The answer will surprise you
Published in The Taoist Online
Jan 26, 2024 (thetaoist.online)
Imagine going for a hike in the Scottish Highlands: jagged peaks, rolling mists, and lakes of such stillness that their surfaces mirror the clouds above.
Now, picture being in the midst of all that unspoiled natural beauty, yet struggling to be truly present, to observe and cherish each moment.
How could this be, one might wonder?
Flies.
Yes, you heard that right. My first hike in this majestic corner of the earth was ruined by some damn flies.
It didn’t seem like a big deal at first; we thought we could outrun them. But no matter our speed or endurance, the moment we took a moment to catch our breath, hundreds of them would appear. It was uncomfortable to stay still, impossible even to look around at the majestic scenery, and enjoy our hike.
It was in this moment of pure agitation that a profound realization hit me: this hike was more than a mere walk in nature gone astray; it was a metaphor for life itself.
As John Muir once said:
“In every walk with Nature, one receives far more than he seeks”
The Allegory of the Flies
Growing up in a Greek-Orthodox family, allegories were my constant companions as a kid. From the tales of Greek mythology to the parables in the New Testament, I always found it fascinating how stories that seemed simple on the surface could hold profound wisdom and hidden meanings.
That hike was no different.
The flies symbolize our past. They’re unwanted memories that always lurk in the background. We tend to keep ourselves busy to avoid dealing with our past. Work, entertainment, and drugs just to name a few of our modern-day escapes.
We spend our lives in a whirlwind of activity to escape these ‘flies,’ to evade the shadows of our past. The moment we pause, relax, and become still, our history catches up. It demands our acknowledgment and attention.
Yet, we resist.
We shy away from facing our ‘flies.’
We do not want to face our past, we avoid looking at the guilt, shame, regret, and pain that comes with it.
Instead, we let our past unconscious patterns dictate our present reality. In the same way, we kept walking at a fast pace because of the flies, our past conditions our behavior in the present.
Let’s see how.
How Does Our Past Condition Our Present?
The past can encompass anything from ingrained beliefs to past traumas and experiences.
1- Religious beliefs
Religion can be a source of security and hope for many, offering a moral compass to some, yet in some cases, it can also be a source of conditioning and suppression.
For instance, I might have grown up in a religious family where homosexuality was frowned upon. I have memories of my parents mocking homosexuality, expressing disgust at the mere notion of same-gender romance.
This past haunts me.
It shapes my present reality. I get married, have kids, and suppress myself, only to be accepted and loved. Instead of sitting with the past, instead of facing the ‘flies’, I choose to run away, to live a life of pretense and inauthenticity, simply because I am afraid of rejection.
2- Childhood trauma
Consider those who have experienced emotional or physical abuse during childhood. When children observe such abuse in their parents’ relationships or experience it firsthand, they often come to associate this behavior with love.
As a result, the patterns of abuse they endured in childhood can become a misguided blueprint for love in their adult relationships. This often leads to dynamics that, in reality, are mere re-enactments of past behaviors.
Emotional and physical abuse
It is quite a common occurrence for a child to be raised in an environment of constant criticism. At least, that is the reality for most children in Cyprus, the place where I grew up. As we grow up, we then tend to associate criticism and judgment with love.
The result?
We constantly criticize our partners or choose partners who constantly criticize us.
Similarly, if a child grows up in an environment where physical violence is the norm, their brain may unconsciously equate aggression with affection. As adults, these individuals often continue this pattern, tending to seek out and fall in love with partners who display aggression, or they may become violent.
Different sexual kinks like BDSM are also manifestations of the same pattern.
Conditional Love as Ambition: The Case of Thierry Henry and Tiger Woods
The influence of our past over our present reality is also seen in our pursuit of success.
Most of us grow up viewing ambition as something noble, a trait to be admired and sought after. Yet, ambition often turns out to be nothing more than the shadow of conditional love, a relentless quest for approval and external validation.
Ambition is nothing more than a trauma response.
Let me explain why.
The need for love in the form of acceptance, when unmet in childhood, can manifest as ambition later on in life, often only an attempt to fill the void of, or even win parental affection.
Of course, when a child lacks the ability to succeed in today’s competitive, capitalistic world, issues like low self-esteem, depression, and drug use become inevitable.
I remember as a kid, my parents would only show interest in me whenever I got good grades, and even then, there was always room for improvement. When love and affection are conditional on performance, the child grows up seeking success in whatever domain earns them parental approval. Then, when the time comes, and the parents pass away, we call that a midlife crisis.
Thierry Henry, Arsenal’s all-time top goal scorer and one of the greatest football players to ever play the game, is a perfect example:
“And I couldn’t care less… everyone tells me how great I was — I wanted to hear it from my dad” — he said in an interview.
Henry shared that he had suffered from depression since he was a child:
“I’m a human being. I have feelings. Throughout my career and since I was born, I must have been in depression. Did I know it? No. Did I do something about it? Obviously not.”
His career and all his life achievements were merely methods of escaping the deeper issues rooted in his past.
“I was becoming a coach and I was trying to find things to stop myself from thinking about what had been chasing me. Deal with what has happened. We tend to run, instead of facing our problems. You stay busy and try to avoid what has happened. When COVID happened, I couldn’t not run.”
Tiger Woods considered the greatest golfer of all time, also spent his life running away from those ‘flies.’
He revealed how his father treated him like a prisoner of war, just to toughen him up.
How many of us spend our lives, conditioned by past trauma, driven by ambition, seeking love in the wrong places?
Fear of Abandonment
For others, the past may manifest as a devastating heartbreak.
To avoid experiencing this pain again, we often build walls around our hearts. In the process of shielding our hearts from pain, we give up our ability to give and receive love. We never open again. We are closed off. We fear experiencing abandonment again, so we isolate ourselves, hide, and pretend.
We fail to see that protecting oneself from pain is essentially shielding oneself from life.
We become prisoners of our own pasts.
Our lives are an endless race against the shadows of our past. We let the ‘flies’ of our history guide our next steps in life.
No matter what surrounds us, even if it’s a landscape of raw, untamed beauty like the Highlands, we never seem to notice.
We tend to lose sight of what truly matters in life.
We often neglect to pay attention to our relationships. The way we treat others, and how we treat ourselves.
Then, death comes.
We start losing those dear to us. Regret chokes us. Because we were not there. We were never present. We were always out there. Running towards a future. Rushing ahead.
Our only focus?
To avoid the discomfort of slowing down, to avoid feeling and looking at the past.
So, we keep going. Non-stop. And in the process, we completely miss out on life.
We never seem to ask: Is there another way?
Life doesn’t have to be that way after all.
Freedom: To Be Free of The Past
We often speak of freedom, but what truly defines it?
As long as we are prisoners to our past, no matter how much money we accumulate, no matter what we achieve in life, are we really free inwardly?
This observation leads to a profound question:
Is it possible to act without a motive — a motive to evade the ‘flies,’ to escape our past?
In simpler terms, is it possible to act free from the chains of our past?
Indeed, our past is an integral part of us, as constant as the air we breathe. Our previous experiences in life have molded us into the people we are today.
Still.
Can we take a moment to just be present with our past, without running away or reacting to it? Can we face our thoughts, unscathed and undeterred?
This is what meditation is all about.
Meditation: Embracing the Vulnerability of Stillness
Meditation has little to do with sitting in certain postures, chanting mantras, or counting breaths.
At its core, meditation is about embracing the vulnerability of stillness, not diverting our attention elsewhere.
It involves a conscious pause and a halt in our perpetual run.
This creates space in our daily lives for past experiences and traumas to emerge. They can be acknowledged.
This practice is deceptively simple yet profoundly challenging. It’s uncomfortable for most of us.
It requires us to sit down, close our eyes, and surrender to stillness.
It requires us to do absolutely nothing.
And ironically, inaction seems to be the most challenging action for us.
Soon, the ‘flies’ — those intrusive thoughts and memories — will emerge. Our task is not to push them away but to remain motionless.
Do nothing.
Watch them come and go, be an observer.
For how long, one may ask?
Well, as Dr. Sukhraj Dhillon puts it:
“You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day, unless you’re too busy, then you should sit for an hour.”
The busier you are, the more time you should dedicate to this practice — you need it.
Only then, when we meet our past, accept it, learn from it, and let it go, will our actions stop being dictated by the past.
This opens the door to something new, an entirely independent guiding force in our lives.
Presence. To be here right now.
That is true freedom — a liberation from the relentless pursuit of the ‘flies.’
So, what are the flies you are running away from?
How do you manage to face them?
Written by Michalis M.
·Writer for The Taoist Online
I write about Non-duality, self-knowledge and the human condition. Follow my IG for more: Freedom.from.the.madness