279. Past And Future

To broaden my awareness, I cannot look only at my present experience. I need to also be open to memories of experiences I’ve had throughout my life. I need to be open even to those memories that are regretful or painful for me to think about.

By exploring my memories, I become better able to see the nature of experience itself. I learn how to relate my present experience to my past experiences and to empathize with others who are currently having experiences similar to those I once had.

While I need to be open and attentive to every memory that arises, I also need to be careful not to transform my memories into cherished relics. To do so would be to form a dangerous attachment to the past, which will cause me to deny my attention to present needs. When I’m attached, I see the past as a lost ideal that I want to recover, rather than allowing myself to move towards what I must see and do today.

Just as my attention must not exclude the past, I also need to become more aware of the future. The future is never something I can know precisely, but it’s exactly this that I must learn to see. Awareness of the future is really awareness of the scope of possibility. It is to see that this scope does not have any hard limits. The future might include anything I’ve already experienced and many things that exceed my previous or present experiences.

I might be able to imagine some of the possibilities the future could bring, but even imagination is limited compared to the actual future. To be truly aware of the future is to see that it is a place of unlimited possibility, and as such, everything that presently exists is subject to change. It is through a broad awareness of past experience and future possibility that I also become more sensitive to the nuances of the present moment.