Memory
April 24, 2010I’d like to go a little more abstract for a moment. (laughs)
I’ve spoken before about how consciousness is always shifting and adjusting. Tuning our awareness so we respond in the right way at the right time.
But is consciousness really participating that intently in our every moment? Well, yes. But there is a deeper aspect we can look at to understand this.
As we shift progressively more deeply into being now, being in the present, more and more is seen to be only right now. Past and future are only in this one moment. Everything is concurrent. There can then be a sense that everything has already happened.
What this can reveal is that it’s all memory. Consciousness is remembering itself through us, through memory.
Until this memory is made conscious, it cannot be said to exist. Until it is experienced, it is not remembered. When remembered, consciousness has known that aspect of itself. We have completed that dharma or purpose.
This is not like remembering how life was when you were 8 years old. That’s taking place right now too. We’re talking about the memory of consciousness itself. Consciousness awakening to its own depth and breadth.
I hesitate to use the term “akashic records” as it’s another of those abused concepts. But this is it, the structure of unfoldment, the structure of the universe, stored in the gap or space of being. (akasha means space) There is also a deeper value of memory called Veda that structures creations such as the one our universe emerges within.
There’s a few interesting details about this. For example, people will talk of karma, the field of action, being unfathomable. But it’s not as unfathomable if you can see the pattern it’s following. Still very vast but…
This may sound like determinism – that it’s already all happened and is predetermined. But ask whose memory are we talking about? And who laid the memory down? This is not separate from your ourself.
We are moving our attention down a timeline that unfolds with our attention. Our attention to our experiences in this moment. These moments are like modules of memory, files of experience we play in a sequence. Our life is our playlist.
What is interesting about this is the moments in the pauses, the gaps between files. The moment where we step a little off the program and stop and smell the roses. Notice a nice sunset. Get distracted and stub our toe. This noticing, outside memory, adds a richness to life and adds in a little variety to experience. We’re remembering who we are in extra nuances.
In the Yog Vasishta, Vasishta meets Bhusunda the crow. Bhusunda has figured out how to live beyond a dissolution or world cycle when everything completes and ends for a time. In the story, he has now lived through 10 cycles and mentions some of the small variations in each. For example, Vasishta has come to see him 8 of the 10 times.
Thus, even though it is all memory, it is not a journey fixed in stone but rather an organic fluid process.
As to why were doing it over and over again… That’s a little more unfathomable. Perhaps God likes the dream enough to have it again. We’re asked to tell our life story one more time…
Davidya
Beautiful! I love it and keep coming back to this one!
“We’re asked to tell our life story one more time…”
To Whom? Could it be to our self? Authors of our life?? I find the thought of it very empowering.
Hi Masi
To ourselves, to the authors, to whatever you might wish to call that which sees and begins.
Yes, “that which sees” !
thank you D.
Very illuminating post.
It’s feels more like a spiral than a circle. But I try not conceptualize. For me, conceptualizing can be very distracting; it takes away from what is prior to the concepts. But very interesting, nonetheless.
Hi Kaushik
Yes, concepts can take away from being but without concepts, how can we describe what is? Best approach I’ve found is to use concepts like a toy. Play with them to find the best model but be prepared to rebuild it as the picture expands. But avoiding concepts is a simpler approach and may in the end be superior. Maybe when I radiate truth I won’t need concepts anymore. (laughs)
Thanks for your feedback.
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