How To Heal Your Past & Rewrite Your Future With Big Brother & The Buddha
On Time & Mind, Part 1
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the future controls the present." -Big Brother
I've been reflecting on this Orwellian quote outside of its original dystopian context of 1984 as it relates to the premise of Benjamin Hardy’s book Personality Isn't Permanent.
Let’s break down this quote.
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the future controls the present.”
In its original 1984 context this quote appears to be addressing the dissemination of information at a societal level — controlling the media, propaganda and the stories that are told to the public to influence emotions and behaviors at scale.
I would like to instead suggest an interpretation of this quote at the personal level.
If instead of interpreting this totalitarian slogan from Big Brother as it concerns circumstances outside our control, we take 100% individual responsibility for our past, present, and future, we shift from victimhood to a sense of agency.
A disclaimer that none of this matters from the transpersonal perspective, which I suppose is redundant for those to whom that applies (is this needlessly exclusionary? Probably).
For the rest, I would like to share a useful prophylactic to the seductive position of nihilism and apathy that may appeal to those who would eschew this temporal responsibility.
There is a certain line of thinking that goes like this: if, in any arbitrary interval, a decade, a century, a millennium, nothing I do matters, why bother?
Here’s the rub — the apathy is bidirectional. That same hypothetical future shouldn't matter to you and is equivalently irrelevant (credit to John Vervaeke - I enthusiastically recommend his work and YouTube series Awakening From The Meaning Crisis). So pay attention to your own life and let's move on.
Presently, let’s continue the deconstruction with a little help from Buddhist wisdom as an interpretive framework. A sort of play-by-play breakdown in the manner of sports commentary without the sports and video. Just words. A spiritual & philosophical remix, if you’ll allow. To borrow another Vervaekian term, let’s play some "conceptual jazz."
“Who controls…” & The Third Mark
'Who' implies personhood. In Buddhist metaphysics, there are three marks of existence that characterize all of existence and beings. These are translated into English as impermanence (anicca), unsatisfactoriness or suffering (dukkha), and non-self (anatta). It is this third mark to which I would first direct your attention.
“Non-self? What the hell does that mean, Tai? Are you off your rocker? What do you mean I’m not a person? Are you saying I don’t exist? How could I be saying that if I didn’t exist? This is crazy talk! Of course I exist; that’s self-evident!”
Well, let’s investigate. Ramana Maharshi, one of the great sages in more recent history, credited self-inquiry as the basis of his teaching:
“The question ‘Who am I?’ is not really meant to get an answer, the question ‘Who am I?’ is meant to dissolve the questioner.”
Spend a minute, five minutes, an hour, a year engaging this practice and see what happens. Whatever your response or responses, notice from where does your response originate?
Where does it go?
What remains?
Who or what is asking the question?
If you engage in this practice, do you notice both the impermanence and attendant unsatisfactoriness of any response?
Notice that whatever content you generate, there is an element of partiality, of insufficiency, of incompleteness. Bad news: you’re not special. This works just as well on a coffee cup or any arbitrary object of investigation. Good news: you’re not special. You’re also not an object. If you were, how could you investigate? The finger cannot touch its own tip (Alan Watts). The eye (or the ‘I’) sees, but is itself unseen.
Or, in the succinct words of St. Francis of Assisi:
“What we are looking for is what is looking.”
As for the topic of control, I would suggest — how long can you stop blinking or breathing? Or can you predict your fifth thought from now? Try stopping your heart beat. Who or what is in control, really?
Now that we have disabused ourselves concerning the mirage of personhood, or at the very least loosened our “grip” (there’s certainly no expectation either way) and appreciate how limited our control really is, no matter how seemingly unpleasant, we can face the truth with clear acceptance and humility.
The Nature Of Thoughts, Identity & Time
While that last part may come across as a sobering Debbie Downer or Buzz Killington, better to live in truth than to maintain the charade.
Or not. Suit yourself.
There is a certain liberation that accompanies this insight of transparency. We don’t have to take ourselves so seriously. A decrease in stickiness of our identity (psychospiritual Teflon, if you will) lends itself to increased pliability.
Spiritual teacher Gary Weber, in his book Happiness Beyond Thought, suggests the following exercise: set a timer for 5 minutes. Notice your thoughts as they arise and fall away. See if you can catch the gaps and pauses between thoughts. Categorize them into three buckets — the past, present and future.
Notice that thinking is predominantly, if not exclusively, about the future and past. Rejoice, for it is the mind’s function to solve problems. Alas, it also creates them.
A natural follow-up to this introspection is to ask: what notices your thinking?
Intuitively, a common conception of time goes like this: you can’t change the past, and the future is unwritten. In addition to its immutable nature, the past has a deterministic effect on the present, and the present dictates the future.
This is the crux: it’s actually just the opposite. Through realizing that the self is essentially insubstantial and by giving the mind its proper portfolio management of past and future, we are free to rewrite our timeline through an interpretive lens of our choosing.
“Who controls the past controls the future.”
One of the key points in Personality Isn’t Permanent and various modalities of therapy, inner work and healing trauma, is to move away from victim consciousness. The gist of victim consciousness is the fundamental perspective of “life happening to you”. This is not to overlook all of the legitimate injustices and abuses that transpire. However, what are the consequences of abiding in victimhood? It is passive, disempowering and contributes to a sense of learned helplessness. This is a very childlike mentality that lacks maturity. What’s the payoff and why is it so enticing? If it’s not my fault, I don’t have to change. I don’t have to take responsibility for my life.
If we remain stuck in disempowering stories, it is not difficult to predict the future. More than likely, we simply repeat our history. If we can instead reinterpret our past narratives towards the perspective of “life happens for me” and reorient our past towards a genuine sense of gratitude, no matter how challenging or unsavory, this opens up a space for a future with much greater potential.
How to go actually go about this effectively is the domain of genuine psychological healing.
“Who controls the future controls the present.”
As human beings, this ability to imagine future scenarios is one of our distinguishing faculties. Perhaps this is more intuitive to grasp, but the future is just as fictitious as the past, yet humans, like other animals, are creatures of habit. We are likely far more predictable than we would care to admit.
Why is that? How many of us dare to think six months, a year, three to five years, ten years or even further into the future?
What is the resistance towards writing a future? Is it the fear of failing, the risk of disappointment? Should we simply throw up our hands, give up and let fate decide? Perhaps it is simply too overwhelming to consider all of the possibilities.
“Most people prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty.” —Virginia Satir
It requires courage to commit to a future, to risk humiliation and fall short.
While there may be a felt sense of risk, as we have seen, this sense of self and identity, when closely scrutinized, is diaphanous, ephemeral, non-existent. What then, is really being risked?
Go for it.
If it’s all a game, and it’s all made up, we may as well write our own story of the past and design our future.
All that remains then is to act congruently with the vision of your future. While the chasm between here and there may seem nearly insurmountable depending on the scope of your vision, consistently remind yourself of the progress you have already made to arrive at your present identity. Look at how far you’ve already come.
Keep going.
Recapitulation & Conclusion
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the future controls the present.”
‘Who’ is mentally constructed.
Recognize how limited control is but embrace what truly is under our control with clarity.
Investigate time. Notice all thought about time happens in the present.
Put the mind in its proper place.
Reconceive time from an unchangeable past and an unwritten future to something far more mutable. It’s your life, after all. You decide.
Heal your past — transform the helplessness of victim consciousness to gratitude. Move from 'life happens to me' towards 'life happens for me.'
Design and commit to a future of your conscious choosing. Use your vision of your future as a compass to present action. Replace circumstance with intentionality.
Fin.
...beautiful...