Audio version read by Rev. Steven Lane Taylor, B.Msc.
“Release a Negative Past and Open to a Positive Present and Future”
Two thousand years ago, Jesus said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is here and now.” He did not say that this best of all worlds would arrive the next day, month, year, decade, century or eon of time into the future. He proclaimed that the promise of the best of life and living was right there and then; right now.
Two thousand years later, in the hustle and bustle of modern, contemporary cities and lifestyles, people hurry about daily, as if engaged in a race in which the winners take the grand prize. The rush is toward what can be, rather than what already is, which seems to lack an element that kindles the fires of a person’s soul.
Because of this, countless individuals in today’s world are merely going through the motions of living out their lives rather than actually living. What could have been appears to be merely a vague image in the wind, filled with the darkness of despair. For some people, it seems that the mental flickerings of what were a few bright moments in their past are all that remain. Even these, for the most part, left them with unconvincing vibrations. Their physical bodies may be present, but their minds linger in the past of “bygone days.” What is and can be are colored gray by their minds yielding their priorities to what has been.
Even individuals whose pressures in life demand immediate attention seem frozen as if caught in a weird time void. Although they have an idea of things that could be done to improve their lives, there is no enthusiasm to move ahead. It is almost as if the ideas, possibilities and concepts are there, but the enthusiasm and inspiration seem nowhere to be found.
The cause is the past; the effect is that the present and future cannot find a place to reside, take hold and grow into promise or the reality of anything better because the past dominates the corridors of a person’s mind. What could be a fertile imagination for the birth of wonderful new ideas that could inspire a person’s present and future may, instead, become a desolate wasteland when imagination is dulled into the belief that life’s past mistakes, errors or failures are the final reality.
The mind finds itself playing a morbid game with itself where failure, and all that it would, at least on the surface, seem to imply, rules over whatever aspirations to which the mind is inclined. The feelings, frustrations, letdowns, and hurts already known and experienced live on as today’s reality. They are of the past yet they continue in people’s todays and tomorrows.
Jesus’ words, “Know the truth and the truth shall set you free,” when related to one’s past, point to the truth that the understanding of certain principles can bring release. We must realize that clinging to past defense mechanisms, in an effort to guard against the present and future, have been and are part of temporary illusions that life has staged for us, from which to grow. The only thing that is real is the eternal, for it is not subject to change; it is and will always be.
To cling to the past, defending against the present and future, is a temporary state of mind, and therefore has no reality. The only thing that can be truly considered real is the unchanging eternal. The false or the lack of spiritual reality and truth about oneself keeps one bound to feeling the so-called mistakes or failures of the past, which were, however, actually stepping stones to learning and knowing greater truth, reality, beauty, wholeness, security, and love within one’s life.
Identify yourself with the spiritual presence, and you are a participant in an eternal day where the real you, one with God, is no longer affected by the temporary past. The Spirit exists beyond the personality level of the mind and is therefore not part of that which is affected by the personality. That is why mystics may sometimes say that our Spirit, true self, or spiritual reality can pass safely through fire, earth, wind and water, and be unaffected by the elements.
Simply put, the real you does not experience the pain of the past, because it exists beyond the human pain threshold. Your true spiritual self, one with God, is always in an eternal state of freedom where the beauty, wisdom and love of the Universe forever exist as an eternal now.
Human experience that is temporary, not lasting and therefore unreal, cannot reach you in, as the Bible describes it, “The state or place of the most high.” There is no need to live in darkness in your mind if you identify with the eternal as God’s Inner Light, illuminating your mind so that you may see life more clearly, and God’s place and role for you within it.
To release the false past, you must trust more in the future. Trust can be accomplished by exchanging the past, which fills the personality level of your mind, with the eternal or trust in God’s Presence within you. The temporary past was but an experience and not what you are. The eternal perfection is what you truly are.
Let go and yield your mind to that which is highest in yourself, and the Divine Light of God within you will dispel the darkness of a lingering past.
Dr. Paul Leon Masters
Reference:
Text taken from Dr. Paul Leon Masters’ “The Theocentric Way of Life,” Volume 2: Module 30.
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Intro and ending music © “Night Radiance” by Maxim Kornyshev
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