The Mirage Of Memory

Hello, doc. I have been a “seeker” for most of my life. I studied Western philosophy, and have dabbled in many religions. Lately I have wished I could let go of much of what I picked up. Conflicting ideas about emptiness, enlightenment, sin, salvation, selflessness, selfishness, chi, Tao, and all other confusing abstract ideas are now a source of anxiety. My friend tells me to “let go” and “surrender” to the present. But even this simplicity leaves me tired. I just seem to be really bad at it.

You have spoken about this surrender as something that can’t be willed. How do I just let it happen? And by “it” I mean life.

Pistachio, 2014

Hi. Good question.

You say you wish to let go of much of what you have picked up. But that’s not possible. As I see it, no one can let go of anything. Once you have seen or heard something, it’s there. You may be able to repress some of it, but repression is not letting go. Repression just sweeps things under the carpet.

All of us are filled with countless repressed and otherwise subconscious thoughts, which, even though we are not aware of them, continue to influence subsequent thoughts and behaviors. If a repressed, uncomfortable idea threatens to bubble up into full awareness (“Could this headache be something serious?” “Is my girlfriend cheating on me?”), I might find myself resorting to alcohol or drugs, eating when not hungry, etc, to cover up or distract myself from the discomfort I feel without knowing why I feel it.

Some distractions may even appear to be “healthy choices”—perhaps a workout at the gym or a jog around the neighborhood—and on the physical level, they may be healthy. However, at root, such behaviors still aim to maintain the repression of unwanted ideas and feelings.

To be clear, I am not saying that every time someone overeats or goes jogging, repression is involved. But often, it is. If you want to see this in action, the next time you feel compelled to do something, try not to do it and just sit, letting your thoughts go where they will, without trying to control anything. You may be surprised at what comes up.

All of that is background. Now let me get to your question:

“How do I surrender to life and just let it happen?”

Short answer: you can’t. Surrender is, I say, neither necessary nor possible. Life is already “just happening” and will continue to happen as long as the body is alive. That is what life is: a living, breathing body.

The body, which is life, knows what to do. You, meaning the endless round of thoughts you call “me” or “myself,” do not own that living body, and yet, you—the memories and other thoughts called “myself,” I mean—need the body to exist, and you know it.

Thoughts about the body may arise—including some anxious and fearful ones—but the body does not need those thoughts. The body needs air, water, food, and shelter, not thoughts. From the standpoint of the body, thoughts are largely superfluous.

“But,” you might say, “if I don’t care for my body, which involves thought, the body might die.” Yes, that is true, but the body does not care about dying the way you do.

The body has no investment in continuing. You, not the body, want to continue. You don’t want to die. That is the motive for the dabbling and seeking that now troubles you so much.

You have “dabbled in many religions” because those traditions promise that somehow, somewhere, you will continue—in “Heaven” if you are a Christian or a Muslim, or in a reincarnated subsequent life if you are a Buddhist or a Hindu.

Such ideas, once implanted in your mind, cannot be erased. Those thoughts just keep on arising whether you like it or not. And those thoughts are you. That’s what “you” is— beliefs, memories, opinions, fears, desires, etc, plus the awareness of all that.

You point to the “confusing abstractions” to which you have been exposed as the source of your anxiety. I don’t buy that. I’d wager that the source of your anxiety is the same as the source of human anxiety everywhere. You know that anything can happen at any time. You know there are no guarantees. You know that security is a pipe dream. You fear pain and suffering. And, most of all, you know sooner or later, you must die, which most likely means the end of you, and you don’t want to end. That is why, just like any other spiritual seeker, you gathered up all those concepts and speculations in the first place.

Forget all those beliefs and try to see matters as they are. See that the body that bears your name must live for a time and then die just like every other living organism and that when the brain dies, the “me” made of beliefs, memories, opinions, fears, desires, etc., cannot survive. That is nature. That’s how it goes. This should be obvious, but many folks will do almost anything to deny it, including clinging to fairy tales, magical thinking, and obvious nonsense. Unless this much is clear, don’t bother continuing to read. It will be a waste of time.

If you get that, the next step is quite simple. Just sit quietly and, without trying to control anything, observe the flow of thoughts as they arise. If you do this earnestly, even if only briefly, you will see that thoughts keep changing the ripples in a stream—the stream of consciousness. One thought appears, just to be replaced by another, by another, by another . . . and there is no stopping that process. That flow is beyond your control.

If you could control that flow of thoughts, anxiety would never be a problem, for when an anxious idea appeared, you would simply erase it and replace it with one you liked better. Then you’d hold on to that happy, happy thought for the rest of the day. But it doesn’t work that way, does it?

If you get this, you will see that you are not standing apart from thought. “Me” is a thought. Even the supposed observer of thoughts is a thought. How do I know that? Simple. Try to maintain that observer for the rest of the day or for even ten minutes, and you will notice it fading in and fading out uncontrollably just like the thoughts it claims to be observing.

So, apart from social norms and conventional parlance, I am not a name or a body but a flow of thoughts. Those thoughts have no more permanence than ripples in a stream. A “myself-thought” arises and passes away--dies--just like any other thought. Although the subject of those kinds of thoughts is always called “myself” or “me,” it is never the same myself as in the previous moment. Nothing is ever the same, and there is no going back.

The “myself” of five seconds ago cannot be reanimated, and the “myself” that will arise five seconds hence, if it does, cannot be imagined. When you notice that myself is also only a thought--ephemeral and without permanence--you will see that there is nothing to which one can cling.

Clinging to “myself” is like trying to stop time. It cannot be done.

Each moment of awareness is what it is. In each moment, a new self is born, replacing the old one that just died. Many of us fail to notice this because we have been taught to believe that the name is me and that the body is me.

Because the gross structures of the body seem to persist, changing only slowly— orders of magnitude more slowly than thoughts—we imagine that the “myself” associated with that body also somehow endures and abides. But it does not endure.

One may create a seemingly stable version of myself by stringing together memories of past thoughts and feelings as if each were a pearl and the body a cord they were strung on. That “myself” is a mirage of memory—a recollected strand of bygone thoughts and feelings called “me.”

Except in fantasies supported by the seeming persistence of memory, I am a flow, not an object. When the fantasy of permanence ends, right now, or eventually with the death of the body, nothing, I say, is lost. The “myself” that demands permanence is only a kind of spinning wheel anyway—a mechanical process.

On seeing that, you will lose your taste for escapism and abstraction.

This right now is it and all we ever have.