Memory and retrieval

Friday, February 7, 2020

3:10 a.m. So, you said, another of the myths Lincoln is associated with, beyond the self-made man. I had an idea about it when you said it, but at the moment, no.

There is a similarity in process between your being able to be a clear conduit [to TGU] and the common experience of being able – or unable – to remember things at will.

Really?

Really. What is memory but the process of retrieval? And what is that process, but the process of association? Of resonance, you might say. That is, you magnetize yourself to the desired data, be it memory or concept or communication.

I guess this is going to take some explaining. If it takes all the session, I won’t care. It sounds important.

Shouldn’t take that long. But you have to understand the function of mind in 3D, as opposed to its function in the circumstances beyond 3D.

I’m listening. With great interest, I might add.

Remember, we all could be described as magnetic fields interacting, rather a more accurate description than the usual idea of building-blocks sitting next to one another. The interaction among fields proceeds according to certain rules, of course, and in 3D conditions, there are more rules than beyond 3D.

We are a more obstructed universe, as someone said.

Yes. You can’t slow down interactions without consequences. Well, as you go through life, you “think” in two different ways, as we have said. One form of thinking is the building of logical chains, and, as Henry Ford said, it is the hardest work there is, which is why so few people do it. The other is the construction, or, one might say, the perception, of chains of association, in which one thing suggests another, under various kinds of stimuli. In its extreme form of autonomous automatic functioning, this is what is sometimes known as “monkey mind.” Monkey mind never refers to the laborious process of building logical chains, notice. It refers to automatic wandering down the paths of suggested association.

That’s very clear.

Well, beyond the primary distinction into two kinds of thinking (two as usual, less because that is how reality is structured than because that is how the conditions of 3D perception are structured; that is, dualism), we can subdivide each. Leaving aside logical construction, let us look briefly at association.

It feels like us feeling our way toward data. It’s what I always do, or almost always.

It is not. It is what you usually do except when you are constructing. Constructing, be it a plot or a plan for a set of bookshelves, requires a different thing than either, an initial vision and a logical working-out.

True, but take editing. Editing is more a matter of taste than of rules. Or, no, I see. It is a combination, isn’t it? Some things work, and I can feel whether they do or not, regardless whether I can say why. Some things don’t. I am not very rule-oriented, though. Most often I can’t justify my knowings except lamely and perhaps arbitrarily. But we know more than we can explain or justify.

However, the point here is that there is a natural function of mind that operates under constraint in 3D. The majority of what anybody thinks occurs as the result of processes that are mostly automatic, below the surface, mysterious to the 3D consciousness. You all tend to justify your conclusions after the fact, but the justification is mostly tacked-on, rather than real.

And these are the same processes as in non-3D, but modified by the conditions we live in.

Of course, primarily the compression of conscious awareness which in effect limits how much you can hold together in your RAM. You swap data in and out of active memory; you create or recognize symbols as ways of associating larger amounts of data than you would be able to otherwise; you rely on unremembered connections linking things together, sometimes in ways whose efficiency surprises you.

An example that comes to mind is that when I pick up a book I am back in the place where I was when I set it down, even if I am alternating among several books, not to mention other forms of input.

That’s right. Your mental bookmarks: You take them for granted, but do you really understand what they indicate?

I expect you’re about to tell us.

As people age, physical factors slow the process down, which makes it noticeable to you. You can’t think of a word, though you know full well the “feel” of the word you want. You feel its absence, one might say. If you push to retrieve it, often it recedes further. If you sit and await its arrival, sometimes it comes pretty quickly because you didn’t push. But if it were not for this physically enforced delay, you might never become aware of this process. When it functions smoothly, it seems instant and seamless, hence essentially invisible.

You – as magnetic field – hold in your RAM whatever it is that you are concerning yourself with, be it a song or a memory or a quotation. Whatever. You magnetize yourself to the data, or equally, you magnetize it to you. that is, you establish resonance between the thought as you experience it and the thought as it exists in the ether: in the Akashic Record, one might say. When you do so without interference, the process is so smooth as to be practically unnoticeable, as we said. In the presence of obstacles from any of several sources or conditions, the process may limp or may become non-functional for however long the adverse conditions persist.

Well, how many times have you experienced these fluctuations in these connections? [That is, in ILC conversations.] You think of it as “talking to the guys,” and you don’t expect nor desire to control it, and to the extent that you allow flow, there are no obstacles at your end. What are you doing, then, but “thinking” by association? Only, you are not attributing the result to yourself and – via ILC – are not needing to attribute it to non-self, either. Having an excuse to think of it as a conversation, you loosen the bonds; you accept what comes and then you argue with it, which is the only sensible procedure in such matters.

After all, I taught people how to get out of their own way, and did it in only a few hours, most of which was their experiencing and a little of which was my pointing out how they were gumming up the process. It is, as you say, a natural way of proceed, but we have been taught that it is not valid.

So label this session Memory and Retrieval, and next time we will continue with Abraham Lincoln as example of mythology and biography – unless, as today, life leads us elsewhere.

And I will take my day off tomorrow.

Yes, good.

Our thanks as always.

 

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