Nowadays we often hear advice like “live in the here and now“, “the past does not exist, only the present, the eternal now“. The truth is that something inside me told me that yes, they are good advice to transcend the automatic mode of operation of the mind, the one that is always worried about the future or remembering past events and meanwhile the present escapes him, but something was missing, something important I felt was not taken care of if I followed the advice completely.
Feeling it like this, my reflective mind whispered in my ear “you must be wrong to doubt the advice of renowned mindfulness teachers, and you’re on the wrong path if you keep doubting“, but if there’s anything I’ve learned in my years of meditation practice respect to topics of spirituality is: you have to pay a lot of attention to experiences and intuitions and leave the reflective mind in silence, because actually meditating is that: experiencing, intuiting, contemplating, in mental silence. So I forgot the fears in my mind and kept asking myself: what is missing there, what is incomplete, is that attitude of considering the past as non-existent, as not worthy of attention?
The answer came in the form of experiential “flashes”, at first some momentary, from time to time while meditating. Then they became more frequent. I didn’t grasp its meaning immediately, I just sensed that it was important, and that it had to do with my doubts. What were the experiences about? Well, it was reliving past moments with full consciousness, sometimes very distant, almost forgotten, even from my early childhood. Short, simple moments, but that he had lived very awake, very aware. They came to my mind, spontaneously, without me making any voluntary effort to remember.
Like the moment of waking up with the rooster crowing, in my bed, when I was very young, maybe three or four years old, I only remembered that moment, nothing after, but it wasn’t a remembering like when you want to remember, it was a feeling of the experience of that moment, a full awareness that at that moment it was of the moment, of the here-and-now. And just like this, dozens of other moments: my hand in the sun-warmed sand as I lay face down on the beach, the feeling of riding a motorcycle down a tree-lined road with my girlfriend sweetly hugging me, and so many other countless moments of full and joyful experience.
They were pleasant and vivid flashes, and as they had appeared in my meditation, I wondered at their meaning, which I sensed was connected with my doubts. It didn’t take me long to realize that they were confirmation that our real, inner Self does indeed manifest itself when we are in the here-and-now state of full consciousness, but at the same time this state will have happened spontaneously in numerous occasions in the past. Therefore, when we work full awareness of the moment does not have to be only that of the present, it can be that of any past moment. In fact, in some ineffable way, I feel that “I”, my deep identity, was and is the same in all those moments. When it is said that the Being is beyond time it does not mean that the Being only lives in the temporal present as we understand it, it means that everything is present time for the Self! All moments lived with full awareness of Being are One! It cannot be understood from the intellect, but the experience is what it is, and it is wonderful, because all those moments were joy, which is another facet of Being: unconditional joy.
So when you meditate for the realization of your higher identity you don’t need to belittle the past as non-existent, on the contrary, your whole life in block is a single moment for the Being, and by meditating on the past moments of full consciousness you access a dimension timeless and full of joy that are undoubtedly of great use to advance in the realization of Being.
the closed room 