Memory
Contents
Definition
Applications
You Need to Confront Your Memories and Delimit Them [1]
JBP: Yeah, and part of the point of that kid’s book is that, as soon as you turn around and look at something, it tends to shrink. That’s partly because—imagine you have a memory that you won’t confront. Well, there’s something in that memory that’s terrifying, and that means that it’s sort of associated with everything else that’s terrifying. It’s a horrible memory, but then, when you turn around and look at it, you think, "yeah, it’s horrible; but it’s horrible in this precise and defined way." That takes it away from all the other potential horrors of it. It starts to shrink it, right away. It also makes you into the thing that can turn around and look at the horror, which is a real positive transformational act, on your part.
Russel Brand: That’s true—that, somehow, being prescriptive and being specific, the problem becomes manageable. Otherwise, it’s limitless in its potential. It becomes apocalyptic, in the end. What’s the worst thing that’s coming? I could be destroyed, and everyone I love could be destroyed, and earth itself could be destroyed. Until you say, "well, actually what this is, is that you feel inadequate, because you weren’t role-modelled correctly." "Well, all right. Maybe I can take care of that."
JBP: Right. It’s still bad, but it’s not everything. You phrased that exactly right: without that attentive delimiting, it becomes apocalyptic. That’s a very, very old idea. One of the things that happens in the Mesopotamian creation myth, the Enuma Elis, is that the gods are the offspring of chaos. That’s a good way of thinking about it. They become very careless, and they destroy their category system—they destroy their father, essentially, and chaos comes flooding back. That’s what happens to people who aren’t looking at things and delimiting them properly. They become apocalyptic, and do them in.
Interpretations
Any memory over about 18 months old which still carries a negative emotional charge is causing stress to us, and is crying out to be fully articulated and mastered.
This is why the writing down of our pasts is so therapeutic, it actually rewires our brains.
- Old memories surface because our threat-detection system fires
- People live inside the stories they tell themselves
- Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it ‘fate’. (Jung)
- Everybody acts out their myth; but people don’t know what their myth is
- You must put your mind and your emotions in alignment, united. That means you must understand and acknowledge.
See Also
