Are You Your Past?
Remembering who I’VE been
Q:are you your past?
A: This question has arrived for me this week. Even with a boundless forward momentum running through me like lightning, I am observing the various pathways inside my psyche, and they run at very different speeds. In one flow of being, there is such joy and exuberance for what is possible. Though “everything is possible” is my favorite mantra, I am starting to have wild meditations comprehending the meaning of this more and more. It is almost disturbing to my senses to go into the “everything” part and yet, here we are in this very particular world of creation, destruction, and all that exists between.
And a different river of pacing is actually running backward through me into the past. It seems to start right here and now and run back into eternity. This one is prodding my curiosity about who I am today and who I have been before. As in, this morning, yesterday, a year ago, 10 years ago, as a child, and perhaps a lifetime or two before that, and so on. Am I my past? It is a big question with even bigger answers. Yes and…
CONSCIOUS & UNCONSCIOUS THREADS OF THE PAST
Who would you be if you had not had that one experience that was so deeply formative even if the most painful? It is hard to know, but you wouldn’t be the same as you are now. And now, what about now? How much of our past lives right here in the now? Following the thread of my past into worlds I have long forgotten, I recognize that, yes, I am my past and that it occupies real estate within me in two different camps. That which I have made conscious, have worked on, or am working with, and that which remains unconscious for various reasons, i.e. my ignorance, resistance, defiance, fear, shame, guilt, protection, capacity, timeliness, karma, quantity, etc.
I give thanks every day for the incredible opportunity I have experienced in this life to die to an old self again and again. Shedding skin is not only for the serpents but also for the beings who are willing. Painful and humiliating, I keep returning to the altar of possibility and bring myself there to sacrifice the aspects of me that belong as memories rather than unconscious acts surfacing to destroy. When I am reminded of who I have been or see these parts of myself lurking in the shadows of my mind, I shiver with torment at how desperate the dark truly is.
“In order to ascend, we must descend,” says every great initiate and it feels so deeply true. How often have you come out of the depths of excruciating pain or ill health only to feel the expanded state of gratitude once on the other side? Is it physics or an esoteric truth? Maybe both are woven together creating a path of inquiry and exploration. The last many years have been a walk through the depths of inner darkness, hallways of death, and an ache that has wrung me out from the insides. I was thinking of this while making my toast this morning and I’m thankful I do not feel these things right now. Instead, I am in a growth spurt, also painful and a bit rugged, but more fun than the psychological slog through the hellish mud I had come to know as “normal”. Descending into those pools has given me new life experience and a reference point of where I hope to go from here, up.
The past. It is deep, strong, and both familiar and unknown at the same time. The very paradoxical notion that the past refers to a path one has walked before, although it may not be recognized or even remembered is perplexing and wonderful. So if I have actually been there but can’t recall the journey, where was I? Hmmm, a great question for a different journal perhaps. Today I will settle with the answer of yes, I am my past. However, I am not a slave to it. I am here to acknowledge it, learn from it, and shed the skin I have worn throughout it.
Ps, I am also my future and I am enjoying remembering this in the present moment now.
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We cannot change the world until we accept we are the world. This is the new conversation.