The Past as Unincorporated Stories

Integrating the past as experience rather than conditioning.

The past could act on us either by conditioning us or instead, if it acts as experience, by improving our discernment in the choices we make in the present.

There are two options for how the past could act on us:

Option 1: The past is conditioning.

Option 2: The past is incorporated as experience.

A conditioning is a specific reference to a single past moment, where that moment has a direct and immediate effect on the present.

Consider Option 1. A conditioning is direct and immediate. It is reactive in its nature. It is like a reflex, like when a doctor taps your knee with a little hammer and you immediately kick. You don’t have to think about it at all. It just happens.

Experience, on the other hand, means incorporating a past moment into a broader decision-making matrix, instead of treating it as an isolated event that directly shapes our choices.

Consider Option 2, the opposite of a “knee-jerk” reaction. In this case, we incorporate an experience as another parameter into the matrix that determines our decisions. For example, you are considering a house to buy. Based on past experience, you consider many parameters such as location, price, and the way the house is built. Unlike the reflex of Option 1, you do not simply react without thinking, based on a single parameter about the house. Your action is a decision made through a matrix that includes the integrated experience of many past moments. It is not the reflexive result of a single past moment.

A very clear way to think of Option 1 and Option 2 is the distinction between action and reaction:

Action is when we use our decision-making matrix. We consider all the information available to us, we look at all the options, then we decide what we think the best move will be.

Reaction is the result of conditioning, and it is very different from action. A reaction considers only a single thing while ignoring everything else. It considers only that single parameter and is a response to that thing.

Consider this extreme example. You are sitting on a chair. In front of you is a bomb that will explode if it is disturbed. If a doctor hits your knee with a hammer, you will kick the bomb and it will explode. This is reaction: You are doing something based on one factor, excluding all others, and without thinking. You kick the bomb even though it makes no sense to do so.

On the other hand, action is making a decision based on a decision-making matrix, which includes all the information available to us, not just one factor.

A past moment becomes conditioning when, in making choices in the present, we refer directly to the past moment, almost like a conditioned reflex.

Consider the extreme example of trauma. Maybe you had an experience in the past with a snake that terrified you. Now when you see a snake you have a reflexive reaction such as screaming and running away. This is conditioning, Option 1. It is not incorporating the past experience into your broader decision-making matrix. Based on a single moment of past experience, you do not consider other parameters in the present or the past. For instance, maybe it’s not a real snake but a toy snake. Maybe it’s in a cage. Maybe it’s dead. Your conditioning is a direct and immediate reaction to one parameter.

So conditioning means you miss out on the extra parameters. It’s just “Snake = Run.”

Another example is knee-jerk reaction in political discourse. Instead of seeing the full picture, you react in a certain way to a single word like “justice” or “abortion.” You ignore the other parameters because you have been conditioned into a reflex by a single parameter.

By contrast, a past moment acts as experience when it is incorporated into a broader decision-making matrix, so that it no longer functions simply as a conditioned reflex.

For example, when someone says, “You never listen to my advice,” they assume their words should condition us, expecting us to do what they tell us directly and automatically.

While not ignoring their advice, we can instead choose to treat the advice as one extra parameter among many in a complex system—considering their opinion, but not in a direct, exclusive or automatic way.

If someone gives me advice and I don’t follow it, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t value it or that I ignored it. Instead, I put it into my decision-making matrix with all the other parameters.

For example, if someone tells me to be very careful of spiders because some of them can bite me and I will die, I can put that into the matrix with other parameters.

But the next time I see a spider, I do not scream and run away. Why?

I see that the spider is a toy made of plastic.

It’s not that the advice about spiders isn’t valuable. But there are other parameters in my matrix, and I figure out that in this specific context, the advice was not relevant. But if it’s a real spider, I would be careful.

Here, “the advice” serves as an analogy for a past moment.

This leads to an important point.

The present already incorporates all past moments, so any direct and automatic reference to a single past moment produces unnecessary conditioning, as it overestimates that specific past moment and gives it excessive weight.

However, the past is not a collection of events but a sequence of continuous transformations that lead to the present, moment by moment, from the first event to the current one.

The past is not a collection of moments that we have to remember individually. Ideally, the past has transformed us–it has made us what we are. We don’t need to refer to the specific past events to make a decision because, ideally, it has transformed us in the present.

Our minds are not just collections of information. The mind makes connections and this allows us to make decisions. We no longer need to refer to specific events individually in the past because they are already part of our decision-making matrix, ready to be used to make decisions. All the past events have already been incorporated into our decision-making matrix so we can use them to make decisions.

The present is the outcome of a long sequence of transformations that have made us what we are today.

The past has served its purpose by transforming us–the change is already made. We don’t really need to refer to specific events in the past anymore.

To incorporate past moments as experience rather than conditioning, we need to accept the present for what it is and for what we have become through these transformations.

Ideally, we accept the present for what it is and we do not judge the present or believe it could have been different. The past is already in us through the transformation.

If we are able to integrate past experiences and they transform us, they will exert only the right degree of influence and will not weigh excessively on the present. If, however, we are unable to integrate them and they do not transform us, they will exist independently as a burden and exert a disproportionate influence on the present, as in the case of unintegrated trauma.

For example, consider the problem of trauma over snakes we just described. If the experience is integrated into our decision-making matrix, we will give it the proper weight. But if it remains unintegrated, it will have its own independent existence with outsized influence on the present.

This acceptance removes any connection that produces a direct mental conditioning between the past moment and the present, improving our discernment and the quality of our choices in the present.

Especially the quality of our choices in the present–because we no longer have strict conditioning that leads to a knee-jerk reaction. Instead we have a lot of good parameters, integrated by our transformation, to make a good decision.