DON’T LET YOUR PAST HOLD YOU BACK!

Is your past, or something in your past, holding you back? Do you keep revisiting the past or some incident in the past to such an extent that it’s preventing you from living fully in the now? 

Listen to these wise words from the Indian spiritual philosopher J. Krishnamurti, pictured right and below:

We are the result of the past. Our thought is founded upon yesterday, and many thousand yesterdays. We are the result of time, and our responses, our present attitudes, are the cumulative effect of many thousand moments, incidents and experiences. So the past is, for the majority of us, the present, which is a fact, which cannot be denied. You, your thoughts, your actions, your responses, are the result of the past. 

So, how can we be free of the past? Of course, as I’ve said many times, we should never ask ‘how’, because then we are asking for a method or technique. Methods and techniques are forms of conditioning, which is the past. The past cannot free us from the past. But what exactly is the past? Here is Krishnamurti once again:

… What do we mean by the past? … We mean, surely, the accumulated experiences, the accumulated responses, memories, traditions, knowledge, the subconscious storehouse of innumerable thoughts, feelings, influences and responses, With that background, it is not possible to understand reality, because reality must be of no time: it is timeless. So, one cannot understand the timeless with a mind which is the outcome of time. The questioner wants to know if it is possible to free the mind, or for the mind, which is the result of time, to cease to be, immediately; or must one go through a long series of examinations and analyses, and so free the mind from its background. You see the difficulty in the question.

Self-analysis tends to fail because the ‘analysing self’ is just another manifestation of self—that is, one of the hundreds of little selves (the ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’ in our mind). How can the self analyse the self, or one of the many other selves within us? No effort of the self can remove the self from the centre of its own introspection and mental machinations. Let’s say that a thought of anger arises in your mind. The part of your mind which analyses the anger is part of the anger. There is simply no way, by that means, to free yourself from the background. True psychological transformation can only arise when one is entirely free of the background (the ‘mental furniture’). Look and observe. Be aware—choicelessly. Don’t analyse or interpret. Just look, observe and see things as they are—both the things outside of us as well as the contents of our own mind. The insight you gain will change you forever—that is, if you want such change in your life.

The good news is that you can be totally free of the past at any moment. It’s entirely up to you. No one else can do this for you. Yes, there can indeed be that ‘total revolution’ or ‘psychological mutation’ of which Krishnamurti often spoke. We can instantaneously liberate ourselves from the past and from past conditioning including beliefs and misbeliefs of all kinds if we refuse to analyse or dissect the content of our consciousness (the ‘background’ or ‘mental furniture’) and simply see things as they really are, without judgment or evaluation.

In what follows, Krishnamurti describes, much better than I could ever hope to do, the essential features of a mind that is ‘mindful’ (or, to use his word, 'tranquil'):

Now, to put it very simply, when you want to understand something, what is the state of your mind? When you want to understand your child, when you want to understand somebody, something that someone is saying, what is the state of your mind? You are not analysing, criticizing, judging what the other is saying; you are listening, are you not? Your mind is in a state where the thought process is not active, but is very alert. Yes? And that alertness is not of time, is it? You are merely being alert, passively receptive, and yet fully aware; and it is only in this state that there is understanding. Surely, when the mind is agitated, questioning, worrying, dissecting, analysing, there is no understanding. And when there is the intensity to understand, the mind is obviously tranquil.

So, this is what you can choose to do—if you really want to be free, forever, and instantaneously, from the bondage of the past. Watch, almost with disinterest, whatever happens, as if it were happening to someone else. Let there be no comment, judgment or attempt to change anything. Note the presence of any unhealthy, painful thoughts, emotions or memories, but give them no power or attention. Don’t suppress or deny them. Don’t resist them, for whatever you resist, persists. Simply observe … choicelessly … and then let go. And let it be.

Acknowledgment is made, and gratitude is expressed, to the Krishnamurti Foundation of America,

Ojai, California, USA. Krishnamurti Excerpts: Benares 2nd Public Talk, 23 January 1949.

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