Feature Article - from Olive Branch, Mississippi

This month's principle is Memory. It showed up big-time at the annual retreat of the Mystery School – the women who founded Generosity Incorporated:

As a human mental faculty, memory is an interesting thing.  What we choose to remember depends on the state of our whole being, and we often are not using authentic Memory.

Ordinary memory can take one scene – the argument that happened yesterday at work, or the echoes of a past love encounter – and repeat it over and over again in the mind.  We commonly call this obsessive thinking.  In such a case, the capacity to remember has been hijacked by the immature emotional body in the service of the insecure ego, trying to remember how to “do it right.”  But this isn’t Memory in its true power.

In our educational system, memory often is hijacked by the mental body.  Memorizing lists or dates, ‘factors that led to World War I’, or technical anatomical terms in introductory physiology are examples.  Relations are ignored in favor of facts.  It’s like telling our brain to build a house and giving it nails and a hammer, but none of the wood.

Memory can also be hijacked by the immature ethical body.  I think many Americans who came of age in the 'sixties were guilty of that.  We’ve hammered away with our memories of civil rights and antiwar movements – which did have tremendous ethical impact – to the point of irrelevance.  The world has changed and we have been living out of those memories.  Is that why we can’t get past the same old political system?

Finally, memory can be hijacked by the physical body.  We want to go back to the womb or back to our youth when we felt strong and invulnerable, or slim and unwrinkled.  We’ll do almost anything that makes us feel or look physically younger.

In all these cases we have ceased to remember Who We Are in our deepest selves. The Principle of Memory calls us to remember that we volunteered to take a human incarnation for a bigger purpose, in service of a plan that stretches far beyond our lifetime, at either end.

At our mystery-school retreat, we called on Ancient Mother, a generic name for the birth-source of all human incarnations, to guide us in a deeper remembering.  We found it surprisingly easy to recall what seemed to be “past lives” – though not all of us ‘believe in’ such things (hello, mental body!).  We found it possible to remember a togetherness that we rarely experience in waking life.  We found that we could hear the smallness of our little “pity me” stories and our “Pits Of Despair” (we call them me-PODs), in comparison to the true Greatness of the human experiment.

We found that the principle of Memory, freed from the ego-hijackers, was alive and well, our reliable track into the past and the future.  Here is a Memory fragment from that bigger story of which we are all a part, from one of our dreamers at mystery school. The assignment was to remember when we were in Ireland.

Part of the story is a head/heart vision of a series of points of lights on a barren, misty, cold landscape, and a series of 'paths' between those points of lights (like ley lines) that MUST be trod by a living human to remain open. The paths do not need to be trod 'well' or 'elegantly' or in any order; they must be trod.
Part of it is a whole-body feeling of walking: walking with a heavy, smelly, wet woolen cape and a tall staff. Near exhaustion, near hunger, committed to continuing as best as possible, committed to continuing in awful weather and worse circumstances.
Singing.
Walking along rocky paths from small farm cottage to small fisher cottage, knitting together a community of isolated farms and families and women who cannot travel, women who know much of deep dreams held close, who listen and live hard stories, who hold the stories alive in their hearts and minds and very bones.
Singing tales, holding community, keeping the promise, traveling the paths, remembering the commitment to hold the paths open, whatever the cost. --Cady Soukup

May we all Remember. 

--from all of us, to all of you.

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Dreams of Memory

We can learn about the principles by examining our dreams. Here are two dreams of Memory:

The heavy blocks that are us are difficult. We try to carve them but usually just manage to take out a core so they’re light enough to move. But the unity is gone.  We are all originally carved, from the underneath of the Throne of Glory.

Here, the dreamer sees humanity as stones, a dream-sign of Memory. They are heavy, barely movable, and separated from their origin in the Divine manifestation.  Yet at least there is a memory of original unity.  Perhaps humanity has become weighed down with inappropriate memory?

I was a part of an anthropological study.  There was a team of us and we were on the verge of discovering something very important.   Suddenly, the bones of three bodies disappeared. Everyone was concerned about who stole the bones.  There was a general belief that they had been taken in order to inhibit our research.
Somehow, using logic and remote viewing, I discovered where the bones were hidden.   They were in three drawers in the lab where we kept plastic bones for teaching.  In the first drawer, all the real bones were shoved in the back corner.  I pulled them out and balanced them in my arms.  In the second drawer, the real bones had been intermixed with the plastic bones.  It was more difficult to discern all of the real ones, but I did it.  By then my arms were full of bones, so I walked into the conference room where the team was meeting and put them on the table.  Everyone was elated that the bones had been found.  
On my way back to the lab to retreive the third set of bones, I saw Dennis Good (an old boyfriend) and knew that he had taken the bones.  I knew him to be a practical joker, and thought he probably didn't understand the ramifications of having stolen the bones.  I hugged him and said, "Dennis, you're so smart and talented and funny, I hate to lose you in this way!"  He said nothing.  I knew he would go to prison.
I went back to the lab.  A magician had been there, and the configuration of the drawers was completely rearranged.  I couldn't find the third drawer with the third set of bones.  It was a little disorienting, but I knew that if I could set my concentration level high enough, I could pierce the magician's illusion and find the drawer. It was as if he'd dropped a very thin veil across the wall of drawers and projected another configuration onto it.  I knew that behind the veil the drawers were still in their right positions.

The missing bones as well as the number 3 (bodies, drawers), tell us the principle of Memory is at issue here.  “Dennis Good” can probably be read as Good-dennis, or “Goodness,” suggesting that the theft (or hijacking) of Memory has led to the imprisonment of Goodness as well.  We cannot discern well if we are out of touch with true Memory. Moreover, anthropology is the study of human beings.  Without Memory, we can’t truly understand our humanity either.

The dreamer locates the missing pieces but, before the find is complete, a veil has covered their hiding place.  This seems to be where we are right now.  We are trying to lift the veil by means of our spiritual capabilities, then all the information we need will be evident.

Look in your dreams for references to bones or stones, to archives or time-travel, and the colors green or peridot.

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Why Bones?

The bones are the framework for the human body, giving it form. They also hold the marrow, a rich substance which regenerates blood cells. Memory is similar: it provides the firm framework for human incarnation, and it hides within itself the capacities for regeneration and re-membering the entire range of living species within our scope.

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Book Recommendations

Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn
This book could equally be part of the principle of Unity, because it details a man’s search for the memories of the one set of people in his family whose fates in the Holocaust were not known.  However, it is the way that these help him reconstruct his own reality, and the pain and struggle of humanity as a whole, that make it a book of Memory.  Our madness and our victory can be seen through the prism of any of us or any family.

Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian Weiss.
One of the most convincing of past-life books because Dr. Weiss, a mainstream psychiatrist and well-respected academic researcher, had no conscious interest in past lives before his experience as a therapist forced him to consider the possibility. In using hypnosis, a technique he occasionally employed in difficult cases, Dr. Weiss found his patient going into places he didn’t think she could have imagined, and finally communicating things to him she could not possibly have known.

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Memory in the News

Ask yourself regarding the following stories from recent news items: Is Memory appearing in its common meaning, or in its spiritual meaning as a basic principle of form?

• Headline: Rome Uncovers Its Founding Moment
  November 20, 2007, www.guardian.co.uk: "...a large vaulted hall beneath the Palantine hill may be Lupercale, "one of the greatest discoveries every made" a lost shrine dedicated to the ancient city's mythical founders ....decorated with seashells and coloured marble, the domed cave was found close to the site of the of the palace of the first emperor, Caesar Augustus..."

  Headline: Ancient Civilization Discovered at Stonehenge
  April 13, 2007, www.voanews.com:  Archaeologists have unearthed an ancient settlement that they believe is connected to Stonehenge, the legendary monument on England's Salisbury Plain.  Archeologists say the village, known as Durrington Walls, once housed a vibrant commmunity of ancient people....."Long after Stonehenge was constructed...Durrington Walls appears to have become some sort of shrine....After those timbers had rotted away, people came back and dug holes where the posts had been and placed deposits of animal bones and pottery and stone tools into the craters where the posts had been, so that you are creating a kind of architecture of memory, a commemoration of where the monument that no longer exists, had been..

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6. Who's Who in Memory

Famous people through whom Memory came to life – these have sun in Memory:

• Barbra Streisand, 1942-
  Triple-contracted with Memory and triple-contracted with Love, this famous singer, actress, producer-director, and activist has an intense investment in life. Winner of multiple awards, she has sold over 71 million albums. Perhaps we can see the principle of Memory in her songs, such as “The Way We Were” and “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.”

• Bob Dylan, 1941-
  American singer and songwriter whose songs “Times They Are A-Changing” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” were anthems of the civil rights and antiwar movements. He later disliked being identified with the ‘60s generation; perhaps he realized he had been hijacked to serve a particular kind of memory.  His 2006 album ranked #1, making him the oldest person (at age 65) ever to top the charts.

• Michael Moore, 1954-
  Controversial Academy-Award winning filmmaker whose credits include the satirical Canadian Bacon and the documentaries Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11.  Time named him one of the world’s most influential people.
  
  
• T. S. Eliot, 1888-1965
  An extraordinary poet of great depth, Missouri-born Eliot became a British subject and converted to Anglicanism in 1927.  His poetry (e.g. The Waste Land) and plays (e.g. Murder in the Cathedral), called on the depths of cultural memory to criticize contemporary society.
  
  
• George Gershwin, 1898-1937
  Composer of jazz music, as in the “folk opera” Porgy and Bess, as well as more classical works like Rhapsody in Blue. Worked with his brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin, to produce many popular songs.
  
  
• Carl Jung 1875-1961
  Swiss psychiatrist, a student of Freud who broke from his sexual theory to develop a rich symbolic theory that drew on comparative studies of ritual and mythology as well as Jung’s own work with dreaming and with schizophrenia.  Jung is probably best known for development of the theory of the collective unconscious, which he regarded as a kind of archetypal memory based on ancient experience.
  
  
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882
  Holding Sun and Moon in Memory, Emerson was one of the nineteenth century’s most influential writers and orators. He was a spokesman for self-realization before the term was coined, as exemplified in his famous sentence “I become a transparent eyeball” from his essay, “Nature.”  A leader of the Transcendentalist movement in literature and philosophy, his writings are still required readings for high-school and college students today.
  
  
• Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519
  Italian Renaissance scientist, mathematician, sculptor, painter, inventor, anatomist.  His paintings are among the most famous in Western art, and he was far ahead of his time in engineering and inventions.  It’s peculiarly interesting that his works became the focus of a collective investigation into hidden – and perhaps mostly imagined – ancient memory, through Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.
  
  
• Harry Houdini 1874-1926
  Hungarian-born magician who gained world-wide fame as an escape artist.  Go figure. What was he remembering?

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7. The Child's Garden

How can our study of the spiritual Principles help us understand our children?  We will be addressing this in depth soon in an online class.  For now, here is an example of a story from a parent who recognized the principle of Memory appearing in her son:

My son's ethical body (ascendant) is in Memory.  He stunned me when he was three by running into the kitchen one day and throwing his arms around my knees.  As he hugged me he said,  "You're the best mom I ever had."  I said,  "Thanks, Ben, but I think I'm the only mom you ever had."  He looked at me puzzled.  "No, I've had lots of moms.  Some of them were fat.  Some were mean.  I've never had one like you."
I laughed, but it crossed my mind that Memory was at work in that moment, and that he could actually, at that stage in his neural development, remember past lives.  Now that he's in college, I can look back at his life and see that ethical decisions are not a problem for him.  He seems to "know" the consequences of bad choices, and therefore he doesn't make them.  In nineteen years, he was grounded once -- not because we're lenient parents, and not because he's a nerdy brown-noser, but because he only made ONE "bad" choice ( to lie to me about something.  Even that wasn't so "bad."
I think Memory serves him well.  He understands life in a bone-deep way.  He embraces the as-isness of life, and doesn't fight against it.  If your child has Memory in his or her contract, look for that deep knowingness, and encourage it.

--Connie Kaplan

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8. Poetry

Robert Frost’s little-known poem, “Trial By Existence,” talks about our loss of memory as we take human incarnation, and the difficulties we endure because of it.  (From A Boy’s Will, 1915; published online at www.bartleby.com and in hard copy by First World in 2004.

22.  The Trial By Existence

EVEN the bravest that are slain
  Shall not dissemble their surprise
On waking to find valor reign,
  Even as on earth, in paradise;
And where they sought without the sword
  Wide fields of asphodel fore’er,
To find that the utmost reward
  Of daring should be still to dare.

The light of heaven falls whole and white
  And is not shattered into dyes,
The light for ever is morning light;
  The hills are verdured pasture-wise;
The angel hosts with freshness go,
  And seek with laughter what to brave;—
And binding all is the hushed snow
  Of the far-distant breaking wave.

And from a cliff-top is proclaimed
  The gathering of the souls for birth,
The trial by existence named,
  The obscuration upon earth.
And the slant spirits trooping by
  In streams and cross- and counter-streams
Can but give ear to that sweet cry
  For its suggestion of what dreams!

And the more loitering are turned
  To view once more the sacrifice
Of those who for some good discerned
  Will gladly give up paradise.
And a white shimmering concourse rolls
  Toward the throne to witness there
The speeding of devoted souls
  Which God makes his especial care.

And none are taken but who will,
  Having first heard the life read out
That opens earthward, good and ill,
  Beyond the shadow of a doubt;
And very beautifully God limns,
  And tenderly, life’s little dream,
But naught extenuates or dims,
  Setting the thing that is supreme.

Nor is there wanting in the press
  Some spirit to stand simply forth,
Heroic in its nakedness,
  Against the uttermost of earth.
The tale of earth’s unhonored things
  Sounds nobler there than ’neath the sun;
And the mind whirls and the heart sings,
  And a shout greets the daring one.

But always God speaks at the end:
  ’One thought in agony of strife
The bravest would have by for friend,
  The memory that he chose the life;
But the pure fate to which you go
  Admits no memory of choice,
Or the woe were not earthly woe
  To which you give the assenting voice.’

And so the choice must be again,
  But the last choice is still the same;
And the awe passes wonder then,
  And a hush falls for all acclaim.
And God has taken a flower of gold
  And broken it, and used therefrom
The mystic link to bind and hold
  Spirit to matter till death come.

‘Tis of the essence of life here,
  Though we choose greatly, still to lack
The lasting memory at all clear,
  That life has for us on the wrack
Nothing but what we somehow chose;
  Thus are we wholly stripped of pride
In the pain that has but one close,
  Bearing it crushed and mystified.