The Past

The past exists in us as activity, and the content of personality is an activity, a movement. Ego activity is the substance of suffering; it is contraction itself. You can see this more specifically if you look at the activity in the centers of the body. If you look at the activity in the head, you’ll see concern and worry. In the heart, it’s a sense of guilt and frustration. Looking at activity in the belly, you’ll see it as attachment and desire. But it is all the same thing: ego activity. And ego activity is always concerned with issues from your past. It is what is called personal karma, or the wheel of life and death. It is the movement of your mind, your personality, your choices, preferences, judgments, resistances – anything you do actively. (Diamond Heart Book 4, pg 10)

Personality and the past

What are the impurities of the personality? What will be clarified from the personality? The answer is simple: the past. The thickness, the dullness, the suffering that you experience as the personality are there because the personality does not exist in its pure form. It carries the past with it, and the past exists as conflicts, memories, undischarged feelings, misunderstandings, ignorance, and all the reactions, associations, and fantasies corresponding to all the ignorance from the past. (Diamond Heart Book 4, pg 5)

Reality and knowing

The moment you know what to do, you are already using the past. You are already taking direction. You’ve already separated things: you are choosing one part of your mind over another when you say, “I know what to do.” Knowing reality, knowing what to do about it, wanting something from reality, and desiring it, feeling dissatisfied by it – all these are indications of living in the old, dead world. (Diamond Heart Book 4, pg 146)