Scary?
You would be in fear of your life at the prospect of being ripped in two as one half of you is propelled into the future and the other half into the past. That would most likely be the end of you.
And yet, that is what we go through, day after day. Let me explain.
We have a unique faculty to imagine our futures, to play around with different scenarios until we find one that we like. Then we can make a conscious choice to go for it and do what we can to make it our reality.
So far, so good; our conscious mind is focussed upon realising a future outcome, and we feel excited about it. But, to realise our chosen outcome we must also engage the greater power of our unconscious mind. That's where problems usually start to creep in.
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You see, whatever it is that our conscious mind is facing in the present moment or looking forwards to in the future, our unconscious mind always begins by looking to the past: "Has anything like this been handled before?"
Now, that usually proves to be a good strategy, and it is always followed with the best of intentions. Just imagine. If we were not able to refer to past experience, we would have to re-learn how to do everything, every single time: how to get out of bed, wash and dress, have breakfast, find our way to the station, catch the train ...
Already, we would be late for work. And if we ever arrived we would have to relearn everything covered on our induction day. Not much would get done.
It's clearly a good thing that we can do most of those things on auto-pilot, without need for conscious thought. But that also leaves us vulnerable to a dangerous pitfall.
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The problem is that, alongside all the really useful stuff, our past is loaded with triggers for automatic behaviours that no longer serve our best interests.
The reasoning from which they were derived is often just plain wrong, having been figured out when we were just kids who knew no better. But once those behaviours are bedded down in our unconscious mind, they lie beyond the spotlight of any further reasoning.
They drive us instinctively, and our instict for self-preservation is guided by whatever is stored in our past as being the safe option, regardless of whether or not it is still valid.
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Let's take a look at an example.
Imagine a young child who is given a money box and told that it's good to "save up for a rainy day". He doesn't understand that, but sees the smile on his mother's face whenever he pops a coin through the slot, and he enjoys the jingly sound as he shakes the tin.
Then one day, the child shakes his tin and ... nothing. The tin is empty.
The money has been "borrowed" by the child's father, who fancied a beer before his next pay day. But all the child knows is that the money is gone. Bewildered, he starts to bawl. His mother happens to be having a bad day and screams at him to be quiet ...
Fast forward to the same child as an adult. He looks into his bank account and finds that, yet again, it is empty. He can't undestand why this keeps happening. Every time he starts to save up some cash, he somehow manages to blow it all on something silly.
He is not conscious of the powerful belief embedded in his unconscious mind from that long forgotten traumatic experience as a child. But he is haunted by a deeply hidden belief that it's dangerous to save up money. Best to spend it while you can, otherwise someone will swipe it, and even his own mother will turn against him for it.
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Yes it's crazy, but that's exactly what happens to all of us in some way or other. And in this way, our powerful instinct for safety and self-preservation, driven by past experience, unwittingly becomes a force for self-sabotage of our dreams for the future.
It affects every area of our lives: our finances, our relationships both private and public, our confidence, our performance in sports, our careers... everything.
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But we need not remain constantly torn between past and future. There are many ways we can learn to align the full power of our amazing minds, so that both conscious and unconscious work in unison for a present moment that is increasingly free from our past and ever more full of what we hope for in the future.
Of course, we cannot change what actually happened in our past, but we are free to change our interpretation of it and how it affects us.
There are many ways to gain this freedom. Different ways suit different people. Take a look under HIGHLY RECOMMENDED in the panel over to the right of this page. There you will find links to several different pathways to freedom ... and many of those websites include material you can download for free, to get you started.
Here's to your increasing freedom!
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CHIMP SAYS:
Personally, I don't see what all the fuss is, about "past" and "future". Pleasure can only be experienced in the present moment. My advice is to treat every banana as though it is your very first, and also relish it as though it is your last.
Bon apetit!