Living In Awareness – Day 2
As I close, I want to remind you that if you have any questions, thoughts, or comments that you would like for me to be aware of, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Living In Awareness: Day 2
Tenses of Time
The Past
The past is 99% story and 1% fact. Every human being has built a story of their own personal past. This not only happens on an individual basis, but it also happens collectively as a group or nation or culture. Sometimes, it is easier to see something more clearly when it is not so personal; therefore, I want to use a global example to prove my point.
Think for just a moment if you were studying a specific subject. Let’s use the subject of World War II. Now, imagine you were to find three history books about World War II. Each book is used in the school system to teach children the “facts” about that era. One book is from the United States, another from Israel, and the third from Germany. These books are used to teach their children “truth” and “facts” but do you think they tell the same story? Would it look like the same war? No, because each country has built its own stories around that event.
The stories we build, whether personal or group stories, are told or based upon perceptions and judgments as the event took place, our conscious and unconscious desires, and our reason or purpose for telling the story. The resulting problem is we take the story as fact or truth, and there is very little truth in any story. Do not misunderstand me; someone may tell you ‘their’ truth, from ‘their’ perspective, but that does not make it the ultimate truth. Most people take the story as the ultimate truth, and overlay that onto a present moment. It is the lens with which they look at it the present moment, and the moment is instantly contaminated by the past. There is also something else that occurs. A person may take a story, file it away in memory, and use that story to continue to support an existing story, or begin the process of building a new story. Ultimately, this robs you of being with, and in, the ever-changing moment of Now.
