A few days ago, Gian and I were talking about Physical Integration and we were looking at ways to explain the concept of 'Physical Integration' to someone who have never heard about it before. So we were playing with the point and Gian asked me to use my imagination and go back to my first driving lesson and so I did - I went back to my first driving lesson and "re-lived" the memory within and as myself.
Now, for context - My first driving lesson was in Israel where we drive on the right side of the road and the wheel is at the left side of the car. In the past few years, I've been living in South Africa and here we drive on the left side of the road and the wheel is at the right side of the car.
When I accessed the memory of my first driving lesson, a fascinating thing happened - as Gian took me through the time line and I was experienced myself in my first driving lesson, I remembered how my driving teacher in an instant of a moment asked me to change from second to third gear and I could remember the specifics of how I felt insecure because I never done is before and I remembered how I looked at the gear with confusion of "what now?!" and as I was looking at the gear and at my teacher - I realized: "Hey, there is something wrong with this memory" - I was driving on the left side of the road, the wheel was at the right side of the car and my driving teacher was sitting to my left side.
In that moment when the teacher asked me to change gears and I was looking at the gear and then at him - I was looking at the gear from the right side of the car and then looked at my driving teacher who set to my left. Physically, it is not possible when you drive in Israel.
As I've mentioned, the memory was very vivid, even though it was 16 years ago; I believed that I literally accessed the specifics of that moment, what I felt, what I did, how I experienced myself and so forth. I could swear that this was exactly what happened in that moment and yet - it was not; because the positioning of me, the road, the wheel, the gear and the driving teacher were completely opposite to the physical reality where there is absolute certainty that I drove on the right side of the road while sitting on the left side of the car, the gear was to my right as well as the driving teacher.
What is showing here is an example of how we unconsciously manipulate our memories. In this specific scenario, I manipulated the memory to fit with my current environment where I adopted the positioning of driving in my memory to how it is done in South Africa. Fascinating enough, I just checked by accessing the memory of driving for the first time again I still see myself driving the opposite from how I drove in the physical reality.
This raise the question - can we really trust our memories? How can we be certain that we haven't manipulate our memories in other instances? How can we be certain that what we remember is what was? How many times we experienced a friction with others because we absolutely believe that we remember something while the other is absolutely convinced that they remember something else?
This is a very good example for us to take a moment to revisit our blind belief in our own memories because obviously, the example that I shared here clearly show that there is a manipulation going on within ourselves without us even being aware of it. The next question is - if we cannot trust our own memories, what can we trust? This is a big question with a very simple answer - we can only trust that which is here. What does it practically implies? This will be a blog series by itself…
(Physical integration in a nutshell - when we no longer have to think about what we do but trust our natural ability to do something. So for example - how for instance we didn't know how to drive a car the first time we were taught to drive a car but over the years and with physical repetition of driving, we can now drive home without having to think about all the physical movements we require to do like for example, changing gears, checks the mirrors, push the gas pedal, clutch pedal and so forth - all of that is done by us automatically without a conscious thinking about what we need to do when driving a car)
0 comments:
Post a Comment