Fighting the past to dethrone the future.

Why?

Sit down for a moment, and ask yourself why. Don't put anything after that word, just ask why. What does saying this word in a pure, inquisitive way, conjure into your mind? When I recently asked why, I had to admit, I cried. 38 years of pain, anguish, doubt, self-loathing boiled up to the surface, and hit me. It was then, for the first time, I felt I was able to say goodbye to the past.

The past, now that in itself is an intriguing concept. A collection of thoughts, emotions, experiences, cultural/national/personal prejudices, beliefs, loves and hatreds that make us who we are. It shapes how we steer the boat that is our life. Some of us steer it like Captain John Edward Smith, right into a field of icebergs. Others do so like the savior of the ancient Greeks, Themistocles, presiding powerfully over their fleets, striking blows at the heart of their enemies. The problem is, the past is a powerful enemy, intent on hijacking the present, and plotting to terrorize our future. It is a force to be reckoned with, and has no moral laws of conflict. It is like an army who breaks all the rules of the Geneva convention, breaks all the rules Hammurabi set down on the conduct of a civilized society. It refuses to place nicely in the sandpit of life, eagerly looking to bully us into irrational behavior. I know this, because it has done very well for the last 38 years.

For all of our intellectual wisdom, we have come up with one of the most astounding, and alternatively, devious concepts known to man, Time. There was a point in our existence, that we knew the sun came up and stayed in the sky, then set. It then disappeared into the underworld, only to be released the next morning. It was here that we started to change. Our brains wanted to keep track of it, to avoid whatever catastrophe lurked in the period when we couldn't see by the bright light. Somehow, our brains allowed us to start calculating time, and then we patterned our behavior on this. Daytime became a time of productivity, work and inventiveness. Night became a time of rest, play and thinking. Eventually, we started to keep track of things that happened previously, and sooner or later, we developed the past, and the present. In this way, we were able to pass on lessons that we had learned, to those that followed us. We could share knowledge, impart wisdom and ward off mistakes that we had made. Then, as our consciousness evolved, something happened. We began to reflect on things we had done, to remember the times we had done well, and when we hadn't. This lead to a fear that was not caused by an outside source, like predators or natural catastrophes, it was something more sinister, more devious.

Having the past influence our present, and potentially harm our future reminds me of all the WWII propaganda, about the hidden saboteur. Lurking in the shadows, or even our the hearts of our friends, there was the possibility that someone we knew was the enemy. This person could be our spouse, co-workers or friends. The fact that someone would act against their own country, was something those who followed God, Queen/Leader, Country could not comprehend. How could something pervert morality so deeply and yet sway someone so deeply be dealt with? This is what the psychological impact of time has had on the human psyche since the time we started to measure it. What forces something deep inside my mind, to surface and then sabotage my life in the present? Why would I want to do that to myself? It all comes down to conditioning. We are a product of 2-5000 years of religious dogma, political persuasion and societal pressure. With each day that we spend on this earth, we become conditioned just that little bit more to conform.

Whilst there are certain things that society has given us, thought, questioning, technology, we have not become any wiser. Yes, we have evolved intellectually et al, but we are still repeating the past in each breath we take. I am not saying, deny the past, don't pay attention to the lessons it teaches, that would be unwise. What I am saying, don't let your personal past rule you. That person you rejected because you had some feeling of disgust towards them, don't hate yourself because you felt a negative feeling towards them. We are humans, and we feel, it is instinctively in our wiring to like or not like, to trust or to not. If you want to chastise yourself because of that incident, then chastise yourself because you judged without thought. If I tell you, "I do not like you, I don't know what it is that is causing this" and then progress to sprout all these things I perceive it to be, then I am doing harm. But if I say to you "Something makes me not like who you are. I know I don't know you, I don't know what it is, but we just can't interact", yes that may seem cruel, but at the same time, is it not more cruel, to pretend to like you, get to know you and then when you think I am your friend, decide to turn away? Is it also more cruel to have people in your life, and even though you grow further apart, your ideals change, your needs change, but theirs do not, is it not unethical to keep them in your life? Would it not be more beneficial to say "I am sorry, but we are growing apart, and for the things you did for me in the past, I am grateful, but, we are going in different directions and therefore, we need to part ways?". Yes, it may seems harsh, but look at it from a different point of view.

But what has wisdom, life and the past/present/future paradox got in common? I asked myself that too. How is it, that I have let the past hold me hostage for so long? How did I allow myself to be held captive willingly to it, and not question why I am doing so? These were two of the hardest, and not in a formulated answer, but on a psychological level, questions to ask. Especially when you count in mental health conditions, you realize that the past is like a stranger who knows more about you than yourself. I think the part that made this apparent, is that when you are trying to do something life changing, trying to improve yourself or move to a new city or country. For months, I was in the why do I have these friends, that I feel I can't depend on, or don't care for my needs? What I didn't realize, is that I didn't know what I needed. It was through a few discussions with people that I am still close to, that made me realize, I needed to learn to do things with my own interests as a priority. At first, I rebelled, I didn't like the idea. I was under the impression that I needed someone in my life to show a measure of success. That I needed to have material wealth to feel good about myself. What it really came down to, was that I was scared of being by myself. My past had been so intertwined in relationships of one varying degree or another, that it had denied the existence of myself as a singular unit. How can you function by yourself? Look at you, you need the charity of others to help you survive. What I had lost, what my past was hiding from me, was my true self. That template that through varying mutations in genetics, was the real me. The person who seeks out what he requires; the person who confidently walks into a room and can assess a situation and move in and lead. That person, was the confident, proud and compassionate self. The Tiger as the Chinese use in their zodiac. A fierce competitor, who will guard those he cares about with a channeled ferocity, with a measure of stealthiness that he can use to slip away from danger, can read the general direction of a given situation, and cut away the layers, and find the heart of the matter. This was the thing that the past hides and sabotages, plays against what we hope for.

Hope, now that is a sword with sharp edges if I have ever seen one. The things we do for a future full of hope. We fight, cajole, blindly follow and serve it, all in the hope of receiving its graces. What if we were to realize that the future is the past, coming to us in a slightly altered form, to manipulate us into unhealthy psychological patterns? What if I were to put to you, this thought: If we could avoid the pain of the past, disguising itself as the future, by denying it's existence? What would you think? Would you think that I was nuts? Look at it like this, I am not denying that what we do today, will make a profound effect on tomorrow, but what I am doing is advocating that the future lulls us into a mechanism of avoidance. It is ok, I will do it tomorrow is a frequent thought among man. Now, if I were to say, "today, I am going to change how I judge people. I will not judge people because, I only perceive an image that I have instantly formed. I am not judging them by their actions, but by how they show themselves to me!". How much more effect does this have on how I behave today? Where do you think this will lead my tomorrow? Doing this, does not make me naive, in fact, it makes me the opposite. I know that things are not perfect, because I have just committed imperfection by judging someone without cause. But what it does give me, without reference to the future, is the chance to chastise my behaviour, and change it post haste. It doesn't allow me to hope for a change tomorrow, it doesn't give me an excuse to not effect that change, or forget to do it. And more specifically, it doesn't make me wait for someone else to come into my life to change that behaviour. I am not saying that I won't make the same mistake tomorrow. But what I am saying, is that I will be aware of it, and again, chastise myself and try more adamantly to change it, until it is gone.

As Krishnamurti said, dividing the psyche into conscious and subconscious has achieved a divide and caused more problems, was an idea I had a hard time reckoning with. How could one man, with no psychological training make such a rash statement? How could he be so brazen to bring up an idea, which went against several hundred years of tradition? Then, just as I was about to ignore it, an idea came to me. If I have 2 containers, and put only blue marbles in one, and black marbles in the other, I have a collection of black and blue marbles. I don't have the option of storing all the other marbles that I have accumulated, because I have adamantly allowed only these two colours somewhere to be stored. This made me think. If I am storing only the past things that have happened, and the ideas of the future that may never come, what am I doing to the things that really affect me right now? What importance am I attaching to things that I have gone before, and I can't change? What importance am I giving something that may never materialize? What I didn't realize for a few days, was that I was forgetting the thing that mattered the most, and that was experiencing the things that were happening in the now. All those other coloured marbles, were being lost, because I had been so focused on blue and black marbles. What was I missing out on and was letting go so carelessly? I was missing out on the absolute important thing in man's existence, the now. Right this second, I can make a difference. It may or may not be of benefit to myself or others, but right now, with a single action, thought, word or touch, change everything around me. It was this realization, this small gem of power, that led me to think that separating the level of thought in our daily actions into these to streams of consciousness, was basically allotting a concept of past and future into our lives, whilst giving the now no discernible motive. What now does, takes away the control of thousands of years of societal programming. It makes us realize, that if we have a belief in a concept, that forces us to become closed off to not only our own needs, but see the needs of others not as fellow human beings, but fellow Christians/Muslims/Australians/Canadians/Whites/Blacks or whatever classifications you place on individuals, to help you feel to be a part of something, you are actually forgetting that you are a part of something already. From the moment you were born, you were none of these, you were a baby, with no programming, no idea of what you were. Yet through your life, you have picked up these external messages of what you should be, not what you are. And the thing that you are, is one of 7+ billion others, living in a world, each having a desire to be satisfied in their daily lives, to be loved, purely loved. Not to be loved for what they own, spend or make, but to be loved for what they can bring. If I were to love you for your money, I am not loving you, I am loving your money! Yet, if I love you, because you bring me security, I am loving you for the security you bring.

To love, without condition is hard. I am still wrapping my head around it. I may not achieve it fully, but I want to learn and try. To love someone, you have to remove all of your perceptions, to remove yourself from the equation, and to love with no expectations. When you love someone, with no expectation of personal reward, and they do the same, it is like looking at a sunset. You have seen the sunset before, but it is not the same as it was yesterday, nor will it be the same tomorrow. Each sunset is new, and that, I am thinking, is how we should love. We should love as though we have dementia. Wait, hear me out. If I were to love you as though I knew that I love you, but today was the first time I felt it truly for the first time. Then tomorrow, I repeat the same thing, would you not think that being loved anew each day, with as much intensity and passion, as the day before, satisfied you, because it knew no attatchment to the past, to a pre-conception? Would you not want to love as though, tomorrow may not come, and that your focus of your love, was the most treasured feeling? And then if you woke up tomorrow, without that guarantee of waking up, to find that you had another chance to love that strongly, would it not feel good? I want to learn this, to understand this.

This is why the future should never be trusted as much as the past. By trusting in that we have a tomorrow, it takes away from the sincerity, and the honesty in which we approach the now. By placing trust in the past, is like letting the serial killer in a horror movie into your house. You are setting yourself up, to forget why you breathing with each breath. You are forgetting that in that breath, we are experiencing. No matter what the experience, it is something that makes us a part of the now, apart of the living entity that the universe around us is. It as though, we are the bacteria inside the colon of a huge animal. We live in darkness as to what is around us, we know we are nourished, we don't need to know why we are nourished, other than what we do with it, is in our control. If we can use our knowledge to improve the ways in which we receive our nourishment, to be more effective in helping the organism that surrounds us, to living in harmony with it, then we all benefit. It is when we forget that we are one of many, working towards the same needs and wants and desires, that we begin to mistrust, hate and judge.