Letting Go of The Past Introduction Past and the Mind

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1 Letting Go of The Past Introduction What is the past and what is the meaning of letting go of it? The past literally refers to a periods of time that has elapsed or gone by. In ordinary parlance, it refers to the earlier part of a person s life but influences from the past come from even before a person s birth in terms of heredity and the customs and conventions of the family and community into which he is born, that is, from the collective unconscious. At any given point of time an individual has the experiences of the past to draw upon. His thoughts and actions are influenced both by his own experiences and by the norms of the collective. He can either react against the past or attempt to break free of it or he may be helplessly in the grip of what has gone by. Either way, the past influences his psyche and personality and thereby his actions in the present that has repercussions for the future. Past and the Mind All experiences of the past are stored in our minds, which according to Sri Aurobindo consists of four layers. The first is the citta or the storehouse of memory. It is as Sri Aurobindo tells us the reservoir of past mental impressions, the foundation on which all other layers stand. All experience lies within us as passive or potential memory; active memory selects and takes what it requires from that storehouse. 1 Then there are the Manas the Buddhi and the Higher Intellect but the citta affects allour actions because the mind motivates us to act being that part of nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ideas, with mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the truly mental movements and formations, mental visions and will, etc., that are part of his intelligence. 2 It is only after thought has been processed through the mind that action takes place and must obviously then be affected by the citta. In such a situation the past, as Sri Aurobindo tells us, can be both a drag and a force for progress. It is all that has created the present and a great part of the force that is creating the future. For the past is not dead; its forms are gone and had to go, otherwise the present would not have come into being: but its soul, its power, it essence lives veiled in the present and everaccumulating, growing, deepening will live on in the future. Every human being holds in and behind him all the past of his own race, or humanity and of himself; these three things determine his starting point and pursue him through his life s progress. It is in the force of this past, in the strength which its huge conservations give to him that he confronts the unillumined abysses of the future and plunges forward into the depths of its unrealized infinities. But also it is a drag, partly because man of the unknown to the old forms of which he is sue, the afraid old foundations which feel so safe under his feet, the old props round which so many of his attachments and associations cast their treacherous tendrils, but also partly because the forces of the past keep their careful hold on him so as to restrain him in his uncertain course and prevent the progress from becoming a precipitation. 3 This means that the past is inescapable and can be both a negative and a positive force. The past always mingles into the present consciously or unconsciously whether it is totally accepted or rejected or selectively accepted or rejected. The present built on the past, grows into the future. In this process the individual gets imperceptibly modified with the passage of time according to the layers of experience that accumulate. As in every growing thing, the dead tissues of experience, too, continuously need to be cast off and new tissues have to be

2 continuously added. That is certain elements of the past, be it relationships or career changes or modes of action that have lost their validity and meaning have to be let go off and new ones have to be built up. As Sri Aurobindo points out, the past has not to be kept,-- one has to go into the future realization. All that is necessary in the past for the future will be taken up and given a new form. 4 However, the residue or substrata of the past elements remain and we continue to identify ourselves with them. The Mother accepts, To get rid of the past is something so difficult that it seems almost impossible. 5 As we resolutely try to put the past behind and move towards the future there is a period of transition. There is a complexity here that is necessary to understand as the period of transition is not temporary but continual. We are continuously in a transitional state because the process of shedding off the past and looking towards the future is an ongoing one. Hence we are constantly in a state of flux. That is why Buddhists would say which identity are you fighting for, that which you were yesterday or that which you are today. Since flux is the law of nature, some aspects of our experiences continuously need to be let go of while new are assimilated. If and when this movement stops, it leads to decay and degeneration of our personality and consequent unhappiness. What is Letting Go The question arises, what do we mean by letting go the past. One way that we deal with unhappy experiences of the past is to try and keep the door closed on them and much of our energy goes into it. Why do we do this? Perhaps, because there are experiences in our past that cause negative and painful thoughts and since do not want to face them, we try to block them off. Sometimes in spite of our best efforts we are not able to shed off things that are not for us anymore. It may be a relationship or a career or any other experience. As Sri Aurobindo says, So long as you have not learned the lesson the past had to teach you, it comes back on you. Notice carefully what kind of remembrances come, you will see that they are connected with some psychological movements in you that have to be got rid of. So you must be prepared to recognize that all was not right in you and is still not connected, not allow any vanity or selfrighteousness to cloud your vision. 6 It is this realization that something in us has still not been corrected that is a painful one and so makes us cling to the past. We consciously or subconsciously try to justify our own feelings and actions and blame the other or the circumstances. Difficulties in Letting Go Many things come in the way of our ability to let go. We may think that to let go would mean that we must stop caring for someone and that idea is unacceptable to some essential part of us.. Or, we think that we must try to change the other person as his behaviour is to blame in the breakdown of the relationship. We try to fix the relationship or our working environment according to our notions of what it should be. In this process we nag, scold or argue in order to try to arrange everything according to our own desires. At times we are unable to let go because we get into a state of denial. We deny that something is wrong because we feel that if it were so we would in some way be responsible for it. At other times we cannot let go because we regret what has happened and often feel guilty about it. However, we have to understand that to let go in a relationship means that while we still care for the other person we have to take care of ourselves too. Caring for our own selves and maintaining our own sense of self worth is not being selfish and egotistic. No relationship can last if one person feels deprived, abused or exploited. We have to realiswe that when we experience these negative emotions in a relationship we have to let go but that does not necessarily mean that we have to stop caring. To let go is to realize that we cannot control the other person and so are powerless to control the

3 outcome. That is, we cannot mould or change a person s attitude or actions according to our notions and hence it is not for us to attempt to control the direction a relationship will take. Often our ego comes in the way of our accepting this because we feel that to let go means a loss of face or accepting defeat. But we have to be aware that this ego is actually a hindrance in the relationship and not a support. To let go of the past usually involves taking a decision that will result in a significant change in our own lives or in the lives of others. It is to accept the risk of the change. Often the change sought for leads to guilt feelings because we feel we are running away from our obligations to another. To let go is actually to fear less and to love more. It is to have courage to accept our own selves and the others as themselves without fearing rejection or disapproval. It is to grant the others the personal responsibility for their own lives and to accept responsibility for ours. This implies that in letting go of a relationship, job or course of action, we have to let go of emotions of guilt, grief, anger, fear, feelings of dependency, a sense of being responsible for the lives of others and above all a resistance to change. We often continue to behave or act in a particular way out of guilt or because we fear a sense of loss. We also think that we have a right on others and that they are somehow obliged to care for us. That is, we try to cling on to others by giving them a sense of guilt for their perceived neglect of us. Or the reverse of it; we cling on to a relationship because we feel that we are either duty bound to do some thing for others or because we have a heightened sense of our own role in their lives and think that if we did not do those things, they would fall apart. At other times, we revel in our unhappiness because somehow it makes us feel noble, self righteous that we are sacrificing our happiness for someone else. We also do not have the confidence that if we express our true feelings of anger towards them, we will not be rejected. At other times, we are just not willing to accept that some aspect of our lives is over. Over and above, we hang on to people and situations because of our resistance to change. We are unable to accept that certain changes are inevitable as we grow older and that we can t cling to people or places or certain occupations.7 We have the irrational belief that if we let go then we will fall apart or that others will fall apart. This is especially true in the context of relationships. We feel that life would be awful if we let go and that we would never be happy again or not to know what to do with ourselves for the rest of our lives. Or again we fear societal disapproval or the disapproval of one s loved ones. In the case of a divorce, for example, a woman may fear that her relations too will not love her any more, or will blame her or be angry with her. She may thing that she won t know what to do without their help. At other times we have a sense of over responsibility. For example, in our relationships with our aged parents or young children or handicapped siblings or any other person close to us we suffer from an exaggerated notion that they cannot do without us. We think that they need us and that we have to take care of them. It gives us a sense of being overburdened and crushed by the sheer weight of perceived responsibility. There are other reasons why we persist in clinging on. We may fear that if we express our incapacity to cope or reveal our hurt we will become vulnerable and possibly taken advantage of. Sometimes this fear leads to the opposite of letting go. Instead of letting go we convince ourselves that we have to constantly remind ourselves of the uncaring and painful past experiences of our lives because if

4 we forget them we will once again be exposed to similar experiences. When this happens we often determinedly shut ourselves out from genuine love or friendship when they are offered.8 Completing the Past and Finishing the Past We have to remember that when we talk of letting go we have to distinguish between being complete with the past and being finished with the past. When we are complete with something, we have said whatever we needed to say about it, felt whatever we needed to feel, admitted whatever we have needed to admit and released whatever we have needed to release. When we are complete with the past, we do not need to expend any more energy fighting its memories or experiences. It leaves the door open between the past and us and yet the past does not impinge upon us to our detriment because it is something that has got completed; we have got healed. To finish the past is to attempt to close the door on it. The focus is on finishing and so we try to keep the door locked on it at all times. The question then is what needs to be done to complete the past rather than to finish it because if we focus on letting go of the past, it is very difficult to see anything but the past as that is where our energy is occupied. Rather than focusing on letting go of it might be better to focus on letting go to. In other words, the more pertinent question is not what we want to let go of but what we want to go to in our lives. Do we wish to have more love, more connection with our being, more freedom or self-reliance. When we ask ourselves what we want to go to, the focus shifts from the past to the future, to the where and what of the experience we desire. To let go, then, really means to grow and live for the future rather than to constantly look back to what has been. As Sri Aurobindo says, Yes one should always have one s look turned forwards to the future retrospection is seldom healthy as it turns one towards a past consciousness. 9 If we are willing to complete the past, we will be able to allow the energy to flow wherever it is appropriate for healing; and if we focus on what we would like to let go to, a whole new energy of release can come in to support us. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have emphasized over and over again on the vital necessity of looking to the future rather than on brooding on the past. Sri Aurobindo says, The past has not to be kept,--one has to go into the future realization. All that is necessary in the past for the future will be taken up and given a new form. 10 Or again, Do not brood on the past but turn your face with a patient hope and confidence towards the future. To brood on past failure will prevent you from recovering your health and will weaken your mind and will, hampering them in the work of self conquest and rebuilding of the character. 11 Completing the Past How do we complete the past? The first step is to pray for those who have hurt or abused us. It would be difficult for us to hate any one that we pray for and hence it gets rid of several of the negative feelings that a change gives rise to. Further it has to be understood that the past cannot be left unresolved. It has to be confronted. For example, our parents exercise both a negative and a positive influence on us. While they have supported us and raised us, they often try to control our lives, give us guilt feelings or make unreasonable demands on us, as they grow older. Even in the process of raising us they have often said and done many things that may have hurt us or distorted our personalities. We may have felt that they loved a brother or a sister more than us, or they may have controlled our choice of career or spouse or overloaded us with a sense of family honor to give only a few examples. It is necessary to confront both the negative and the positive; both their support and their hurt. Once an emotion is confronted, it is released whether it is a sense of hurt or obligation. It can then be let go of as it has been completed. The next step

5 is forgiveness because to forgive is to release and to heal. When we forgive it is essential to be aware whether we have truly forgiven someone or whether we have paroled him, that is, forgiven him on condition of good behavior according to our yardstick. At this point, it is also necessary to count the blessings that life has showered on us. When we do that we realize how much we have received and it automatically releases our depression and negative feelings. But above all, we have to decide to be joyful. There is always a source of inner happiness present within us. It is only we who lose our way and do not tap into it. Therefore, we must be clear that we wish to have true happiness and peace and that we have to look not only outward for it but also within. That is emotional and psychological fulfillment, spiritual evolution, peace, joy and happiness are as important if not more as goals of material success and worldly achievements. Further, it is necessary to give, that is, transcend or look beyond our own small joys and sorrows and reach out a helping hand to another. There is always someone who is less privileged than us and whom we can help with our time and resources. Giving brings a joy that grabbing cannot. Besides, all thoughts and actions create waves or ripples in the universe that return to us multiplied manifold as echoes. Finally, we have to learn to live for now for the present. We cannot wait for tomorrow because tomorrow is not promised to us.12 In order to let ourselves complete the past and move towards the future, we have to remember to let go of our desire to control life. Rather, we have to learn to flow with it because that is the key to effective relationships. At any given moment, life is exactly the way it is. We, too, remain what we are as do the others in our lives whether we like it or not. When we fight or resist life, we create a state of fear and set up a resistance that makes the situation worse and destroys our effectiveness. It sets up a state of tension, a protective mechanism, a shutting up of ourselves up to different possibilities and so we lose our ability to see clearly. This sets up a reaction by which we destroy love and create opposition and resistance against ourselves.13 When we get upset, with someone or with a situation we think it is because of what has happened. But it is actually because we are we fighting and resisting what has happened. If we could accept the situation, we would not be upset and remain calm. That would make it easier to take action or to handle a situation. To let go is an inner psychological action by which we remove the resistance to an event, which in turn removes the fear of the consequences and thereby of the future. It is a psychological truth that the more we fear something, the greater is its chance of coming true. The only way to overcome fear is to create in ourselves a willingness to lose what we fear to lose. For example, if we fear to lose power, we have to create in ourselves the willingness to lose it. We may not to do so but the willingness must be there. To take a mundane and humdrum example, we may not like to go to the dentist but we must be willing to do so and accept the pain in order to be cured. Once this willingness is created, it is easier to find a solution that could not be seen before with a stressed mind. It is important to remember that letting go or willingness to lose something is a state of mind and not action14. Once the fear of loss is gone, it loses its power over us and we can act calmly to accomplish what we want. This is true for both personal and professional relationships and situations. If we are having trouble in our marriage for example, when we can truly say to ourselves, I am willing to lose my spouse that a solution is most often found. Similarly, if there are problems in our job, we should be willing to lose the job in order to act in a calm way from apposition of strength. Such an attitude also brings the kind of `detached involvement that

6 Krishna talks about in the Bhagwad Gita that inevitably leads to peace and happiness whichever way life turns. Two important steps are necessary to make letting go easier15. The first is faith in the divine. It is the faith that no matter what happens, we will be all right. This doesn t mean that life will turn out the way we want it to but that whichever way it turns, it will be all right. Once we are convinced of that, it is much easier to let go. By not trusting, we constantly fight, resist and hang on, preventing ourselves from acting effectively. The second is the willingness to feel the hurt16. We resist certain circumstances because they trigger our feelings of hurt or betrayal. Actually what we are resisting are not so much the circumstances but the feelings and emotion that are being activated by our circumstances and which often find echoes of similar experiences in our past. More accurately we are actually resisting a specific hurt that lies buried in our citta and surfaces because of our past experience. We need to be aware, find this hurt and to heal it. Once this hurt is found and healed, the need to resist or to hang on disappear. When this is done, it would be easier to let go and handle the present situation. If it is not, we are likely to act in a way that sabotages our own endeavors in the present and ultimately leads to even greater suffering. At the end, we can only achieve all this through surrender to the divine. When we try to control, we show that we have no faith in the divine intervention within us. As Sri Aurobindo tells us: Talk of surrender or a mere idea or tepid wish for integral consecration will not do; there must be the push for a radical and total change. It is not by taking a mere mental attitude that this can be done or even by any number of inner experiences which leave the outer man as he was. It is this outer man who has to open, to surrender and to change. His every least movement, habit, action has to be surrendered, seen, held up and exposed to the divine Light, offered to the divine Force for its old forms and motives to be destroyed and the divine Truth and the action of the transforming consciousness of the Divine Mother to take their place.17 To surrender is not to feel helpless. It is to be convinced that whatever comes along the way in life is our path towards fulfillment and final realization. We have to have the faith that in spite of our ignorance and errors and weaknesses and in spite of the attacks or hostile forces and in spite of any immediate appearance of failure the Divine Will in leading is, through every circumstances, towards the final Realization. This faith will give us equanimity; it is a faith that accepts what happens, not definitively but as something that has to be gone through on the way. 18 Dr. Kavita A Sharma Endnotes: 1. Mental Education, Course Booklet 3, Compiled by Ritika Goyal and Aditi, The Gnostic Centre, 2000, p Ibid. 3. Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, p.128.

7 4. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga III, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, The Mother, 14th June, 1967, Collected Works of the Mother, v.16 p Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga III, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1995, 7. Letting Go, gbgm-umc.org/disc/poems/letgo.stm 8. Letting Go, www. coping.org/loss/letgo.htm 9. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga III, p See also, Maynard and Leanne Dolderis, Vitagenics Letting Go of the Past, tcel.com/ vitagen/d_001.html 1. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga III, p Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga III, p Letting Go of the Past to move Forward Into Future, blackwomenshealth.com/let_go_past.htm. 1. Bill Ferguson, Learn to Let Go and Flow With Life, www. divorceasfriends.com/letgo.htm. o Ibid. o Ibid., o Ibid., o A.S.Dalal, compiled and introduction, Looking From within, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1996, pp o Ibid.