Many moons ago, I wrote a list of 12 Prin­ci­ples that were the basis of my under­stand­ing, both of my life and of my coun­selling prac­tice. I’ve been think­ing about pulling them together into a small book that I could give to new clients.

11. One of the tough­est “sells,†both in ther­apy and in life, is this: there is no need, nor is there any way, to resolve the issues of the past. There is not a hope in hell that water, once under the bridge, can be pushed back upstream and fil­tered until clean. There is let­ting it go, or let­ting it own you.

Haunted by images of you…

I thought the lyrics quite appro­pri­ate to this point’s theme. The first para­graph is a per­fect descrip­tion of how most peo­ple live their lives—not only in their heads, but in there, “play­ing with (caught under the spell of) things and peo­ple ‘dead and gone’.â€

It seems to me that each moment is born, lives,
and dies in an instant.

This is how it is for all of us, and for everything.

I was watch­ing a stick of incense today, notic­ing the stream of smoke aris­ing, and how each sec­ond of the burn­ing was dif­fer­ent, both in terms of the smoke, and in the infin­i­tes­i­mal short­en­ing of the stick itself.

The seems to be the per­fect metaphor for our lives, which pass by sim­i­larly. One moment blurs into the next, and you are a year, a decade, a quar­ter, or half cen­tury older.

We do not notice time’s pass­ing as it’s pass­ing, but more like the incense stick, notice when it’s spent, used up, burnt out.

We miss the smoke rising—the moment-by-moment expe­ri­enc­ing of life—because we are mostly up in our heads, play­ing with ghosts— regret­ting things we did, rela­tion­ships and peo­ple that left, died, moved on. We play with the ghost of “Christ­mas futureâ€â€”our imag­in­ings about what is going to hap­pen.

We make up sto­ries involv­ing oth­ers, assign the parts, write the dia­logue, and then, with great pomp and cer­e­mony, enter into the drama we have cre­ated, there to play out alter­nate sce­nar­ios to what really happened.

I firmly believe that such a life is a mon­u­men­tal waste of time, as is hop­ing that “there must be some­thing more.â€

This frag­ment of the above lyric is often the idea or desire that brings clients to counselling.

It’s sort of a half-eye-open look at the “stream­ing by†of one’s life that causes the “there must be more to life than what I am expe­ri­enc­ing†reac­tion. The odd piece is that there is more to it—it’s called moment-by-moment expe­ri­enc­ing.

In other words, the cure, such as it is, is right there, in front of your nose. The cure is let­ting the past be the past, and deal­ing with the future when it actu­ally arrives, thus free­ing one­self to be alive, in this moment.

The past is the past

You can’t un-ring a bell, they say. Nor can you push the river of time (or any other river, unless you’re in Chicago…) upstream. While it may seem only to be seman­tics, you can­not mend the past. You can only deal with the present moment. Mak­ing amends, for exam­ple, does not change the past sit­u­a­tion one iota—it changes the rela­tion­ship between you and “what­ever†in the here-and-now.

Most peo­ple do not “make amends†in the real world—they do it up in their heads, in the form of “If only I had said such and such, things would have turned out dif­fer­ent.†Or, “If only I hadn’t mar­ried him, I’d be happy.†Or, “If only my par­ents had treated me dif­fer­ently, then I wouldn’t be this way.†Of course. If things had been dif­fer­ent, things would be dif­fer­ent. How­ever, you did say such and such, you did marry him, and your par­ents did treat you as they treated you.â€

Noth­ing can change your past expe­ri­ence,
which led to your present reality.

The only way out of the pat­tern of sec­ond guess­ing the past and dream­ing about the future is to let go of cling­ing to either. This is done by, first of all, watch­ing the games you play in your head, with­out join­ing in. Get­ting caught “in the head spell†is a sure recipe for feel­ing like crap while stay­ing deeply stuck.

Instead, we begin to explore the process, instead of the con­tent. We start to notice how we are “camp­ing out†in our heads, play­ing “remem­ber when!†games. As we notice, we can gen­tly but firmly let go of the drama, open our eyes to the present moment, and see what’s really happening.

This also serves the pur­pose of actu­ally pro­vid­ing our­selves with a life—precisely the one we have, which has been rush­ing by unno­ticed. We live in this moment, and life seems to be end­less. And inter­est­ing, because we are expe­ri­enc­ing one thing and one thing, and then another thing, with­out attach­ing to any of it.

With­out try­ing to keep dead moments alive.

You can live your life as a ghost, rarely immers­ing your­self it, and only judg­ing it as it passes quickly by. Or, you can let the stream roll, let peo­ple, places, and things be how they are for as long as they are present, and then let them go, with­out attachment.

You can. It’s a chal­lenge to beat our­selves at our own games, but you can.

Excel­lent ther­apy, ele­gant body­work, and med­i­ta­tion are the tools for this explo­ration. More about this next week, as we con­clude this series.