Life is enjoyed for its moments and is appreciated most in retrospect. When we are in the midst of an event…well, the event occurs. It is only after the event, upon pondering in retrospect, that we conclude and make sense of our experiences to create packages of conclusions that we then store as memory. We go through life collecting these packages of conclusions which we categorize against the background of our personality and preferences; some we love, some we detest, some are just fillers but all are ours. Our memories when taken as a whole gives us the uniqueness from which emanates our varied perspectives that influence the choices and decisions we make. Consequently our choices and decisions lead us on to our unique futures; thus a relationship between our past and the future can be conceived.
If this relationship is accepted even if only as a possibility, it would mean that the effect of a memory or the collective effect of a grouping of memories can be precursors to the future. It would also be conceivable that we could design our future by tinkering with our past; but how do we tinker with the past when it is history–facts inextricably recorded in time and of course memory?
We can easily travel to the past in our mind. There is no barrier to going as far back as we wish; in fact if we have enough accurate facts of an event in the past we could place ourselves in it and imagine quite vividly what we might do in those circumstances (even if the event was beyond our time). Of course this mind-time-travel cannot ever change the facts of the past nor does anyone really consider traveling through time by imagination valid time travel; its just too simplistic. We would rather a time machine be a sophisticated piece of technology that would safely transport us to whatever time we want physically like the ones in the movies. However, while it may lack sophistication working with the record keeper in our brain can yield results as tangible as actually going to the past and manipulating it. I will explain how this is possible but first lets indulge ourselves with the past for a bit.
Have you ever mused over the value of your past? If the value of anything is what it can provide at a time of need then an obvious value of memory can be found in past academic, technical, artistic or professional accomplishments. How we stack up these credentials when we portray ourselves to others can give us a lot of meaning as our identity and as a means of livelihood. An even more basic value of memory is the ability to remember facts, i.e. for an exam, languages and logic functions. The practical benefits of these types of memories are apparent but would you categorize them as memories you cherish? Perhaps if your accomplishments also earned you accolades from family, friends or peers. Accolades, praise, appreciation or receiving gratitude form a different type of memory. (These are memories that we cherish; an important element of these memories are that other people deliver to us these experiences.) The best way to truly appraise ourselves of the value of our past is to record our memories in a format where we can capture an overview, a sort of summary, of our past. For this record to be of any use we must start by creating categories for our memories. I have just described two types of memories, the latter we can categorize as The Practicals, the previous The Cherished-Involving Others. Lets continue defining and categorizing memories.
We also generate and hold on to more personal experiences that do not necessarily involve other people. Of these I can divide them into two more categories, one involves just us and the other involves nature. Our life is as much about our relationship with ourself as it is about the relationships with others. Thus we find it only natural that we have the urge from time to time to give ourselves accolades, praise, appreciation and gratitude. In contemporary lingo we call these the me-time moments. The memories created when we do kind and helpful service unbeknownst to others or when in solitude we appreciate ourselves for our accomplishments can be categorized in The Cherished–Self. The other large body of non-social memory we store are our cherished experiences of nature; nature in this regard includes the wonders of the great outdoors, sense and sensual delights, sensational moments in our experience of physical forces and geography–like bungee jumping or riding a roller coaster. The memories we create from these experiences are among our most intimate as they reflect the uniqueness of our personality and preferences. You can actually learn a lot about a person or even yourself if you know your affinity for or relationship to nature as it is usually honest and free from pretentiousness. Ones preferred colour, affinity to different animals, to maths, the the outdoors, types of music, tastes, smells, etc. can be the most telling of a person's subliminal nature. These memories we can label as The Cherished-World.
We have covered factual, social, personal and nature based memories which pretty much covers most of life; what is left are memories from events outside the bounds of the tangible world, such as experiences of the occult and spiritual (The Mystical). If I were to look into my memory banks I could take these types of experiences and break them into as many categories as Earth bound experiences, in fact I would add a few more. I have a very lively mystical mind and if I were to go into all that it would make the exercise I am going to share with you later too complicated. Anyway for the most part people have less developed mystical minds; such is our educational emphasis and social pressures that keep us mainly focused on the externals of life leaving The Mystical category of memory with relatively less content. Nevertheless it is important to include these memories in our organization of memories as they tend to be quite potent. If you ever caught a glimpse of what might have been a ghost, an apparition of a deceased ancestor, an angle, demon, etc. simply the possibility of a glimpse alone can sear a strong impression into your memory banks even if it was a dream.
Paranormal beings are not the only things that make up mystical experiences, actually for me I count more memories created from amazingly abstract meditative experiences than anything else. Whether you cognize your brain as a super chemical / drug fabrication plant or that it is a gateway to soulful experiences, it is the organ that produces how we feel about anything–whether it be of this world or otherwise. Exhilarating mystical experiences come from mastery of abstracting thoughts and manipulating the latent energy of consciousness; to the adept mystic they create experiences of blissful communion with Cosmic Consciousness which to the layperson is akin to the exhilaration of the "Eureka!" moment. So you can add those unusually great epiphanic moments that seem to occur for no reason–search for these in your memory banks and they will pop up here and there–and add them along with the other paranormals in this category of The Mystical memories. This category may include religious experiences especially if the moment culminated into intimate spiritual feelings or insights of deep significance. In general religious experiences are usually more social than spiritual and therefore should be categorized with memories involving other persons.
So here you have it, an ensemble of memory categories:
The Prcacticals
The Cherished-Involving Other Persons
The Cherished-Self
The Cherished-World
The Mystical
These should cover most areas of life but to complete this list we must also add a polarity to each of these categories. The Cherised of course indicates that these are memories we consider good for us or pleasing. Basically if you could go back in time with a thing-a-magic time machine and could playback some moments those would be from The Cherished. Then we have as part and parcel of life the opposite of the cherished moments. These, of course, yield experiences we rather not repeat so lets call them The Detested. The Detested however doesn't necessarily mean bad nor does The Cherished necessary mean good. Memories are very personal, how you handle or maintain them in your mind is your business; therefore the moral code you use to delineate good and bad, right and wrong as far as your memories are concerned is totally up to you. Nobody has the right to dictate how you manage your subconscious mind unless you make it amenable to another's suggestions.
The following is the complete list of memory categories:
The Prcacticals - Positive
The Cherished-Involving Other Persons
The Cherished-Self
The Cherished-World
The Mystical - Positive
The Prcacticals - Negative
The Detested-Involving Other Persons
The Detested-Self
The Detested-World
The Mystical - Negative
I alluded earlier to an exercise that I am going to share with you involving these memory categories. Let me get down to it. The exercise is simply making a mind map of these categories and filling them up with appropriate memories (your memories naturally). It is a method of subconscious-mind management and what you labour to produce is a Memory Mind Map. The idea is to sort the memories in the subconscious mind and arrange them into established categories such as the ones above. When you consider doing this exercise you will naturally realize its tediousness which will make you question its purpose. What are its benefits?
The main benefit of the Memory Mind Map is that it can help you figure out your life. How? Basically it is similar to putting your house to order and getting everything to where they need to be; you will feel better and it gives you room to think as they say. The Memory Mind Map also provides you the benefit of holding an overview of your past. Once you have made a Memory Mind Map you will immediately feel a sense of accomplishment as you behold your otherwise invisible subconscious mind laid out in front of you; a task that is inconceivable as a purely mental exercise. With the Memory Mind Map in hand you can pull all sorts of data from it. For instance you can simply count how many memories you have on the cherished and positive side compared to the detested and negative ones and see which of them you have more of. You could even weigh them as percentages–what will this tell you? Well the data is yours to interpret and I can assure you that you will discover valuable insights from the life you have lived thus far that hitherto you had not known nor could have known if not for the Memory Mind Map. Following is a hypothetical scenario that illustrates useful revelations that the Memory Mind Map can provide.
Mr. A took a whole month to complete his Memory Mind Map. He worked on it a little bit at a time for about 20 minutes a day. It was a monumental task as he had decided to start with memories from as young as he could remember. He enjoyed his recollections of the pleasant, touching and fun moments…he wished he could go back to some of them; but he also felt pain, regret and anguish when the painful ones surfaced. It was not an easy decision for Mr. A to do the Memory Mind Map. He knew it would be daunting to go back to the harsher experiences of his past and he wondered what he might glean from this exercise. Nevertheless he settled on getting it done with the hope that he would find a sorely needed solution to an unusual problem he was facing. So he steeled himself and assiduously filled up all the categories on his Memory Mind Map. A month had elapsed before he could deck out the 10 photocopy papers that he had used to jot down each category of memory. He wrote each memory as a one line summary like a title and put a time stamp next to each memory.
Mr. A is generally happy with his life, he is in his mid-40s, married with two kids going to elementary school. His job is secure, respectable and it provides for more than just paying his bills. Though he is not a millionaire Mr. A knows many envy the life he has. Yet as of late he feels a faded zest for life; an emptiness has crept into him that he can't quite fill with anything; this feeling of confusion has been lingering for sometime and it is making it psychologically harder for him get out of bed to begin the day. This confusion had turned to a palpable frustration that his wife and children encounter once in a while. He knows the condition is creating suspicion and insecurity in his wife and his work performance is starting to be affected. Mr. A has lots to lose if he continued on this path so he was in desperate need of a diagnosis and solution. A psychiatrist friend of Mr.A's blames his condition on depression and if nothing is done about it, it could become clinical which he says can be handled with prescription drugs. The whole idea of taking drugs to cure his condition makes Mr. A even more depressed.
In a moment of despair one late sleepless night Mr. A fires up his computer and behold!...He comes upon the Memory Mind Map. Mr. A is desperate enough to try anything that doesn't involve drugs or spilling his guts out in a counseling session, Mr. A is a rather timid and personal fellow. He realizes after reading this subconscious management method that the process is going to be tedious and that he is not going to be able to get his answer as immediately as he had hoped nevertheless he sets his mind to get on with it.
A month later he is finally done. With his memory patterns decked out in front of him on his large office table after hours he immediately notices a pattern. It is clear that he has way more memories that he cherishes than ones he detests. Most of these memories involve people: his parents, family, siblings, friends and so forth. He has only a few of such memories with nature and when he recollects an especially memorable camping trip he made as a boy scout he realizes just how much he misses being out in nature especially when he juxtaposes it with the Detest column below The Cherished-World where he notes that the traffic jam and pollution in the city gets to him terribly. He detests the hustle and bustle of the city and the constant need to be on the move. It makes him long for the beautiful open spaces of nature and its peace.
Mr. A has an epiphany, he realizes that for all the successes in his life which has been so driven by others' expectations and the need to please, he has put aside his own innate needs. He is out of harmony with himself and he knows how to put it right again. His passion has been nature and the environment, he detests how as a community we are spoiling the very ground that nurtures us. A great burden of confusion lifts from his mind as Mr. A realizes what he has been missing all this while. The niggling emptiness that he has been feeling for almost a year is getting filled by inspiration of a newly developing vision and passion for life. Mr. A has had it in the back of his mind dabbling into nature photography; now it fills the forefront of his mind with excitement and ideas pouring in from a source that hitherto was nowhere to be found. He also decides that he wants to get in on the environmental effort to help curb chemical pollution, but first he has to discuss his new found ideas with his wife.
Mr. A's wife is not a very outdoorsy person, she is more a people person who enjoys socialite trappings. Part of the reason Mr. A never pursued his outdoor hobby was in deference to his wife. At the time he thought of it as a small matter, an inconsequential price to pay in a compromise of marriage with his sweetheart. Now he realizes innate longings cannot be ignored forever and that it has a way of accumulating disharmony to the point where he can put it off no longer and has to work it out with his wife somehow. Mr. A cannot contain himself with his new found buoyancy. He wonders why he hadn't figured this out himself earlier but more than that he is relieved that the mysterious answer to his depression is not complicated and instead quite elementary. His wife quickly picks up on her husband's new found zest. Mr. A puts it all on the table, his Memory Mind Map and his revelations. His wife in tears of relief confesses that she was worried if he was distant because he was having an affair or some other heart wrenching problem. They share an intimate moment together in a seemingly newfound passion for life.
While Mr. A plans to incorporate nature outings and environmental work into his and his family's lifestyle Mrs. A with the encouragement of Mr. A is inspired to do her own Memory Mind Map. Mrs. A's revelations were more obvious than her husband's though similar. Since she quit her job to be a full-time homemaker she had been missing out on her social life with her friends; a need that she considered ostensible compared to her responsibilities as a mother. Yet while she finds joy in seeing her children grow and learn her personality does pine for the time she used to enjoy her friends and work colleagues. In her Memory Mind Map this need represented itself clearly as she can see how The Cherished - Involving Other Persons used to be prominent with memories until she quit her job, after that The Cherished - Self took up the slack as so much of the work she does as a homemaker to keep her family organized and cared for goes unnoticed. For a few years now she brushed off her social life needs by assuming that these cravings were selfish and at times had even denied herself such simple joys as going out with her friends when invited for a soiree even when she was given the opportunity; these moments appeared as she was working on the Detested-Self column. Learning from her husband's experience she realizes that even if she was committed to a labour of love leading a balanced life is essential to her emotional wellbeing as it was to her husband's.
Mrs. A now knows that her persistent feeling of lethargy is not because of laziness, instead the lack of inspiration caused by her being out of harmony with her personality demands. Equiped with the clarity that her own needs are also as important as fulfilling her responsibilities as a mother and wife; and that they are not selfish but natural to her, she too plans together with Mr. A to strike a better balance of care all around.
The Memory Mind Map though tedious to do is a simple tool, it certainly does not have the sophistication of a time machine, which could make one wonder about its effectiveness. I have found that the simplicity of method of spiritual or mystical practices like the Memory Mind Map is the biggest hurdle for most people to cross before they attempt the practice. However once the practice starts one will discover insights pouring into the mind as the past takes shape outside the mind and the realization that it is impossible to have such an overview of life by trying to do this exercise mentally will dawn. Subsequent revelations can be invaluable enough to give merit and credence to the effectiveness of such simple tools as pen and paper as a time machine.
The Memory Mind Map is a flexible tool that can be modified to fit your needs. You may add or remove categories according to your life and personality. This practice can be done for many reasons such as to figure out a particular situation you are in to see if you can find correlations with consequences from past deeds to find answers to the 'Why is this happening to me now?' question. Perhaps you are at the crossroads of deciding your future–the 'What now?' or 'What next?' musings–where a structured look into the patterns of the past may shed valuable information or you just want to take stock of your past like you have never done before to behold it and be awed.
Organizing one's past into areas of life is a spiritual exercise. It can provide all sorts of insights about the life we are leading, the life that we maybe missing, the likely future we are heading towards, the reason for our current condition(s) and about who we are to ourself. Of course the key ingredients of the Memory Mind Map are memories, where the more you have the better. This is not to say that this practice is only for older people. We begin collecting memories and making conclusions from our experiences from as young as we can remember. Even teenagers who are trying to figure out their life's path, their purpose or their priorities can find the Memory Mind Map enriching as a tool for charting their future. Some of the conclusions one might draw from his or her Memory Mind Map can be profound while others maybe simple, nevertheless the cumulative result of both are insights that provides a platform from which an outcome that is a future can be viewed.
