by Presence
Maybe you have been a part of a few situations that you feel you never resolved, situations that you weren’t ready to forget about – situations that just kind of faded away over time? On the rare occasions of solitude away from work and family this is some of what people are thinking about.
On a short work break, perhaps smoking a cigarette out back with only a brick wall to face, the mind tends to think about something else, rather than stare blankly at the brick wall of the business – the place I break away from – the place I escape from. Past experiences makes us who we are.
Why am I still thinking about it?
1) Perhaps being aware of the thought – the memory of this past situation now – is preparation enough in case a similar one happens in the future? (Ultimately, that having experienced this situation, though I still can’t get over it (because I am still thinking about it), I am somehow more experienced?))
2) Because I feel like I have not acted to my fullest capacity. I might feel like I could have done or said something more. Indeed, after the fact, the mind often puts a spin on thoughts and imagines oneself saying and/or doing the perfect thing, attaining what it could have attained but didn’t. (Only, in this imaging of oneself, the self-image is self-created. Imagining that one could have said or done the perfect thing, after the moment for saying or doing it has gone creates the “capacity.”)
Often, the mind deems that the very past experience that it is escaping into is boring and comes back to the present leaving it unresolved. As one walks back inside, one may or may not realize that the brick wall never existed, the cigarette neither, and meanwhile some people remark that life is short and quickly passing them by.
Perhaps five years from the cigarette in front of the brick wall, this mind thinks about that exact unresolved past situation/experience again and relives all the same thoughts another time, and creates the same feelings once more.
If the mind is still attached to the same feelings and thoughts it created from long ago, does five years seem very long; how quickly is life passing by in the mind? and here, now!
People remark that “it seems like it was just yesterday…,” and lives do become predictable, because thinking about any situation or experience is not resolving it. The very thought of this experience is preventing experiencing the present.
Unless this one situation is resolved in the mind, this particular thought and feeling, in five more years, perhaps next time re-watching a movie, or sipping a glass of wine, the mind will relive it again. The word “resolve” itself implies that this situation wasn’t handled…
the mind must re-solve it! and honestly, that seems to be the only problem.
Perhaps if we figure out the formula for resolving one situation – rather, living each moment to the fullest – we could be able to resolve them all instantly?
If resolving were a process, short or long-term, it would create experiences not unlike the one the mind sought to resolve. And at the end of a tiresome search – many white hairs and forehead crinkles later – one would still feel experienced when thinking about “that time “I” resolved a great problem!” Even then one is still not living in the present, immersed in the mind, as a thinker still exists who might, on that very day, come to a new experience and not react perfectly… driving home thinking about better ways to say or do things in the future.
If the mind is to ever let any experience go, it has to watch it arise.
What unresolved experience would there be to remember if one hadn’t forgotten about the experience!?
I think that “peak experiences” may be a time when we encounter A Course in Miracles’s “real world.” Think about it. We are not living in fear in those moments; we are lost in the flow of our experiences. We don’t spend any time planning against contingencies to come, attacking, or judging, and so we are not in danger of falling from the pathway to God and His greatest blessing of Awakening.
I would be interested in having you reply to this e-mail and commenting upon whether or not you see any benefit in viewing peak experiences as evidence of, at least briefly, living in ACIM’s real world.
Most cordially, Celia
You write “That situation that the mind is thinking about, that was never completely settled, is still as clear in the mind now as when it happened in the past”, but I don’t believe that is the case. Memory is consistently modified and rewritten, if you will, by the brain. So, the best we get is today’s version of yesterday, so to speak.
I feel it is more important to be welcoming to the brain and its activity (mind). However, we must not fixate attention on it. When we do, we overlook that which supports all activity and we miss what we allege we are ultimately searching for.
Thank you so much for commenting Celia! You wrote, “We are not living in fear in those moments; we are lost in the flow of our experiences. We don’t spend any time planning against contingencies to come, attacking, or judging, and so we are not in danger of falling from the pathway to God and His greatest blessing of Awakening.” Perhaps you might look at what you wrote from this perspective…
“We are lost in the flow of “our” experiences,… so there is no “we” who could spend time planning contingencies to come! There could be no “I” to attack, to judge, to be afraid, and thus immediately there is no danger of falling from the pathway to God and His greatest blessing of Awakening. No experience belongs to us. This is to live fully awake in the gift of the quiet present moment, without any “us” judging, commenting, being fearful… To call this gift a peak experience, to call it anything, indicates a “judge,” who might very well experience it.
To call this gift anything is a massive understatement. The “real world” from ACIM is most definitely the peak experience, a complete, immediate transformation which some might even call enlightenment. But who could experience it? since the experience cannot co-exist with personal judgments, it is as if the gift is the present moment itself.
“You who would judge reality would not see it, for whenever judgment enters, reality has slipped away. The out of mind is out of sight, because what is denied is there but is not recognized. Christ is still there, although you know him not. His being does not depend on your recognition, he lives within you, in the quiet present, and waits for you to leave the past behind, and enter the world he holds out to you in love.”
- From A Course in Miracles. Attainment of the Real World.
It is the feeling one has about the past experience, which comes back exactly the same. Having felt “I” could have reacted differently, there is this feeling of an “I” who perhaps was afraid or ashamed then, who is afraid or ashamed now. This “failure” has not changed, and comes into being after the memories of this past situation arise in the mind, just as it came into being as this past situation unfolded in the present.
You are absolutely correct, Roy. Thank you so much for pointing that out! After being unable to find a better way to re-write, or modify that sentence, it was deleted. After some consideration, it is not that the situation is as CLEAR in the mind now as it was when it happened in the past, that is truly impossible.
Perhaps memory is modified, rewritten, only because a mind is not clear!? If the mind were to see the truth, wouldn’t all memories of the past instantly drop away? Essentially, is discussing this to fixate attention on it!?
I completely agree that the degree to which we live in the present is the degree in which we really live. Most of us spend way too much time out of the present, ironically, when we are covering up the only time we really have–lost in memories of the past, or contemplating what is good or bad about what the future will bring.
I think that when we are living in peace, we are more ready to live in the present. We are not so fearful.
And not being fearful, but being encompassed by love (and forgiveness) is a good part of what A Course in Miracles really wants for us.
I appreciate this dialogue.
Most cordially, Celia
It’s like living in peace, living without fear, being love and forgiveness, and living in the present are synonymous!
And thank you, Celia, for introducing A Course in Miracles for the first time!
You replied “It is the feeling one has about the past experience, which comes back exactly the same. Having felt “I” could have reacted differently, there is this feeling of an “I” who perhaps was afraid or ashamed then, who is afraid or ashamed now. This “failure” has not changed,……………….”
I believe that you have fallen into the same snare again. What still remains is today’s memory of yesterday’s feeling; it’s still a re-write.
I feel that the larger and overriding issue is why do we get so fixated on the content of thought?
We claim that the thoughts that appear are “ours”. However, evidence in support of that is sorely lacking. Granted, the thought appears to us in the same way that a bird’s song appears. Yet, we never claim the bird’s song as “ours”.
There are those that argue that the brain does the thinking. But here again, evidence is scant. What we can agree on is that the brain is the receiver of thought in much the same way that a radio (you remember those?) receives music.
The seeming upside value of the “brain does the thinking” argument is that it sets up the creation of a thinker, me. The downside is that it perpetuates the myth of “me”. We each get to choose which side of that fence we want to sit on.
I “found” your writing via its Ramana Maharshi tag. One of his primary teachings is that what comes and goes is not real and is therefore not worthy of attention.
If my ramblings are inappropriate to your content, I apologize.
Sir that is hardly a ramble. Your writing is lucid and we are on the same page now. I realize what you mean finally that “what still remains is today’s memory of yesterday’s feeling,” and it is only fitting for a site about the beauty of living in the present moment.
Thanks Josh.
You know, we each get so invested in what our mind has created that we lose sight of the bigger picture.
What has existed as purely Potentiality has actualized and this manifestation is the result. There is the functioning within the manifestation and there is the neutral observation of said functioning.
Aside from that, the rest is a narrative created by the mind. The brain is hardwired to be attracted to story, so it’s a perfect setup.
When we become entranced by the narrative, we have obscured the underlying support of the entire manifestation, whether you call that support God, Consciousness, Nature or whatever.
Now there’s Original Sin for ya.
NOW you’re ramblin…
Just kidding. You saved my butt here.
Hey presence! I’m not sure if you noticed on my blog that I upgraded to wordpress.org so you should come follow that one of mine, as I’ll be deactivating my old one
the address is http://www.mnmizestudio.com
Thanks again for your support!