Lesson 8: My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.
I’m finding it difficult to start today’s reflection, mainly because I’m too busy thinking about yesterday – the pleasant memories along with those that upset my peace of mind. I’m thinking about the things I enjoyed doing as well as the things I didn’t get done, the things I should have said, the places I could have gone, the people I could have connected with, but didn’t.
Our egos love to help us misconstrue and misuse time. “The mind’s preoccupation with the past is the cause of the misconception about time from which your seeing suffers. Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is,” reads today’s lesson.
Because our mind is incapable of grasping the present, we rely on the past to keep us occupied – or on the future, dreaming of a better moment than this one somewhere down the road. For all my preoccupation about things left unsaid or undone yesterday, I can’t change one moment of my past – and the Course tells me that continuing to dwelling on past events and feelings right does me no good, and prevents a miracle from entering my reality.
“The one wholly true thought one can hold about the past is that it is not here. To think about it at all is therefore to think about illusions,” the lesson tells us.
I have both fond and not-so-fond memories of my past. I love to dredge up both, smile about the good ones and fret over the bad ones – regrets and offenses, most especially. When we’re engaged in such activities, though, the Course says, we’re not really thinking at all – because we’re focused on an illusion – something that is not here in the present moment.
The exercise for today invites us to recognize when we are dwelling on the illusion of the past. We’re not called to forget our stories or what we learned from past mistakes or successes, but to put them in their proper perspective – as illusions that have absolutely no bearing on this present moment.
When we have a thought today about the past or even the future, we are invited to recognize our preoccupation with past thoughts, perhaps especially those that irritate or upset us, and use them to realize we are not being fully present to this moment when we entertain past illusions.
This can serve as a “bell of mindfulness” as Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh calls it, that brings us out of our preoccupation with the past into greater awareness of this moment.
Hafiz uses the image of a violin to make the same point:
When
The violin
Can forgive the past
It starts singing.
When the
violin can stop worrying
About the future
You will
become
Such a drunk laughing nuisance
That God
Will then lean down
And start combing you into
His hair.
When the
violin can forgive
Every wound caused by
Others
The heart
starts
Singing.