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Life is filled with experiences. These experiences, regardless of good or bad, are stored as memories in the mind and body. Sometimes we ‘access’ memories to reply them, or to evoke certain states. We also ‘keep away’ other memories that we don’t want to process fully for some reason or another.
It’s ever so rare for you to get a flash back, a look upon another time. Up until recently you thought flash backs were the thing of bad acid trips, and nothing more. You never thought that smells, tastes, or even words could evoke a memory and a feeling already present, yet submerged.
She talks to you about ice cream growing up, and from nowhere you transform and become 13 again. Your by the water feeling the gentle sun. You can hear waves crash against rocks, smelling the salt spray. You taste the reward of ice cream after a hard morning of junior lifesaving, called nippers.
This memory comes to you from no where, and it transforms you for both a second and eternity, as you become the memory. Eventually you come back to the body and present moment, with the memory now honoured, and living in you. It’s no longer trapped somewhere, not wanting to or not being allowed to be remembered. For some reason you pushed it away, and placed it in what Zen they called The Cave of the Blue Dragon.
Now, after living it, you let it breathe. You breathe easier, your load has become lighter, there’s one less ‘thing’ you carry around, and somehow you feel a little more present in the world.
By coming back to memories, we eat through our karma and mental history. Our habits for actioning and repressing selected memories is what we work to slow down. By sitting, and not creating new stories or experiences, the old ones start to bubble to the surface. They come unstuck from the walls as there’s nothing keeping them in. This is the third stage of practice, the practice of liberation. It’s beautiful how no instructions change from the first to the third, no thing continues to be done, yet we still continue to move.
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Thanks for a beautiful post Wade.
I’m not sure that just remembering the memories is what does it. I can go back to the same memory many times.
One quibble: what does ‘present moment’ mean in this situation. Is it only sensate data? If not doesn’t the present include remembering and anticipating? Or do you mean that there are qualitative differences?
Hi Evan,
Thanks for your comments
What I’m trying to talk about here is not a conscious decision to replay a memory, nor a conscious memory to avoid a memory. This is something that ‘bubbles’ up to the surface. It literally felt like it was trapped inside me, and came to the surface.
Now I can think about it and replay it as I wish, before I wasn’t able to. It’s funny to feel lighter, but thinking about less clutching/holding, more flowing, it sort of makes sense.
Present moment means my current reality. I snapped back out of being 13, and relayed what had just happened to the woman who was talking to me about ice cream.
Let me know if I’ve missed or not answered your question.
May all beings be happy.
Peace,
Wade
Hi Wade,
Thanks for your response.
The part of my question I maybe didn’t express to well is: when we are remembering isn’t this the here and now? Wasn’t remembering 13 your current reality for this time?
I trust this makes sense.
Evan
Hi Evan,
Yes, that makes more sense, and yes, you got me. Thanks for clarifying your question.
When that took place I was ‘in’ the memory and that was my present moment. It enveloped me. Instead of observing it, or letting it go, and staying in the present it became it.
I liken it to in meditation, when a thought keeps recurring, instead of letting it go, you enter into it. It just so happens that this was triggered by something so strongly I was unable to see it.
Hope that makes sense.
May all beings be peaceful.
Peace,
Wade
It is interesting that as we become enabled to be really centered in calm inner awareness through the practice of meditation, from that safe haven we can allow the unprocessed memories, attachments, and emotions to arise and dissolve without clinging to or rejecting them. You really make a good point.