Repair the Past

We are told, “Repair the past, prepare the future.” How can we repair the past? We cannot change it, but “repair” suggests something broken that we can mend.
Or perhaps it’s reparations—repayment.
The Latin reparare, the root of ”repair’s root, means, oddly enough, to prepare again. Are we back to “prepare the future?”

Now “Pay the debt of your arising.” is Gurdjieff’s version. And this seems closer.

I know that the consequences of my past actions have made bad karma for me, karma which must be repaid or ignored at my peril. This seems much closer to “repair the past.” But how to repay? “Good” actions? Well-wishing? Being nicer?

If I’m the same person as in the past, this is meaningless. Bennett says, ” We can be free from the past only when we have so changed ourselves as to be no longer the same person who performed the action.” So a change of being is necessary. Are we back to Work on myself? Is this a dead end?

But conscience knows.
Perhaps remorse for who I’ve been can help this transformation.
There.
Something from another level.
Something in me knows, and it wishes to be heard.
I AM.
I wish.
I can.

Lou Gottlieb 7/3/25