Before Memory
Antes de la Memoria
A playful exploration of what remains of your experience when you set aside memory and the world of thinking.
Before Memory
The world of thinking
I find one of the biggest obstacles to this work is quite a deep confusion around what is thinking.
There are many ways to define mind, and there's no right or wrong way, because you can include perception as mind.
But in this work I distinguish thought, or mind, from sensation and perception.
So the mind and thought becomes the inner dialogue and everything that has to do with images from imagination.
Visual thought.
Thought that is also based on sound, which is inner dialogue at times.
And another aspect of that is emotion.
What often happens is that we believe we are relating to reality, and we are mostly engaged with thinking.
A game without memory
One way to explore this in contemplation is: what do I know about myself and about reality if I don't have access to memory?
So in this contemplation, let's explore as if it were a game, playfully.
The rule of the game is memory is not allowed.
We can look at our experience currently and notice what part of our experience is built on memory.
Memory is the foundation of the house, the house of the world of thinking, map making.
And so we want to notice two kinds of experience: what is based on memory and what is not.
Direct experience and memory
If I hear some sounds, the raw direct experience of that sound is not based on memory, therefore not based on thought.
The knowing of that sound as a car or a voice, the meaning of the words, that is all based on memory.
If my eyes are closed, do I know what a hand is?
There is a sensation.
What is the experience of the body without memory?
Who am I without memory?
What is here now?
When memory is not: sounds, sensations, beingness.
What is a body without memory? Sensations.
Where do I come from?
Who were my parents?
The knowing of a universe, planets, continents, societies, all based on memory.
Who am I?
Look for the answer to the question: who am I?
Before there is memory, we are.
All sense of time goes without memory, no past, no future.
All of what we know about the universe, about life, belongs to the world of thinking, based on memory.
What is here before thought?
Discerning without pushing
There's no need to stop the world of thinking, no need to push against it.
Just to discern what of my experience currently is built on memory and thought, and what is beyond.
Keep contemplating this.
Notice where attention goes.
Is it back into the world of thought based on memory?
Don't push against this.
Just notice.
Beyond memory
What is beyond the world of memory and thought?
What am I without memory, before memory?
Memory can only offer a very poor answer.
Sink into the world of sensation, perception, sounds, the unknowable, unnameable presence.
Memory offers a filter.
Look without filter.
Direct, raw experience.