This is the first two verses of a longer poem written by Robert Moss, author and teacher of dream workshops.*
“When you die to the old life
you must bury it well
or you’ll stumble on
with the corpse of your old self
strapped to your back.
Bury it well and do your grieving.
Set right what can be set right
with those you hurt
and those who hurt you.
Give up the souls you’ve stolen.
Reclaim what was stolen from you.
Then walk on and don’t look back.”
When I read this (and there’s more, but this is, for me the most poignant and pertinent excerpt), it stunned me for how deeply it spoke to me.
How easy it is to live in and with regret. How many of us spend far too many days, weeks, months, and sometimes years carrying the corpse of a past [fill in the blank with whatever you're carrying] on our back?
That’s a pretty visceral image, carrying a corpse on your back, which is why it’s so striking. It’s also about more than carrying a person or an incident; it can be about carrying an entire life that is associated with whatever-it-was; all the trappings of that life: the hopes; the activities; perhaps the love. It’s all there in that one image of the corpse.
Wow.
“Set right what can be set right
with those you hurt
and those who hurt you”
It doesn’t really matter what it is you’re leaving behind – a career, a marriage, or something else of major significance – what’s crucial is to do your best to make whatever amends are possible at the time, and move on. And the amends, the setting right, as Moss says, oftentimes is as much with yourself as it is with others.
Easier said than done, I hear you say?
Yeah. I know.
This is where forgiveness, a subject much talked about lately (or so it seems), raises its head and yells, “Hey you! Pay attention! Remember me?” Forgiveness of self and others for hurting or being hurt, or for being just generally stupid (been there, done that).
Or forgiving yourself for having attempted something for which you were just not prepared and stumbled about wildly - till you finally fell on your face, causing you to feel like a total idiot and a complete failure.
Ouch. Got the t-shirt for that one and there’s a book in it somewhere.
This is huge, the asking forgiveness of the person in your life you’ve hurt, as well as the learning to forgive yourself.
Forgiveness is SO crucial to letting to and moving on.
But that’s a whole ‘nuther subject. People a lot smarter than me have written entire books about forgiveness, and this is just a 600-or-so-word blog. So we’ll leave that for another time. But don’t forget it! Forgiveness really is part of the process.
In the mean time, while you’re diligently working on continuing to move forward, remember the adage, “energy flows where attention goes.” That may be a little trite, but it’s very true. If you can drop that corpse of the past you've been carrying on your back; keep your eyes forward and focus on where you want to go, rather than on where you’ve been, eventually things do get better.
Looking back just doesn’t help. Eyes forward is where it’s at.
Learning to let go is a lifelong path. It's one well worth walking.
Care to join me?
*Moss, Robert, Conscious Dreaming, (Three Rivers Press), New York, 1966,pg. 89