Why do we go back either in time or in space to look for memories? Because we think they are happy memories. So it is an illusion. What we cannot find in the present we are not going to find in the past. And even if it did exist there, it is of no more use to me than the bread I threw away yesterday, and for which I am hungry today. If I find it, it is not going to be edible bread anymore. This is one reason why we should not look backwards. Either it is here or it is in front of us. It is not behind us, by any means. It cannot be captured again.

Memories are like roses: soft, tender, sweet, but unfortunately, when we go back in time, we find the petals have dried and blown away and all that is left are the twigs and the thorns which have hardened with time, and prick you all the more. If they still exist, you have only the thorns, the flowers are gone. So in these ways we damage ourselves by going back looking for things which we have not, in things which we had.

“Pain”, CR, January, 1991, p. 21

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Because the present is a moment in which we are always trying to reconcile the potentiality of the past with the achievement of the future. Not realising that the past is dead, the future is not yet, and such potentiality as is available, is now in the present.

Love Has No Reason, Sept. 21, 1992

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 It is wisdom to put the past back where it belongs (in the past!) and get on with the job of living properly in the present—which is where the future is being built! If this is understood and followed sensibly, then the past is past, and we should not devote even a moment to it. Then we become free of all the disappointments, sorrows and guilts associated with that part which has gone, and we are free to face the future in the most sensible way by trying to build the future. This, if followed exactly, is in itself a great liberation, as it confers freedom of thought and action upon the individual who has hitherto been burdened by the sins and the tragedies of the past!

Spider's Web Vol 1, 5th February 1985, Denmark