Amnesia

The example below says only too clearly how one may often forget things that are so important, and fall into old habits. The woman David was sleeping with was someone from his past he was unhappy with. A dream may often show this forgetfulness as the experience of sudden recall after a long period of not remembering. Both the loss of memory and the recall illustrate very real ways the mind works. Things that may have been of great importance to us, or caused powerful feelings at one time, are subsequently forgotten. Such experiences may not even be taken into account when making present decisions, and so literally one has a sort of amnesia regarding them.

Example: ‘I am sleeping rough in a garden with a woman I do not love. I think I should try to make the best of the situation, but my feelings against it are too strong. Then I decide I don’t ever want to live like that again and tear up the mattress we slept on. As I do this I realise, as if waking from amnesia, that Pat lives just across the road. She has specially moved there because of our love. I realise with horror I had forgotten and may have lost her.’ David H.

And here is another example of forgetting the awful things we have done.

Example: I was in a large house – probably the kitchen. I discovered a lock, bright and sparkling, that had its keyhole covered up. On it were drawn pictures of a young woman. I felt it was a part of the puzzle regarding the big house, and belonged to a room that was now so locked, and even the keyhole covered, that it had been forgotten and lost. Finding the lock was rediscovering the mysteries of the house. The room and lock associated with love for the young woman depicted on the lock – a very sentimental love. I felt very emotional just looking at the pictures. This part of the dream is very difficult to remember clearly, but there was a wooden snake and a rat that were eating breadcrumbs. I felt that the snake would have swallowed the rat if it could have moved faster, but it was hindered by its woodenness.

Then I was looking in a big cupboard, and found a clue to where the room of the lock was. This was to the number of salt sellers or something in the cupboard. A young man came in, he was Lord Montague, a homosexual. He said something like, “Hello, been up all night?” I couldn’t understand at first, then saw that the curtains were drawn, and it was daylight outside. I was surprised, and thought I must have been in unconscious, or in amnesia, and not known what I was doing. There was also something about having had homosexual relationship while unaware of what I was doing. The next thing was that I, as someone else, entered the “lost” room, with Montague. In it a young refined and lovely woman was kept prisoner by myself. This was because of a supposed adultery, of which she was in all likelihood innocent. I treated her as a prisoner, a thing, a coarse animal, to be hurt and belittled emotionally in every way my sentiments could. The servants were told that she had chosen to live the life of a nun. I made her strip off her clothes in front of the other man, and washed her, roughly. She was terribly sensitive about this, but endured it. Montague apologised to her again and again for the part he was playing in this. She told him not to feel too guilty. He also asked her how she did not go mad. She said not to talk of madness, as it was always a threat, but she had developed a true religious outlook and patience, that protected her.

One of the easiest ways
To find out who is a psuedopod
And who is a real person
Involves a simple memory test.
Ask the person if they
Can remember their childhood.
If they say, “Oh yes, I remember
My aunt Nellie telling me how I
Used to wet the bed.
I remember that.”
Well that is not real memory.
It is more like having photographs
That you are acquainted with.

Ask them if they remember being a baby.
Ask if they remember being in the womb.
Ask them if they remember their life in eternity.
The real self remembers all this.
After all it emerged from eternity,
Lived in the womb,
And experienced all those years until the present.

If you are suffering amnesia,
You are probably a psuedopod.

As for me, I was desperate to find my way back.
I saw the signs of my maladjustment
Everywhere I looked.
It was difficult to accept those signs.
Painful!
They were like being stabbed
With a hot knife.
They were in places
You don’t want to be dug.
They hurt too much – old wounds.
That is my story.

This is ground zero.
I am a reporter on the scene.
It’s rough going at the moment.
Maybe we are both pseudopods,
But I hold out my hand to you.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What is my dream suggesting I have forgotten?

What has led me to forget this?

Is there someone or something I want to forget – and if so why?

The technique Talking As may help.