Imagine starting your life over with the advantage of knowing what you know now.
We can't go back and start over. However, I considered this a thought experiment. It’s impossible to achieve in reality, but as a thought experiment, it helped me investigate the scenario and develop spiritual insight from the process.
So, let's brainstorm this idea to discover how you might view the results if you had started your life over again.
Let's begin with this question: If you could repeat and re-create your life starting from some moment in the past, would it alter your behavior? Would you do anything differently?
Several issues come to mind, so I'll discuss the following in detail:
It's crucial to start over at a significant age. How old we are when we start over has a lot to do with our ability to make good use of the journey.
For example, starting over from birth would be silly. That wouldn't help at all. We would be infants all over again and probably make all the same mistakes as we did when we were growing up the first time.
So, at what age should we begin our repeated life journey to achieve the best results?
Wouldn't it be more beneficial if we went back to an age where we already had some knowledge of the world? For example:
Considering all that, the right time to start over and do better would be an age when we already knew enough to behave in a particular way to guide our path properly. That is, if we start over from any specific age with the knowledge we acquired throughout life, we might follow a different path—a better path.
However, we might make similar mistakes even when following a different path. Why? Because the primary part of the process, our ego, has not changed. To understand that, we need to examine how our ego is involved in each event of our lives.
Our life is a series of moments we experience one after the other. Our ego gets in the way with almost every step. If we repeat our lives with the knowledge and experience we accumulated from every moment of our present existence, I think nothing will be different. That is because we'd have to change our ego also.
We would have to change who we are entirely. Our personality stems from our experiences, the people we know, the trials and tribulations we have gone through, the mistakes we've made, and even the lucky streaks we've had.
All that had shaped us into who we are. If we take all that ego with us, all that which makes up our personality, and go back in time to repeat our lives, then we'd be no better off. We would repeat the same patterns all over again.
Does that mean this thought experiment is useless? Not necessarily. But we must be clear on what we want to learn from it and what we must come to terms with.
We have both positive and negative experiences. We would have to erase references to those experiences that are detrimental to us in the present. But erasing the past is not possible. Instead, we need to come to terms with how we relate to the experiences we've had in the past.
If we return to an earlier time in our lives with the knowledge and wisdom we have today, it may allow us to be more positive in how we relate to experiences that disturbed us at the time.
Those experiences are causing conflicts in our present lives and they are a result of unresolved issues with those experiences.
If we erased the effects of those experiences, could we jump-start our lives for the better? Well, we can't erase the past. That's a part of us now. Going back will only allow us to revisit those events and rework them in our minds.
Let's elaborate on that thought and see where my brainstorming takes us.
Things happened in the past. And they affect us today. But can we dismiss all the negative feelings? That's not so easy, I know. And there is no reason to put less importance on our feelings than we have.
Our feelings have been molded into the person we are, based on how we let past experiences affect us. Some never go away. Is it the same feeling you have when bad things from the past come back to haunt you over and over throughout your life?
I can't stop those feelings. And you can't either. It's part of who we are. The best we can do is work with it, understand it, and own it.
Those experiences from the past molded us and created the self-awareness that makes up our personality. We may want to change it, and we know how some memories have gotten in the way.
Why can't we merely erase it, dismiss it, do away with it, and become a new person? Become—a Different Person?
Who are we kidding? We don't want to do that! We see how we've survived through life so far. We figured out how to deal with issues that presented themselves. We're good at it and must give ourselves credit for that. We don’t need to be a different person.
We don't need to go back and start over after all. We have the power right here and now to make changes. From this moment forward, make the following agreements with yourself:
If you wish you could start over, there's no need to go back in time. Just follow the points in the last section above on overcoming obstacles from this moment forward.
Starting over doesn't require doing your entire life over. You can start over from anywhere at any time. Right from "here and now" is an excellent place to start!
This thought experiment brought me to an important conclusion: If you dwell on all the bad things in life, you miss out on what's good.
Was this meaningful to you? Tap
