#183: The Creative Function of Memory

The Creative Function of Memory

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have always believed that memory is simply the faculty that looks back, that it records what has happened and then stores it away like a faithful clerk who never alters the figures. You have thought of it as harmless in itself, a passive mirror of yesterday, and so you have permitted it to play over and over the scenes that formed your present self. Yet I tell you that memory does not merely recall the past. Memory creates the present by sustaining the identity you now wear. It is the invisible thread that keeps alive every state of consciousness you have ever assumed, and because it keeps them alive they continue to out-picture themselves in your world.

The man who feels himself a failure does not remain a failure because some external fate has decreed it. He remains a failure because memory continually revives the feeling of failure. Every time he remembers an incident in which he fell short, and feels again the sting or the shame of it, he is feeding the very state that produced the failure. Memory is not a spectator; it is a participant. It takes the images of the past, clothes them with the present feeling of “I am,” and thereby keeps the old identity intact. So long as you remember in the old way, you are unconsciously decreeing that the old way shall continue.

Consider what you call your past. It is not a closed book lying on a shelf. It is a living structure within you, and you are that structure. Man and his past are one continuous whole. The events you think are finished still operate below the threshold of your senses precisely because memory sustains them with feeling. You may say the thing is over and done, yet if you can recall it and feel it, it is not over. It is still alive in you, and because it is alive it is still creative. This is why the same patterns repeat in your life. The memory that sustains the pattern is never revised; it is only rehearsed.

Now, if memory is creative, then it can be used creatively. This is the office of revision. Revision is not a denial of what happened outwardly; it is a refusal to let the outward event continue to live inwardly as the sustainer of an unwanted identity. You take the scene that wounded you, or the scene in which you fell short, and in imagination you allow it to unfold differently. You see it, you hear it, you feel it as you would have wished it to be. You do not argue with the old facts; you simply withdraw your attention from them and give your feeling to the new version until the new version feels natural. When it feels natural, the old memory has lost its nourishment. The structure has been pruned. A new memory now sustains a new identity.

Many will say, “But the thing really happened. How can I change it?” I answer: the thing that happened lives in you only because you remember it feelingly. Change the feeling of the memory and you have changed the only place where the event still possesses creative power. The outer fact is not altered for the world at large, but the effect of that fact upon you is altered completely. The wound that memory kept open is closed. The sense of self that the wound supported is no longer fed. You are free to remember yourself differently, and in that different remembering you become a different man.

This is not a matter of words or of vain repetition. It is a matter of feeling. You must feel the revised scene as vividly as you once felt the original scene. If the original scene made you feel small, the revised scene must make you feel the dignity or the success or the reconciliation you desire. You do not try to force the outer world to change first. You change the memory that is sustaining the outer world as it is. When the memory changes, the world must follow, for your world is always the out-picturing of the states you are sustaining.

Every night you are given the opportunity to exercise this creative function of memory. Before you sleep, review the day. Wherever you find an incident that left you with a feeling of regret, or loss, or failure, or hurt, revise it. See the same persons, hear the same voices, but let the event unfold so that it awakens in you the feeling you would have preferred. If someone spoke harshly, hear the words spoken in kindness or understanding. If you acted in a manner unworthy of the man you wish to be, see yourself acting with poise and wisdom. Feel the relief, the quiet joy, the sense of rightness that the new scene brings. Do this with every disturbing event until you can fall asleep in the feeling of the revised day. In that feeling you have already begun to live the new memory, and the old memory, starved of feeling, begins to wither.

You will discover that the change does not always announce itself dramatically. Often it is quiet. The person who formerly irritated you no longer has the power to do so, because the memory that gave him that power has been revised. The situation that always seemed to defeat you begins to unfold differently, because the memory that expected defeat is no longer nourished. You do not need to struggle to produce these changes. You have already produced them by changing what memory sustains. The outer world is simply revealing the new structure you have given it.

Some will fear that in revising they are falsifying life. But I tell you that life itself is not fixed until it is fixed in feeling. The facts of yesterday are not sacred; they are plastic. They can be remolded by the feeling you give them tonight. The unjust steward in the parable was commended because he altered the record of the debt. He changed what was written so that it conformed to a more merciful and more practical end. You are doing the same thing when you revise. You are altering the record that memory keeps, not to deceive others, but to free yourself from a past that no longer serves the man you choose to be.

As you persist in this practice, you will notice a subtle yet profound shift in your sense of identity. You will cease to think of yourself as the sum of your old mistakes or the victim of old circumstances. You will begin to know yourself as the one who can remember only what he wishes to remember. Memory, once the chain that bound you to yesterday, becomes the instrument by which you fashion tomorrow. You are no longer compelled to relive what wounded you. You are free to remember what blesses you.

This freedom is not achieved by forgetting. It is achieved by remembering differently. Forgetting is merely repression; the old memory still lives in the dark and continues to act. Revision brings the memory into the light of imagination and transforms it. The transformed memory then sustains a transformed self. You do not fight the old identity; you simply cease to feed it. In the measure that you cease to feed it, it loses its power to appear in your world.

Consider how much of your present difficulty is kept alive by the memory of a single scene or a single sentence. Someone spoke a word years ago, or failed to speak it, and you have remembered that moment with feeling ever since. That single memory has colored your attitude toward love, or success, or trust. It has become part of the structure you call “I.” Now, tonight, you can revise that scene. You can hear the word spoken as you would have wished it spoken, or you can hear the silence filled with the understanding you craved. You can feel the reconciliation that never occurred outwardly, and in feeling it you give that reconciliation a place in the structure of your being. From that moment the old memory begins to lose its authority. The new memory begins to operate in its stead.

You will find that revision is not an effort. It is a relinquishment. You relinquish the feeling of the old event and accept the feeling of the new event. The moment the new feeling becomes natural, the work is done. You do not need to watch for results. Results are inevitable when the memory that sustains the old result has been replaced. The bridge of incidents that once led to disappointment will now lead to fulfillment, because the cause—the sustained feeling—has changed.

There are those who say they cannot revise because the memory is too painful or too deeply buried. I tell you that if you can remember the event at all, you can revise it. The very fact that it still hurts or still haunts you proves that it is still alive in feeling. Take that living feeling and transfer it to the revised scene. You do not deny that the outer event occurred; you simply deny it the right to continue occurring in your consciousness. You give the right of occurrence to the event you would have preferred. In so doing you are not lying to yourself; you are telling the truth of the self you choose to become.

As this practice becomes habitual, you will discover that you revise not only the marked events but the small, unnoticed reactions of the day. A fleeting irritation, a moment of doubt, a careless word spoken to yourself—these too are revised. You do not accumulate the little burdens that formerly made up the weight of your identity. Each night the slate is cleansed. Each morning you rise lighter, freer, more truly yourself. The creative function of memory is now consciously directed toward the fulfillment of your ideal rather than the preservation of your old limitations.

You will also notice that the outer world begins to cooperate with the new memory in ways you could not have predicted. People who seemed fixed in their attitudes toward you will alter their behavior, not because you have willed them to change, but because the memory that sustained their old behavior in your world has been withdrawn. The structure has changed, and the world, being the mirror of that structure, must reflect the change. This is not influence exercised upon others; it is the natural consequence of a changed inner continuity.

The secret of this practice lies in the feeling. If you revise only in words or in pictures without feeling, the old memory remains untouched. But when you feel the new scene as real, when you experience the joy or the dignity or the peace of it as though it had already happened, then the old memory is pruned indeed. The sap of feeling no longer flows to it. It withers, and in its place grows the memory that supports the self you desire to be.

Do not be discouraged if at first the revised scene feels unreal or forced. The old memory has had years of feeling to strengthen it. The new memory must be given feeling consistently until it becomes the stronger of the two. Every night you add to its strength. Every time you choose to remember the revised version rather than the original, you feed the new and starve the old. In time the balance shifts. The new memory becomes the natural one, and you find yourself living from it without effort.

This is the true meaning of being born anew. You are not born anew by changing your outer circumstances. You are born anew by changing the memories that sustain your inner state. When the sustaining memories are changed, the state changes, and the changed state inevitably expresses itself in new circumstances. The birth is from above, from the revised memory, and it is as natural and as inevitable as the rising of the sun once the night has passed.

Tonight, as you lay your head upon the pillow, take the day that is ending and revise it. Do not skip the small things. Revise them all until the feeling of the day is the feeling you would have chosen. Then sleep in that feeling. In the morning you will awaken to a world that is already beginning to conform to the new memory you have established. And as you continue this night after night, you will come at last to that place where memory no longer binds you to what was, but frees you into what is. You will know yourself as the one who remembers only the lovely, only the noble, only that which is worthy of the consciousness you have assumed. In that knowing, the creative function of memory is revealed in its fullness, and you stand free—sustained no longer by the past, but by the eternal now of your own revised and perfected remembrance.