A new year is upon us and not only that but a new decade as well! Pretty big deal, right? I suppose it is, from a certain point of view. How are you taking it? Just another day? A moment in time, perhaps? Our society has been structured in such a way to teach us that time is linear. There is a beginning to a day and an end to a day. Same with a week, a month, a year and at this point in time, a decade.
One’s life has a beginning and an end. We have been taught this and have taken in programs or systems of belief that have fit into this gestalt of thinking. Collectively they have created the illusion of mortality. Illusions are as real as you believe them to be. The more life you give them the more they appear to be real. The more people that agree to its existence than the bigger it becomes, eventually creating a reality. The daily news is dependant on this so-called truth. It complicates life and can make it challenging to determine what is real or not. Sure, you can prove to me that what I am seeing is real and my senses can attest to its validity, yet is there something more to it? Something separate from the senses? How is what I am seeing, hearing or touching being interpreted? How have I been taught to see, hear, or experience touch?
The dictates of society are multi-layered and very deep, ancestral and collective. There are so many influences that it is hard to find the thread that began it all. History repeats itself and like a biological computer we are often playing out programs on often times a subconscious level. How has the human collective influenced your way of thinking? How has it influenced mine? Are there any original thoughts left in the world, or has everyone hit the repeat button, thinking that they are original? Has this all been said before, I wonder?
As the new decade begins I've found myself looking back on my life and what I've done with it so far as Joseph Machney. Have I made people happy? Have I contributed in a positive way to other's lives? The times I have hurt others, have I done what I could to correct the situation? Have I forgiven myself for the times that I didn't and the reasons for not doing so? Have I understood the lesson?
That is where the theme for this article comes from. Regret is a self-imposed concept that keeps you repeating the past over and over again. Like a looping track on a record, no new information is ever withdrawn from the experience. You can add what you want to the past and recreate in the workshop of your mind what could have been had you done something different. The fact is that nothing can change what had happened and all of it is now a memory. The only thing to take from it is a lesson.
When involving other people, I feel it is important to see the interactions with them as subtle lessons being given back and forth. Everybody has their own individual paths and personal journey. Seeing it in this light gives you the freedom to not take anything personally. Understanding that it is not about you can remove any feelings of hurt that you may have felt from the other person.
This removes them from the experience. Doing this localizes the experience to yours and yours alone. Now, what do you do with it? How have you been taught to deal with it? If you haven’t then what are you going to use for a reference to decide how to make your next move. What does your moral compass tell you? How does it feel to you? Is that feeling something you had before? Where is its origin from? Is there a charge or a trigger from it that may be distorting the present experience?
Through my session work, I have noticed how bogged down people are in the world that their physical, emotional and mental bodies have created for them. They are reality, but they are not the only reality. There are other influences that can expand the boxes that people find themselves in. People become stuck because no new lifeforce has been able to come in and old patterns, as I have called them, become repeated or recycled. The result is a recreated illusion using the same ingredients just put in different ratios at different times within the three bodies.
Insights through meditation allow for a new life force to come in that is not recycled energy from the collective emotional, physical, and mental bodies of mankind. We are not computers that have limitations, we are spirits inhabiting biological computers that desperately need a software upgrade.
But how does that idea of reality suit you? Is it enlightening or darkening? The comfort zone you are being asked to step out of, can you do it without seeing what lies ahead? Can you trust the next decade ahead of you, having no regrets of the things that you’ve left behind? Time is an illusion and so is everything that has manifested from it. What in time are you bound to? What part of you is timeless? From pondering comes personal purpose.