[Tic Tac Took]

i am extremely grateful for the past because it made me the person i am today (and i love me) i don't regret anything i have done. perhaps i may make some different choices should the same options be offered me today but i truly believe that i have always done what i thought was best at the time.

megan

[DoctorNiCYDEn]

i picked up a great book yesterday that made my mind jump right back to this thread, it is castenada's the active side of infinity....

don juan revealed to me as time went by that the shamans of ancient mexico had conceived of this collection of memorable events as a bona-fide device to stir caches of energy that exist within the self. they explained these caches as being composed of energy that originates in the body itself and becomes displaced, pushed out of reach by the circumstances of our daily lives. in this sense, the collection of memorable events was, for don juan and the shamans of his lineage, the means for redeploying their unused energy...don juan considered that to collect the memorable events in their lives was, for shamans, the preparation for their entrance into that concrete region which they called the active side of infinity.
the whole book is basically a biography of castenada's memorable events and so really portray what he felt his purpose was and how don juan and others play their roles in castenada's journey. its really been a beautiful book so far and i reccommend it to anyone looking for a program to plug their own past into.

[MattJargin]

i think this is a good question. many sources advise us to release the past, it's over and gone, and now is the only moment. however aren't there instances where the past is helpful, for some reason or another? what about the past in relation to bigger things like atlantis? should we just let go of all that or dive back into it? if it's in the past, why bother?

[QuidQuoPro]

greetings to you,
yes its a good question.
it's true you should release the past in the context that you should not dwell on past events with feelings of guilt or fear. you just end up messing up your life. you are missing out on the 'now'. missing out on the events that are happening now moment by moment. the same applies to dwelling too much on the future. the 'now' is where it is all happening.
however, our memory of the past is a powerful learning tool. we remember when we made mistakes and we should learn from those mistakes so as not to make those same mistakes again and go forward to be a better person. that is where the past is important.
remembering the happy times teaches us what we can do now to create happiness around us.
what we must not do now is feel guilty of mistakes made. feelings of guilt and fear of what has happened in the past only distract from the present.

learn from past events then drop them. use the lessons to live a better life now and the future will take care of itself.

i'm not too good in expressing my concepts into words, please forgive me. i hope ,however, that i have been of some help.

i offer you peace and love,

yusuf

[allaboutauto.us]

the ego has a strange notion of time, and it is with this notion that your questioning might well begin. the ego invests heavily in the past, and in the end believes that the past is the only aspect of time that is meaningful. remember that its emphasis on guilt enables it to ensure its continuity by making the future like the past, and thus avoiding the present. by the notion of paying for the past in the future, the past becomes the determiner of the future, making them continuous without an intervening present. for the ego regards the present only as a brief transition to the future, in which it brings the past to the future by interpreting the present in past terms.

"now" has no meaning to the ego.

--acim

[QuidQuoPro]

that's a good point. ah the ego. do you get another one next time round?
yusuf

[Thydaysuh]

the past is neither important or unimportant, it just is. be true to yourself and carry that impecability with you in service of eachother and with an open heart. we all trip up, but it doesn't really matter. keep on moving on.
atlantis occurred for many reasons, but if i can articulate this right, it's because we began to view our vulnerability to eachother in a negative light. conceiving of eachother as things we must step upon to rise above this vulnerability, we created a self-fulfilling event of creating friends into enemies. we became obsessed with "righting" these resulting events in revenge and it just spiraled downward as we lost our vision by always looking backwards at others.
it's okay to be vulnerable, to love and trust one another. that will create its own self-fulfilling series of events that will balance the fall...
remember that always.

[Misebeita]

many sources advise us to release the past, it's over and gone, and now is the only moment. however aren't there instances where the past is helpful, for some reason or another? what about the past in relation to bigger things like atlantis? should we just let go of all that or dive back into it? if it's in the past, why bother?

great question, one that many people ask.

i recently heard/saw (can't remember where) this advice...

"glance at the past, just don't stare"

in other words the past, both individual past(s) and those of the collective, are experiences to be learned from, to gain wisdom from to use in future decision making. that is it.

this means, as we are so often reminded, we should always be living in the now. the decisions we make now are what shapes our reality thus our future...

blessings to everyone!
(:-deeze

[ultramDoctoo]

...and besides, the past is changeable right?

[Arbinknit]

i see guilt and fear like magnets on our shoes...

the guilt and fear ones stop us from walking or running because they weigh us down so much.... but if you flip the magnets around the other way,to joy and love, you can practically walk or run on air!

so as for the past, i just used it's experiences to remind me which things caused my magnetic shoes to weigh me down, and which ones caused me to walk on air, and of course, i wanna walk on air as much as i can because i'm lazy, so i try to repeat those things (relationships/belief sytems/actions/judgements) that aren't attatched to fear or guilt.

[Sotmoigma]

sometimes i like to use the past to train myself. i pretend that i am the higher-self of the past events. i revisit these events and pretend that i am my higher-self and practice figuring out what i would try to teach to my-self at that time. i know it's out there but it works for me, i enjoy it, and lessons faithfully come back to me as intuition...............sylvain...............

[gennick]

i take my few memories that i have from previous lives as part of my life and use as this life experiences. it is really interesting to find out what kind of relationships i had with my friends then. david is right, our lives are interconnected with persons whom we were living with in previous lives. so i use this to valuate and develop my relationships with people close to me. at least with those i remember. i was not very nice person in some of my lives (robbing a friend with another etc.) this time i try to be better. hope that i can remember more, it helps to make life more richer.

[JulieSmithdccd]

looks like someone has been reading tolle.

for me, the past is a source of a lot of pain, and a lot of self-incrimination. but at the same time, the only thing that wears down the pain is going back and analyzing where it came from (for me). i have experienced such release in finding the source of some quirk or another that i cannot jump on the forget the past bandwagon completely. it is useful to me.

but at the same time, i do think i spend too much time there. but work gets boring and they don't let me go outside and play. so where else am i supposed to go?

[yWleIJm4]

all of the responses so far have been eloquently written!

for my part, i've learned not to dwell in the past, or spend too much time thinking about the future; for if you do that, you're missing out on the best part of life - living in the present here and now.

with that said, the past is still very useful - memories are from the past; experiences and learning are in the past... i'll echo what has been said:

you can go back into the past and reflect on mistakes made, or any negative feelings you may harbor towards this or that. you can do this, and alter the past, using forgiveness as your tool. forgive others, forgive yourselves. this will help to release or, better yet, alter "stored energy" so that it can be purified. doing this, we can abandon the victim mentality, which, personally, is what i see alot of people suffering from...

yes, everyone makes mistakes - that is how we learn! however, if we don't take some wisdom from these mistakes, then we will continue to make them, as if guided "karmically" to learn these lessons...

this is a good thread with alot of knowledge and wisdom contained in the various posts. to finalize, for me, the question then becomes, how much "time" is too much "time" to dwell on past events? ... for certainly, it can be beneficial to remember happy events. remember good times with loved ones who've passed...

of course, these "passed" loved ones are always with us, for, and i quote:

we are made up of those around us. our family, our friends, our associates all contribute to who we are as a person. sorry for going off tangent there - just last week was the seventh anniversary of my mother's unexpected passing. so much pain, eventually to be replaced, with so much understanding and growth...

art