People who live in the past cannot experience the present and cannot understand the future. And every new experience they have is simply used to fit into the past, to add to their collection of ideas, beliefs and assumptions, and to fortify them as well. Their lives become relics as a result, museum pieces of their own personal history. There is nothing alive, nothing fresh and nothing vital there. Instead, people only amass recollections. Their pain is entrenched, and their decisions have become hard like concrete.
The thinking mind must constantly be stirred by new experience and by adaptation to new experience and new understanding in order to be vital and capable of learning. It is like stirring concrete. If you do not keep stirring it and adding water and new things to it, it hardens. And once it hardens, it can only be broken.
People who are learning and living The Way of Knowledge are constantly being renewed and refreshed because they are close to life, and they are close to Knowledge. Their thoughts change, grow and evolve. Their ideas change, grow and evolve. Their conclusions change, grow and evolve. They can do this because there is something greater. There is Knowledge, the dynamic force of life within you, within the world and within the Greater Community as well. Knowledge brings you to the edge of life where you have to learn and adapt, communicate and contribute. This keeps you young, alive and close to the heart of life. Your mind, then, becomes constantly relevant to the present and is able to prepare for the future.
