This time, start the day by waking up in the immediate
present. Throw off the weight of the past.
When you get up to wash and dress, wash away the past at the same time, and
along with your clothes, put on a fresh and open mind. Dwell not upon the past today. Keep a completely open mind, washed of
all past ideas and clean of every concept you have made (W75 6).
We let our days usher us along from a past that never
happened to a future that does not exist. Each day seems to dawn pre-packaged
with its own expectations and limitations, reminding us who we are and how real
the world is and chivvying us into another day of role-playing. The sense of
loss we feel is not for what was, or was might be, but for what we are
neglecting in the present moment.
Time neither takes
away nor can restore. And yet you make strange use of it, as if the past had
caused the present (T28 I 6) - which is just what we do believe. We may treasure our past because it is our own special
story, and tells us who we are and how we got here. Or we may feel cast helplessly
into the present by the shipwreck of our past; or stranded by the ever-rolling
stream that sooner or later bears all that we love away. In other words, we are
always living in one or another metaphor, without really questioning whether the
way we see things is helpful or dispiriting.
If who we are and what is happening now has its cause in the
past, what hope is there for change? No one can go back to the past to alter
anything then. You can't turn off a
tap yesterday or twenty years ago. But what is happening now can indeed be
changed now, which shows that its cause is not somewhere else or some other
time, but active here and now, in your own thinking. Now.
We think what we remember is reality. It happened, we think,
and here is the evidence to prove it: my emotional scars and moving pictures in
my mind, external records of events, other people's recollections...But our
variable collage of the past is incomplete, a selection of snapshots taken
through a flawed lens and coloured by wishful thinking, an archive of
associations filed haphazardly and ever changing according to personal
interpretation. The past as we remember it is
an illusion of the past, in which
those elements that fit...are retained, and all the rest let go...What is kept
but witnesses to the reality of dreams (T17 III 8).
If this seems to pull the rug out from under your feet, the
Course tells us in its own way, don't worry, it was an imaginary rug anyway. You
will find that the reality of the eternal present is much firmer ground to
stand on.
No one really sees
anything. He sees only his thoughts projected outward. The mind's preoccupation
with the past is the cause of the misconception about time from which your
seeing suffers. Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time
there is. It therefore cannot understand time, and cannot, in fact, understand
anything (W8 1.2). In short, the Course tells us matter-of-factly, everything
we think we know is founded on misperception and illusion. Our view of the
world, our sense of self, what we think is true or important, have been cobbled
together from what we selectively choose to believe. Remember nothing that you taught yourself, for you were badly taught (T28
I 6)
Your past is what you
have taught yourself. Let it all go.
Do not attempt to understand any event or anything or anyone in its
"light," for the darkness in which you try to see can only obscure
(T14 XI 3)
There is a purpose behind our insistence on blaming the past
for our experience of the present, and our using the past as a guide to present
choices. It is a strategy that protects us from our own unreality. Without our
past, who are we? Nameless, storyless, no longer an individual, but a vital
presence we hardly recognize as ourselves; a mind observing its own
impressions, a creative consciousness. Without the past, we are essentially no
different from anyone else, and we have no one else to blame. The idea of
'living in the now' sounds nice and spiritual, but there is a reason we keep
forgetting to remember to do it. Let me
remember that I look on the past to prevent the present from dawning on my mind
(W52 3 (8))
But if you do start the day by imagining you could let go of
your own past, what a relief! All your investments written off, but also all
your guilt, mistakes, wrong turnings and wasted times. There is freedom in
letting go of the past: of regrets, grievances, of learned attitudes and
opinions. They are an unnecessary burden and bring us no joy in the present.
They encumber us with guilt and fear. Amnesty, reprieve, the slate wiped clean,
the case against you has been thrown out. You are free to go. The past is over. It can touch me not
(W289).
To be born again is to
let the past go, and look without condemnation upon the present (T13 VI 3).
To start clean of past history is also to release everyone
else from your expectations and grudges. What would it mean, to see your brother without his past (T13
VI 5)? It would hardly be practical to pretend that you have never seen your
friends before, or to treat members of your family as complete strangers.
Though wait, isn't that exactly what many families do? But this is when we hold
the past, our version of the past, against each other. We respond to our own
judgements, fears and wishes, and do not know who anyone really is, while they
do not really see us either.
We can, however, decide to put preconceptions, labels and
learned responses aside, and discover each other person we encounter today as
if we are both stripped free of who we thought we were, and meeting as we truly
are for the first time.
The past is not in
you. Your weird associations to it have no meaning in the present. Yet you let
them stand between you and your brothers...A minute, even less, will be enough
to free you from the past (T13 X 5)
To forget (your version of) the past is not only how you forgive
someone else. It releases you from guilt also. We are afraid to do this, for
what chaos might be loosed upon the world if we suspend judgement? We think it
would be an abdication of responsibility, denying the evidence of everything we
know to be true. But the point is that what we 'know to be true' is based on memories
of a past that never was:
The one wholly true
thought one can hold about the past is that it is not here. To think about it
at all is therefore to think about illusions (W8 2).
So start the day without it. For what can be forgiven but the past, and if it is forgiven it is gone
(W289).
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