I have practically an avocation regarding the many quirks that human memory is capable of. It may not be a matter of spiritual importance, so it doesn’t qualify as anything but a minor hobby. But I remain fascinated and feel that each little example I experience or even hear of, regarding memory, gives me a tiny boost in some kind of database that plays some role in my (and our) being here.
This particular anecdote will gain a bit more spiritual gravitas by virtue of how it came about and the particular word that I’ve found so difficult to retain in my memory. The word appears in a wonderful line of poetry by a friend that I wanted to commit to memory so I could/can meditate on it, repeat it when I lie down to sleep at night and so on. (It’s that powerful a line, or perhaps couplet.)
The segment of verse from a poem by my friend Brian Darnell goes like this:
“He absorbs our tormenting sins to the exact extent
we open our wounds to His mercy.”
That’s an amazing little “formula” that I want to take into the depths of my being. It’s become kind of paired for me with another sentence, part of a brief tract by Meher Baba called HOW TO LOVE GOD, I’ve also been repeating that tract upon going to bed, as well as at other times of the day and night, because I want to make it a part of my intuitive understanding, too.
That aphorism goes like this:
“If we endure our lot with patience and contentment, accepting it as His Will, we are loving God.”
I don’t have a real problem remembering the quote from Baba word-for-word. I did have a small glitch at first, because I found the word “endure” a bit hard in that particular sentence, and I would substitute “accept” for it, only to find myself coming upon the same word again, a few words further into the sentence.
There was also a small problem for me with the sentido of “endure,” considering where it stands in the sentence. I can easily grasp the idea of “enduring” something with patience. Endurance always requires patience, it seems to me. But “enduring our lot with contentment“?
It seemed to me that endure e contentment were oxymorons, or nearly so. “Endure” seems to me to connote difficulty. Indeed, the literal denotation of the word (which I just looked up in the dictionary) is: to remain firm under suffering or misfortune without yielding. though it is difficult, we must endure. transitive verb. 1. : to undergo especially without giving in : suffer.
And, while I’m at it, I’ll look up “contentment.” It says, simply, “A state of happiness and satisfaction.”
So this way of loving God, then, is like another example of the proverbial command of a spiritual Master to a disciple: “Stand up and sit down at the same time!” or “Jump in the Ocean but don’t get wet!” The kind of thing Meher Baba asked His close ones to do all the time!
I’ve learned, by correcting myself in the exact wording of the sentence several times, to get the word “endure” in its proper place instead of having to go back when I get to “accept” later. (And because I regard Meher Baba as a Realized being, I take Him at His word. That it somehow é possible to “endure” one’s lot with contentment, as well as with patience!)
Tormented by “tormenting”
The meaning isn’t what was hanging me up in Brian’s line of poetry that I began this little piece with. No. My problem regurgitating this line from my memory was that no matter how many times I went back to the text of the entire poem, which appears on a Facebook page that I manage, and so is relatively easy to access and refresh my memory from—I would still, often just a minute or two later, completely forget the word “tormenting”, the adjective that modifies “sin.”
I know why. It’s because I’m just not used to using the word “tormenting” and my memory doesn’t accept it as natural, without being trained! I knew from my first lapse, in my initial effort to call up the line without the text before me, that the word was an adjective and started with the letter “t.”
Yet, when I tried to bring it to consciousness, I simply drew a blank! I thought of words like “terrible,” “torturing” and others that aren’t coming to mind right now, but the word “tormenting” always slipped away into a black hole of memory.
At one point, tired of opening Facebook on my phone and pulling up the poem yet again to get the word, I made the connection with the shorter word “torment,” which é more a part of my usual vocabulary. And then, after calling “torment” to mind, which I trained myself to do in a new habit that seemed to maintain itself, I’d go from there to the participle of the word that adds “ing.” After that, I podíamos do several repetitions of Brian’s line without forgetting.
Until … a couple of days passed when I must have been too busy to recite the line. And, wanting once again to do it, I found myself back at square one! It was utterly strange to find my memory so hole-ridden in a way that came again to seem impossible to repair or correct!
A mnemonic solution
Because my wife, Barbara, also enjoys all manner of linguistic lore and anecdotes, I finally told her what I’d been going through. She didn’t have any additional suggestions, but after talking about my conundrum aloud, it occurred to me to use sound as a mnemonic. I thought of the word “Thor,” the Norse god of thunder, and when preparing to pull up Brian’s line, began to have the one-syllable name ready and waiting for my stumble. I’d then be able to transfer my mind to thinking of the three-syllable adjective whose first syllable is the word that resembles the sound I’m looking for.
So far, this has worked. I’ve been able to quickly transfer “Thor” with its “th” sound to “tor,” and from there, get easily to “tormenting.” Maybe before long, I’ll be able to dispense with the mnemonic circumlocution entirely!
Aren’t language and its relation to the mind interesting?! For spiritually-minded readers, here is the entire masterful poem by Brian Darnell, reprinted with his permission.
God-given
The mind fades—I’m learning to put forth
the heart, a small warmth, a candle
flickering in the dark of my cell,
not flame enough yet to burn away the dross
but a relief to my chronic solitude—
a glow sufficiently humble to draw my Beloved.
He absorbs our tormenting sins to the exact extent
we open our wounds to His mercy,
His benevolence annulling
our every clinging indulgence,
allowing expansiveness to bloom—
an assured and expressive love setting up a house
of which we seem inherently unfamiliar,
a peace from which we’ve been too long estranged
but which is apparently our Self, our essence—
the seeds, pith and components of our true being.
O child of God, the flame within is the dhuni
burning away all your imagined deficiencies.
«LEITURA RELACIONADA» ON WORDS AND IMAGES: Comparing the experience of writing a poem and making a painting (in a time of war)»
imagem 1: Nick Youngson; image 2: Erik Solibakke, webmaster, avatarmeherbaba.org; imagem 3: Bernhard Wenzl
