Look
Back
“If you
don't know where you're going, turn around and make sure you know
where you're coming from.”
African
Saying
When I taught psychology,
I had my students create a time-line of their lives. Most of them
were only in their 20's so the line wasn't very long. It was marked
off by decades, and then by individual years. For each segment, they
were to identify one event recorded in memory. At the end, we taped
the time-lines up on the walls of the classroom, and each person told
their story to the class. It was an opportunity to take a look back
and see what went into making them who they are today—major
milestones, and sometimes seemingly small events, can change our
direction. Putting them into a visual map of sorts, and expanding
them with oral stories helps us realize how far we've come (or not)
and may even give a sense of direction for the future.
A case in point in my own
life happened freshman my year of college. In those days (known as
the dark ages), you had to declare a major first year, and I had
declared mine to be psychology. But the very first class required
that every student participate in the behavioral research that either
faculty or graduate students were doing. I was so shy and insecure,
that the mere idea of being a stranger's guinea pig was enough to
cause me to change my major to special education. It wasn't until my
early 30's that I came back to field of psychology. That small turn
changed the trajectory of my life.
In his book, Finding
Inner Courage, Mark Nepo writes about looking back as either
constructive or destructive depending upon one's level of conscious
awareness. He uses two examples: First, the Buddha, who, once
enlightened and on his way to Nirvana, “refused to leave his
human form until he relived each of his previous lives as a fully
compassionate being.” The question Nepo asks is, “once we
are awakened and conscious and aware...how do we come to peace with
our experience of being human over time?” The second example is
Lot's wife, who you may remember had to flee the hail-fire and
brimstone that God was reigning down on Sod'om. She and her family
were told by two angels to run for the hills and not look back, but
she simply couldn't obey. She turned and looked back, and was turned
into a pillar of salt. (Genesis 13) Nepo suggests that one's level of
consciousness determines whether looking back is healing or harming.
In my experience, as we
walk the path of consciousness, events from our past present
themselves for our consideration—sometimes when we realize that we
are repeating old patterns. Or, we may encounter them in the form of
spontaneous memories that seem to pop up out of nowhere. Sometimes
they present themselves in dreams. As we are ready to deal with them,
they come. And at that level of consciousness, we are able to
integrate them and learn from them. If we are not working on becoming
conscious, however, it is rarely helpful to rake the ground of past
experience. We may find ourselves experiencing the original trauma
and not knowing where to go with it. It becomes once again a source of
pain and shame—which is in no way healing. That would be our pillar
of salt moment. We are stuck in the past and can't move forward.
We all have to capacity
to grow in consciousness, to be able to see our past as the perfect
road to where we are, and who we are, now. What is essential is
self-understanding. Realizing that life happens, we make mistakes,
others make mistakes, and we don't need to hold ourselves or them
accountable forever. We can humbly and honestly ask forgiveness. We
can forgive ourselves, and forgive them and move on. Back on that
time-line, some good things happened, too. Good people, happy events,
grace upon grace. Celebrate those. They, too, are part of your history.
In the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment