Forgetting...

What a wonderful topic.

I recall hearing about The Art of Forgetting. I didn't give it much attention, but the seed stuck. Now you post this at the perfect time.

All I can remember is that it is as important to learn to forget as it is to remember.
How simple. How neglected.

The urge to hold on, to the bad and the good, it's strong. There really does seem to be an art to forgetting - to wisely choose what will become part of you, and what is best given or left alone.

I remember a lot of emotion. I've forgotten a lot of facts.

Work in progress....

So wonderfully spoken. thx

We can convincingly fool ourselves in to pulling the wool over our own eyes...



We dilute thought until there is not even a single particle left of the original idea...

Forgetting is tied into our discriminate emotions. Forgetting is a chemical function of the mind...

There is long and short term forgetting and memories that haunt us.

There are things we should never forget... and things we couldn't possibly always remember...

I think my post has been forgotten

Sleeping words...

They are not remembered but never forgotten.

Is there that much senility here on a2k?

How does forgetting work? Is forgetting in the realm of miracles?

I have started forgetting things.
I have realised that what is really happening is that my brain has developed the skill of turning my mind off to the unnecessary things of life.

So, when I arrive in a room and can't for the life of me remember why I went there, I thank my lucky stars that my brain has saved me from doing something unnecessary.

I hear ya rhymer,

Do we forget faster than we learn? Is forgetting subjective?

Why are some thing harder to forget and some thing harder to learn?

I don't forget--I simplify.

Nice topic - great post, flushd.

It is said that the brain retains all the information that has ever been presented to it. I believe that to be true. Through the process of skilled psychoanalysis and/or hypnosis, a therapist can help us 'remember' things going back to a very early age, perhaps even into the womb, that we could have never brought to the surface on our own.

The concept of "forgive and forget" is unrealistic however as to consciously or intentionally 'forget' is really an oxymoron. Nobody can really 'forget' on purpose. We can choose to accept the consequences of an offense rather than making another accountable for it, which is what 'forgiving' is. But the forgetting is not within our conscious power to do.

Still so much does slide into our subconcious mind. Sometimes it resurfaces when something--a sound, smell, sight, comment--triggers it. And some things we are told is part of our history of which we have absolutely no conscious recollection. The mind I believe especially suppresses or buries some of the most unpleasant memories. Sometimes this is beneficial. Sometimes not.

There are some who believe our spirit retains even memories from a previous life. General George Patton, for instance, was a devout believer in that. If true, it would be really interesting to know what might be lurking in the subconscious.

Fox, I think I agree with you for the most part but what the conscious mind decides to remember is another story...

How we remember things and how memories "fade" and become easier to reflect on...

The unconscious mind may still completely have recollection but the conscious mind decides what it will dwell upon...

The conscious mind can focus itself where it chooses to such a degree until selective thoughts and memories fade into obscurity.

Well, my conscious mind sometimes has a really tough time bringing up information that it would like to have on the surface. How many times did you cram for a test hoping to have all that information at the surface when you needed it only to find that you couldn't come up with an answer even though you knew you had studied it?

How many times do you search your memory for the name of a person, a movie star, a place, a term, a word, a phrase, etc. and just can't bring it to the surface? Then sometimes BAM, there it is in your head hours or days later. And some things you cannot force or tease to the surface without looking it up or asking somebody, and once you hear the answer it is so familiar you can't imagine why you couldn't recall it. It seems obvious to me that there are levels of subconciousness with some data just beneath the surface where it will be familiar when recalled, and some stuff buried so deep that it seems unfamiliar when recalled even though you once knew it.

And of course there are those nagging little things that seem so familiar though you are quite certain you have never heard of them or never been to that place or never met that person or have never done that activity before.

I do think through mental exercise, focus, techniques, and deliberate intent we can enhance what we retain in our conscious memory, but we do not have 100% control of that. And I still think we have very little control over what we will forget, i.e. what slides into our subconscious, and we have no control at all over how deep into our subconscious it will go.

You are what you eat and you become what you feed your mind upon.

2Co 5:17
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

The best way I've learned to forget is to remove myself from the situation that warrented forgiveness.

Some "situations" stare back at us in the morning mirror...


Very wise advice though.

We cannot emancipate ourselves from something if we still remain it's captive...

It seems that we weigh each thought in the balances and assign importance to our actions.

These actions we discern as if they are "sinful" or "righteous".

One person's sin is another person's tolerance.

One person may torment themselves because they stepped on a bug on the sidewalk where another person may have not have remorse.

Different sets of standards... Where do we get standards? How do we measure our own sin consciousness?

We need to feel justified in forgetting...

So if we are going to forget we need to detach emotion from these thoughts and then let the mind obscure them amongst the other memories. We need to feel justified in doing this.

Yet the physiological psychology is to discuss our past and to revive it and concentrate on it to such a degree to actually feel like you have relived it. To FACE the past. How can we face the future if we are facing the past?

Why "face" the past?