Clear the Path From Your Past to Clear the Path to Your Future

In theory, the present is independent of the past and the future. What’s in the past is past. What’s in the future is yet to come. You are here right now.

And….

You can be here now, in the present. But your perception of who you are, and where you stand right now, is informed by the past. And your perception of who you are and where you are right now inform your perception of the future.

How you feel in the present is often based on the past.

We often assess ourselves and our worth based on the past. Whether we feel good about ourselves at the end of a day, a week, a month, a year, is typically based on our view of what we did in that immediate time span leading up to the present moment. This is what we do in a year-end review, quarterly review, monthly, weekly review, or daily review. We plan our future based on the past and how we feel about the present.

If you had a bad day, you don’t feel good about yourself in the present, even though, in theory, what you did earlier in the day or yesterday or last week has no bearing on the present.

This makes it harder to plan for the future. What’s the point?

This might be true, especially if you’re bringing yourself from today into tomorrow.

The Vicious Cycle

Then you enter a vicious cycle. It’s all well and good to say that you wake up to a new day as a new person, but in practice, it’s hard to feel that sometimes. You wake up in the same place, look at the same environment, meet the same challenges. Same shit, different day. It’s hard to get out of that spiral.

One of the reasons many people eschew year-end reviews is not wanting to face the disappointments from the past. The underlying belief is that if we don’t face them, we can somehow avoid bringing them with us into the future.

If only it worked that way. If you don’t look at what’s there, then you are guaranteed to bring it with you into the next cycle.

Or, you bring something worse: the paralysis of fear. The fear of repeating the cycle can keep you stuck, so you’re not moving at all.

How do we break the cycle?

First, acknowledge the disappointments and pain from the past. Our ability to get past something is determined by our ability to be with it. How much space can you hold for it?

Second, allow it to be there, without the thoughts and story that wish to attach. Touching the rawness of the emotion can feel like touching a tender bruise. Slightly painful, but also weirdly satisfying. It can feel alive in the body.

Third, practice self-compassion and forgiveness. Let go of whatever past experience we are holding, to the story around it, to the meaning we give it.

Forgive yourself.

Forgiveness is a radical gift that clears the slate and lets us start new tomorrow.

As I read teachings about forgiveness over the Yom Kippur holiday I was reminded of the concept I read in Pamela Eakins’ Tarot of the Spirit:

Clear the path from the past.

It relates to an ancient Navajo blessing:

May it be beautiful behind me.

This is the essence of forgiveness. It interrupts the cycle, allowing us to truly leave the past behind as we stand in the present. Forgiveness lets us create a new identity for ourselves in the present that we can choose to bring into the future.

When we clear the path from the past, we can be fully in the present and create a new future.