Dear Readers,
Recently I stumbled upon a question from a reader that intrigued me : are we prisoners of the past?
Please give me your thoughts on that.
Love,
Paulo
Are we prisoners of the past?
Previous post: Top authors join Amnesty project
Next post: YouTube Reporter am DLD 2008: Paulo Coelho
Previous post: Top authors join Amnesty project
Next post: YouTube Reporter am DLD 2008: Paulo Coelho
{ 409 comments… read them below or add one }
Next Comments →
I have been a prisoner of my past up until now, and know many people who are as well. Allowed myself to be riden by guilt from the mistakes I have made. Can’t do it any more, though. After reading The Zahir, it is impossible to go on being a prisoner.
We are a result of our past experiences, yes, amongst other things, but as a lot of the bloggers have said, we always have a choice as to how we use the past in our daily lifes. I.e. do I allow my past to rule my life, or do I, as a reborn person, rule my past and consciously decide NEVER to let it take over my life, but only use what I have learned to lead an effective and fulfilling life, and not make the same mistakes that allowed my past to rule me in the first place.
I choose the latter. Just have to write down my personal history first, though. Harder said that done!
I’m stuck in 1999…
I think we are products of our past, but not prisoners. The word prisoner implies we are stuck in the past, but I do not think this is not the case. We have the power to move on from what lies behind us.
I am a prisoner of a love I feel for one man. He and I are not together anymore, yet I still feel he is a part of me I can not easily discard or ignore. I am also a prisoner of the loathing I feel for certain people who betrayed my trust and, as a result of that betrayal, lost me my one true love.
Now I am a different person than I was before. I am a result of my past heartaches, and the present emotional prison I have made for myself.
I am not willing to break free because as long as I am alive, I can not forget a love so deep and true, nor can I forget a hatred so deep and unforgiving.
Am I wrong in my actions? I don’t feel I am. Am I going mad? I feel I am.
Nous sommes prisonniers du passé, tant que nous refusont de livrer bataille.
Même Bouddha a travaillé sur lui toute sa vie.
Paulo, this is a clever question and prisoners is a strong word in this case. Yes, I believe we are prisoners of the past. You know the saying that goes something like, “If we forget the past, we are doomed to repeat it.” And yet, we keep repeating it, don’t we. There is still war and such, and we know that war rarely benefits both sides. I read a book once that said that we should just forget the past and that is the only way to really move on, since remembering it only brings pain and repetition. Of course, completely forgeting may not be the answer, maybe to forgive would be. Forgivness is a human quality we often overlook and are frequently incapable of doing. It is hard, but worth it in the end, i think.
the past is a gate to a future and present therefore
we are concted to the past as slave prisioners,or just memories that guide aour self to become wise.
Only if you belive on that!!!!!!!!!
We are prisoners of our past. Ideally, we shouldn’t be. Each and every action and thought has brought us to wherever it is we are right now. However, in order to live life freely we must let go of the past…it has served it’s purpose, we have reached the destination. The past is no longer useful and only serves as a chain, prohibiting us from fully exploring the present.
A,
You sound a lot like a good friend I have (or used to have). He continues to hold himself back because of the mistakes he has made. He also continues to make the same mistakes again and again. Thus he is a prisoner of his past. He can not move forward because he continues to concern himself with past mistakes, and then continues to make them again.
Tomorrow is a new day. What happened to you yesterday should only serve to guide you, not determine your exact path.
Use your past as a source of strength for your future. If you have gotten through those other tough times, you can get through this as well.
Often our future is brighter than we think. It is so easy to concentrate on all the bad things in this world, and let it get us down. We focus to much on the bad things in our life, and the horrible situation we may be in. But we can solve our problems, overcome our situations and become wiser and stronger for them.
Have faith in God.
Have faith in yourself, God does.
I think many people are prisoners of their past, but only because they choose to be.
Throughout our life we encounter situations, those situations teach of lessons, challenge us to change and to grow. If we do not learn those lessons, if we do not grow, then we become stuck in the same place. Those same situations will continue to come back, trying harder and harder to teach us the same lesson, help us grow in the same way. Many people refuse to learn these lessons, many of the lessons are not fun to learn, or require us to grow or change in a way that at the time does not seem like something we want.
However, if we learn the lessons, if we grow as we need to, then we move on into our future and the past becomes the past forever.
Our past is part of who we are, but it is not who we are going to become.
we must realise that sometimes we have fears. All persons have their own fears.there are born fears, which are not dangerous and permit us to avoid risky situations for our lifes, and then there are unborn fears,which are a product of dilusions that we gained from past experiences. So our fears make all of us somehow prisoners of our past, becoming real obstacles for us to achieve what we want. We must freed from them.
I think – that the true is in each reaction:-) I can agree with everyone partly.
The life is too short to be a prisoner, but sometimes we are. Sometimes we are fighting with. Sometime we won and we are free, sometimes not….the life is about to have open eyes and mind. This is the most difficult thing…to be honest yourself…
So we can try to be free…
Kate
We are not prisoners of our past, but we are connected very deeply with it.
Anything you see, hear or smell your mind will associate it with past experiences.
The past is living in us – all is registered, but it does not imprison us. If you have seen your life roll by backwards from the last moment to almost the first (NDE), you will realize this.
On a daily basis a recollection at the end of the day is well advised and then just let go and do not dwell on anything. Tomorrow is a new day…a new inscription on the emerald tablets. Remember whoever is without “sin” can throw the first stone; we all have done, said and thought things we are not proud of. So just forgive yourself and others and move on. If something persists in your mind, just take a deep breath and blow it away – literally.
Dear A,
I don’t know if you have a faith, it sounds as though you do. Pray for help, for alms, peace of mind and also take small steps to help yourself by doing positive things for other people in need. One of the best ways to help alleviate the sadness you feel for yourself is to help others.
Once I basically begged for help from God to alleviate my hurt and I will always remember this, I felt a wave of calm wash over me.
Believe in good, keep yourself busy, whatever you can change for the better – even if small things, try to because it will help.
Kathleen xx
Bem eu vou escrever em português mesmo. Alguem escreveu em francês, acho que falar em portugues me ajuda a expor melhor o que eu penso. Eu não acho que seja apenas um estado mental e um cliché, somos sim prisioneiros do nosso passado.
Você, Paulo, sempre fala muito em seus livros de forma que de alguma forma devemos construir um futuro, achar o nosso caminho e nele construir nossa lenda pessoal. Mas como poderemos construir novas estradas, sem sabermos o que fomos outrora?
Tavez não sejamos assim tão prisioneiros, mas conhecer nosso passado é algo que nos ajuda a contruir nosso próprio futuro.
E o passado não é algo que possa ser negado, ou refeito. É com ele que aprendemos a consertar nossos erros, a lutar mais, a respeitar e tantas outras coisas que são únicas dos ser vivo : homem.
E eu tenho que se renegamos o passado renegamos o que somos em essência.
YES AND NO
(below is a song that i was listening to and i thought of your question and how it related)
“Hello morning, now when does the fun begin
Goodbye morning, sorry it had to end
But see I cried just a little too long
Now it’s time for me to be strong
Hello morning, I sure missed you last night
Goodbye morning, you just won’t do me right
I stayed just a little too long
Now it’s time for me to move on
Hello yesterday, I sure need you now
Goodbye yesterday, I just can’t stay around
You see I cried just a little too long
Now it’s time for me to be strong
Hello yesterday, remember how it used to be
Goodbye yesterday, I can’t take you with me
You see I stayed just a little too long
And now it’s time for me to move on”
Dear A
Believe!
That is the only way.
Believe and trust in God and He’ll bring you the answers,
He always does, for He is the Light of the World!
love
Agnieszka
I think I am or I have been and truth is I would like to free myself from that past because is that past what has brought me here; in a present that I don’t like.
And probably, if I am in a dark situation is because I am still a prisioner of my past life (with all my fears).
It is so dark that looks like if there were no way out but, I know there is a way out (and not just out; I mean a Way toward the Light). I just need to learn how to do it; how to bring Light to my mind.
But everytime I try, so far, I have ended up crying, out of sadness. Like now you see …
Am I then still a prisioner? When is this sadness going to dissapear? What is Life and, what is going to happen with me?
I am wounded and I need to go to a Good Place to Heal myself.
I want to have a Family and be a Child again. How can I stay in the world if I am wounded?
Yes and no – I wouldn’t call it prisoners in every case because if we like what we have created everything is fine. But I do believe that we have to deal with prejudices all the time because of our origin and because of what we have already done in our lives etc.
LETS THINK IN THE POSITIVE SENSE,WE ARENT PRISONERS OF THE PAST,ITS A TORCH LIGHT THAT GUIDES US WHEN WE TAKE OUR FUTURE STEPS.THE TORCH GETS THE POWER TO GUIDE AS FROM OUR OWN STEPS ONLY. LV,Parveen
May be we where prisoners yesterday ,or last year ,last lifetime ..what matters is today we have the power to cast the burden on the Christ within and go free …its 2008 not BC ..
Blessings Tania ~~~
Sommes-nous prisonniers du passé?
Si nous voyons le temps comme un arbre ou une plante,
le passé étant les racines,
le présent le tronc et les branches et les feuilles,
et le futur les bourgeons, les fleurs et les fruits.
Première obsevation : où est la limite entre le passé, le present et le futur?
Considérant les choses ainsi, je pense que le passé est ce qui nous nourrit.
Sommes nous donc prisonniers de ce qui nous nourrit?
Nous sommes surtout prisonniers de nos choix de nourriture, le choix du terrain ou nous plantons notre arbre ou notre plante.
Ce qui est sûr c’est que nous avons tous besoin de fer, de terre, d’eau, d’air, et de lumière.
La délivrance :
Plus généralement, on peut tirer un trait sur le passé, tourner la page, ou l’ on peut voir la vie comme un palimpseste.
Sur la question du temps, St Augustin dans Les Confessions, dévelloppe une idée très interressante dont je ne me souvient plus bien.
Si quelqu’un peut m’éclairer, d’avance merci;)
Everlasting Now!
Love
PS : “Race de Cain, au ciel monte
Et sur la terre jette Dieu”
Baudelaire
in Les Fleurs du Mal
Diaz
Yes, most of the time.
I tend to make a lot of my decisions based on my past experiences. And this is sometimes useful, but other times it stops me from going into the unexplored.
yes I AM a prisoner of the past, while I am sleeping all my dreams occord in our old house i am still dreaming of my past I am locked in my past .
You can be.
Some people live in a time of their life that they were happiest. Like they have been caught in a time warp and they don’t want to move on.
On the other hand some people don’t learn/grow from the bad things that have happened to them so they ponder on them and retain a resentment/fear/anger. They don’t let go so that they become true prisoners of their own feelings.
I think for the most part you can learn to let go and hopefully be fully whole again, recovered, but that is not always the case. It shows up in our reactions to certain situations.
Love Kathleen xx
No, we are not. The past makes who we are today and if the prison bars reappear once in a while, we know where the keys are kept, Just stop for a moment, think and look for the keys… It’s there somewhere…
and exuse for that we did not enjoy our wealth in the way we could…
So, I do not want to hurt anybody, but for me the statement: are we prisoners of the past is only a word and mental cliché.
In my understanding, we are not prisoners of the past. We keep on looking back at bad and good things that happend to us before and keep looking over our shoulders to grow. As days are passing by, we are changing in time thanks good and bad deeds and things that happend to us. We think and rethink again and again about our childhood, days spent at school, memories from our past job, previous relationship to be able to create more integrated picture of ourselves, our changing Us. I think that this looking back we are making only with constant feeling of living in and for the present moment. In other words: Thinking about our past does not mean that we are living in it. What makes us inprisoned and limits us is not our personal, familial or national history but the thread of our potentional, opportunities and possibilities that we have.
depends !
till we r living in unawareness, we r prisoners of our past. it is a choice, an unconscious one, which can be changed by conscious efforts !!!
aditya
Your past may shape you, but I choose to believe that HOW – either positive or negative – is still your choice…
So if you are a prisoner it may be your choice?
We are no more ‘prisoners of the past’ than we are ‘guardians of the future’… I have learned from the past, but did not apply it to the future. Does that make me a prisoner of my knowledge? I believe that we must unlock what we know and let our unbridled acts of love compel us to an understanding that as human beings we can only achieve commonality when we have opened our hearts to equanimity.
your mind is clear and focused.
We are not prisoners of our past. We are today the product of everything we have thought and experienced in the past – including past lives. Since we are all on our proper path of growth, our past is a key ingredient to our success and failures today. Therefore, our past is our teacher and our friend.
We are not prisoners of our past,but,infact it is the other way around…..We are freed by our past…The past has already taken away what had to be taken away,given us what we might need for the future,and has mysteriously paved a beautiful way for the present…..
Judgment keeps us in the past. It is a product of the ego.
When we are judging others, it is a reflection of our own inadequacies. It has a boomerang effect : What we give is send back to us.
A lot of wasted energy is spend on the “five minutes glory” of wanting to win at the expense of the others and this can have a devastating effect on the rest of our lives.
When we are inconvenienced by what some people are saying,
instead of learning from it, we tend to react. Every time we are reacting, we are in lack. For ex money problems, war, politics, sports, religion can bring a strong reaction according to our experiences.
To be able to navigate in life, we need a good road-map, otherwise you get lost.
Observations can point you in the right direction.
When you are observing you are detached from th e situation, for ex when you are observing a child in his developmental stages, you look at their strengths and weaknesses in certain areas(c0gnitive, eye-hand co-ordination, emotional, physical, etc) in order to implement a program to help that individual child to reach his potential.
In observation, there are no pass or fail.It keeps you in the moment.
,
prisoner in term of it takes much effort to runaway, or else you need outside power to leave the prison, no? otherwise, you’ll be trapped in it
well.. we obviously cant forget memories. we cant forget our past and i dont think we should ever do it.
but then, a good prisoner is the one who can learn from his mistakes so he wont be doing the same mistake twice. dont forget your past – use it as a lesson of life.
Yes, I think we are prisoners of the past if we want to..It depends how good or bad it was the past…
I think we learned from the past experiences for a better future….
Prissoner is a big word, but sometimes we live in our past so we don´t have any evolution. Our past is important because we live something special so that give us some good or bad caracteristic or development or improved.
I think that our past give us our history of life, we need to live our present and we will live our future better than we live now.
– Prisoners of the past?!!
mmm… thats a good one. I believe each and everyone of us may get locked up in the past.
But its something that we choose to do.
Regrets, memoirs, sad encounters, HUGE mistakes, they Hunt us to keep us from LIVING, and they try to conquer our thoughts, control us, and its up to us if we let them CApture us, and make us prisioners of that past we probably would have never liked to experience, nor live. And yet its a part of what we are today. And tomorrow all those fortunate/unfortunate events, will help us not fall again and if we sometime do… stand up, heads up and Keep Walking…
So we’ve got to decide whats best 4 us.
Yes and No, it depends on who we are, and how we understand it.
Everything that happens to us in the past, in the present or in the future reflects on us.
Whatever we get in touch with, changes and changes us.
Today is different than yeasterday and will be different than tomorrow.
Nothing is and stays the same.
Our past can change us, but also can dominate us, depending on our state of mind, our strength.
You can be stronger because of your past, or you can be weaker.
If it was your stimulus to move forward with your life – you’re OK,
but if not than you’re still there, trapped – in your past.
Your past can be your enemy but also your friend.
Depends on you, only you.
I know from my experience that BELIEVING is the key to overcoming the past, to becoming a better, stronger person.
Only when you believe, you are connected to this Higher Love, which can take you places, can make miracles, can bring you whatever you need in life.
Here is a part of my poem:
…..
..love will show you the way,
even if you are so lost,
will help you understand
some things that you scared of the most.
…..
love
Agnieszka
I agree with almost all of you..
Yes, and No..
it depends on your own mentality, and how you look at things..
if you look at things as an inter-connected chain, then yes we are prisoners..
if you see each day as a new beginning, a fresh start..
then no, we are free from our past..
and for me, it also depends on the situation, or incident..
Are prisioners of our past… well we´re prisioners of what we think is our past. for me the future is just this present moment that becomes past while you read this. We´re not stuck in our past, we´re stuck in our own past fears and thoughts.
I think if you look expectant towards the future, you will never bee a prisoner of the past.
You should always see your life in the light of what the future brings.
If your not agitated against your past, or bitter on your pas, you will never be a prisoner.
Yes and not. It depends on point of view. If I´m thinking as ordinary person without any spiritual pressure or limits…still the answer can be as Yes and Not. Almost everyone has good and bad experiences from pastness. Sometimes we are doing things or we are acting with the best idea but this can be easily turned to negative….sometimes the acting is as well knowing aim and then it is up to us judge/understand our steps. Based opn this we have lot of options to find out…but mostly we have two alternatives to “try to” live with that, to try to forgive yoursef as is possible, to try to get this as best learning from done mistake or we can torture yourself and be respective prisoner.
This is only flash look as this topic.There are another points of view on this from catholic´s, zen´s, islam´s etc. perspective.
But firstly we have to look on ourselves as thinking human being and it is great if we have own moral priorities.
k
I think it’s the other way around.
Every significant deed in the past is imprisoned by our mind and we have to let it free, because we shouldn’t fill our mind with things we can’t change.
Our past is who we are,
our future is what we will become,
our present is trying to overcome our past.
mmm nice one – yes and no,
like yourself have written, sorry for not being able to repeat in exact words, but it was something like that we’re now the result of our whole past. All memories, experiences, encounters etc have shaped our person to the one we’re now.
But,
I guess that what she (or he) means is more a negative aspect of being inprisoned in a past that refuse to “loose” it’s grip on us. There I would like to believe it is a question of choice… that what you wrote – if you don’t like your past, invent a new one and believe in it, remember the victories and let them give you strength to move on.
By fear we cling to the past,
afraid to “loose” what can although never be kept. Time flows and so must we.
Will you have a party this spring again?
*smile*
Josephine
Next Comments →