Since the past is unreal and the future is unreal, all your thoughts are about nothing.
– Byron Katie
For us, the past is imagined. The future is imagined. And what we call the present is our ideas about something already gone.
Since all our thoughts are about the past and future, they are about nothing.
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I did an inquiry on the thought it’s from the past yesterday.
This refers to the (apparent) childhood wounds that have bubbled up recently,
along with feelings and thoughts such as I am alone, nobody likes me, I am unlovable.
– 0 –
It’s from the past.
Is it true?
Yes.
Can you know for certain it’s true?
Yes.
What happens, how do you react, when you believe that thought?
I see it (the childhood wound) as in the past.
I cannot do anything about it – that it happened.
I blame my parents, life.
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Adyashanti talks about this analogy in Ideal Spiritual Orientation.
Is the present created by the past, or is the past created in the present? Or are both true, each in their own way?
The boat and wake analogy invites us to explore this. A boat creates it’s wake, so is it similarly true that the present creates the past?
If so, in what way is it true? What do I find when I explore this through simple, real and specific examples?
And is it true in just a moderate way, or in a more profound sense?
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Always in motion is the future.
– Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back
And that goes for the past as well. Always in motion is the past.
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Before falling asleep in the evening, and after waking up in the morning, I like to take some time to explore the sense fields. And as I often write about here, one of the things I explore is the three times. How does the past, future, and present appear in the sense fields?
I may begin with bringing attention to each sense field – sensations, sight, sound, smell, taste, and thoughts/images – one at a time, and notice what is there.
Then, I close my eyes if they are not already closed, and notice how I have an image of my body laying there in the bed, in a room, in a building, at the outskirts of a small town, next to a forest, in a country, on the Earth. All of that happens in my own world of images. It is the movie I play for myself about the world. I recognize it all as images.
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“Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best,” and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.
~A.A. Milne
Even a simple Pooh quote is a question and invitation for investigation.
When anticipating eating honey, it is easy to see that the joy of sweet anticipation is all in the mind. If we like honey, that is.
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Joel sometimes says that enlightenment is retroactive.
One of the many ways of noticing that is through inquiry. Especially when it is done in a wholehearted and heartfelt way.
I take a story as true, and it colors my past. It may even bring up sadness, grief, anger, regret and so on.
I inquire into the story, finding what is more true for me, and the story is liberated from being taken as true.
And here, I find that my images of the past has changed as well. Instead of – for instance – regret over a particular situation, there is now a gentle and heartfelt appreciation.
Often, it is bitter-sweet. I can see how I acted in beliefs back then, creating suffering for myself and others. It is bitter. And yet, in realizing that I was confused and acted on a belief, and now have a little more clarity around it, there is a sweetness, a sincere appreciation of the whole process.
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