Amnesia

There's an old film - "Random Harvest" - about a husband suffering from amnesia and how his wife tries to return him to his memories. The final scene, when he remembers her is so beautiful!

Imagine if, for a moment, we forgot everything we ever were told. Imagine if, for one single second, all we could remember were the kindnesses shown to us and the people we love. All the rest of our memories vanished - no appalling news stories, no bloody history, no slights or affronts - all we remembered was our love for others and our response to love in others. Every day we would awaken with a sense of awe and 'newness'; we would feel such wonder at seeing the sunrise or the moon, the changing seasons and the myriad of colours even in the dark seasons! Every moment would be a blessing and, like babies and small children, we would be able to gaze in fascination at a truck or a flower, a weed or a puddle, and see everything as wondrous!

I guess, as so many wise spiritual teachers say, there really is no moment except this one and in this moment everything that went before is gone like a mirage. There are no grudges or axes to grind and if ever we learn anything from our memories it is surely that, at the end of the day, all we have to do is let it go and know we don't need to make the same mistakes tomorrow, and can simply be in this moment. There are always unresolved issues that need to be laid to rest - the memories of people who were wronged in the past, whose stories need to be re-written to come closer to the truth - but, even more importantly, when we learn from those people we can let the past go and, regathering power of the present moment, know that we need no more tyrants or people to govern us.

We don't need some EU president, unelected prime minister or any governing body to tell us how to live. We don't need some manipulated bank crisis or economic decline to close us down and tell us we are dependent on the state. When we learn to live within ourselves, forgetting the fears that have been instilled into us, enjoying the amnesia that releases us from the bizarre notions that people just like us want to hurt us, we can simply remember that we are much bigger than all of that nonsense because we are created solely out of love. All the rest will pass away but, at risk of sounding trite, Love is the only thing that is eternal...and Love, to my mind, simply means that every single being, all people, all animals, all plants are born with the ability to grow and be themselves.