We Are Free of the Past

Written on February 21, 2008 by Tom Stine

My good friend, Matt, sent me the following the other day:

Ultimately…it’s not the stories that determine our choices, but the stories that we continue to choose. —Sylvia Boorstein

The timing of Matt’s email couldn’t have been more perfect. I have been thinking a lot about the past, and the above fits well. As this statement aludes to, the past that we remember as occasional thoughts and stories that we tell ourselves and others, does not have a dramatic impact upon our current lives. It is the past that we remember over and over again that influences our present experience.

When anything occurs, it always happens now. In this instant. And just as quickly, it is gone. Even if it is an event that takes place over an hour, a day, a month or a year, every aspect of it occurred in just one instant, an instant which is over. Ultimately, then, every bit of the events of our lives, and thus all the details of our stories, ends up in the past as nothing more than a memory. And there is the biggest tragedy and greatest hope with regard to our past.

As Sylvia Boorstein indicates, we keep choosing to remember certain of our stories, and we then define ourselves by the details of these stories. For instance, I graduated from college, and therefore I have a rather large memory, filled with multiple events and details, that I have carried around with me and used to define who and what I am: I am a college graduate. But in fact, isn’t my experience of having gone to college just a memory? How can I even really know for sure that all the things that I think happened to me during college every really occurred? I can’t. All I can say is that I remember them.

While graduating from college is a fairly innocuous example, we can quickly imagine a whole host of stories that would be far more dramatic and, for almost everyone, far more influential upon their present lives. For instance, if I had dropped-out of college because I had a problem with drugs or alcohol, I could easily be carrying that story around with me today as a large limiting belief that makes my life difficult. But, upon reflection, it seems valid to ask whether an event that occurred 2 or 10 or 20 or 40 years ago really means anything in terms of the present time. Almost everyone would answer yes, but I think the better answer might be no.

Given the fact that the past is gone, that it no longer exists, then we have a chance to experience some real freedom from what we thought were the stories that defined who and what we are. We can start with the obvious truth: the past is unreal. It is at a minimum gone, done, finished. In a very real sense, though, we can say that it was never real. Only what I am experiencing in this moment has any reality, if we are honest about it. My high school graduation is just a collection of faded memories. Can I say it even really occurred? Even if you show me a photo of the event, does it really make it real? No. It is only my memories that tell me that I walked across a stage, received a diploma, went to a party afterwards, etc. But it can’t say for sure whether I did it because I am not now doing it.

All of this must mean, then, that at this moment, we are all free of our pasts. Our pasts do not exist. Our stories are just that, stories, that are not real. And without them, we are free to do and create anything we choose without limitations based upon our past. We are free, truly free (and we always were).