230328 The past is always in the present

Memory is not an accurate representation of the past. People can have different memories of the same event. Memory is subjective and can change over time. Memories can be unreliable and may not accurately reflect what actually happened. Dreams also raise questions about the nature of reality and the reliability of memory. Overall, memory is not a reliable source of information and should not be relied upon to define who we are. Ok, so we're not remembering the past. When we have a memory, we think we're remembering the past, but we're actually creating the experience in the present. It just feels like it's something from the past. It has been shown through scientific testing that memory is not what we think it is. We think we're remembering correctly, but the reality is it may be nothing like what took place. Two people involved in the same experience can have very different memories of what took place. Who's correct? Memory can become thought of as being the thing that took place when in fact it has somehow morphed into a different thing altogether. But we remember it as if it is correct, because we've got nothing to compare it with. So if that is what comes up as our memory, then we experience it that way even though the reality may have been different. So, can't be certain that what you remember as being the past was in fact what took place. It is merely what purports to be your memory now in the present. But it feels like we're remembering correctly, so we assume we are. There's nothing to compare it with, except perhaps had it been written down at the time in a journal, one might then go back and look and that would adjust things if there had been some discrepancy. But for the majority of memories, unless one is reminiscing with another who was there, and I've done this myself where I don't remember that, oh that's not what I remember, and yet that's the experience. So, if one can't be 100% certain that what one remembers is actually what one experienced, what is the point of memory? Some say that memory is essential to define who we are by having some connection to who we have been, who we were. But if those memories can't be relied upon to be accurate, then what they're telling us isn't correct. I mean I can remember I have been here, the larger picture, did I go to India? Yes, no question. Once I get down to the details of the experiences of that time, there may be a change in the actual reality of what took place to what I think I remember of it. So the larger picture is fine, generally there's no discrepancy there. Every so often, unexpectedly, a memory of something I hadn't thought of for ages, or maybe ever since I had the experience pops up. Just a brief flash of something reminding me that essentially everything is there, everything must be available, just the mechanism of recall, and for whatever reason isn't necessarily efficient. If somebody I experienced something with reminds me of something we did generally, I'll now remember it, but until they do, unless there's something else that triggers it, it's as if it never happened, it never existed. But they say that all memory of all things exists, and with the right intention, the right trigger, it can be recalled. I think that's true. Why do certain memories seemingly randomly just pop up? A place, a situation from the distant past, something I hadn't thought of, I had no reason to think of now, and there it is, just appearing for a moment. Insignificantly, I acknowledge it, oh yeah, that's right, that took place, and then move on, because there's no relevance, at least from my perspective. What causes it to appear at that moment? A random neuronal firing? Doesn't make any sense. Just like, I suppose, if one has a dream that involves the past, people, an experience, whether it reflects an accurate idea, or whether it's just a faint approximation because of its dreamness, I suppose doesn't really matter. Where do all these things come from? I often think about dreams, not the symbolic, very obviously symbolic imagery that can be in dreams, although even dreams that seem relatively free from that can still be symbolic, it's hard to tell. But my dreams, for the most part, are as if observations of another life, a different reality with logic and purpose and autonomy that seems to take place independently of me. I've even had dreams where I've found myself returning to scenarios and situations that I've been to several times already, as if they have a life of their own and I'm merely popping back. But if they are simply constructs from a subconscious mind creating what seems to be intelligently, creatively, logically experienced, where does that come from? Who's designing that? How can it be random? Because it has too much logic, too much purpose, too much order. If we're able to create something as intricate and as detailed as dreams can be, it can't be random, especially if it has meaning for us. So there has to be a mechanism that is essentially creating it, like a director involved in creating a film with an idea and a vision of how they want it to look like. The film can't create itself without a director deciding what takes place. So who's the director of our dream? I'm asleep. The conscious me has nothing to do with it. So is there a different aspect of me that isn't asleep, that's wide awake, and in that moment is deciding what works, what appears, in what order, in what way, with what characters, for whatever purpose? It can't be happening randomly and still have such logical structure to be as informative and as coherent as dreams can be. Yes, of course, some dreams in the moment seem perfectly real and logical, then once awakened seem ridiculous. How could I have possibly thought that that was a real experience? It just doesn't make sense now. But at the time, I never questioned it. It made perfect sense in its own reality. But even then, that feeling of it making sense, of following some coherent structure, having some storyline, some purpose, some point, can't be random, otherwise it wouldn't have that. It would just be images and ideas coming together in a non-coherent way because it wasn't structured, nothing was organizing it, nothing had any say in it. There has to be more to it. And also, putting aside the fact that some dreams, or what appear to be dreams, could be other planes of existence, travelled to and experienced from, that are another explanation altogether. So it's hard to say whether any dream is actually just an internal experience that has no meaning, or that it is memories of actual travelling that takes the idea to a whole other level. We know that people do travel in their nightly experiences that are more than dreams. But I'm only talking about what are recognized as a dream. I don't have, to my knowledge, astral projections and visitations into other realms at night. I may do, but I have no conscious knowledge of it. And I am often aware, when I wake up, of having just finished, however long before, perhaps very recently, a dream. And I'm never aware that I am dreaming until after I have completed it. They may be fairly straightforward in the experience that could have been real, and now shows itself to have been simply a dream, but I recognize that I had an experience which at the time was my reality. There was nothing else available. The idea of me as a person awake in the world of a life that I had lived didn't exist anymore. It was simply that experience that I was having, I later discover, oh, that was just a dream. Am I even remembering it correctly when I do this? Perhaps they're fragments of different experiences coming together in one. It often quickly fades as well. I can't hold onto it, the structure. There must have been far more going on, but somehow I'm already losing it. Just like memories of life experiences that I recognize I lose, I don't hold. So much of my past isn't accessible anymore. I'm okay with that. It's gone. I've written down an awful lot of stuff that, in a sense, would remind me forever were I to read it. But the vast majority of what has taken place can't be recalled easily. What would be the point? Carrying all that. The experiences don't seem to really matter. It's only the lesson, the learning, the changing, the evolving that's taken place as a result of it. I am the result of what I've done, how I've been, what I've thought, what I've felt, that has brought me to this moment as the person I feel I am. But that person isn't finished. It's not even real. He isn't the same as the person he's been. He won't be the same as the person he will be, depending on what takes place. Things can change us profoundly, shift us in directions we never imagined taking place, and somehow access to the past, it changes too. I no longer... I can't recall things, in a sense, vibrationally, because I'm no longer vibrating in a way that would allow me to. But that doesn't mean that the memories of the things that took place are gone. They just aren't seen. They can't be accessed. If I'm truly in the present, there is no past. I can't remember it. My mind isn't thinking about it. There is only this moment. There is only what is happening. If I'm not interpreting, if I'm merely experiencing, without deciding, without concluding, without judging, that is probably the realist it gets. The moment I interpret, the moment I think I know, I may be changing it completely, turning things into a belief, deciding that I am aware of everything that's taking place to do that, when the reality is probably I'm not. But the feeling of being in the present, without the mind moving and making its decisions, feels real to me. But then, at some point in the future, if I remember back to this moment, I may see it differently. I may not recall all the details as clearly as I am experiencing them. As if they were just dreams all along. Just in the moment that I'm having it, it feels real. And that's all that life is. Something illusory that feels real. And that experience of feeling it real, is real. The experience of reality is real, even if what we call reality isn't. When I'm having that dream, and there's nothing else to compare it to as to who I was before I went to sleep, and who I am when I wake up in the morning, the experience is real. Even strangely crazy scenarios aren't questioned. They are the reality I'm experiencing, therefore it is real. No doubt. If that can be true, if that is true, then how do we know the experience we're having in what we call waking reality is also real? It's just what we're experiencing right now. And that makes more sense to me. That makes a lot more sense to me. But I still don't go around thinking like this. It's only because I'm talking about it in this moment, without really knowing what I'm going to say or whether I'll even be making sense. It sounds like I'm making sense to me. I could listen to this back and get a sense of whether I did or not, whether I was. It might not make sense to you. You may actually not resonate with these ideas because you have your own perspective which shifts it. We may be able to find common ground. It may make sense what you think compared to what I think. It may be similar. But it might not be. That's why I'm not saying what I'm saying is the truth. It may not even be my truth. It's simply what comes out in this moment that purports to be. Am I remembering enough to create a truth? And if I am and it resonates with you, is it simply because we've had similar experiences, we think about things in a similar way? Even though our lives have been very different, at the core are we the same? Is everybody the same at the core? Are we one thing that somehow has branched off so that it has experiences that can seem very different but fundamentally at the core are the same? The same fears, the same needs, the same wants, the same loves. All of this stuff, whether you go to the remotest tribe in South American jungle, once you get past the difference in language, cultural, superstitious, religious, we are the same. Same experience. Raising children, struggling with in-laws, feeling at peace, experiencing anxiety. What's the difference? And wherever we are, whoever we are, we all dream, we all believe we remember the past correctly. I don't know about you but it's possible to be completely mistaken about what took place, not just slightly mistaken, completely mistaken. Oh, I thought that we did this, we went there, and now I remember that's not true at all. How come? It changed. How has it changed? Is it just the failing of the structure that holds what we call memory? And as it changes, as it fades, as it alters, it doesn't change the fact that we feel it as our memory, even though it isn't the same as it once was. We've got nothing to compare it to. Here's two memories of what purports to be our past, it's likely that we'll recognise one being more true than the other. But if we only have one, that's it, that's the memory. We're a memory. I don't reminisce very often, certainly not with anyone who has connection to me in the past. All those people from before no longer exist in my present, I have no contact with them whatsoever. I had an experience many years ago where things that were experienced by both of us were no longer remembered by me at all. But you must remember, you must remember that we did that. I don't remember. It was as if it never existed, and I'm not sure that he believed me. As if somehow I was making it up, I was deliberately being obtuse, that I had no memory of what he said we did. I didn't doubt that that's what he remembered, or even that that is what took place, but I had no memory of it. And so for me, it didn't exist anymore, as if it never had. I didn't need to be convinced, I couldn't be convinced, nor did I have to convince him that, well maybe you're wrong. Maybe you're remembering something that had nothing to do with me. I just found it very interesting that after several years of being apart, and have followed vastly different paths, that somehow I don't have access to something that he strongly does. I'm not the same person now, so I can't connect with what he says he remembers, and can't begin to understand why I no longer do. It wasn't long after that, before I had no further contact with him at all. As if he now no longer existed either, and that he was simply a memory. It's interesting, isn't it?