Forget To Remember
Hiya!! What was your childhood like? What situations do you recall the most? Do you consider these things to be fact? Do you call this memory up often? Do you think it changes over time? It does. Memory is very faulty… our memories are a construction of our past, not a clone of it. What seems to be a single memory of say, a whisk, is actually your brain retrieving the name of the object, the shape, it's function, the object performing it's function. Basically, depending on your ideas about a whisk (plastic or metal) your history of a whisk (used for batter or for being battered) and desire for a whisk (wanting one that is flat or 3-D) your memory of a whisk can and does change. You may not be recalling the whisk from the past but creating a whisk for the present based on your feelings, ideas, desires and judgments. However, if you were to be asked if you remembered a conversation you had with friends the night before you might be someone who would swear that they remembered, and you would be insulted if someone said that your memory was fallible at best. We put a lot of stock in our memories, especially ones that we have used to build the idea of ourselves on.
What does knowing that we recreate our past by pulling what sticks out to us and then adding it to our judgments and so forth make you think? What if the stories of the past weren't really that factual? What if large chunks of memory were false? You probably have stories that you have been telling yourself that you believe to be the way it was. You may have based life decisions on these stories. You might even describe your personality in reference to these stories being the reason you behave certain ways. Correct? Do these stories support your positive movement forward or do they hinder you in some way? Are you harboring ill will or judgment against someone for doing something in the distant past that you keep "remembering" so you won't "forget"? Maybe the energy we spend recreating our past could best be spent creating our future.
What if you let go of the stories you hold onto as truth? Recognize that you can't be sure of what happened and it isn't happening now so move on. Holding onto things in the past does not ensure you are on firm ground in the present; it ensures you don't move on. It is going to be a good thing for you to realize that you can, since you do anyway, create the history for yourself that supports growth, love and learning. You can remember yourself into who you are becoming. You can decide to pick out different pieces of your past and hold onto those if they are conducive to movement in the way you desire it. We have unlimited power and potential that we smother aggressively moment to moment with doubt, uncertainty and false ideas of ourselves, each other and the world around us. Begin to think that all is possible, all is love and always was… your history will become your training for your unbelievably magnificent future.
future and past
xo a