Memory is an important faculty for coping with daily life and an essential ingredient for maintaining good mental health. Being able to retain and recall information, ideas, or instructions, is essential in caring for one’s self, completing jobs at home, or undertaking tasks at work. The notion that this capability is diminishing, or that it could be lost completely, can produce debilitating anxiety or extreme fear.
So concerning is this issue for mature aged people, that even small memory lapses, such as not remembering a person’s name, are worrying. They’re concerned that perhaps they’ve inherited a poor memory, that the ability to recall information is diminishing with age, or that it is being lost entirely through disease.
Since thought and experience are closely connected, it follows that if someone believes that memory is threatened by any or all of these scenarios, then the fear of losing it appears understandable. But no one has to fear losing their thinking capacity—or any other capacity, for that matter.
From a physiological standpoint, memory is believed to reside in a fleshly brain that may or may not be healthy; that matter is the source or manager of intelligence because it supposedly thinks, and remembers. But what if memory was actually spiritual, ageless, and always intact? What if a person was totally exempt from theories that predict the inevitable decline of the body and subsequent loss of mental capacity? What if it was possible to overcome the fear of not having instant recall, and even to improve one’s mental capacity? Is this something that’s achievable?
Mary Baker Eddy, a great thinker, author, and religious leader who lived to her nineties, thought so. She writes in her book, Science and Health, “If delusion says, ‘I have lost my memory,’ contradict it. No faculty of Mind is lost. In Science, all being is eternal, spiritual, perfect, harmonious in every action. Let the perfect model be present in your thoughts instead of its demoralized opposite. This spiritualization of thought lets in the light, and brings the divine Mind, Life not death, into your consciousness.” p.407
How reassuring to be told, that no matter what your age, the capacity to retain needed knowledge is always present. There’s no need to be afraid. Not remembering where one put the car keys, does not have to indicate aging, or the presence of disease!
The source of intelligence and wisdom is from divine Mind. The ability to think, is in, and of, Spirit. Memory, that is, the facility to recollect information, is thus a spiritually mental faculty. That capacity is not something that’s here today, and gone tomorrow. The divine Mind that created each person to be intelligent, to reason, think, and remember, also keeps each person’s thinking intact. Thus ideas, along with instant recall, are permanent in everyone.
I discovered this several years ago when I was employed to speak at various public venues, as well as on radio and television programs. There was a lot of material to remember for these presentations. Fear of forgetting crept in. I addressed the dread of short-term or long-term memory loss, from a spiritual standpoint. I gave up the notion that remembering is associated with a material brain, and affirmed that memory is a permanent spiritual faculty. When the fear of not retaining information was removed, I spoke freely and recalled ideas and information readily.
Thinking of one’s self in spiritual terms, means age and decline are no longer a threat to memory or continued good mental health. Right now it’s possible to stop being afraid of forgetting. Anyone can utilize this spiritual approach. They can affirm, accept, believe in, and expect to have excellent memory – always.
This article, Memory and Good Mental Health, by Beverly Goldsmith was originally published on her blog site, Spirituality and Health Connect. Beverly is a Melbourne-based health writer who provides a diversity of health content on how spirituality and thought affect health.
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