We like to think of ourselves as independent, free-willed beings, living our own unique personal experience.
We also like to think we have the freedom of consciousness to put ourselves in ‘other people’s shoes’, able to have compassion for them because we can imagine how that situation would be for ourselves.
But our freedom to put ourselves in other people’s shoes has unconsciously gotten us to wear many more shoes than we imagine. That would be fine if we took off the shoes we put on, but they have gotten stuck on our feet, so to speak
Your body is created from DNA, which is really lived history that has evolved a physical structure to carry the memory of its experiences forward into the future. So your DNA is really thousands and millions of years of lived history, and the memory of all that history is still with you. If you could meditate deeply enough into your DNA, you could sense the consciousness of your ancestors within you. Their voices have seeped into your psyche and influence your every thought and action. And because you will unquestioningly take any thought that arises within you as your own, you take all the thoughts arising from all your ancestor’s consciousness as your own as well. Metaphorically, you are walking in their shoes without the least recognition that you have put them on.
Most likely you will recognize some of this with respect to your parents, noticing that you have taken on some of their emotional or behavioral patterns. But much of this was inherited from their parents, and before that from their parents, and so on, back up the evolutionary chain. So it is not just that you learned to copy your parents after you were born. Rather, from in the womb, you identified with a bodymind that was built entirely out of other people’s experiences and points of view, and that has become a major framework and filter through which you perceive life and through which you express yourself. You are continuously walking in and living through your ancestors’ shoes.
Yet there is also a second inner closet filled with old shoes: your incarnational consciousness. In each past life, you formed a unique sense of self with a unique point of view. Each of those lives still resides in your consciousness, carried forward as memory, and each of them speaks to you and expresses through you, just as your ancestors do. So not only are you continuously walking in your ancestors’ shoes, but you are walking in all your own old shoes as well.
You can combine these two sets of ancient shoes into a single, simple concept: you are continuously walking in history’s shoes. Most of your thoughts and actions arise out of these old, historical frameworks that have nothing to do with what is really you. You are not really living your own life; you are living historical perspectives that are re-expressing themselves in the present.
So how does one get free of walking in history’s shoes? One has to find a way to step out of history. History is memory, and memory is maintained by constantly reflecting itself in consciousness, through image, sensation and inner story. Since you are at the center of all of your history, this constant reflecting of history is really a continuous process of self-referencing. You keep talking about yourself to yourself, creating self-images about yourself for yourself, and referencing yourself through the lenses of visual, emotional and kinesthetic memories. This creates an ongoing, multi-sensory story about yourself that perpetuates itself through time, and this becomes your experience of yourself in the world. But that is not who you are; that is only the you that you created out of a mix of historical frameworks and present experience. That you only exists in your mind.
When self-referencing stops, history disappears from active consciousness; and with that, the sense of your self as a particular being, a particular person, a particular mind, or even a particular body, all disappear, along with self-images and any sense of self that is based on history. The you that you created out of story and history disappears, and what is left is the essence of what you really are, the pure being-as-you-are, which you have always been, behind the veils you have become cloaked in.
Of course, stopping this self-referencing is easier said than done. So, I offer you a secret: the heart is the center of identity, the center of your history. Your I-thoughts necessarily begin there, and your inner story and your sense of yourself as an historical being are rooted there. Rather than try to quiet your mind, which may only create a superficial quieting, quiet your heart. When the center of identity becomes quiet, self-referencing stops, and with that, the continuous mind movement that is referencing yourself in the past, present and future also stops, and the you that you have always been shines through.
To quiet your heart, start by dropping into it, relaxing into the heart, and let go of reflecting your sense of self there. You’re not trying to become heart, or trying to become no-self or anything else there. That all maintains self-reference. You are simply letting go of referencing your sense of self as a way of knowing yourself in this moment. Be as you are without needing to know who you are. The need to know your self, to continuously reference your self so you don’t forget who you are, is really an addiction. You have to be willing to break that addiction. You have to be willing to relax out of this need to continuously reference your self, which is the mechanism maintaining your historical, egoic identity.
When you are willing, even for a moment, to be what you are without referencing your self, in that moment you drop into pure beingness and presence. Your heart becomes Heart, and the eternity of Now unfolds from it. And there you are, completely naked, including your feet, without any of history’s shoes.
Ric Weinman is the founder of VortexHealing® Divine Energy Healing, a holistic system of energy healing and an awakening path. He is also author of Awakening Through the Veils, A Seeker’s Guide, and VortexHealing® Divine Energy Healing: A Magical Path of Healing and Awakening. For more info on VortexHealing® or to read other articles written by Ric, visit www.vortexhealing.org. To view his interview with Buddha at the Gas Pump, visit https://batgap.com/ric-weinman/.
