We cannot turn back time....they say. People think of the past and live in the past and are traumatized by past events for years and years.
But the Buddha said " Time is not." Why ?
What does he know about time that other people do not. Is he so special that "time IS NOT" for him but "time IS" for the general population? I think not. There is a pearl in his words that can be harvested by those curious to know.
I will try to explain what I recently discovered about this statement and possibly change someone's view of time.
Something bad happened in the past, either to us or by us and we cannot undo it. We regret it or are traumatized by it. We keep thinking about it. It enters the head, uninvited, in a free moment, replays in the mind like a movie, and releases cortisol ( the stress hormone) again and again, week after week, maybe for years.
So the tormentor is not actually the event, because it happened long ago...but the process in our mind which keeps repeating it. For example - the mind may make us feel that we didn't act the way we should have, we should have done something differently, or maybe reacted to an injustice differently.
But we cannot go back into that situation again and no pause button. We are in the present, today...what can we do about it ? Can we learn from it? Will we repeat the same action in a similar situation? My guess is no.
If we regret a poor action, then we have grown in maturity and would not repeat the same mistake. We know we have grown because we regret. Have we forgiven an injustice done to us? If not, we can forgive today.
So the situation is gone, but what was the purpose of that situation , and our ability to remember it? Its probably to show us what is not of the highest in us. To expose a flaw. We did the mistake. We learnt from it. Today, we will not repeat it. A similar situation may or may not unfold to test us, but we know we have learnt our lesson. We have grown in maturity. So time has served its purpose.
These unconscious replays are images and movies we carry with us in our psyche. If those images were erased, for example with amnesia, then time would be erased.
The effect of reliving the past is what it does to us , in our minds , in our emotions and our sense of who we are.
Our memory allows us to process it in our minds, and learn from it. It's not necessary to re-wind and watch the same tape everyday. That's our choice, it has nothing to do with time. We always have the option to forget it, to consciously choose to do something else with our mind.
This is how we can use time for our benefit and not be tortured about the past. It requires us to be more conscious and question: Why does this keep coming back to me ? What have I not processed about my past ? Why can't I let it go?
And that's what I think the Buddha meant by "time is not".
🙏
When you pointed out that the tormentor is not the event, but the process in our minds, I felt myself begin to dis-identify with a separate self stuck in trauma (a certain place and time) .
Why was I holding onto this certain place and time? Because another self thought it had to preserve the event, so it could figure out how to DO something about the injustice. But the event is gone! What is left are energy impulses in MY physical, mental, emotional and identity bodies that I have created in reaction to the events.
How will punishing another for exercising their free will choice (perceived injustice) free me? How will me forcing my idea of right and wrong…
Thank you for sharing 🌺