When Memory is Not Real

Salvador Dali once said: "The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant."

“The only thing we ever deal with is thought, and thoughts can be changed! Regardless what the situation is, it is only outer effects of inner thoughts! The power is this moment and you choose what it is!” ~Pa’Ris’Ha Taylor

Elizabeth F. Loftus, a well-known professor and researcher in the field of psychology and “the creation and nature of false memories” has shown in her research how memories can be distorted, how people can be influenced by information after an event has occurred. Her experiments involve exposing people to outside influences of suggestion after witnessing a video, and being questioned about their observations, for example.

According to an article on Businessinsider.com, Dec 19, 2017 by Lindsay Dodgson, “Neuroscientists have looked at brain scans of people having real memories and false memories to see if there's a difference. In one study from Daegu University in South Korea, 11 people were asked to read lists of words that fall into categories, like ‘farm animals.’" Then they were asked whether specific words appeared on the original lists, while functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) detected changes in blood flow to different areas of the brain.

“When study participants had confidence in their answers and were correct, blood flow increased to the hippocampus — the region of the brain that is important for memory. If they were confident in their answer but were wrong, which happened about 20% of the time, the frontoparietal region lit up — the area associated with ‘a sense of familiarity’."

Now consider how the human brain can influence memory by going over and over an event that is influenced by a high emotional response. According to Dr. Joe Dispenza, in Evolve Your Brain, “We can make thought more real than anything else.”

The way we think affects the body because every thought creates a biochemical reaction in the brain, which allows for a corresponding feeling in the body. There is a continuous cycle of thinking creating feeling and then feeling creating thinking.

 

“All that you perceive is a hologram and the materialization of your thoughts,” shares Pa’Ris’Ha Taylor. “Do you like what you See? If not, change your mind.” The thoughts, vibration and frequency that you emit returns back to you an exact reflection.

Each time we “re-live” a highly charged emotional experience, we literally cause the brain to fire in the exact sequences and patterns as the original event. This firing and wiring of the brain to the past only serves to reinforce those circuits and create even more hard-wired circuits. The emotions can become even more heightened thus creating a distortion of the “memory” of actual events.

 

When there is an extreme emotional charge to an event or experience in our life, and we continue to live it over and over again, recreating the same chemistry in the body-mind, there is the opportunity for distortion of the memory of that event, heightened by the memorized emotions. Because we tend to “re-live” especially traumatic events or uncomfortable or unhappy experiences from our past, those “memories” become distorted by our emotional state.

This unconscious repetition trains the body to remember that emotional state, equal to or better than the conscious mind does. When the body remembers better than the conscious mind, then the body is the mind. Our feelings become the way we think, and we can’t think greater than how we feel. At this point the body (feelings) controls the mind (thoughts).

Only 5% of who we are is conscious, and 95% of who we are is subconscious, or even unconscious. So, body-feelings is that 95 % of memorized negativity, while mind-thoughts is the 5%.

“Think of your body as the unconscious mind. It is so objective that it doesn’t know the difference between the emotions that are created from experiences in your external world and those you fabricate in your internal world by thought alone. To the body they are the same.” -Joe Dispenza, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself.

 

Pa’Ris’Ha Taylor reminds us that all is energy. The "here now" that we are looking at is a series of images that we have created from our memory bank, because the physical action of looking is actually a black hole. The iris is a hole that acts as a lens. The optic nerve broadcasts electrical signals that play across our eyes like a movie on a screen. This is what we have been calling reality – past experience. Those electrical signals are pulled from our memory bank. We are not present at that moment.

The question of the accuracy of memory has more recently become of interest in the criminal justice system.  According to an article in Wired, “False memories and false confessions: the psychology of imagined crimes” Julia Shaw, a criminal psychologist at the London South Bank University, conducts research to study how false memories arise in the brain and its implications to the criminal justice system. She has found human memories to be susceptible to suggestion, malleable and “often unintentionally false.”

"False memories are everywhere," she says. "In everyday situations we don't really notice or care that they're happening. We call them mistakes, or say we misremember things." In the criminal-justice system, however, they can have severe consequences.

Elizabeth Loftus, a cognitive psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, had been studying memory for more than 20 years prior to 1990. In one of Loftus’ research studies, she concluded that "The key is suggestibility. Often, false memories develop because there's exposure to external suggestive information. Or, people can suggest things to themselves - autosuggestion. People draw inferences about what might have happened. Those solidify and act like false memories."

Joe Dispenza in Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself gives this advice: “Warning: when feelings become the means of thinking, or if we cannot think greater than how we feel, we can never change. To change is to think greater than how we feel. To change is to act greater than the familiar feelings of the memorized self.”

Thus, in order to move out of living in the past, and being boxed in by “memories” – real or unreal – is to challenge the thoughts and feelings that come with them. A vital skill that Pa’Ris’Ha Taylor teaches to help separate our thoughts from “ghosts from the past” and what’s truly our inner self, our true self, is to simply ask, “Who’s talking?”

 

Ask yourself: “Is this true?” “Is this just what I’m thinking and believing while I’m experiencing these feelings?”

Rather than continuing to replay old scenarios – move beyond the “old memorized self.” Knowing that memory is more an illusion than a reality, it is possible. The act of coming to present time is absolutely vital to moving from victim to victor.

All we ever have is this moment. What we do with our emotions, memories, thoughts and actions, right now, is all that matters and is all that creates matter. ~Pa’Ris’Ha Taylor

 

-DJA


References:
Evolve Your Brain, Joe Dispenza, DC; ©2007, Health Communications, Inc.

Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, Joe Dispenza, DC; ©2012, Hay House, Inc.

https://www.businessinsider.com/science-of-false-memories-2017  Dec 19, 2017, Lindsay Dodgson

https://www.psychologistworld.com/memory/false-memories-questioning-eyewitness-testimony False Memories: How false memories are created and can affect our ability to recall events.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/false-memory-syndrome-false-confessions-memories, Emma Bryce, 7-22-2017 False memories and false confessions: the psychology of imagined crimes

 

Cannot Just Get Over It?

 

Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha shares, “So as you move through time as an eternal Being, you need to Observe the Body Mind and see where you determine yourself the God Within.”

 

 

Most people carry around feelings or thoughts that are stuck in their system. Thoughts and feelings that seem to be on automatic pilot, looping over the years and being acted out with different people.  This happens when there are the old unprocessed hurts that simply will not budge for example that boyfriend that broke up 20 years ago, that person who took sexual privilege. As the years go by, life can add to the list of hurts and we can end up spiraling down emotionally and physically. Often thoughts of the hurt are long gone and yet the lingering feeling sits there waiting to be triggered by the next person who shows any sign of acting in the same way as that original hurt. An example of this is a child who never felt anyone paid attention or loved them- perhaps their parents worked so hard that they were often left alone. And as an adult it can feel very painful if their partner seems distant or inattentive.

 

 

Old hurt sits stored in the nervous system, brain and body and when the new situation happens, these old feelings can be triggered and come to the surface. To the person it seems like all the feelings and thoughts belong to that new situation. It looks like it is all about the person who is in front of them acting that way, such as the husband who didn’t remember the anniversary, or the friend who doesn’t seem to call. While some of the emotion may relate to the current situation, they can be fueled by an underground stream of past unprocessed emotion from old memories and hurts. This can feel quite intense and confusing both for the person it is being directed at and the one triggered.

 

 

You can even be someone who smiles and laughs and plays the social star and entertainer on the surface and yet privately feel angry, low, depressed and or anxious. It is this private, internal realm that deeply matters when it comes to be free and happy. It is the feelings that sit below the surface.

 

 

Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha says, “All is so beautiful when you look for it. It is always residing just there waiting for you to see, not just looking but “seeing”.

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Sometimes it can be the smallest trigger in our current life that seems to “derail” us. This is because memories that have some similarity get stored together in the unconscious. They can join together and build up big bank of emotion that sits outside conscious awareness. We may have developed fantastic defenses that keep these emotions at bay so that we can get on with day-to-day life.

 

 

Then one day something happens to add to the bank and our defenses cannot hold back the intensity. All the emotions and thoughts from all the previous times are firing off and overwhelm the nervous system.  Perhaps it was the last boss who spoke to their employer in a demeaning way that brought back the flood of overwhelming hurt from previous experiences of being disrespected. Perhaps the bank of emotions is made up of indiscretions we have done to others. Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha tells us, “To See yourself in All. AS such there is no enemy.”  

 

 

There are many events that happen to us in life that we naturally work through and let go of. It is often thought that the process of sleeping and dreaming during REM sleep is when the brain naturally processes the day’s events and emotions.

 

   

In order to find out if you are holding on to old hurt you simply need to look at patterns of how you reacted in life. What are the things that commonly hurt you? Are there any themes? Think of the last time someone really upset you. When you think of that notice any thoughts you are having about them. And as you think that what do you feel it is saying about you? For example – they are rude and nasty. While this logically says more about them then me, when I tune into the feelings it makes me feel disrespected. And when I ask myself what does that mean about me from within the feeling?  It feels like I am not valuable. So, the next phase is to tune into that memory and go back earlier in life. Are there any other memories that come up?

   

 

Another way to do it is, think about old memories that have hurt you in the past. When you think about those old memories do you feel anything in your body? Remember this is not an exercise of logic. Logically you may very well be over it. It is when you bring up the memory, and even find an image for the worst part of the memory. When you tune in and notice the negative belief about yourself within the memory and then see if there is any emotional charge on it. If there is charge on it then this memory is a part of the bank of emotions that fuels your reactions to life today and holds you back from just getting over it. Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha lets us know over and over again “What you think about you bring about.”  

 

  

When you recognize any of these signs there is a lot you can do about it. Many of the mind and body therapies that involve going into the subconscious and bringing to consciousness these old emotions can be helpful. Although simply going in and remembering is not enough. In fact, doing this can be damaging if the emotions are not discharged and can leave a person retraumatized. One particular therapy is very effective in my experience for fast tracking the letting go process. EMDR therapy stands for eye movement desensitization reprocessing therapy. It uses the brain’s natural healing mechanism similar to what occurs in REM sleep to gain access these old memories and allow them to integrate into the nervous system and brain as wisdom and learning while discharging the emotional charge attached to the memory. In 20 years in the mental health field this is one of the most powerful processes I have come across for letting go of old hurts.

 

 

 

When we do ‘get over it’, the end result is being present in the moment as it is now. Not as it was, or how it may be perceived through tainted lenses. When situations are met fully in the present moment, they can be met with

can often stay emotionally regulated and present enough to handle the situation effectively.

 

 

"Every circumstance, every event, and every meeting of every person - everything that you live- is because of what you have been thinking about, wondering about, pondering, remembering, observing, considering and imagining…You are literally thinking your life into being.” Ester Hicks

 

 

Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha lets all know that we matter and the universe is listening to what we are broadcasting.

 

-MAL