Subject #14: On memory

There are few reasons why people are not able to live in the present, in this very moment. Reasons are connected to past and future, which do not exist in the present. They do not exist but mind keeps bringing both of them into present all the time. Past, in the form of not only memories but also knowledge, patterns, roles and behaviour. Future, in the form of dreams, worries and plans. If one gets caught up with either one, problems appear. There also seems to be logical pattern in the order of apperance - usually one is first caught up more with the future, and after that more with the past.

How do memories affect us? First a thought about some moment from the past appears. It doesn’t matter if that moment was pleasant or horrible. Because even if the moment was pleasant one – it can cause yearning & pain to see it now. Why is that? Simply because one would like to experience the pleasure of that past moment now. It’s exactly the same when one dreams about something, it causes yearning of that imagined something which one does not have in the present. Only difference is that dream about future does not carry such pain as memory from the past does and that’s because ego has not tasted the dream.

What are memories? I would describe them as shadows of subjective mind - not what was there in the first place as truth cannot be captured. Those shadows become darker as time goes by and also the view to those memories is ever changing. Still, humans value their memories a great deal. It is thought that one’s life is the content of one’s memories, that we exist in order to make memories, that we are the sum of our experiences (memories), that when one becomes old those memories will bring warmth and so on. That is also one reason why people like to take photos, store letters, keep diaries, buy souvenirs, ... – all attempts to capture moments with you.

Sometimes I have used expression ”one is haunted by demons”, referring to memories. The strength of these ”demons” can be immense - people have done suicides or lived the rest of their lives in trauma because of them. The more one dwells in memories, the bigger the effect. To see memories just as memories, without attachment to them and with an open heart – that is the Way. And how does one do that? By observing how mind works.

Poet T.S . Eliot wrote the following quote, which can be understood at least in two different ways:

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened