Overcoming the Tendency to Rehash Past Work or Worry About Future Work

We spent a considerable amount of our time rehashing events and actions that are past, analyzing them, worrying about whether we have done things correctly or not, and reflecting on how we might deal with similar events in the future in a better way. We recount what happened during our day to our close companions. If we reflect for a moment on how much time, energy and focus is spent in looking back at what we have recently done, not to speak of circumstances long in our past, we can easily understand the amount of time and energy spent is enormous. Could we find a better way to deploy that time and energy?

Similarly, we tend to make ‘what if’ scenarios about possible future actions and events. We worry abut how we are going to deal with some situation that we anticipate in our work. It may be a conce
about an issue we are having with a co-worker, or there may be a particularly difficult problem we are trying to solve. Whatever the case may be, we are putting substantial energy and time into future circumstances that may, or may not, actually occur.

There are of course times to reflect on the past events if we are using that time to understand and illuminate our nature, our reactions and our habitual patterns of action, and thereby are using the review as a means of progress. Most of the time, however, this is not actually what we are doing. It is also worth noting that such things really only have significance as long as we are still locked into the ego-standpoint.

Similarly, reflection on possible future actions may be useful in terms of both guiding the being into new attitudes, and in aiding the realisation of a specific goal or result. Yet, most of the time, our focus on the future is not shaped in this type of positive way, but is a form of anxiety or worry, sapping energy rather than creating new directions and avenues of development. Again, this is the ego-standpoint in action.

The practice of ‘mindfulness’ works to bring our attention entirely into the present. This practice is useful when it can help break the habits of time and energy being dissipated through rehashing the past or owrrying about the future. Sri Aurobindo provides a succinct description of such a practice to discipline the being and move it away from the ego-personality’s fixation with its own past and its own future. The spiritual seeker, as he shifts the standpoint away from the ego, becomes receptive to a higher force that orders, organises and manages the work effort, and thus, the individual fixation on past and future is no longer useful. As the seeker relies more and more on the Divine rather than on his own individual personality and capacities, he can gain a measure of peace and calm as he carries out the work to be done, and not disperse his energy and focus on the past or the future.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “Think of your work only when it is being done, not before and not after. … Do not let your mind go back on a work that is finished. It belongs to the past and all re-handling of it is a waste of power. … Do not let your mind labour in anticipation on a work that has to be done. The Power that acts in you will see to it at its own time. … If you can remember to let your mind work only when its action is needed, the strain will lessen and disappear.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 3, Action and Work, pg. 67