We tend to look in the past for why we are feeling the way we are now. Many times we find ourselves basing our lives on our past. We say: "The reason I am the way I am now is because of what happened to me." Yet, as Alan Watts says, "It really doesn't make sense to base our lives on what literally no longer exists." The past is no longer here; we don't have to fight with something that no longer is. We can forgive and release the past as a way of realizing our freedom from it. The past only controls us as long as we mentally dwell upon it and forget that we are no longer there. Jesus said, "Let the dead bury the dead." In other words, let the past be past— it came to pass, not to stay. Releasing the past, we then awaken to our freedom.