When you eat a piece of chocolate cake, are you enjoying what is happening in that moment, or are you re-experiencing the past? Is your body reacting to a memory? Or maybe you don't like chocolate cake because the first time you tried it, it wasn't good or something negative happened at that time. This memory or emotional association comes back every time you see a piece of chocolate cake, reminding you that you don't like it, even if you might actually like the piece that's sitting before you if you tried it.

Lesson 7 in A Course in Miracles states: "I see only the past." And from Lesson 8: "The one wholly true thought one can hold about the past is that it is not here. To think about it at all is therefore to think about illusions."

We tend to view the past as real, and therefore valid. The events, beliefs, or judgments that occurred or were held yesterday become our "proofs" for today. But events differ with the beholder, and one person's experience can be contradicted by another's, with the effect that there is no One Correct Point of View, because no two people have the same point of view. Likewise, our beliefs and judgments are just that, and these mental constructs are no more real than the events which we can only view through our own particular lens.

We all live in the past, projecting our memories, emotional associations, judgments, and beliefs onto the present and into the future. But that bad experience with chocolate cake in your past has nothing to do with the chocolate cake in your present, and it is up to each of us to choose to see and experience with new, innocent eyes and senses:

Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.
~ Mark 10:15

Children eventually learn to discriminate, judge, believe this but not that, and apply the lessons of their past into the present. This isn't "bad," it's just being human. It's part of the plan. But if we want to transcend this and heal and wake up to who we really are, we have to unlearn what we have learned. We have to become children again. We have to learn something new, and in this consciousness, we truly are the children, and the spiritual teacher that we all have access to within ourselves stands ready to parent us through this transition.

How would your life change if you pressed the Reset button on your past? What if you enjoyed a piece of chocolate cake as if you had never tasted it before? What if you could no longer remember why you were angry with a family member? What if you no longer had the belief that the possibility of failure was worse than trying? What if that one bad job experience hadn't convinced you that you couldn't do what you really loved to do? What if you had no belief in limitation?

Every day, we can choose how we react to the world. We can choose to relive our past and assume that what we thought was true yesterday must also be true today, or we can truly be present and experience the world that is here now and withhold judgment from what we see. When we cease to define the world according to our egos, we can experience what is real. We can experience our own divinity, reflected back to us in infinite ways and in infinite forms.

Related links:

• A Course in Miracles
• We are One: The world is a reflection of you
• Light and dark: The spectrum of God
• Players on the holographic stage
• Judging other people's truth
• Stuck in judgment ruts