As humans in the twenty-first century, time is very much a part of our lives. Our days are organised around time, using devices that synchronise with the Internet. We remember what we were doing last week, experience what is happening now, and plan for the future. We experience time passing slowly and quickly, run out of time, and feel the pressure of time. Intuitively, we experience and think about time in a linear way, like an arrow that moves from the past, is experienced in the present, and flows into the future.
Modern Physics tells us that time is not like how we subjectively experience it. Albert Einstein wrote, “People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” He was writing about spacetime, the fact that time and space are inextricably linked in the universe. For physicists, spacetime is like a loaf of bread, which is cut through with present-moment slices. So, yesterday, last year, or one hundred years ago, are still there in previous slices of spacetime. We experience time as a flow because that is how our brains are wired. We evolved to predict the future based on past and present information in a world where the sequence of cause and effect makes sense.
Even with how we normally understand time, we know that the present contains some of the past – like a wave contains the movement of the water behind it that pushes it to the shore. We bring our energy, level of focus, awareness, thoughts, beliefs, past feelings, habits, and behaviours into each new moment.
When we do something enough times, it becomes a habit, or an embedded pattern of thought, emotional reaction, and behaviour, which starts consciously and then becomes automatic and unconscious over time. If you are an experienced driver, the habits you developed to drive a car have become unconscious long ago. We develop habits as they are useful at the time. The trouble is that they become unconscious, so they become part of the unnoticed background of experience. When habits serve us, they are useful, and when they no longer serve us, they can limit our freedom and potential.
We can develop habits in our posture as well as powerful body language, like our resting face, our default facial expression. Many of our emotional habits are formed by our evolutionary impulse to move towards the pleasant and avoid the unpleasant. Some emotional habits become our default way of reacting to triggers, which is equivalent to our resting facial expression.
Although physicists tell us that we live in space-time, we only experience the present, the past has a powerful impact on our lives. Using the bread metaphor for space-time, it is as if the previous slices are still resonating with us. With mindful awareness and insight, we can investigate how the past resonates in our present and begin to free ourselves from limiting beliefs, emotions, and embedded habits that no longer serve us or others.
Suggested weekly practice
- Notice your habits in thought, speech, attitude, behaviour, and mood. See if they are rooted in the past, where they once served you, and whether they still serve you in the present.
- As far as you can, embrace and acknowledge what comes up about your past with self-compassion, kindness, openness, and acceptance. Honouring the past as your personal history but not allowing it to interfere with and limit your experience in the present.
- See if there is a default emotion that you return to again and again, like your resting face, and explore how useful this is. If you find it’s no longer useful, swap out the emotion with it’s opposite. For instance, openness and gratitude instead of anger and anxiety.
Guidance
Find somewhere undisturbed and sit in a comfortable, dignified, and upright posture, where you can remain alert and aware.
There are two guided practices for this session. You can close your eyes, or lower your gaze while the meditations play.
- Play the first settling practice, then read through the session content, which you can print off if that helps.
- Then play the second practice to explore how the past affects the present moment, as well as experience the potential openness and freedom from the past.