Facing the Past

One of the really impactful scenes from the movie Lion King is when the monkey Rafiki pulls a hair off of Simba’s head and Simba says “Oww! Geez, what was that for?” Rafiki replies “It doesn’t matter! It’s in the past!” Simba says “Yeah, but it still hurts” to which Rafiki replies, “Ah yes, the past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it, or… learn from it.” I used to have a picture of this quote as part of a poster on my wall.   

There are going to be many layers of lessons in this post, intertwining things that we have already talked about into new learnings. The past is an interesting concept. It not only shapes our present lives, but also pops up in unexpected ways if we don’t choose to address it. Rafiki tells Simba to learn from it so that he stops running. I have found that dealing with the past is sometimes not as easy as you thought. You might think it’s done, and then it comes back again and adds another layer of understanding. Sometimes we voluntarily can choose to revisit it to add to our layers of understanding. The last few years I had looked back at my childhood, my parent’s lives and how they influenced mine, and the generations of Sikhs before us, and how they influenced our lives today. This understanding of history influences our understanding of the present and is a very helpful perspective. The past has deep importance, as we all know to prevent history from repeating itself, we have to learn from it and change.

We can also voluntarily choose to revisit the past to add to healing from our connection with others, and to make amends. We never know how many breaths we have in life, instead of waiting to make amends later it is always best to address it now and make peace with it while you can. Each conversation should be treated as a potential last. The last few months I chose to do some revisiting for this purpose. I’ve found the difficult part is navigating that the past version of myself, the decisions I made, and the reasons I made them are really not able to be understood by the present self. The logic that made sense to me at the time doesn’t anymore and I cannot justify it. In the past, I did what I knew how to do with the skills and maturity I had at the time, and that’s not where I am now. There was a process of having to forgive yourself for not knowing and making mistakes at the time that you wouldn’t make now. There is a level of also understanding that the other individual is the same- they also reacted based on what they knew how to do at the time and trying not to hold that against them at all. That is the point of the past- to learn, grow, and to become better people from it. To become more loving, compassionate, empathetic, and open. I think that in revisiting the past to heal a connection with others, there’s also an element of understanding that we cannot change what happened. We can reflect deeply, apologize, change ourselves, and do better, but that’s all we can do. That is in fact, the best we can do- to change ourselves from it. It is not helpful to carry guilt and shame for our mistakes our whole lives, and Guru Ji reminds us again and again “Immense pain, murders and sins numerous, poverty and misery since birth, troubles and disputes of major girth. Nanak, all that is destroyed by Divine Name Contemplation, and burns like a pile of wood by fire’s action.” This is part of an acceptance of Hukam (reality), that what happened, happened and we cannot alter it. It was written the way it was written. As we talked about before from the Nanak Naam videos, God does to God because there is only one being, You do to You. There aren’t two beings forgiving each other, because there is only One being. Our interpretation of pain is based on the fact that we take it all personally. We involve our own egos. I do this all the time. It wasn’t about me, it simply is reality. One of the biggest questions for me this week was how to move forward into a future that looks vastly different than what I had planned. It is a matter of realizing I did all I could, I put in every effort, and it is what it is. You realize what Hukam is when you put your whole heart, spirit, and life into something and still it doesn’t happen. As Bhai Satpal Singh reminds us, Hukam is reality, not fantasy. 

The biggest lesson for me over the last few days was that once you learn from the past, it is valid to let it go.Take everything good, all the lessons learned, all the love, and leave the rest behind. It reminds me of that quote “Never be a prisoner of your past. It was just a lesson, not a life sentence.” How does the past become a life sentence? I think the first way is that if it is ignored and not dealt with. This is necessary. It will most definitely come back over and over until we make peace with it. It will invade into our thoughts, emotions, and dreams. The second way the past becomes a life sentence is if we carry our past as our definition. (One of my friends actually taught me this... These are the types of conversations that I think are important to have in our free time with our sangat. We can only really learn if we invest in conversations beyond the superficial and learn from each other!)

This is a very important concept, to carry the past as our definition. It is like carrying a heavy bundle on our backs for life that just builds over time. The bundle is about all the things that happened to us in our lives, all the interactions and stories. In this way the past becomes an attachment, and it holds us tightly. When this happens, we hinder our spiritual progress because God can only be reached in the present moment. Don’t get me wrong, the stories are useful. We can use our challenges and difficulties to explain how we have found our way to Sikhi, to explain where we are in our spiritual progress, to inspire others, and to explain how the challenges have shaped the mind in the most beautiful ways. I have done this frequently, because I think through the most difficult times, I have found purpose and a path. I find similar stories of others very inspiring, and it can be used to propel our journey forwards. At the same time, we cannot let the past define us. We cannot get absorbed into defining “me” and “my story.” The story is then simply a burden to carry day by day, instead of an inspiration. It adds to the ego. It adds to the reasons why “I” and “you” are different instead of One. This goes back to the bricks analogy from the Nanak Naam videos we discussed. We are building a wall of things that define “me”, my challenges, my life story, and it keeps being another reason that separates us from the Oneness of the universe. Gurbani tells us that our relationships don’t define us, this body doesn’t, and therefore this story doesn’t either. None of these things go with us after we die and are not permanent. It is actually freeing to remind ourselves that our path can be walked regardless of the story behind us, we are free to achieve our life purpose at any time. It is maya that wants us to stay entangled into “my story” because then we are stuck in the past and things that we think define us and we cannot let go of the temporary things in life to achieve the permanent realization of Truth. We cannot make that realization if we are totally grounded into the definitions of ourselves as part of this life and its stories. This is why Gurbani talks about not being “touched by pain or pleasure.” Only when one can see beyond this life’s relationships (ex. Guru Gobind Singh Ji asked his father to go be martyred and sacrifice his life to save the Hindus), this body (ex. Guru Arjan Dev Ji’s shaheedi), and this life’s stories (ex. Bibi Shamsher Kaur who was kidnapped and fought as a warrior), are we able to then move to a state of being where we are in an awareness of God. This is why we shouldn’t judge ourselves or other people for their stories either. They are part of transforming our mind’s journey but don’t need to define us.  

I hope this reflection about the past teaches you something new. It has certainly lifted a weight off of me and I am now understanding things in a new light, and more comfortable sitting in the present and letting go of what I don’t need to hold onto anymore. Through this there is ever greater love for Sikhi. 

References 

https://simplyloveyourself.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/the-lion-king-it-doesnt-matter-its-in-the-past/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWiaLugOROU

P.S. I have a lot more time than I expected lately so I'm hoping to post more youtube videos soon.