September 20, 2005 at 10:55:57 p.m.
Historians, I am convinced, would have us believe that the study of the past provides us with a clear understanding of our triumphs and a litany of our mistakes. In this manner, we are told, we can learn to control our experiences and become masters of our future.
I have never been able to understand this logic. If true, then we would never have seen anything but the first war, or the first murder, or the first plague. I always thought that leaning from one’s mistakes meant not making them again and again. Instead, history is a smudged line drawing of man’s inhumanity to man. Although there have been some triumphs, the succession of repetitive horrors continue.
From the metaphysical view the problem is twofold. The first lies with Universal Law. The second with our unwillingness to follow that law.
In the outworking of an infinite universe, there is no such thing as repetition. In this context, repetition is meant to mean “an exact duplicate.” There will certainly be similarities, but exact duplicates do not exist. To what value then, would history be to the Universe? If each action is “new” and there is not duplication, a review of what has gone before would serve little, if any purpose, relative to moving forward. In more mundane terms, “done is done.” Within Universal movement, all action is complete within itself and life goes on.
It is our unwillingness to follow that Law that lies at the heart of our travails. Humans are collectors, rememberers, holders of the past. Our reluctance to give up one old pattern, one old thought, one old memory, is so deeply a part of our make-up, that the ability to move forward is already impeded beyond any further action.
Our momentoes become an historical prison, dooming us to the repetition, or near repetition of our past. What we believe worked no longer works, because we cannot go back to where we were. A memory is nothing more than than a myth of what we wish to believe, not a record of what really happened. What we recall is what we want to recall and the longer we are removed in time and experience from the original experience, the more distorted the picture.
This is one reason we keep repeating war. In time, no matter how horrible the war has been, we outgrow it. Instead of seeing the horror we change the picture to heroics and weave strange and mystical tales of our victories and conquests. And when the stories begin to lose their meaning, we have another war. We refresh our heroes and reinforce our political beliefs and continue to do this until the next generation repeats the historical mayhem.
But, it’s easy to lose sight of the eye of the needle. Everything we do within our individual experience is either a move forward or an attempt at a repetition of something from our past. The photos in our albums, the keepsake on the mantle, nostalgic conversations of better times, all contribute to the attempt to go home again. Perhaps there isn’t any harm in these things, except that one cannot grow and reach the level of experience intended for this lifetime, while carrying the chains of yesterday.
The will of God, to which many people love to refer, in no Will at all. The Universe doesn’t have any plans, because it is not dependent upon its experience. It is happening, now-not later, nor retrospectively-NOW! To the extent you can make your life work the same way, you will be able to tap into the unlimited Universal power that surrounds you. – G.T.