If Only… Living Life Without Regrets. Part Two

If Only… Living Life Without Regrets. Part Two

[00:45] Buddha’s Hallway of Mirrors

There’s another part to the question about, “If only… If only I hadn’t done this. If only…” Because we’ve covered already, “If only I’d done this,” unfulfilled desires. “If only I had jumped out of an aircraft at 10,000 feet and hurtled towards the Earth and pulled the rip cord and glided to the Earth, and conquered the fear of falling. If only, then I would have been a fulfilled person, but I didn’t do that. Oh, if only.”

So we’ve covered the “if onlys” in another episode. I’d like to spend some time on the subject of regretting what already has gone down.

So, we look at the long trail of evolution, one of the things that came out of a retelling of the life of Lord Buddha. Lord Buddha, who lived some 2700 years ago, at the moment of his nirvana, the moment of his arriving into realization, Self realization, at the moment of his arriving into the integration of Unified Field consciousness with his own individual consciousness, at that moment Buddha had, for him, an experience which possibly was unique.

We’ll see when each of you practicing Vedic Meditation twice a day will also arrive at that state. Maybe you’ll also have an experience like this. We’ll see.

But certainly Buddha reports having had this experience of what he called the hallway of mirrors. Now, what does that mean? You’ve stood, all of you, before a mirror, maybe in a barber shop, maybe in your own bathroom, where there’s another mirror behind you, and looking forward at yourself in the mirror, but being able to see behind you the other mirror.

You see the back of your head and then you see a corridor of mirrors with you featuring in each of them, in some of them alternating your front view, the back of your head view, the front of your head view, the back of your head view, and trailing off infinitely into the distance, usually curving slightly to the right or curving slightly to the left, because your own head gets in the way of you having a straight down-the-line view.

This is the hallway of mirrors analogy that Buddha used to describe his experience. And what was in that hallway of mirrors as he described it? He could see all of the lifetimes preceding this one. His individual generations of rising through varying degrees of species from a blade of grass, through a number of body lives, to slightly more sophisticated body life of a beetle.

To a slightly more sophisticated body life of another larger insect. To the slightly more sophisticated life of some lizard. To the slightly more sophisticated life of some mammalian small creature. Through many, many lives of different mammals making their way up to a cow. And then, coming first time human. First time human out of the animal kingdom.

See, in the Vedic worldview, there’s that ever increasing sophistication is the average. It’s the average of a curve. And so one continues finding oneself being born into nervous systems which are increasingly complex. I’m not going to use the word complicated because I’m using complex here as well-integrated sophistication.

Sophisticated complexity is ever increasing elegance of physiology, until finally arriving where he found himself sitting as Buddha, enlightened. But he could see down this corridor of lifetimes and in this corridor there was a theme; ever increasing sophistication. So let’s look at that for a moment.

We’ll use Buddha’s experience as a kind of a jumping off point.

[05:43] Something Good is Happening

What does the word evolution mean? Well, for most of us, it means that wherever I am now, I’m getting better every day. Something good is happening. There is progressive change unfolding. What I refer to as the sequential elaboration of evolution, the storyline.

Sometimes things seem to be a little bit dark and stormy and not as abundant as other times, but if I have enough memory in my memory banks, I can use my intelligence to direct my memory to my past and realize that it’s really elevational theater. There’s a period of time where you’re at a particular plateau. And then there’s a fall from that plateau. Things change.

When we don’t have the evolutionary viewpoint, we use different language. We say, “Things went wrong.” Well, things didn’t go wrong. What happened was things went right, things changed, and the unsustainability of the previous plateau came to a close. That plateau reached its expiry date, and there’s a fall from the plateau. That means that things upon which you had relied no longer are there and reliable for you.

Certain experiences, relations with people, styles of behavior, styles of relating, physical things like houses or bicycles or whatever else, these physical possessions. went through a change, and then there was a fall from the previous plateau. The fall means that you can no longer rely upon the different elements of the previous plateau.

Then in the depths of that fall, realization begins to come to us. Things begin to change. Opportunities begin to appear. We’re able to meet some of those opportunities and interact with them. We rise and we rise and we rise up and we exceed the previous plateau. But we’re entering into a new plateau. It’s a higher one.

We go along in that plateau for a while, this also will pass. This also will change. The elements that seem to be supportive of the new plateau will begin to, one by one, disintegrate. And this plateau also will change, and will also be a readjustment of expectations. This is the next fall.

And then the next rise, which will take us up and beyond the previous plateau. And so on and so on. This is what I refer to as “elevational theater,” because if we take plateau followed by fall, followed by rise, followed by new plateau, higher than the previous one, followed by fall, followed by rise, followed by new plateau.

If we do a Fourier analysis of this timeline, Fourier was a mathematician who taught us how to do averaging of curves, we get an upward curve. We see this continuous upward curve. This is evolution.

[09:26] The Penitent Person

So when we think of evolution, mostly we think about, “Oh goody, whatever is good now is going to get even better. All my things about me that are weak are going to drop off. And all the things about me that are good, they’re going to get even better. If that’s evolution, now, I’m into that.”

And then we have, “But oh, let’s look back at this. You had that argument with your mother,” or “you had that argument with your father,” or “you had that argument with your lover,” or maybe you just didn’t argue at all, you vanished.

Or maybe you were cowardly. Or maybe you were this, or maybe you were that, and don’t you regret. And you’re putting yourself in the penitentiary. What’s a penitentiary? We usually think of them as prisons. But it’s a place for people to be penitent.

Now most of us don’t recall from our English lessons what the word penitent actually means. But it means to be repentant, to be living in regret. It’s a place where you think about the stuff you’ve done that could have been done better but wasn’t.

Where you made choices that, now you’re incarcerated somewhere in a penitentiary where you are expected to be penitent and to be correcting yourself. 

Now you don’t need to necessarily be locked up and incarcerated physically in order to be in a penitentiary. You can place yourself in one. The penitent person is in a penitentiary. and what is that? It’s a failure to have the largest possible view.

We don’t have to be gleeful about opportunities we missed, or gleeful about choices we made that were not life supporting, that were life damaging, but what we do have to do is get up and beyond all of this and look at it from a perspective of a century. Human body life could be about a century, some percentage of a century. If we hit the century mark and go beyond it, well, that’s not the usual thing, but, it’s a possibility for a human body to last for a century, so let’s think of it in that way. And then we can go beyond a century to a millennium, 1,000 years.

So, if in the largest possible time view, the largest possible perspective, there was evolution, what does evolution require? It doesn’t just require things are getting better. That’s a little bit, goody two shoes about evolution. Getting all excited about, “Oh, everything’s getting better.”

We have to acknowledge that evolution requires us to once upon a time  having been worse than this. If we weren’t worse than this once upon a time, evolution doesn’t exist. The fact that you are now in a state where you would not have made the choices you once made indicates evolution has occurred.

We don’t have to sit in the penitentiary for very long. We can simply acknowledge, “Well, that was a choice that I made. Interesting. It didn’t work out all that well. If a similar choice or the exact same choice came to me today, I would choose differently.” This is evolution. Congratulations. And what does evolution depend upon?

It depends upon there being a place in the past where you would have done worse than would do today. Where your choices would be worse than they are today. It depends upon you having a memory of things which you’re probably thinking in terms of “regrettable.” 

Let’s not waste time regretting anything. Let’s learn from it. Lesson learned, and we are now in a position, thank goodness, we are now in a position where we can look at the other side of evolution, the forward-looking side of evolution, and say, “Something good is happening. Things are getting better.”

Better than what? The what from which things are getting better is the behaviors of the past, which don’t bother regretting them, just move on from them. Learn from them. Use them as evidence of evolution.

[14:34] Saṃskara

So, this is the difference in the Sanskrit language between the word saṃskara. S-A, an Ṃ with a dot under it, which indicates a kind of nasalized M N sound, a little bit like the French saying sanssouci. So saṃskara, S-A- Ṃ with a dot under it, S-K-A-R-A, saṃskara, saṃskara.

A saṃskara is the etymology, the source of our English word, scar. When you have an impression left from some activity that laid open your flesh at one point, and you’ve got a scar to show and to remember from the thing that possibly you wouldn’t do again. Because here’s a scar to remind you of what happened when you didn’t look the right way or when you sharpened the knife but then accidentally put your own body in the way of the blade. Whatever it may have been.

So, scar comes from saṃskara, which means a memory that you have that binds you because you’re not able to see it in context. A non-contextual memory. Context is provided by perspective. Large perspective gives rich context. Small perspective, when I can only see a certain amount, gives me very poor context.

Things stand out and one looks with shame at a less evolved state that one was in. So rather than looking with shame at a less evolved state, let me offer to you that the less evolved state, taken with the largest possible perspective in the largest possible perspective, can be given rich context. and see what it is you’re departing from.

And so the past is the rearview mirror. You’re looking in the mirror and seeing what’s behind you from which you are departing as it’s receding away from you. And the future is the windscreen, as we say in the Commonwealth, or the windshield, as Americans say. The frontward view. The oncoming view, where you’re going.

Keep your attention mainly on the windscreen. Any driver instructor will tell you that. Don’t be constantly looking in the rear view mirror. Otherwise, you might miss a curve, or you might end up making contact with a tree, or a telephone post, or something.

[17:41] You are Not the Same You You Used to Be

So, primarily our awareness needs to be evolutionarily; on what’s coming and how things are progressing with greater speed and with greater latitude, greater freedom. Occasionally we glance in the rearview mirror in order to ascertain what we left behind, but too much living in the rearview mirror is dangerous to life. And so, the you of today is a different you of the past.

Consider this for a moment. I’ve said this in other places but I’d like to use it in a different context now. This body that you find yourself sitting in, all the way down to those little tootsie toes of yours, up to the tip of your nose and the top of your head, and out to your fingertips everywhere.

This body that you’ve convinced yourself is you, palpably, scientifically, is not you. It’s made up of 70 trillion individual cells, and every one of those cells has an expiry date. Skin cells expire in 28 to 30 days, so your outer epidermis will be shed over the next month and replaced by subdermal layers, which will come up and become the new epidermis.

So the skin that’s stretched over the muscles in the bone, that everybody looks at you and goes, “Oh, you’re so and so, Percival from Arkansas.” Well, last month’s skin is a completely different skin. Last month’s skin is floating around in the breeze and the house dust mites are getting at it. It’s all flaked off of you and you’re leaving a trail of it everywhere you go.

The new skin, the new you is less than a month old. Below that we have the fascia. Below that we have the muscles. There are many layers. I’m skipping a few just to make a point. Then we have the bones. And each one of these layers takes longer to die cell by cell and to replace itself. But the oldest, the bone cells, ’round about 7 years replacement time, our skeletal base.

So, if you are your body, then the you that you think you are wasn’t even here more than eight years ago. Whatever happened, whatever “you” did or didn’t do, neglected to do or did, action or omission of action, this body is a completely new body. It’s replacing itself cell by cell every day.

Our body cannot possibly be what we are. Our body is not a frozen sculpture. Our body is a flow, a flux of energy and information that’s constantly going through change.

The one constant that resides inside this flow of cells is the consciousness that resides inside of it. The consciousness can constantly and does constantly change this body. Think a happy thought, all the cells are now chemically happy cells. Different chemical.

Think a sad thought. You’ve just changed the chemistry. All the cells now structurally and materially behave in relation to each other in a sad way.

Think an angry thought. Now you’ve got the body of anger and ooh, you can feel it. Think a happy thought, and you have the body of bliss. Within seconds we change the chemical structure and material and structural relationships of the body, of this big mass of cells that we think we are. We have a body, we are not the body that we have.

The body is a printout of our consciousness. Yesterday’s mind, today’s body. Today’s mind, tomorrow’s body. What body are you constructing for yourself right now?

If you’re dwelling on the less evolved version of you and moping about in the self-created penitentiary, then you are constructing for tomorrow the body of regrets and penitence.

[22:35] I am Better Today

Why are you doing that? Let’s keep today’s consciousness elevated where we wish it to be so that we can construct for ourselves the body of tomorrow, the body that we would prefer to have.

So, place your attention on that which you wish to grow. Don’t spend time sitting around thinking about all the things you don’t wish to grow.

Whatever it is you put attention on, it’s like walking around with a sprinkler, watering a garden. If you stand in front of the weeds, and you’re regretting the existence of the weeds, you’re spraying the weeds with your garden hose that’s sitting in your hand while you’re looking at the weeds and wishing they weren’t there. You’re watering them.

And then tomorrow, when you come back and they’ve grown into a forest, and you wonder, “How the heck did that happen?” Well, you did it. Yesterday, you stood there with your hose in your hand, gazing at the weeds, wishing they weren’t there.

Why weren’t you standing in front of the apricot tree? Or standing in front of the pumpkins? Or standing in front of the zucchinis? Or whatever. put your attention on that, which you wish to grow. whatever you put your attention on, that thing will be growing.

So rather than growing in penitence in the penitentiary consciousness, rather than growing in regrets in the regret consciousness, let’s acknowledge quietly that every one of us was considerably more lousy before than we are today.

That’s what evolution means. “I am better today. If I’m experiencing regret, it means I’m better today than I was before.” Let’s harness that part of it.

And of course you are. Evolution works. It works because the past is always less sophisticated than the present, and the present is always less sophisticated than the future.

So we can kind of stay cheery about all this.

Jai Guru Deva.