Honour your past to be better in your present.
May 08, 2024
I read somewhere that said that our past is the mother of our present.
This reminds me of when I worked with new mothers in their pre and post natal stage. Usually around three months into having had a baby there is a longing for normality and perhaps for a time that has now passed. I would remind the new parents that we often start this dream of being in this time now several years before now.
I use the same thread when after time off we find ourselves saying I just want to get back to normal again. Having forgotten that our desire for time off was because what was normal had to change.
Get my drift.
A more simple way of putting this is to say that we never go backwards, time only flows forward.
If we should only look forward, perhaps we should honour our past because the past has shown us how to be today.
The story that I use in classes has been given to me in the book The Living Gita, with a commentary for modern readers by Sri, Swami Satchidananda.
He says that there are times when we are not ourselves, either sick, injured or hurt in some way and at this time we really do have to protect ourselves and take time to become better. We don’t always know how long this will take, but we must yield to this time and not fight it. We might have a teacher, or a therapist or a medical procedure that supports us through this time. Swami Satchidananda uses an example of when we break a leg. The leg is put in a cast to protect it and we might need crutches to support ourselves. Another analogy would be like a building being restored, its needs scaffolding to protect it, or a tree that is growing needs to be tethered to a post to support its growth. We all need something to lean on at these times.
In his commentary Swami Satchidananda tells us to that when we are better we should honour the time spent healing. Whatever or whoever supported us at these times should be honoured and remembered.
Valued.
As we get better and we can be a bit stuck in this transient time and I ask my students to consider how they can honour their past by creating something symbolic. It can simply be a few words, like a mantra to repeat when we get stuck in the past. It might be something that is a physical object in view, photos or a piece of art, an ornament. This sort of work is more about the effort that we put into creating something and how this make us feel in the process, to come to a place of acceptance and adjusting to the present time.
Several years ago now after a long period of grief I began to delve into my past looking for a way to understand better understand myself.
As normal as this sounds there is nothing normal when we go through it. However hard it was I did come to a place of peace and acceptance.
My symbol of acknowledgement of this time is a pen.
Not an ordinary pen though. It’s fancy pen, it cost me more than I will ever spend on a pen. It was out of my comfort zone but it was at the time a celebration and a symbol of making peace with my past and I use it all the time.
When I was in my twenties my dad used to give me a Cross pen for Christmas. My mum would always criticise the extra special gift and say that pens were stupid as they get lost so easily. And sure enough these pens did slip through my fingers.
My dad was my step dad and he adopted me and my brothers when we were young. He was loving, kind and generous. We were taken in and loved by his family and made life long friends.
He never doubted his choices and everyone supported him. My symbolic gesture to honouring my past and to give thanks to a person who changed the direction of my life for the better was in making a trip to buy the same pen that he gave me. When I hold it I am reminded of this legacy. It took a lot of work for me to get under the pain and find the love that was always there.
This is also the message of the Bhagavad Gita, under the surface of the battles that we have in life is love. Is takes effort to find it. But find it we must.
It’s all work.
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