Hello and welcome to episode 28 of The Ask Sri Vishwanath Show. Today I want to talk about bad memories and how you can destroy them.
Today’s question comes from Michelle. She says “I have had many tragic incidents in my life. Is it possible to wipe away bad memories from your mind?”
Thanks for the question Michelle. I think this something a lot of people yearn for. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could just wipe away bad memories like dirt from glass? We all have memories, good and bad and they can haunt us for as long as we live.
Channel
All the great men and women say that every time we think or ask a question or every time we ponder something, there is a channel that forms in our minds. The mind forms various channels during our lifetime and all the questions and answers, everything that we see or touch flow through them.
The first thing I would suggest would be for you to start a new channel. So how do we create a new channel in our minds? The easiest way to create a new channel is to ask a better question. The moment you ask a new question a new channel will be formed. It will start a new flow and everything in your mind will be fresher. So instead of asking of you can wipe bad memories from your mind you should ask how I can create great memories so the bad ones will not exist.
The minute you do this you will create a new channel. Remember our mind is like a bank account with memories being credited and debited. The debits are all the unpleasant and unwanted memories and the credits are all great experiences of love and joy.
A Bank
So if we think of memories like a bank account we know that it only looks bad when there are too many debits and not enough credits. It looks really wonderful and it makes you happy when you have an excess of credits. So draw a new channel by asking a new question so that good memories are generated and bad ones will no longer exist.
Don’t worry about how you are going to do this. It’s simple. Just ask a new question. Remember what Christ said: “Ask and you shall receive.”
The second step is very important. You’ll either get this or you won’t get this. There’s really no in between. Krishna defines the consciousness with the following words: “Close observer, giver of sanction, experiencer, sustainer, preeminent lord. Thus is styled the spirit in the body”
Experience and experiencer
I don’t have time to go through all of them but let’s focus on the experiencer for now. Krishna says the experiencer is the consciousness. Not you. So there are two things happening here. There is an experience, in this case a bad one, and there is an experiencer. We feel that we are the experiencer but Krishna says this is not true. The experiencer is the consciousness. This is the secret. You are the medium through which all this happens.
The easiest way to explain this is to imagine you are watching a film. In a film the actor and actress are given a script. Within the script there are good and bad experiences and they are told by the director to act out those experiences. The actors know that experience is being channelled through them but they know they are not the experiencer.
So it’s really important to be able to detach the experience form the experiencer. The experience is pain and pleasure and the experiencer is the consciousness.
I want you to do something. Visualise a book and pretend that it is your mind. Imagine then that you have a knife. This knife represents all your painful thoughts. These thoughts will stab at your mind. This causes you great pain and frustration.
Be detached
Now imagine that book is detached from you. Imagine it is far away from you. Now those thoughts cannot harm you. Being detached is like having an armour that will prevent those bad memories from hurting you. If you hold those memories too close to your heart then that knife will kill you. Those memories will destroy you. When the emotions are so close to the body we make the mistake of thinking the experience and the experiencer are the same.
Always visualise your consciousness and keep all your experiences, pain and pleasure, good and bad at a distance. Always be detached. This way none of those bad memories can affect you. Remember the experiencer is the consciousness and the experience is the pain and pleasure.
Visualise it. Imagine those emotions detaching from you and moving away from your consciousness. Create a barrier between them and your consciousness.
So follow these steps Michelle: form a new channel, be detached and distinguish between the experience and the experiencer. If you follow these steps then these bad memories will vanish and life will be a lot easier for you.
I hope I answered your question. Remember you keep asking questions and I’ll keep answering them.
