This writing is adapted from the talk given on Sunday, July 10, 2022. If you prefer to listen, you can find the recording here.
In mindfulness meditation, we talk about staying in the present moment, but what we know is that our minds, more often than not, bring us to the past, the future, or somewhere in our imagination. The focus of this talk is on the past.
A few weeks ago, my son and I took an excursion back to my hometown on the North Shore of Long Island. It is a place that is embedded in my memory as being one of the most beautiful places to live. As we made the tedious drive there from NJ, I wondered whether it would be as magical as my 15 year old mind, the age when my family moved from there, remembered it to be. As we pulled off the LI Expressway and found our way to the village of Laurel Hollow, it was indeed as idyllic as I had remembered.
I pulled down the quiet lane where we lived and it was hard not to be overwhelmed with the memories of the landscape I loved and wished we had never left. We drove the two miles from our old house to the town beach, a ride we would take on our bikes as kids. My son, seeing that the ride was a slight decline, asked if we had to peddle back uphill the whole way on the return. We did. It always felt exhausting and endless. Then he said something that surprised me, he said, "no wonder you love Maine, Mom." I never put it together. Mount Desert Island in Maine, the summer place I have been going to for the past 10 years, has many of the qualities like this area of Long Island without the mountains. But Maine, unlike Long Island, isn't drenched in childhood memories. It is a place of newer memories. A place where I found myself again. A place that is mine, unadulterated by the past.
When we returned, I had to let this excursion digest for two weeks. Going "home," even to a place without the people there, isn't always easy. I felt how much of my current being is still wrapped up in the past and being there made it all so clear. The things I struggle with as an adult are woven into this place. Threads of belonging, money, beauty, privilege, longing, loneliness, and the goals, desires, struggles of my parents all woven into a thick tapestry that has influenced everything I have become.
This experience of returning threw me into a whirlpool of emotions that I thought I was done with. Memories, and the feelings they evoke, don’t work that way. We don’t get to choose to be done with them. We get to respond to them differently as we mature even if, at first, they dredge up those old responses. When we got back, I had to let them raise turmoil running in circles amok inside until they were ready to quiet down again. The whole experience was clarifying. I got to hear myself say, “well off course you struggle with these issues still!” I was able to be on my side in recognizing that there are reasons behind the places I continue to get stuck. At some moment in the week, in speaking with a family member about it, he said something and it was as if a bell of mindfulness went off reminding me of who I am now and what my values are now and suddenly the conflict I had with the past that had gotten dredged up quieted.
Memories are charged. They have a volt of electricity behind them that inevitably causes a reaction. Some memories we simply want to close the door on. They are usually ones that have shame circling around them. As Brené Brown explains so well, shame likes secrecy. It gets stronger the more we stuff it down. Mindfulness teaches us that we don’t have to do that. We can make room for the difficult past experience and not judge it and not add onto it, but breathe with it and offer compassion for the hard feelings that come forth. We can recognize that other people also have this experience and we can offer compassion for this collective experience of being human. This moves it away from being a personal attack to a basic experience of living that we all share. The specifics may look different, but we all suffer; we all experience joy; we all want to be happy and loved and safe.
In my story, I chose to go to the past, well aware that I would be facing many feelings. I was surprised at how powerful they were, but going there was intentional. When we meditate and the past comes up -- when we start rehashing a conversation, when we replay a scene, it’s often unintentional. Or in our daily life, when this happens, we start ruminating and we stop being present. On the other hand, when we reflect, we are choosing to go over something with awareness. This is what makes reflection different than unconsciously ruminating. Reflection is not something that takes over, but something we decide to pay attention to with care in order to gain insight. Looking into our past has value when we look with curiosity and with kindness, seeing beyond what happened, to what we learned, possibly to find forgiveness, or to see more clearly.
My son and I had a great day. I showed James a bit of where he came from. In going back with him, my guess is that he understands me a bit more. This is the gift of being able to go to the past – to understand more now. The past makes up who we are, but the present is who we choose to be.
Certain seasons, holidays, places, objects, smells can cause memories to arise and when we stop and are still in meditation, the past is sure to resurface. What we do is practice observing it without getting caught in the web. In the present moment, observing the past. It is a very powerful ability because we look from the person we are now.
The next time you are in meditation, or at any moment in the day, notice when you find yourself going over something that is behind you and lean in. Step out of the thought and get curious about the feeling that comes with it, the reaction you have to it, what you are adding onto it. Then, let the judgment go, let the reactivity go and breathe with what’s here now as you behold it’s aliveness in you.
🌻
Jean
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