Читать книгу Making Your Wisdom Come Alive - Michael PhD Gluckman - Страница 21

There is one last function of the mind that we should look at. That’s the memory. Many people feel that it’s their memory that provides the sense of continuity for their life. It is because of what they remember that they know who they are.

But if you examine your memory closely, you will discover some astonishing facts. First of all, you forget a lot more than you remember. If you don’t believe me, what did you have for lunch 27 days ago? For all of the things that you do in the course of a single day, you only remember a very small portion of them, and that’s what you call your life.

Secondly, even the things that you remember, you remember imperfectly. Over time the facts and the details get lost. Generally the details in your memory favor you, and not the other people in the memory. If you need proof of this, try getting several people to describe an event that they just experienced like a crime scene. Everyone will have a different version of what happened. Which one is correct? That’s why when someone writes a memoir, I wonder if they are just writing another form of a novel.

Now thirdly, when you experience your memory, are you experiencing it in the past, or are you experiencing it now? We are really just experiencing our memory now, aren’t we? So memory is not proof of what happened in the past; it’s proof of what’s happening right now.

With all of these flaws, it certainly isn’t our memory that gives our life a sense of continuity and reality, is it? So what is it that makes your life seem real, and that makes it seem like one continuous story. To discover this, you have to notice the one thing that almost everyone overlooks: you are aware of your memory.

In fact you are aware when you remember something, and you are aware when you forget it. Few people ever get curious and ask, “How did I know that I forgot that.” If they looked finely, they would notice that it’s because they stand as awareness that they notice what they remember and what they forget.

In fact the function of the mind called memory is just an imposture. The sense of continuity and reality comes from you, the awareness that knows the memory, and not from your memory.

In the next chapter we will talk about the little hook that pulls us into limitation. Noticing this hook is the secret to quickly stepping out of limitation and suffering. That’s the thought, ‘I.’ See “The I Thought.”