Monday, August 31, 2015

Memories

The phrase "in light of our past experiences" captures the reality that your own memories form the essential basis of your history. Perception is a complicated phenomenon. Using your sensory resources, you can encode both internal and external stimuli. What that means is, your understanding of any situation is impacted by the type, quantity, and complexity of your encountered experience. If you have your eyes closed, the amount of visual detail you can see will be restricted. I prefer to avoid saying positively or negatively impacted, since all experience is always influenced by the characteristics identified through sensory sources (seeing, hearing, feeling, touching, tasting).



The accumulation of your "exposure based experiences," help you create images and impressions that you organize in your brain. How are they organized? That is a question that requires much more information than should be included in a blog post. It's safe to say that there are common organizational patterns and there are completely unique organizational patterns. This becomes even more complicated when you consider how new experiences are interpreted based on earlier memories. We may add colors, clarity, details, and attributions that do not even exist in the newer experiences ... but, because your brain needs order to function efficiently, you fill the information gaps using artifacts from every experience leading up to this most recent one.

The memories you hold as significant are the images you cling to, in order to understand the world around you. Self-discovery begins with you willingness to examine (without prejudice) your vast collection of memories/images. These memories may not dictate your present or future, but they exercise great influence in steering your behavior sub-consciously.

As you continue to follow this blog, you will learn more about your uniqueness, how you create a reality, how you can embrace your novelty and respect and honor those whose memories may be completely foreign to your own.

I hope you will join me on this journey.