How do we accurately evaluate our options and make purposeful decisions when we are so powerfully influenced by our past? Our capacity to be here, now, is always highly problematic.

Holding on to consciousness when history floods us is one of the most difficult things we ever do. And achieving it now is no guarantee that we can do the same tomorrow. Only the sustained effort to remain conscious simultaneously of our own unique journey and the earlier, blocking paradigm, brings the possibility of mature choice.

James Hollis, The Eden Project