How to BE PRESENT. How to let go of the Past & how to live in the Present

Fr Seraphim Aldea from Mull Monastery - Orthodox Monastery of All Celtic Saints on the Isle of Mull - talks about the dangers of trading the reality of our present for the fantasy world of a past which no longer exists. We must learn how to let go of the past and how to live in the present.
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We often mistake the reality of the person in front of us for a shadow from our past. We often fail to hear the real words they say and we react to painful echoes from a lost past which has nothing to do with the flesh and bones people in front of us. We often compromise our present out of fear of a past which has long ceased to exist.
There is a saying in the Desert Fathers: if you can neither pray, nor fast, nor keep vigil, then keep yourself in your cell and your cell will teach you everything. Only when we learn to keep ourselves in the reality of our cells (our marriage, our monastic life, our single life), only when we learn how to keep our minds and our hearts in the reality of 'here and now', only then we shall break free from the shadows and the echoes of our (endlessly rewritten) past.
Only then shall we see who we are, who Christ is and how to approach the Cross of salvation.