maybe it was you
“Your future self is watching you right now through your memories.”
More than half a decade later, after ample time for processing and reflection, I still don’t know how to fully account for surviving the loss of Moxy. Stubbornness seems to be built right into my cellular structure, and all my will at that time was totally bent on joining him.
After many profound spiritual experiences and epiphanies, it occurred to me it could have been Moxy, himself, who was pulling me forward, or perhaps other benevolent forces who knew it wasn’t the end; I still had a part to play. And then, not long ago, another possibility presented itself:
Maybe it was me, too. My future self.
“The distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
I’ve participated in multiple guided meditations and visualizations from various teachers where we were asked to do a variation of the following: let a memory come to the surface of a time when we needed help, or were at a breaking point, or just really suffering; and then in our mind’s eye, offer love and compassion to this past version of ourselves, in whatever way felt right to us.
Before I tried this practice for the first time, I had zero expectations. It felt a little simplistic, a little too easy or too good to be true. I figured I’d try it out, see what happened, and—worst-case scenario—I’d treat it like any other trip down memory lane (e.g., indulge in my favorite comfort food afterward).
The first memories calling for attention were from my childhood, times when I was in physical danger and desperately needed help, but none ever came. I was pulled to certain moments like a magnet, and watched as my adult self tended to my little one—holding her, stroking her head, urging her to hold on. Life will not always be this way, I’d assure her. With each experience came many tears, a gentle release, and also a sense of warmth enveloping my current body, like an invisible hug.
Eventually, the memories shifted to Japan and immediately afterward. I saw my legs give out in the Jasmine Clinic after getting the call that Mox’s heart stopped, and I tightly hugged this collapsed version. Get up get up get up. I sent her the strength to stand, to go into the room where she would see her baby on the table and Atsoko, the night doctor, manually pumping his heart. When this self made unearthly sounds and cradled his lifeless body to her chest, I held them both. When she was lying on the couch in a grief-stricken stupor, I laid down next to her, wrapped my arms around her, and flooded her body with light. Any felt sense of love, every bit of compassion I could muster, I willed to her. I knew the dark place she inhabited, and why, and I also knew it wasn’t where she belonged. Not for good.
This whole concept of reaching backward in time, of sending love to a past self, is a strange one. It rebels against everything we’ve been taught about linear time and space. But there’s also something oddly compelling about it, perhaps because it carries such profound implications. What would it mean if you could heal your trauma? If you could undo the effects of heavy emotions, limiting beliefs, abuses of all kinds? What would it feel like to be in your own corner?
“...At a more fundamental level of existence, there is no space or time, no obvious cause and effect–of something hitting something else and causing an event over time or space….The universe exists in some vast ‘here’ where here represents all points of space and time at a single instant. If subatomic particles can interact across all space and time, then so might the larger matter they compose. In the quantum world of The Field, a subatomic world of pure potential, life exists as one enormous present.”
I can’t say for certain it was my future (or higher) self in these moments of meditation and imagined connection who kept me tethered. Maybe there were multiple compassionate energies, of which I was one. Maybe I wasn’t involved at all. How it happened, and why, remains a mystery. And that’s okay with me.
What I can say is that I’m still here. Somehow, I turned the corner and made my way ahead, inch by inch. Another miracle? I spent the grand bulk of my teens and 20s teetering between paralyzing depression and anxiety, punctuated by suicidal ideation. And ever since I lost Mox and came into a new way of being, they have never returned. Not once. A depression may still arise and last for a time, anxiety may drop in to say hello, but neither sticks around long or consumes me the way they once did.
Just think of it: the limitless potential of sending your own love and compassion to these images we thought were frozen, casting a ripple effect that radiates outward in all directions, across all dimensions, of your life. It’s a stunningly powerful act of consciously creating your reality from right where you sit.
What are those memories in your life exerting their own gravitational force, pulling you back again and again?
All those times you fell to the floor.
All those times you couldn’t get up, couldn’t carry one more thing, couldn’t take one more step.
All those times you wished the morning wouldn’t come.
All those times you wished it would.
All those times you were completely overwhelmed, in over your head, out of your mind with fear.
All those times you were painfully alone, aching, and broken.
All those times you were weary and heartsick, depressed and numb, panicky and bitter, chock-full of righteous anger.
All those times you were drowning in your grief, at the mercy of your despair, lost to yourself and the world.
Maybe it was you.
The one murmuring words of encouragement: keep going, keep going. The one sending the subtle sense of It’s going to be alright. The one holding you in the darkness, so you’ll never, ever be alone. You’ve never been alone.
Maybe you did it for yourself.
Maybe you’re the one who called your attention to a particular program or teacher, or turned your head just so in time to see the sign, or made the book fall open to the right page, or guided your friend to say the right word at the exact right time, or blew the wind that brought the flier directly to your feet, or opened your heart to a new perspective.
Maybe you’re your own benevolent force. (Or at least one of them.) Your own angel. Your own guide. Your own personal Gandalf or Glinda or guru.
After all, who would know better than you what you were up against? What you were feeling? What you needed to hear? What you were longing for, but not getting?
Maybe it was you all along.
The future self that’s always whispering your highest thoughts, curbing your harmful impulses, guiding your wisest choices, offering you endless love and light, pulling you up, bracing you from behind, beckoning you forward, holding the vision of your life fulfilled. You’re not done yet.
Maybe it’s you.
Maybe it’s all you.
Do something your future self will thank you for.
