Forgetting

Forgetting.

I am going to lay out a few phenomenon and then in the end I will bring it all together.  Bear with me.  

The first is the case of the separated fraternal twins.  Born near the same time, giving them practically the same personalities, they were cause for study.  Later in life they were studied by researchers.  Both twins were perfectionists, but had different reasons for being so.  They had created reasons in their minds for being perfectionists.  One blamed his adopted mother who was a perfectionist; the other blamed his adopted mother because she was lazy.  The one said she ingrained it in him, the other said he was compensating for her.  

Please take a moment and let that sink in.  We too, you and I, create stories for why we are the way we are, yet in reality; we just are!  There was no reason for the twins’ perfectionism other than being born when they were, yet their stories were quite profound explaining why they were the way they were.  They were living their whole lives believing a lie.  Make sure to see this in yourself.

The second is the case of a woman’s sense of smell.  Some researchers got a bunch of men to wear the same cloths for a week.  No showers, no personal products, nothing but accumulating their own scent.  They then asked women to smell these men and report which one smelled the best to them.  It turned out that the women choose the man with the most opposite immune system.  Women found the man who would cause their children to have the best immune system to be the best smelling.  Turns out women on the pill get it wrong.  Please take a moment and let this sink in.  If a woman’s sense of smell dictates which man smells the best, what are her other senses dictating?  If hormones are off, out of whack, via the pill, they get it wrong and choose the wrong guy.  I have never known a woman to consciously think about these things while she is in the act of being attracted to a man.  Think about this.  Take a moment and let that sink it.  We have no real idea why we are attracted to the people we are attracted to.  We merely create a story after the fact of why it is so.  Forever after living a lie.  

The third phenomenon is the case of the lessons learned.  I was recently talking to a friend and she was telling me how she met her first boyfriend.  She was describing all the reasons she was attracted and what not to her first love, why she liked him, why she thought it happened.  For her it has been over ten years, so looking back she can clearly see what went wrong.  But can she?  What about ten years from now and she looks back again on the man she is with now.  What will she say?  Will she realize like she does looking back on her teenage self that she did not really know what was going on?  What prevents her from seeing it in herself now, that she doesn’t know what is going on with her current relationship anymore than she did then.  She is just creating a different story.  

You see, in her mind, like the perfectionist twins, she was creating a story about why she was doing what she was doing.  The truth is she has no idea why she was doing it.  Her psyche wanted to be with a boy, but the choosing of that was not ever really up to her conscious mind.  Her unconscious mind was practically in full control.  Our unconscious minds always are.  Her conscious mind was merely creating the story after the fact.  Who is conscious of what our sense of smell tells us?  It would be foolish to think it only detects another’s immune system.  What about the other senses?

What about our life stories?  How can we believe our memories are real after realizing these things?  If we are going to be honest with ourselves; we can’t.  So what are we to do if our memories are false?  I found the answer in spiritual books.  They call it living in the moment.  In order to live in the moment one cannot be consciously dwelling in the past.  No comparing, labeling, judgments, or thoughts.  One cannot use the past as a gauge in the present.  Re-read it again if you need to; your memories are false. 

In my own life I have let the past destroy so many good times it’s not fathomable.  Being afraid.  Insecure.  Bitter.  Mean.  All because of a story in my mind, created by my conscious mind, that imposed a lie on the present moment.  This culture forced its labeling system into my mind.  Forever after forcing me to create lies upon lies, constructing story after story.  

Being abused as a child, I am not willing to say that it didn’t happen.  There is some play here on the word memory.  Our unconscious minds remember everything; literally everything.  Your unconscious mind is aware of every single little detail regarding your physical surroundings at all times.  Here is the difference between the minds though.  The subconscious mind does not reason.  To the unconscious mind things simply are.  It cannot inductively reason.  It is the conscious mind that distorts everything.  The abuse I suffered did happen, but the story in my mind did not.  My friend did meet a boy when she was 16, but the story in her mind about why did not happen.  You will have to draw this line out on your own, within your own mind.  It is important to do so if you wish to live in the moment.

Maybe you are like me and are in your thirties.  Looking back on those memories is as common a thing as anything we do.  I clearly remember my first love at 16.  I had no clue what was going on.  Thinking on my friend, reminiscing about her first love, she had no idea what was going on either.  The issue is that if you were to talk to her, she will speak as if she did.  Don’t we all do this?  But right here in our face is this truth; we don’t.  We don’t even know the power of our own sense of smell.  What else does it tell us about the world around us that only the unconscious mind knows?   What about all of our other senses?

The only way out of this mess is to stop thinking.  Or at the very least come to terms with the severe limitations of thinking.  So many people in the world believe that the thinking part of their mind is actually their mind.  They identify with it so much that they end up fooled into believing it is them.  It’s not true.  The thinking part of our mind is less than 1% of what is going on.  It’s not even close to who we are.  Thinking is just a tiny minuscule little part of the totality that is our mind.  

You!  Whoever you are, you are not your thinking!  You are so much more than that it isn’t fathomable to your thinking.  If you realized the truth regarding the total effects of your mind all the rest of the world would call you a god.