There are two ways (at least) of looking at memory. Sometimes we feel trapped by our memory; we realize our tendency to superimpose things from the past on present time happenings. We can feel caught in a repetitive pattern of events because of our memory. We may view animals as much freer than ourselves because they don't seem to mind repetition. Yet our memory is not just a yoke that pulls us into repetitive cycles. Memory gives us the freedom to make sense of our life. Without memory, there would be no possibility of functioning in our world. We remember all the rules of life each day, and we remember how to apply them. If we had to relearn how to walk, talk, eat, drive or relate to others every day, life wouldn't be possible for us. We can be glad for the memory of who and what each of us is every day. There may come a point of liberation when we are free from the bondage of memory, but we will still have the use of memory to function appropriately in this world. Be thankful for the great tool of memory. 

When we change, everything changes. Sometimes we seem to exhaust ourselves trying to get people or situations in our outer life to change. We feel that if only they would change, we would be all right. So we try and try to get them to see our point of view. We try to get them to connect with us, or we try to get them to let go of us. We spend a lot of time trying to make the outer world come around to our way of thinking. What a tiring pursuit! At some point we begin to realize that if we change our mind and our heart there is always a corresponding change in the outer. There's an old hermetic saying: "As within, so without." Let's begin to change our world by changing our own mind first. Let's release an old tired thought that is no longer serving any purpose. Let's accept a new positive thought about ourselves and our life. 

Too often we see our family from a center of judgment deep within ourselves. When we think of the different people in our family, we always seem to relate to each of them through a fixed idea of who he or she is. We say, so-and-so will always be like that. We never seem to allow for growth, change, transformation or unfoldment in our family members. Yet each of our loved ones is a growing and vital offspring of nature and nature never does the same thing twice. Perhaps it's time to set everyone free, to release every person in our family from the prison of our imagination— set each free to reveal himself or herself to us in a new and living way. Each person in our family is a unique way in which life is expressing. Each is an original, unlike anyone before or since. We can gaze in wonder at the unique energy-awareness-being each person in our life really is. Set everyone in your life free today. 

When my cat isn't fed on time, he sometimes becomes very angry— even outraged. And even after the situation is remedied, and the food is right there in front of him, he will still continue to whine and cry until he complains himself out. We, too, may find ourselves in a complaining mode long after the original injury is over. Complaining about a hurt we have experienced can indeed be a part of the healing process. We may need to sit in the corner for awhile and lick our wounds and mourn over our hurts and losses. While it's OK to complain, it's even better to complete your complaint and get on with your life. 

When things don't seem to be working out for us, we usually pick someone to blame. Often we pick the people nearest at hand on whom to take out our frustrations. These are the people who support and who love us dearly; yet when it comes time to fight with someone, we always seem to pick these people. Perhaps instinctively we feel that those closest to us will not mind our anger— because they know we don't really mean it. Yet it puts great strain on our relationships to test them in this way. In effect, we are saying, "If you really love me, you should put up with me even when I'm being hostile and unreasonable." Let's enjoy the people in our lives, not inflict our erratic mood changes on them. People are with us because they do care for us— let's make it easy for them to like being with us as well. 

Many times we blame outer circumstance for our problems. What a relief when we can begin to forgive the outer world and release the need to blame anyone, including ourselves. Complaining does not solve our problems. When we relax and release our scolding attitude, we discover that there is nothing and no one left to blame. There's aTaoist story about a man riding in a boat. When his boat is suddenly hit by another boat, the man turns around furiously to yell at the person driving the other boat— but the boat is empty. Who can we blame when there is no one there but us? 

A woman went to a counselor and complained, "When we were first married, everything was different. When I would come home from work, the dog would bark at me, and my husband would bring me my slippers. Now everything has changed. When I come home from work now, my husband barks at me, and the dog brings me my slippers.” "Why are you complaining?" asked the counselor. "You're still getting the same service." Things do change in life. We hear people talking about the good old days— but were they really that good? Perhaps they were spelled d-a-z-e instead of d-a-y-s. Rather than wasting our time complaining about how things have changed, maybe we can deepen our perspective until we reach the underlying harmony and order at the center of our life. In Taoism they say, "The surface changes, the depth always remains the same." Let's stay so centered within the depth of our being that we cease to be disturbed by changes at the surface of life. 

This present moment is not the past. Sometimes we feel that a present moment happening is just like something that happened to us before. We say to ourselves, "I know better this time." And we try to treat the present situation as if it were something from the past. We impose a preconceived judgment upon what is happening. But the present now moment is always fresh and new and innocent of the past. We need to be open to receive the meaning and joy that this present moment has for each of us. As no two people are alike, so no two moments in our life are alike. Let's quit trying to make the present into what has already happened. Our life is not a rehearsal; it is also not a rerun. 

In Zen they say, "When the cart won't move, who do we whip, the cart or the horse?" Logically we would say, "It's the horse that is to blame." But perhaps there's another way of seeing this. Yogi Berra used to say, "When I'm not hitting, I blame the bat, not myself. How can I be at fault for not hitting? So I get another bat, and then I start hitting again." When things aren't going well for us, we tend to blame ourselves or those closest to us. But how can it really be our fault or their fault? Maybe we need to just see it from a different angle. If we have to assign fault, maybe we can blame some external force (the bat or the cart) just to relieve the pressure. As Bob Dylan once said of the 80's, "It just wasn't my decade." It's surprising how much order and harmony flows into our lives as we release the need to blame. 

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. 

Someone once said, "I have made a parachute out of everything broken." There was once a janitor named Murray Spangler who lived in Canton, Ohio. One day, Murray was sweeping dust from the carpet—as usual the dust from the sweeping was making him cough and wheeze. All of a sudden, Murray stopped sweeping. He had an idea: what if there were some kind of gadget that could suck the dust up from the floor into some kind of container? He found a friend to finance him, a man named H.W. Hoover.... So with us, in our life right now. Whatever is disturbing us, whatever is the problem, has within itself the seed of its own solution, a solution that may go beyond our own individual situation and also be of great benefit to our world. As Robert Schuller says, "We can turn our scars into stars" by not trying to escape but by seeking the solution to our problem from within the problem itself. Our problems are the stepping stones to our freedom. 

When we are having trouble releasing a tiresome situation in our life, it may be that we just need to give it a new name. What we are calling a mistake or a negative experience may have just been an experience that, at the time, we couldn't understand or see clearly. We may just need to relabel it so that it is no longer an obstacle for us. When we decide to stop calling something bad, we begin immediately to see the good in it. This frees us from the need to keep rehearsing it over and over again: "Oh, oh, why did this happen to me?" When we can give an experience in our lives our blessing, it lets us go. 

When his company had a corner on the automobile market, Henry Ford once said, "Americans can have any color car they want, as long as it is black." As a result of this stubborn philosophy, within a very few short years, Ford lost his hold over the auto industry, until his company was willing to come into alignment with the changing needs of people. In the 1950's, Ford introduced the Edsel as a medium-priced alternative between the inexpensive Ford and the more costly Mercury. The Edsel, as we know now, was a major financial disaster. Yet out of the Edsel fiasco, the Ford researchers discovered a new market: Americans were no longer merely buying cars based on price— the cars had to fit certain lifestyle changes and aspirations. So out of the failed Edsel experiment, Ford developed the Thunderbird to appeal to an emerging American sports car consciousness. And the Thunderbird was one of the greatest successes in the auto industry. When we are open to learning through our apparent mistakes, we discover that the mistakes themselves can be the stepping stones to our success in life. 

We often wait to give gifts to someone until it is his or her birthday or some special holiday like Christmas or Hanukkah. But this takes much of the surprise out of our gift-giving; it makes it too predictable. The real joy in giving and receiving gifts is in the unexpected. When, for no reason, we give a gift to a friend, just because we feel like giving him something special, there is a great gladness in being so unpredictably generous and open and loving. Perhaps we can also give ourselves more in our life in this open and generous and spontaneous way. Maybe we can begin by just picking someone who is special to us and give him an unexpected gift just because we want him to know how important he is to us. So give, even if it's not his or her birthday; give unexpectedly and see the joy you create. 

There's a Zen saying, "Those who come are not to be refused; those who leave are not to be pursued," meaning that we can relax and allow the comings and goings of the people and situations in our lives to happen without struggle, strain or anxiety. Sometimes we are exhausting ourselves trying to make something or someone stay who is ready to leave or trying to make something or someone leave who wants to stay. Our lives become very simple and filled with ease when we decide to follow the way of not resisting or letting things come and go. The seasons come and go in orderly sequence and progression. This is the way of nature. We can't argue and say summer mustn't leave and fall mustn't come, and fall mustn't leave and winter mustn't come. What we can do is relax and appreciate the beauty of each season as it comes and release it in gladness as it goes, knowing that another beauty awaits us. 

When we are traveling on an airline, we are familiar with the flight attendant's instructions: "If the cabin pressure changes, an oxygen mask will drop from the overhead bin. If you are travelling with a small child, first put on your mask before you put the mask on the child." If we stop to think about these instructions, we realize a profound spiritual truth: first we need to get ourselves together before we can be of much help to the others in our lives. Yet we have the tendency to want to 'fix' the people in our lives first, and then we'll get around to getting ourselves clear and free. We live in relationship to help us to see our own spiritual blemishes, not to point out the spiritual faults of another. Buddha said, "Work out your salvation with diligence"— not somebody else's. 

Sometimes even our deepest relationships in life change. People we thought we would be with forever are suddenly gone for one reason or another. This is a very challenging time, when someone we were close to is leaving or has left our life. Sometimes we feel as if we ourselves are being lost. Our emotional connections to people we are close to are so strong that we almost feel as if we are losing our own center deep inside when they leave our life. It is helpful during these trying times to remember that there is more to us than any relationship in life. We each have within us the capacity to deal with any relationship or situation that comes our way. People don't always stay with us, and one of the great gifts of maturity is in learning to be with ourselves and learning to befriend ourselves as people come and go in our lives. The self that each of us is has all the strength and courage it needs to go forward in this life regardless of circumstances. 

Thomas Lux once said, "Friend, please forgive me for dying so little today." Sometimes we outlive ourselves by carrying yesterday's thoughts and feelings into today. If we carry too many yesterdays with us, we may find ourselves missing too much of today. Like the lady in Dickens' Great Expectations, we might find ourselves in a shuttered room full of memories living out of our past. To find ourselves alive and fully real right now, we can die to yesterday's pains and pleasures, to all that we were in the past. Dying daily to the past is to come alive and feel vital, fulfilled and ever-new. It is particularly helpful to forgive and release old memories of pain, hurt and sorrow; we really don't have to be who we were then any longer. No one keeps us in the past but ourselves; no one can open the door to living now but ourselves. Choosing to be fully present in this live gives us tremendous energy to go forward into newness and joy. 

There is a wonderful story told of the legendary Zen Master Bodhidharma who is said to have brought Zen to China from India. The legend has it that one time Bodhidharma fell asleep in meditation, and when he awoke, he was so angry with himself that he cut off his eyelashes as a reminder to himself to stay awake in meditation. The story goes on that Bodhidharma's eyelashes fell to the ground, took root and sprouted as tea plants. So when a Zen monk is tempted to fall asleep in meditation, he drinks tea— which is Bodhidharma's gift of wakefulness. It's interesting that even the great Bodhidharma got angry at himself for spiritual slackness. In fact, the great teachers of humanity have all acknowledged mistakes and shortcomings. Yet how hard we tend to be on ourselves for our frailties and mistakes! Perhaps we can be a little more gentle and tolerant of our own foibles when we stop and think of Bodhidharma's eyelashes. 

A customer was complaining about the shoes he had purchased in a store. After offering to refund his money or exchange the shoes to no avail, the salesman finally asked, "Well, what do you want?" The customer responded, "I just want to complain." Sometimes we feel that life has played us a dirty trick; people and circumstances have conspired to cause us disappointment, frustration and sorrow, and we are nursing our grievances against the way things are and have been for us. "It's unfair," we say. We haven't been treated right by this, that or the other. Yet we can rehearse the wrongs of life endlessly and never find peace of mind or freedom of heart. Forgiveness releases us from a too long festering wound of pain and grievance. With forgiveness comes real healing and new life. We forgive for our own healing sake. We've been wounded too long, and we need the healing. We don't have to carry our pain a moment longer. This moment right now we can forgive and experience our healing and our release.