The Past
Many come to the spiritual search identified with a painful past. It’s like living in a movie that you take to be real. In this movie, life as it presently appears is colored by the content of the past.
If you are a victim, present circumstances give the appearance that you are continuing to be victimized. If you believe your life is incomplete, present circumstances are interpreted to be “not enough.” If you were abused, neglected or mistreated in the past, it is likely that those patterns are repeating themselves now in some way. We believe we are our thoughts.
This past identity perpetuates itself through present mental and emotional interpretations. Reality as it really is now is veiled by this movie.
The question is, “How can I be free of the past?” “You” cannot be free because you are the movie. There is a presence already here — reading these words right now — that is beyond identification with the time-bound, thought-based movie of the past called “you.”
By noticing the movie of past whenever it arises to interpret the present moment, this presence is realizing itself. It is seeing that who you are is this presence.
What you really are is not a movie, interpretation, memory, or emotion. Those are objects coming and going in presence. Noticing the movie slows it down. Then it just stops. What is left is the utter simplicity, love, freedom, and freshness of what is in this moment.
by Scott Kiloby
