Memory and Reading Issues

Wunjo

Padawan Learner
Hello!
Got an odd situation for me and I was looking for some advice. Within the last 1.5 yrs My memory of the past started just disappearing as well as my ability to remember what I just read the day before as well as my ability to articulate what I have just read. I am a fairly healthy individual with my only complaint being abused knees. I do my fish oil, a prenatal multi (we have a ton due the the birth of our daughter), ALA, glutothione, plenty of sun, the vast scope of exercise, from weights to cardio to yoga, never over do it, doing the EE program sporadically, low stress life. It's not a feeling of spaciness or anything of the sort or a lack or focus or daydreaming (from my current perceptions of the moment). I can be reading something and be very into it, and I can't remember what I read 2 pages ago. Odd and disturbing, the information will pop out later if it is needed but avoids all direct inquiry. The same type situation is happening with events of the past, "Honey do you remember when..." No, I don't. The issues began to arise when I went through some deeper personal work. MY partner and I have been working through the Work for 2 years now. At one time it became very clear how much holding onto the past and using it as an anchor for self pity was holding me bound to certain "I's" and keeping me from advancing. Those certain "I's" have defined me for my whole life. Once I faced the truth of that area of my self pity and decided to let them go, they disappeared quite quickly. It felt as a piece of me just ceased to have anything to anchor onto regarding that past personality. This occurrence and my difficulties stated above coincided fairly close. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas regarding this or similar experiences. Thanks guys!
 
Reading tonight, and my wife who is reading Gnosis I, decided to point out a passage I had underlined that I thought might be pertinent to my own post.
"Memory is the direct function of the being of the individual. The higher the level of being, the better the memory and the greater the capacity to contain. Loss of memory, which causes the notion of the name and the ensemble that is attached to it to be forgotten, makes a madman out of a normal man: the sense of continuity is no longer present." The first element of my memory loss seems to coincide with the waking of the fictitious "I's" running my life and slowly removing them. I guess the second aspect, the current memory might very well coincide with idea that perhaps my being hasn't actually grown to the proportions that my earlier imaginary selves had obtained. :huh: Any other thoughts?
 
Hi there! You might be interested in this thread: http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=6683.0
It discusses the book "The Myth of Sanity," by Martha Stout. The book and thread, go into some details about dissociation, as well as recommendations of the "Big Five" recommended books on narcissism. An excellent worthy discussion to spend some time reading.

This may or may not be what you are describing, but it's still important to look into. :)
 
Hi Wunjo. Considering the two statements below:

Once I faced the truth of that area of my self pity and decided to let them go, they disappeared quite quickly. It felt as a piece of me just ceased to have anything to anchor onto regarding that past personality. This occurrence and my difficulties stated above coincided fairly close.
...
The first element of my memory loss seems to coincide with the waking of the fictitious "I's" running my life and slowly removing them.

Could you explain how you "let them go/removed them"?
 
Ok, I'll give it a shot. First I'd like to thank Dawn for the link suggestion, it was definitely interesting and I'm going to order the top 5 books on narcissism.

As for the memory problems it’s all pretty weird I have a hard time remembering what happened to bring it about. It was initially regarding a level of complete inaction that characterized my life. My wife and I had both finished In Search Of. She went on to get some books on the Enneagram. She ended up getting fairly into it and began to basically peg me and my behaviors.

It was at this point that I decided to listen. The first step was to surrender to the mere notion that perhaps I wasn't always right, but before that I had to surrender to the remote possibility that I was obsessively right. Once I let some water through the crack the dam began sprouting leaks all over and through the Work and my partners help to help me be objective we got to some core issues. One core happened to be that I was addicted to self pity and used my childhood as a tool to tap into this reality addiction. I had an addiction to making sure things never changed in my life and the safest method of love was false self love through finding situations to pity myself through.

Once this happened, it gets fuzzy, basically, anytime a behavior that fell into a certain series of patterns occurred, I would just remind myself over and over that I was asleep and this was a behavior my brain was using in order to create a result that would end in self pity. It worked wonderfully, after a few months, after many pieces of my self image that were built on childhood defense mechanisms had been noticed, they were gently evaporating.

With the loss of my childhood perspective and holding onto memories for justification of self pity I was able to come to some beautiful forgiveness. However, once I let go of the past, I really let go of the past, where I used to keep an iron grip on things that had happened, good or bad, now they all just floated away. I'm not devoid of memories by any means, I have them they are just not concrete. In my mind they could have very well all been made up. Unfortunately this just kept going into my present state of existence.

I can't remember really what happened a few months ago, it’s like time I existed in never really happened. Many things people can ask me about and I just don't remember. And I really don't care. Once my wife and I really got into the work, really started pushing each other and seeing life as a school for the Work, and not really real, life just started to seem echo-y and fake.

I'm by no means over my self pity thing but it merely is recognizable as an entity with no home, basically a squatter looking for an excuse to get on a soapbox. My wife and I have come a very long way but we are both very excited to learn from the forum and begin connecting to like minds in the quest for objectivity.

Thank you for your time; sorry if this is disjointed, still working on the "I" of fear regarding public expression.

[mod: split into paragraphs for clarity]
 
Wunjo said:
Thank you for your time; sorry if this is disjointed, still working on the "I" of fear regarding public expression.

Hi Wunjo,

Thank you for sharing and going beyond your fear regarding public expression.

For clarity you can try to break your messages in paragraph, it's easier to read.
 
Hello!
Absolutely, I will definetely break my future postings up, looking back, it's a veritable work salad! Thanks for the heads up! Just curious, should I repost what I wrote, broken up into smaller chunks or just for future reference?
 
Just curious, should I repost what I wrote, broken up into smaller chunks or just for future reference?

Hi Wunjo -- no reason to repost. Just take it as a suggestion for further postings. I'll edit this message for you, and in the future, when you reach 50 postings, you will be able to edit your messages by yourself.
 
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