Episode Transcript
My name is Ken Hanuman and I've been practicing Raja Yoga meditation for over 40 years. In these episodes, I will share the experiences and insights I've gained from meditation and how I've integrated them into my everyday life and all my relationships. Welcome to the Spiritual Relationship Podcast. Hello everyone. Meditation can change your memory in a positive way. Welcome to the Spiritual Relationship Podcast. My name is Ken Hanuman. I'm your host. As you know, in the the series of podcast. I'm focusing on the foundational classes that you need to learn to do Raja Y oga, meditation. The first lesson we spoke about who I am, and we referred to the self as the soul consciousness and our nature is peace. There's an innate wisdom, love, and the natural nature of the, of consciousness is like, it wants to be peaceful. It is actually at a core of each one of us. We will, we do experience that is what we desire in life. The next class was on thoughts or the mind, and how the mind can feel and think, and, have emotions,, imagination, visualization, and how meditation can be used to change that to make it work for you to create happiness. The intellect is another function that we spoke about in the previous class, and it was about human beings having this ability to think, to learn, to analyze, to discern, and to improve your ability to control the mind through spiritual education and meditation experiences. So today I'll talk about memory because this is another function of consciousness. We all know, memory is very complex and it's actually fascinating and also mysterious like I said in the beginning, meditation can change memory. It can reduce the negative impact of stress on memory. It helps with emotional regulation, and I'm sure you have experience where memories can shape, can be shaped by emotions. It can also be shaped by suggestions and even imaginations. Memories can be shaped also by your meditation experience. When you have a very wonderful experience of peace or love and, revelations and the deeper understanding, these things can enter into your memory. And as I mentioned in the first class, our thoughts and our feelings. A lot of our thoughts that come up in our conscious mind is coming from memory. We have a Hindi word for that. We call that Sanskars, and, your personality, your identity, your characteristics and habits. These things are coming from your memories, from your sanskars. So we can say that memory it's like a living process that shapes our identity and our, even our perception of reality and also the understanding of time because based on how you recollect the past and maybe the way you grew up from childhood to adulthood with your own family and whatever your experiences at work or your profession or, generally in life. These things are recorded there and based on that, you develop values and belief systems and cultural, histories. You know, it's almost like It's almost like we can do a time travel, we can travel back into the past, into the memories. We can recall certain memories. And there is this idea of nostalgia where, you know, sometimes we just love to remember wonderful things and relive them. But in meditation it's really important to understand that memory actually is not filing cabinet of your human experiences be because every time you try to relive an experience, every time you try to recall something, it never really comes back exactly the same. You cannot reproduce it exactly. It is more like a story that you can build. And, sometimes memory over a period of time will fade or blur or vanish. So then can you rely on it totally as an absolute truth? That is exactly what happened in the past. In the case of PTSD, where that post traumatic stress disorder. There might be some emotional trauma that we suffered as a child growing up and now that you're probably in your adulthood getting old and you're trying to remember, oh, this one did that. My parents did this, you know, something like that. We are trying to recall the truth is that it is colored by, one emotions two that over a period of time, we might only know, we can only recall bits and pieces of it. So this is why it is important to understand memories that if a memory is painful and it is causing you sorrow presently in your life, in your present life. And You find it very difficult to forgive or to let go. Maybe this understanding of memory as being fragile might help you to let go of it a little easier and to realize that you can restructure or you can remember something and rather than suffering from it, you can see the benefit of that, what you learned from that, how it made you who you are today. So maybe some painful or, very difficult experiences or challenges can actually make us a better person, so that we don't have to carry hurt and pain. We don't need to bring it forward into the present where it starts to create depression and sadness and anxiety and fear in the present, because that will affect the way you enjoy your present. And this is where meditation comes in, you know, to help you to reshape that in so that your thoughts become more uplifting. Memory also is not just personal. We have a history, family history that we tend to identify with. Even though it might not have happened to you, certain things might not have happened to you personally. You still take it personal, like it as, as if it did happen to you. Also the cultural or even as a nation history, your history of wars or, someone. You know, one country fight, a war with a, with one person and did certain things or the history, let's say, of colonialism or whatever. And that might affect your, even now, your perception or your understanding or your relationship in the present. You know, so the, these are things that, I would like to point out because if we understand this about memory. We can now sit in meditation, bring your attention to yourself as being a soul, being a being of light and understanding. You know, speak to yourself that you are the life force of the body. I am the soul, the life force of the body, and my nature is peace of light and I'm immortal, eternal. The body goes through birth growth, death, but consciousness continues and I'm sure also you would agree with me, that even though we age internally, we don't really feel that we're old internally, like you still feel like you are a young person or like you have the same desires, when you were young, even though they might have, the body might have changed. You know, as we know what happened when the body gets older. So the mind wants one thing. The body can only give you this because of the aging process. So now look at, like I was just mentioning about the meditation. It has been proven that if you can meditate even for short periods every day or very frequently, you'll develop, an ability to focus and to concentrate and also to be able to overcome stress. When you have a good, like a high self-esteem and an understanding of yourself, of your spiritual identity, and you identify yourself with spiritual values of love and happiness and peace, and if you believe in a higher power or in your higher self. You feel a sense of belonging too, that you're not alone and internally you can create an experience of relationship. You can experience relationship, positive relationship with a being that is loving and caring and always present and always listens. This really helps you emotionally. This really helps. To create, control of, the effect that the, you know, what is going on in the world. Many things that are going on can only cause us sadness or sorrow, but in meditation, we are going in inwards and we are creating an experience of ourself. In a spiritual, way, we can have these experience of love and peace and happiness. And when you are lost in that experience, you are able to create memories of what you just created for yourself. Something that is not dependent on outside opinion or outside support. You are able to create this inner experience that you are not the body. You are spiritual, being belonging to the world or connected to the world, and you have this capacity for benevolence and compassion. So you could see how this can really create good memories, good feelings. And as we know, the in the brain itself, there are organs in your brain like the amygdala and hippocampus that deals with emotions. Amygdala deals with fear. The hippocampus deals with other emotions. And the more you can create these wonderful experiences. They have found that the amygdala tend to shrink because that's the part, the more fearful you are, the more it enlarges. So, it affects us there. It also affects cortisol production. Cortisol is the hormone that is produced from stress. As a result of stress. So the meditation helps with the emotional regulation that allows us, not to be, not to reproducing cortisol or to reduce it to where your body also is not affected that much negatively by the emotions. So it is really important to meditate and this is why we're doing this, course online. We also have free meditation classes available to everyone online, and you can find links to that in the description below. And also there are a lot of meditation commentaries, free meditation commentaries that you can use at home and you can practice. And there are also Raja Yoga centers throughout the country that you can go to and they offer these classes free in person. So with that, I would like to, close this episode. The next episode we're gonna speak about the original nature of the self. So this, these four classes or episodes is about understanding who am I and how consciousness function and how we can use meditation to create a process that this resource that is always, that's available to everyone, but you have to make an effort. You have to want to meditate, you have to want to learn and make time for it to develop this because we didn't learn this in school. So, hoping to see you next week, the next episode. Thank you very much for listening, and I hope you gained something from this. So with that, I'll say goodbye and I'll see you next time. Thank you. When you walk into a room, life gets little, you. You.
