“Time is a funny phenomenon. It can add to, or subtract from, the quality of our lives, simply by ticking down the present moment toward the past or future. We control, by the placement of attention, the direction in which time ticks. If a dark story lies toward the past, it may simply fade out as a conscious memory. Alternatively, it may remain, occasionally calling to mind a part of one’s journey to the present. If held too tightly by emotional entrapment, it may stay around indefinitely, ticking away into a future cast of the same gloom.

“It is in trying to escape the latter that the past can be reinvented, brightened, or dimmed around certain aspects to satisfy personal bias. Time can be the redeemer of fact or fantasy, or the transformer of villains into heroes. Still, its passage does allow distance, unless resisted from the causative moment of negative experience.

“My greatest challenge in rooting out the self-revealing truths of my war epoch was getting enough distance to clear other voices out of my head, to hear my own voice distinctively. Only then was I able to weigh all of these voices impartially to determine whether I was a victorious human being while fighting in Vietnam.

“By victorious, I mean did I meet the moral injunctions of my own higher self? Did I do right or wrong in the spiritual context of the human condition, where war still exists? This higher self, as the inner recognition of pure, spiritual consciousness, is the authentic source of all true wisdom. It supersedes politics, ideological supposition, and denominational faith or belief, all of which come and go, transmute, or dissolve into the sands of time.”

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Sitting with Warrior – pg. 112-113

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