The following is an invitation, put forth by Mark Nepo in “drinking from the river of light”: “So, when not doing well, when full of doubts or pain or worry, when unable to find your way, try, very slowly, to return to moments that feel foundational.” He’s speaking of past moments when one felt connected to life, safe, and have experienced Peace.
And this prompted me to realize that we generally are encouraged to revisit the past in order to uncover the source of any false beliefs we carry with us, to bring them into the light so we may then be free to experience the truth of who we are. And that’s all essential I believe.
But it is also equally of value to bring back into the moment past memories of moments when we experienced all the joys, the sense of being connected with our own inner God Self, with others in that Oneness of God, and the peace that inevitably is the reward for truly Being in the Moment. For these are life lines available to us in any moment when we’ve slipped into “unknowing,” into times when we may have been overdoing, became stressed, and allowed ourselves to be triggered.
They are of value because they remind us that we don’t need to try and recapture anything, to think that something is missing, that we need to take a class or read more books to find the answer (although reading something or being in a class may be what we’re doing when we have the epiphany that we “already know”).
Sometimes we just need to pause, take a breath, and ask ourselves, “Can I bring to mind a time in the past when I felt connected and guided and at peace?” And then simply allow our opened mind and heart to surface one of those past moments and smile to ourselves and say, “Silly me! I just forgot!”
Namaste, Steven