Learn in the Present Moment and Disarm Any Regret

Following is a small excerpt from a "fireside chat" between Guy Finley and Dr. Ellen Dickstein as they explored the topic of The Power to Release Regrets and Get Over Guilt.

Guy: We don't "learn" the way that we think we learn... which is by reliving things. No one learns anything by reliving a situation.

Ellen: This reminds me of something you said that I found very interesting, which was: "People think they can learn from the past, but they don't. It's not true. We can't learn from the past."

Guy: No, we can't.

Ellen: Can you explain that? It's such a deep-seated belief in people.

Guy: When we think to ourselves about an event that took place, we revisit these things because we want to reconcile them. We believe we'll learn from it if we revisit it. But when I revisit the past, am I revisiting the past?

Ellen: No, I'm revisiting my memory and my distorted picture of the event.

Guy: I'm literally moving into a house of pictures in my head, loaded with the content of my experience that provide me the sensations that were stored there when the impressions were first taking place. So, I'm as far away from reality as a human being can be. I'm literally in a dream. When you are regretting something, caught in the past over a pain, you are in a dream!

I have to be there where change is possible. Change is only possible in the full integration of my awareness with the full awareness of myself as revealed by the present moment. Take one of those elements out of that situation and any change is impossible, except for contrived change.

Contrived changes are those we add to ourselves when thinking back over who we've been, and we then decide who we're going to be. So, I come up with a new image. "I won't regret it when I'm the king of Siam!"

Ellen: That image comes from memory, so it's not a new person at all.

Guy: And not only does it come from memory, but it soon becomes the thing that I regret. Because when I decide I'm going to be a new kind of person, then I have to go out and fulfill all the things necessary to be that person. And I can't keep that in place any more than I could have kept the one that made me regret what I did in the first place.

So here I am, but my image of myself is Mr. Savoir...sophistication... I'm whoever it is that looks like that. In the moment when I'm like that, suddenly you see that I'm not, and I'm filled with regrets. So, the regret is a sort of back-handed attempt to prove to myself that I was what I wasn't to begin with.

Ellen: Yes. And all the pain was in the pretending.

Guy: Exactly. So that's another example of where we can learn in the present moment and disarm this part of us that stores these regrets.

Ellen: And the lesson is if with awareness you look at the thing, then even what you thought was bad can actually be turned into something good. Because there's a new lesson about yourself that can bring you to a higher level.

Guy: All things are good, Ellen. All things are good for those who are awake enough within themselves to allow all things to be a part of the transformation of all things within them. That's what real life is. And there's never regret in that. There's no judgment of oneself in that. There's no guilt -- none of the qualities that are so prevalent right now in our society, and in ourselves as individuals.

All of that begins to wash away because a person is in a different relationship with the moment. And they understand the moment is really a bit of grace. It's an opportunity to explore what is present in them for the purpose of the transformation of that presence.