ONLY IN THE PRESENT CAN WE TRANSFORM THE PAST
The redemptive power of a moment of forgiveness
It’s not what’s happened in your life so far that has the power to determine your future. It’s how we interpret what’s happened, and learn from what’s happened, that sets the course for our probable tomorrows.*
Every day, in fact every moment of our lives is like a plane either taking off or staying stuck on the runway. And nothing keeps the plane from taking off more than too much weight in its cargo hold. All that weight is our unprocessed grief, the unforgiven mistakes, our lack of acceptance that things went the way they went.
All of that is the stuff of the past, and there are two distinctly different ways to interpret it. We will see our past through the lens of fear or through the lens of love. The ego uses the past as an excuse to endlessly bludgeon yourself. It will never allow you to escape the pain, because your pain is its peak experience. The Voice for Love on the other hand would reinterpret your past, gently and with forgiveness. It frees you to begin again.
The past is over, existing only in our minds. Yet the mind is a battlefield, the ego dragging shadow figures from the past into every present moment so the future will be just like it. The ego then yells, “See, I told you! Nothing ever changes!” Through it the past and future exist as a continuum, with the present having nary a chance to come between them and intervene.
Yet we needn’t be hostage to the ego; we can instead be host to God. There is one point where God’s time intersects linear time and that is in the present. The present moment is our place of power, the zone of the miraculous. It’s our sacred opportunity to atone for our errors and forgive others for theirs. In that lies its power to redeem us, to rescue us from the ego’s punishment and its savage attacks. We call it anxiety, but it is so much more. There is a place in all our minds that hates God, hates us, and hates others. It is the malignant cell that is bent on destruction. Only the Love of the Divine has the power to dissolve it.
Dorothy poured water over the wicked witch, and the wicked witch dissolved. Jesus says “Satan get thee behind me” and hateful thoughts are stopped in their tracks. In A Course in Miracles, he says, “Give me your past so I can change your mind about it for you.” There is a Higher Power in all of us, an all-powerful Love that goes by many names. It will not impose itself upon us, for that would be violating our free will. Yet should we ask for its help, it will respond to our slightest invitation. It intercedes on behalf of our holiness. It rescues us from the ego’s clutches. It delivers us from the most painful nights in ways that nothing else can do.
It doesn’t matter what you call it. Just call. The past needn’t be the source of your agony. In the words of A Course in Miracles, “The past is over. It can touch you not.”
Dear God,
I give to you my past.
I am willing to see it differently.
I am willing to forgive myself and others.
Please show me how.
Amen
*from Midlife Awakening
I find forgiveness usually to be a sticky thing.
It is a process for sure and often times has its own schedule.
We need to be patient with ourselves, but it is worth the endeavor.
I love the lesson of Dorothy helping her friends and sticking up for them and dousing scarecrow with water, opposing the fire, cruelty and meanness of the witch and that the wicked witch could not exist in that kind of world.