Memory: Friend and Foe
"Memory recaptures living experience or prevents it from escaping...
" ~ Bernard Bouanchaud (from The Essence of Yoga: Reflections on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, 1997, 16) Memory can be a friend or foe, it can help or it can harm, it can facilitate or complicate.
In daily life, the myriad of help that memory gives is incalculable.
It is because of memory that you do not walk out into the middle of the street with cars flying by, you do not pay for your groceries with beans, and you do not sip soup fresh off the burner still boiling hot.
Memory helps.
As Bernard Bouanchaud interprets Sutra 1:11 in his book The Essence of Yoga: Reflections on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, "memory recaptures lived experience" -- that experience had by just being and doing and acting in the world.
You learn from experience and so you follow the path that educated you the most.
The world said, you will probably get hit by a car, get into trouble, or scald your mouth if you do the above; so, you learned to look both ways and wait for traffic to stop, bring paper/coin money, and wait for the soup to cool down before proceeding.
Perhaps you had been hit by a car, forgetful or confused and thought you had money, or impatient and really hungry; or, perhaps someone told you about so and so who did one of these things.
In either case, by lived experience or testimony, you learned from your own or someone else's experience and thanks to your memory, you saved and spared yourself.
But what about those times when you wish you would not remember, when all you seemingly want to do is forget, but instead, the memories are right there with you every step of the way.
When you want to learn another language, take dancing lessons, apply for a grant or scholarship, apply for a sought position, travel to another country, talk to your new classmate, teach a class you have never taught before and you "remember" that you are not good at that or good enough or not worth it or too whatever.
Through lived experience we gain valuable lessons that help us structure our daily living, as we saw above.
But, we often structure our daily lives based solely on memories and nothing more--memories that were created out of fear or anger.
We experience hurt, disappointment, anxiety, and we carry those experiences, those memories, with us so that we can protect ourselves from future similar experiences.
Giving no credence as to the evolution of the situation or the person, we respond in the same way that we did before.
We allow for no change.
Like Stepford people, we respond robotically.
We do the same for the happy experiences too and who could blame us.
We remember how pleasant something felt and we want to experience it again.
Looking at the rich, gorgeous colors of a painting, listening to the bravado of a piece of music, laughing at the most hilarious thing.
We remember what it was like and we either seek to reject it and avoid it or accept it and repeat it (Yoga Sutra 2.
3, 7-8).
In our struggle to avoid and repeat, we grip terribly.
In the same way that we grip in our minds and stubbornly refuse to see how a situation or person has changed and to see the multitude of other viewpoints, we tend to grip in our bodies with the same ferocity causing tensions unnoticeable and noticeable only when the pain has become too much to bear.
We grip onto our memories for dear life because we do not want to experience unhappiness.
But, unfortunately, oftentimes we use painful tactics such as remembering and re-remembering over and over in order to avoid, which by itself causes undue pain.
Take some moments to sit quietly.
Scan your body.
Pay attention to any parts that feel painful or tense.
Maybe place a hand on the part or simply look at it if you can, or just think about it.
Tell yourself to let it go.
Then tell yourself to REALLY let it go.
Memory is invaluable and it saves our lives and helps us sort out the yuck from the yay! but it has the nasty habit of keeping us stuck in assembly-line patterns of reacting and responding that stop us from evolving and growing and taking life in fully.
Use your memory to remember how to calculate a tip and not to avoid doing that thing you have really been wanting or needing to do.
SOURCES: Bernard Bouanchaud.
The Essence of Yoga: Reflections on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.
Translated by Rosemary Desneux.
Delhi, India: Sri Satguru Publications, 1997.
" ~ Bernard Bouanchaud (from The Essence of Yoga: Reflections on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, 1997, 16) Memory can be a friend or foe, it can help or it can harm, it can facilitate or complicate.
In daily life, the myriad of help that memory gives is incalculable.
It is because of memory that you do not walk out into the middle of the street with cars flying by, you do not pay for your groceries with beans, and you do not sip soup fresh off the burner still boiling hot.
Memory helps.
As Bernard Bouanchaud interprets Sutra 1:11 in his book The Essence of Yoga: Reflections on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, "memory recaptures lived experience" -- that experience had by just being and doing and acting in the world.
You learn from experience and so you follow the path that educated you the most.
The world said, you will probably get hit by a car, get into trouble, or scald your mouth if you do the above; so, you learned to look both ways and wait for traffic to stop, bring paper/coin money, and wait for the soup to cool down before proceeding.
Perhaps you had been hit by a car, forgetful or confused and thought you had money, or impatient and really hungry; or, perhaps someone told you about so and so who did one of these things.
In either case, by lived experience or testimony, you learned from your own or someone else's experience and thanks to your memory, you saved and spared yourself.
But what about those times when you wish you would not remember, when all you seemingly want to do is forget, but instead, the memories are right there with you every step of the way.
When you want to learn another language, take dancing lessons, apply for a grant or scholarship, apply for a sought position, travel to another country, talk to your new classmate, teach a class you have never taught before and you "remember" that you are not good at that or good enough or not worth it or too whatever.
Through lived experience we gain valuable lessons that help us structure our daily living, as we saw above.
But, we often structure our daily lives based solely on memories and nothing more--memories that were created out of fear or anger.
We experience hurt, disappointment, anxiety, and we carry those experiences, those memories, with us so that we can protect ourselves from future similar experiences.
Giving no credence as to the evolution of the situation or the person, we respond in the same way that we did before.
We allow for no change.
Like Stepford people, we respond robotically.
We do the same for the happy experiences too and who could blame us.
We remember how pleasant something felt and we want to experience it again.
Looking at the rich, gorgeous colors of a painting, listening to the bravado of a piece of music, laughing at the most hilarious thing.
We remember what it was like and we either seek to reject it and avoid it or accept it and repeat it (Yoga Sutra 2.
3, 7-8).
In our struggle to avoid and repeat, we grip terribly.
In the same way that we grip in our minds and stubbornly refuse to see how a situation or person has changed and to see the multitude of other viewpoints, we tend to grip in our bodies with the same ferocity causing tensions unnoticeable and noticeable only when the pain has become too much to bear.
We grip onto our memories for dear life because we do not want to experience unhappiness.
But, unfortunately, oftentimes we use painful tactics such as remembering and re-remembering over and over in order to avoid, which by itself causes undue pain.
Take some moments to sit quietly.
Scan your body.
Pay attention to any parts that feel painful or tense.
Maybe place a hand on the part or simply look at it if you can, or just think about it.
Tell yourself to let it go.
Then tell yourself to REALLY let it go.
Memory is invaluable and it saves our lives and helps us sort out the yuck from the yay! but it has the nasty habit of keeping us stuck in assembly-line patterns of reacting and responding that stop us from evolving and growing and taking life in fully.
Use your memory to remember how to calculate a tip and not to avoid doing that thing you have really been wanting or needing to do.
SOURCES: Bernard Bouanchaud.
The Essence of Yoga: Reflections on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.
Translated by Rosemary Desneux.
Delhi, India: Sri Satguru Publications, 1997.
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