I used to think there were many different problems. After working with clients and students for more than twenty years, I came to see it differently after a few years. You could trace most of the problems people wrestle with inside themselves back to one great basic problem, of which all the others are derivatives. People are often cut off from themselves, they have lost the connection, their anchoring in the NOW no longer exists. They wander about in a world of memories of old situations and events that seem so real that they become their absolute reality. They have got lost in the past. In this article I mainly want to look at this phenomenon from various angles and explain it, rather than work out the solution. That is material for another article. Even so, at the end I will give you a few basic steps for learning to make the shift from the past to the present.
Pushed by the past and pulled by the future
Years ago, when I did not yet know any painting techniques, I painted a canvas on the theme: pushed by the past and pulled by the future. I only added the title afterwards, since I had no particular intention but gave my brushes complete freedom in whatever they wanted to create. As a consciousness architect I receive clients who come to me to stand in life in a more conscious way. I found the painting interesting because I could use it in sessions with clients who kept getting stuck in stubborn patterns. One characteristic of such patterns is that, with your presence, you unconsciously travel back and forth between the past and the future and therefore miss the present moment entirely, so your pattern never gets resolved. The painting made something clear. It brought clarity to something that is not always easy to describe in words. The energy of the painting touched their emotions. So many years later I would depict the proportion between the pushing force of the past and the pulling force of the future differently, but back then the painting achieved its purpose.
We suffer from rear-view mirror syndrome
No doubt you have got up in the morning while already holding conversations in your head with people who played a part in a situation that took place yesterday, or even long ago. Perhaps you notice that your peace of mind then changes and affects your mood or your vitality. It may well be that you hold conversations with yourself as if you were on a roundabout, going round the same circle over and over. How many laps have you already driven on that roundabout? And how many years have you been doing it? You are looking in the rear-view mirror.
No doubt you have asked your father at some point why he still does certain things the way he does, when there might be another way.
‘Why do you do it like that?’
‘Because that is how I learned it from my mother. That is how it used to be. That is how we did it back then.’ All those years he has been repeating what he learned from someone else. She may have spent her whole life repeating how she learned it from her own mother. In this way your father can live out convictions and patterns that are generations old for decades, or for his entire life, without ever thinking of developing a conviction of his own, or managing to. He keeps on looking in the rear-view mirror.
No doubt you have seen your grandmother perk up and heard her talk with great enthusiasm about events of sixty, seventy, eighty years ago. Or she always wants to go back to the family home where she lived as a child, to walk the route she used to take from home to school. The moment she talks about it she comes alive, she becomes happy or sad. She is still looking in the rear-view mirror.
Collective bewilderment about time
Once you have an eye for it, you can no longer miss it. Almost everybody does it. Chances are that you do it too, or have done it. Or that you are busy practising not to do it any more. What is it? Many people live with their attention and their emotions in the past. As if they had agreed on it and were all in favour. It seems self-evident. They are rather astonished the moment someone points it out to them. Given the choice, they deny it, because they are not aware of it. It is like a collective bewilderment about time. One in which being absent takes over from being present.
Your past is not a place to live
For many of us our past is like an enormous castle in which we have registered our address. It consists of countless corridors, staircases, halls, living spaces, secret rooms, dark rooms, love rooms, drama rooms, victim rooms, it-should-have-been-different rooms, reproach rooms, painful rooms, trauma rooms, small-pleasures rooms, I-don’t-want-to-know rooms, why-me rooms, it-is-all-because-of-that rooms and I-pretend-it-doesn’t-exist rooms. We have made it our permanent place of residence. We go from one room to the next. Tirelessly we maintain the rooms that matter to us. The room that attracts us most at that moment and stirs up our emotions is the one we explore and study over and over again. Memories mix with interpretations and inaccuracies, topped up with colourful details, and out of this a story is formed that hangs together for us. That story is not the truth. It is the truth of the one who created it. From within that truth we try to live in the NOW. An attempt that usually runs into obstacles, because we try to fit whatever happens in the NOW into our story about the past.
Living from the past is living on quicksand
Everything has a place. The NOW has a place. What is over and done with consisted of moments in the NOW. What is to come will be moments in the NOW. In terms of time, then, there is only one moment and that is the NOW, The Eternal Now. If you live in your castle of the past, you are in fact leaving the place of the NOW. You are trying to pull the past into the NOW. That cannot work, because the past does not actually exist. Your first kiss of fifteen years ago no longer exists. You can summon up the memory of it, you can summon up the emotion, but you can no longer summon up the actual event. The fact that a wrong decision cost you a sum of money — that moment no longer exists. Again you can become aware of memories and emotions, but you cannot undo the decision. Just as you cannot turn yesterday’s weather from rain into sunshine, or change the meal you ate yesterday into a different meal. You have lost a loved one to death. You can still feel that love, but you cannot undo the crossing. Deep down you know it. Against your better judgement, in your thinking, feeling, acting, perceiving and in your identity you are investing all your energy in an outcome that is never going to come about.
You are living on quicksand with unstable ground beneath you, watching out that you do not go under. It takes a great deal of effort to keep your balance and to move forward. Life in the NOW will show you this with enormous patience, again and again, through the obstacles laid on your path. So that you can wake up in your life.
Your past is the foundation for the present
At the same time your past can be a solid foundation for the NOW. While it does not actually exist. I understand that this may confuse your brain, but the more you observe it, the more it will become reality — which it already is. In the rooms of your castle, full of fascinating themes, life lessons lie hidden. Just as a quiz, a treasure hunt or a sporting achievement demands a certain amount of effort to arrive at a satisfying result — without that effort the fun goes right out of it — so it is with life lessons. Although they are visible and present themselves over and over in a repeating loop, we miss them because inside our castle we keep storming onto that roundabout again and have to try, yet again, to get out of the quicksand.
If we dare to look from the NOW at the themes, the thoughts, convictions, pain and emotions that float to the surface, then something changes. Step by step you learn something about yourself and about others. Step by step the riddle of life reveals itself to you. You begin to take an exit off the roundabout. The road renews itself. You breathe more freely. Perspective becomes visible. What you have been through becomes valuable. Your experiences, combined with a higher inflow of love, bring you wisdom. What you have been through in past moments of the NOW becomes a solid foundation for the present. The past is sitting in its rightful place. That is a process requiring firm commitment and actions to be taken. The discipline for it rests with you.
Living from the past makes you unpredictable
It is not abnormal to be flooded by emotions from the past. It is not abnormal to pay a visit to your second home, your castle. Making it your permanent residence, however, is not an innocent matter. Old emotions float to the surface and determine your present life. The past takes the reins and you are dragged along as if you were tied to the back of a bolting horse. You lose yourself on every level.
What is more, you become unpredictable in your reactions. You fly off the handle in a situation that had nothing bad about it at all. You heap reproaches on someone because that person unconsciously reminds you of someone from your past. You are afraid of ‘all’ men/women because you once had a nasty experience with one person. You project the unprocessed emotions you were left with indiscriminately onto the entire male/female population. You overprotect your children so that they will not go through what you went through. You can add an endless number of situations to these examples from what you see around you.
How can anyone else understand you if you react in the NOW from a situation in the past? How can you find your place in a group or a team if you are not here? How can you feel safe in yourself, let alone with someone else, if you are wandering about in the dungeons of your castle?
At a certain point you find yourself at the buffet of consequences
At a certain point you notice that you do not feel involved in life. What seems possible for others seems difficult or even impossible for you. Because of your longing for the past, for how it was or how it should not have been, you miss out on the joy and the abundance of life. The buffet of life serves up dishes with recipes composed from the ingredients of your absence in the NOW.
The recipes taste of anger, pain, sorrow, illness, trauma, fears, rigidity, drama, misery, jealousy, frustration, incomprehension, being a victim, distractions, addiction and loss. Hard on your taste buds. You cannot get another bite down your throat. You cannot digest it any more. It would give you indigestion.
Every now and then you meet someone who says to you: ‘Do come out of your castle. Go travelling in the NOW for once. Discover new colours, scents, sounds and flavours. Set out. There is still so much to discover. It is worth it.’ At that moment you are faced with a choice. One you make. Or not.
‘Love lies at the bottom of the well. It cannot drown, but people do not care for deep water.’
Djwhal Khul through Alice A. Bailey
Discipleship in the New Age 2
When you grow, the past changes
You can choose to keep your address registered in your castle of the past because it feels safer. It is familiar. You know what to expect. Better to suffer than to embark on an unknown adventure whose outcome the passer-by could not tell you.
Or you can fill your rucksack with the life lessons you have learned from the stories of your life, put them to work in your favour and set out, towards unknown roads. The path is strewn with pebbles, obstacles and diversions, but the new experiences are a blessing for your lungs. They swell in and out again to the rhythm of your joy in living. Your diaphragm relaxes. Your organs benefit from the new oxygen and put their best foot forward to carry out their task as well as they can. You meet other travellers on the path. They tell new stories and inspire you with their descriptions of wondrous landscapes. The world of your thoughts and experiences shakes off its immobility. Life flows again. You know once more that you are on your way and that everything has meaning.
And then, just like that, out of the blue, memories of beautiful and funny moments float to the surface. You have not thought about them for years. For the first time you remember. It was not all doom and gloom. There were many beautiful things too, but you had trained your focus on everything that did not please you. You have grown. Now your past suddenly seems to look different. Softer, milder, more loving. How could you have forgotten that? You smile. You have taken up the process.
Life knows only one direction
Life knows only one direction and that is the direction of freedom. From the NOW you look ahead. The pushing force of the past, which does not exist, and the pulling force of the future, which does not exist, keep you firmly in the saddle of the NOW. On and on towards the next NOW moment, which is always NOW. A sense of freedom comes to meet you. You are travelling through your life.
Basic steps for bringing your focus to the NOW
Tip 1: Feeling your body helps you to live in the NOW
- Find a safe, comfortable place. Sit or lie down.
- Close your eyes and turn your attention to your body.
- Breathe in and out calmly. Follow the movement of your breath.
- Let it become quiet inside you.
- Look the emotions of your themes straight in the eye.
- Do this from the NOW moment.
- Name the plain facts that you perceive. Do not step into the story.
- Let someone guide you if you need it. In the beginning especially, it is advisable.
Tip 2: Explore the past through a family constellation and anchor yourself in the present
- When you feel that you are ready for it, consider a family constellation.
- A family constellation is a therapeutic method in which you look systemically at your family and at the unconscious dynamics that influence your life.
- Let yourself be guided by a competent systemic constellation facilitator.
- Use the constellation to look at the past from the NOW, so that you can land firmly in the present.
Tip 3: Breathe your Way to inner calm
- Learn various breathing techniques such as abdominal breathing or the 4–7–8 technique.
- Start with daily exercises of a few minutes to get the hang of the breathing.
- Use the breath to move through difficult themes without needing words for them.
- Breathing cleanses, brings balance to thinking, emotions and body, and opens up your spirituality.
- You can also let a breath therapist guide you in this, but many breathing exercises you can do on your own.
Tip 4: Emergency stop in the NOW
- This exercise is meant to help someone calm down and ground quickly during panic or fear.
- When you are panicking, say out loud all the facts you can see around you, in as much detail as possible.
- Example: “I see a window divided into three parts. In the middle of the room lies a square rug with several colours. There is a painting on the wall.”
- Example: Four cars are driving past, a blue one, …, an Opel, … There is a row of trees. Underneath them a man is walking with a brown dog. The man is wearing a hat.
- This helps you to return quickly to the concrete NOW and to reduce the panic.
- After this observation, take a few deep breaths to reinforce your calm.