help from a person like myself is of any use. I go to the source from where such help is possible. I invoke the Lord in prayer.

I intimately realize that I am victim of my own past. As a victim of my past, I cannot be apprehensive about the future. I become worried. I become cautious. I become frightened of my future. To deliver myself into the hands of the Lord, I deliver myself to the order that is the Lord.The Lord is not separate from the order and the order is not separate from the Lord. My past then becomes part of the meaningful order of my personal life. The future unfolds itself in keeping with the same order, an order that includes my previous karma, if there is such a thing.

All's well that shapes well, that ends well. Past mistakes become meaningful as long as they have made me wiser. To acknowledge my helplessness is itself a great step towards recognizing the ordeer. I intimately acknowledge my immediate past and remove the past from my life.

As a child I had no will of my own. I was in the hands of my parents, my elders, my teachers, and other adult members of the society. As a child, I see that I was absolutely helpless. My knowledge was limited and my perception was never clear. I was insecure. I was learning with a small mind and with meager information, without any worldly wisdom, without any wisdom at all. Naturally, I made conclusions about myself and the world. Those conclusions formed the basis for my interpretation of the events to come. In the process, these interprated events definitely seem to confirm my conclusions.

Look at the helplessness. As an adult I cannot remove the conclusions I made as a child and therefore I become a victim of my own past. Whom should I blame? I cannot blame myself. Nor I can afford to blame the world. Blaming is to retain the past and does help me let go. It is one thing to acknowledge the mistakes of others but quite another to hold on to them and to retain my fears and anger. I have to eliminate all forms of blaming in order to be free of my past.

I may have valid reasons to blame. I see those reasons and let go of my past. By allowing my blaming to continue, I allow the past to continue. If I was a victim of the behaviour of my elders, by blaming them nowI continue to be a victim. Understand all of this, but still I am helpless.

O Lord, help me. Help me accept gracefully what I cannot change. Let me be free of blaming anyone, including myself. I cannot blame myself for what happened to me. Nor I can blame others because others themselves have others to blame.

Help me accept gracefully what I cannot change. Blaming means that I want to change the past. I want my past to be different. How can it be? O Lord, help me accept gracefully what I cannot change. I let go of my resentement, anger, and dissatisfaction by accepting gracefully what I cannot change. O Lord, perhaps what I went through was meant to happen. Perhaps it was all in order, for now I pray.

All the years of pain, struggle, and groping seem to have paid off, for I pray and by this prayer everything has become meaningful. My pain, my past, has resulted in my coming to you to seek help. Intimately, I acknowledge my helplessness. I seek thy help, thy intervention, to make drop what I cannot change, even what you also cannot change. You cannot change what has happened, nor I can or anyone else. Intimately I acknowledge this fact: What has happened cannot change be changed.

Help me totally accept what I cannot change. My mother's behaviour, her omissions and commissions, my father's neglect, his anger, his indifference, his lack of care, his mishandling, his mismanagement, his drinking, the fights between them, the confusion at home, my being left alone, not fondled, not cared for, not loved. I was wrong perhaps, but this is how I felt.

O Lord, I cannot change what has happened. Please help me accept gracefully what I cannot change. I do not want to bury the past, nor do I want to forget the past. I cannot. I just want to accept the fact, accept the past. Gracefully, I accept the past. I even begin to see an order in all of this, for do I not pray now? I have come to the objective. I see some order here. Please help me accept gracefully what I cannot change.