How deep are your memories?

Memory is one of the most powerful ways to enhance your meditation practice, and the power of your mind.  I'm not talking about memorizing facts, that is one type of memory, but it activates different area of the brain.

I'm going to introduce you to a ten minute memory exercise that increases your skill at deliberately navigating through deep memories.

What are Deep Memories?

Deep memories are memories that lie below the surface of what you normally remember about an event, an emotion, a person. For instance, if you sit quietly and think about where you lived when you were five years old, you will probably immediately or with relatively little effort, be able to remember maybe the name of the street, or your childhood friends name, or your pets name at that time.   A deep memory in contrast is a something that you would normally never occur to you to put your attention on - like the sound of the train that ran behind your house, or exactly what you felt when you were bullied at school, or the color of a model train you had as that five year old.  A deep memory can be an emotion, a color, a sound, an image - any sensory input whatever. It might be the single water lily on a quiet pond your found by accident wandering in a foreign city, the sound of laughter across the room at a party you once threw. But it is always that something that is below the normal 'surface' of remembering. It may have no importance, or you might find that is has some meaning that you never would have thought about.

Deep Memories are so valuable to us because they are just not available to us unless we make a specific effort to use your consciousness, the skill at navigating your own mind. But the fact that they are there makes us aware how rich our own mind is, and how so many things that might be important are normally forgotten in our normal daily lives.

Make sure you understand deliberate navigation of deep memories is very different from daydreaming. Daydreaming is what you do sitting beside the pool in the summertime, half asleep from drinking that mid-afternoon cocktail.  Navigating deep memories is a consciousness skill, something that improves greatly when we practice, even for a short period.

Ask around and you will find that navigating deep memories is something that very few people have even taken any time to ever do, even though it takes very little skill and very little time.

Want to feel revived, connected with your past, 

grateful for your life in 10 minutes or less? 

Then the Deep Memory Exercise might be for you.

Just follow these steps the next time you sit down to do your meditation practice:

1. Close your eyes and pick a time in your life when you felt happy. It doesn't really matter how long ago it is, the key thing is that is when were were happy. Don't pick a negative memory unless you have the confidence to work through negative emotional states that may get triggered.


2. Gently direct your attention to the most obvious aspects of that memory - whether it is about an emotion, a place, a person, an idea. Do this for about a minute or so.


3. Now, go deeper. Gently direct your attention to aspects of that memory in turn, for instance the color of the leaves, the sound of a car door slamming, what your friends talked about, how you felt about what was going on. If you attention wanders, bring it back to that memory and look for something else. Seek to go deeper into one memory or area of memories. This is not free associating from one topic to another, it is going deeper into one topic.


4. The key is relaxed effort. This is not a difficult, goal orientated exercise, its a training in deliberate attention management. If you are straining, back off and be easier on yourself.


5. Once you are comfortable with the concept of going deeper, stay within the general area, but slowly allow your attention to naturally explore, using your curiosity as a guide. For example, if you picked a particular time in your life remember other things that were happening at that time, and go deeper into each of those things in turn. Or if you picked a person, remember all the things you ever did with that person, and go deeper into each one. If it was an activity, remember other times or places you did that same activity, and go deeper into each of those places.


6. Continue this process until you come across something that you really haven't remembered for some time, and that would never have occurred to you to place your attention on if you had not done this exercise.


7. Continue the memory exercise for at least 10 minutes.