As long as I can remember, I have held an unbridled optimism about humanity’s future. Humanity’s present, however, sometimes does not seem to justify that optimism. So many grievances among humans. Personal grievances, societal grievances, political grievances; wars, even. Something seems to be holding us back from the beautiful journey that I sense as awaiting humanity. Is it perhaps a focus on the past that is holding us back?
The past does not create the future. The past exerts no influence on the future. Except, of course, to the extent that we mine the past, wad it up as if into snowballs, and then hurl those snowballs into the future. Which we do a lot. We do it in our individual lives, and we do it societally. We even do it where it perpetuates war.
Individually, there are two sources of the “past”. The first is our experiences in the present lifetime, from early programming to various experiences during the course of the lifetime. The second is past lifetimes, a karmic shadow. Those are harder to pinpoint than present-life events, but we feel them. A shadow lurks, then emerges; not again, says an inner voice trembling with fear or outrage. There may even be shared karmic memories of times when humanity collectively stumbled, fell back.
For each of these two sources of the “past”, the imperative is the same: let it go. So that you can create your future from a blank sheet of paper. So that you can construct a future from desire and joy and adventure, rather than from fear or sadness or anger.
Letting go of the baggage of the past is a complex subject. I touched upon it in the course of EARTH GAME The Next Level; I won’t reiterate that discussion here. Whole books have been written on that subject; I will not attempt to encapsulate the collected wisdom. Rather, I will focus here on a single habit that, if adopted, might help us all progressively let go of the past: Can we make it a habit to talk less about the past?
In what I call “Earth Game”, it is our thoughts that are our primary tool for navigating the game. What we choose to pay attention to is our most powerful freedom. Well, what if we resolved to pay more attention to the future and less to the past?
To put the above in practical terms, a sure sign of what we are paying attention to is the words that we speak (or write). What if we collectively decided to (mostly) stop talking about the past? And then determinedly made it a habit. A rule, almost, that we could remind each other of, as often as need be.
Imagine if the Russia/Ukraine issues were to be looked at fresh. With no looking back to past differences, or past borderlines, or to the past “glory” of the USSR? Or, imagine if the longstanding issues in the Middle East were to be tackled with no thought about 1948, or 1967, or October 7, 2023? Unthinkable, one might respond. But think for a moment about what could fill the void if the past were removed from the equation.
The exercise would, in each case, involve three steps. First, what is the present status? Second, what is a status that would constitute a marked improvement for all concerned? Again, without regard to any grievances from the past, but rather only in terms of a workable and ameliorated future for all. Third, how to move from the present status to that ameliorated status? Of course, it would have to be win-win; the future would have to be an improvement on the present for all involved. This would work particularly well for any kind of war, which is hellish, destructive, and horribly uneconomic for all participants. Surely, there is always some kind of win-win that would be an improved future relative to the hell of a never-ending war (or alternatively, the win-lose of a “victory” tantamount to genocide).
Short of ongoing wars, is there any reason – other than the past – for there to be hostilities between North Korea and South Korea, or between China and Taiwan? Think about the positive possibilities if a “fresh start” (based on current national boundaries) were embraced by all.
On a more individual, personal level, the same embargo on bringing up the past could be observed. You don’t have to condone what others have done; just stop talking about it. And, by extension, stop thinking about it. If you want to call that “forgiveness”, fine. But you don’t forgive someone for their benefit; you do it for your benefit. Because whatever baggage you are carrying will deny you entry to the journey you want to be on.
The rule is simple: talk more about the future and less about the past. Talk more about your plans and dreams, and less abut what happened before. To give an obvious example, consider first dates. Tell each other about what you have going on now, and about what you want for the future. Do not, do not, recite your horror stories about past relationships or your horrible parents or what went wrong or who died when. The past should be a permitted subject (with caution) only when it is part of the foundation for your desired future; i.e., what stirred your present dreams and passions. Lose the tales of woe, the grievances, the declarations of (and excuses for) self-limitation. Remember: when you talk about the wounds and failures of the past, you hurl them into your future. To be re-enacted, albeit with different players on the stage of your life.
Even in a job interview. Talk less about your difficulties at your old job, and more about what you want to bring to your next job. Talk less about your frustrations, and more about your aspirations.
Also avoid the temptation to talk about negativity in the past that you have overcome. When you regurgitate your horror story, even as a story of triumph, you breathe new life into the horrors that are better left behind. As “The Council”, channeled by Sara Landon, has put it, Stop telling your story. That may seem counterintuitive, but it is an important piece of this puzzle. Leave the past in the past.
Of course, there should be some exceptions to a societal (or individual) embargo on talking about the past. Reminiscing is fine, if the reminiscence is about pleasant times or positive outcomes. Repeating customs from the past that continue to bring us joy and evoke love; nothing wrong with that. Taking beautiful memories from the past and lobbing them into your future – for example, making a plan to revisit the site of a wonderful past vacation – holds no downside.
Cautionary tales (with some caution exercised about that) can also be useful. That is, if a specific methodology was tried and tested in the past and found to be ineffective, it would be foolish to discourage bringing that up if that same methodology has again been proposed in similar circumstances. There is a place for that “learn from history … [or be] doomed to repeat it” axiom.
Similarly, I am not counselling against the wisdom of “… fool me twice, shame on you”. Nor am I suggesting that past criminal convictions be disregarded. There is nothing wrong with learning from the past. But accumulated wisdom is very different from being somehow stuck in the past. Factual knowledge gleaned from the past does not hold us back (even if some of our “facts” are off the mark). Rather, it is the emotional charge of certain things in our past that will deny us passage into the brighter future that awaits us. The important thing to let go about the past is anything in the nature of grievances.
No, no noo, you may protest; We must not let those grievances go. Really? Things that humans who are long-dead did to other long-dead humans generations ago (for instance, the horrific practice of slavery), we need to keep tossing those into the future so that the score can be settled? Wouldn’t one need to resurrect the offenders from the dead in order to exact a “reasonable” revenge? Unless, that is, the descendants of the offenders are somehow to be deemed vicariously liable for the misdeeds. Which seems to me misaligned with any notion of law that has ever been collectively agreed upon.
Anecdotally, where there has been a determined and protracted emphasis upon the horrible details of an aggrieved past, the focus tends to be on establishing guilt and obligation, rather than on amelioration. Which seems to almost resist amelioration – because a strategy premised upon victim status must perpetuate that status. And also because focusing on the past is not an effective way to conceive and construct a better future. Here again, can the conversation be turned to “How do we improve the future?” rather than being an exercise in convicting the past?
But what about those who are disadvantaged on account of the past? Well, let us collectively work to remove those disadvantages. But let us do that for the benefit of the future, rather than to avenge the past. And let us do that not from a place of judgment and retaliation, but rather from the truth that we are all in this together. And that we are all co-adventuring bits of Source/God, having an adventure, playing a game, weaving a story. All of us, on our journey homeward. How someone fell behind should hardly be the point; we should reach out to them, individually and collectively, just because they have fallen behind – rather than out of a sensed guilt and obligation and indebtedness. The latter categories are not constructive energies; compassion and caring most certainly are. A past-oriented approach to any problem focuses on assigning blame; a future-oriented approach instead focuses on looking for solutions. Moreover, seeking to motivate action through guilt and obligation and indebtedness always divides us; whereas compassion and caring pull us together, in the direction of Oneness. Even where actions are taken with a bona fide intention to aid and assist, the energies underlying those actions matter.
The path homeward, the path of Oneness, is in our future. But we cannot get to that future by detouring through the past. Whatever is back there that holds us back, let us resolve to let it go. It is time to remove the “old business” from the agenda.