What’s your first memory? How far back can you go? How detailed do you let yourself become if you give it a few minutes to emerge from way back there?
Mine? Oh, well mine takes place in infancy. I am lying on my back, staring up at a white expanse that I know now to be the ceiling of my parent’s bedroom. My eye catches a light that starts at one side just above the window, goes across the ceiling, lengthens and disappears on the other side near the corner at the other window. This phenomenon happens with some regularity and sometimes, there are three or four in a row followed by several moments of nothing.
There are bars all around me and I lay on a soft flat mattress with no awareness of my body. I am only aware of the periodic light that moves across the ceiling. Suddenly, I realize I am here. I mean “I” am “Here.” (okay, I’m not smoking pot) I think, “Oh shit. I’m in another fucking lifetime” and I start to cry. The lights continue across the ceiling. A man appears above me, smiles and slips his hands around me to pick me up. My memory stops there.
I imagine starting my spiritual journey book with this story. On my book tour I am interviewed on countless radio and television shows. One interviewer reads the story to me and asks with big wide eyes, “Is that true? That you became aware of yourself and felt the dread of being in another lifetime?” I say, “You mean another FUCKING lifetime?” Then I pause and look deadpan at her, shrug my shoulders and say, “By true, do you mean, did that really happen? Well, I don’t know if it really happened. It’s a memory. How can anyone know if the facts are right in a memory? All I can say now is that it was true at the time I wrote it. On another day, who knows?”
I’ve learned enough in my life that my perception of an event is simply that, my perception. What’s true is what’s true for me. I seek validation by telling my story and looking for someone to concur. Too often, I’ve had people tell me that my memory is inaccurate and even damaging, especially to family. But my memory is all I have and though I’m open to reordering the facts, how do I trust what’s true to someone else? I only have my own lens.
This particular memory stays the same every time it us unearthed. I believe there are moments that either get burned in as a result of their emotional intensity or as a result of repetition. The circumstances in this memory have not changed. I am lying in a crib and watching the reflection of the sun on the roof of cars going across the ceiling. I have a memory of being aware in that one moment that I am “I” and “I” am suddenly finding myself “Here” as if I were somewhere else before that moment. The one moment that changes periodically, is my perception of how I felt or if I felt anything when I had that awareness.
It was a flash of awareness that seems to have burned itself into my memory centers. As an adult, I get to change my reaction and the details as much as I want. The truth in the current perception is that I feel weary at the thought of being in this life at this time.
We get so caught up in trying to get the facts straight that we miss the essence of the images and feelings that arise. What’s your first memory? Let it come up. Feel it. Don’t manipulate it. Allow it to arise and go from there.
