ConsciousnessThe Self

Thinking about Memory

February 2012 {found an old flashdrive}

The power of memory can serve us greatly for good or for ill; the husband that reminds of the father, may or may not actually share traits but can start to display echoes simply because someone is seeing a connection. If, for instance, this reminder is negative in nature then we may impress upon others a design that is not their own and cause disruptions as reactions inspire lack of understanding. When we truly seek to understand our environment, we open ourselves to others contributing how they choose and are so inclined—which may or may not be helpful to our cause.

Memory can cause us fear of situations we’ve yet to fully encounter, as we may remember similar situations we’ve experienced with negative response. Like many suffering from anxiety, the idea of going to an indoor mall may be enough to trigger an attack after attacks have happened in the location before. The tricky thing with fear is eventually we may fear the idea of something, the collection of potential possibilities that may not even occur—but weigh on the mind regardless. Fears of repeated situations can, some believe, breathe new life into those situations—bringing them back into our lives as if they belong, for the energy we attach to them. A wiseman once said that our dominant thoughts dictate our reality, and it certainly holds true that if we think of how much a situation, person, event bothered us and we do not wish it to enter our lives again. Our subconscious easily reads the focus point as what bothered us and works to bring that to us; the much debated curiosity of how negative language is interpreted.

This one {note from the future; that's Me going through a Rurouni Kenshin phase} is of the mind that the reason our subconscious doesn’t process negatives is that words like don’t can’t won’t are illusions the conscious mind sees as real. If we don’t want negativity—for example, bad luck—it is senseless to say “I don’t want bad luck” because what you’re thinking of is only “bad luck” and that’s what your subconscious processes and gives. It’s not stupid, just basic—what you focus on is what your subconscious assumes you want. If you focus on the bad luck you don’t want, you’re negating yourself because you won’t focus on the good luck you do want—the subconscious is said to give us everything it/she/he thinks we want.

Memories, fears, allowing ourselves to feed on energies designed to keep us complacent and subdued—what we truly want may feel like something we don’t, for the power and peace and pride we receive from embracing it as ours. Our most natural course of action may be one against everything we truly desire because we may genuinely be afraid of obtaining what we truly desire for the freedom and responsibility that comes with it. If we were to live as we aspired to when we were children thinking of our adult freedom and power, responsibility soon comes into play—for when we truly have all we desire, we have no one to place blame on but ourselves.

Blame is something akin to an elusive creature who can rarely be caught, but often seen or felt just the same. When we place undue blame on others, we both feel burdened as we know such placement is unjust but accept it just the same. Some people love to be at fault, relishing in the attention that is all they seek. Some people run in terror from blame, as if to be held accountable for something will kill them or destroy their ideas. The Christian teachings of my father’s church often taught that if we are to blame, we could find ourselves in a place of eternal torture and damnation with little or no hope for redemption.

The idea of blame is simply that someone is accountable for a deed, action, apathetic choice, or event—cause and effect, if I drop a glass of milk it will shatter upon the floor and create a mess someone will have to clean. Removing blame from the lives of mistake-makers is insanity and lack of foresight in it’s purest form, for if we are not made to be accountable who’s to say what really matters? When an abuser, rights violator, cruel advantage-taker—what have you—isn’t held to his or her crimes against love/respect/balance the ripple effect of disruption can have devastating effects.

The memories we share, only with our present thought or with others, often hold an important role in our lives and how we feel about them. When a (wo)man feels wronged, unjustly treated, and then cast aside without receiving retribution or balance—who’s to say how much emotion is harboured for how much (s)he dwells on such unjust acts? When we feel a crime is committed but not properly equalized, we feel the injustice and can have a plethora of varied responses. As thinkers will say that memories can be changed, so our very lives can be changed as we are well able to shift our focus from one memory train to another.

What we choose to hold deep within us, the memories we keep closest to our waking mind is often described as what we will complain about—the mother who never shared money she had with her children, the father who was always gone on business so couldn’t be a role model, so on and so forth. Often times we sink to dwelling on what we didn’t have, rather than what we did, when we find ourselves in thought provoking transitional phases: deciding what to do next to replace the poorly-functioning present system.

With all change comes some fear, for we may not know what rests on the other side or how we may feel about it—but change is a good thing, and evolving creatures are intelligent creatures. Our memories are keys to our past and present, but new memories are the key to our future. Healing love is my ultimate answer.