What's your earliest memory?

[Monica]

Just one memory - at 1 years old, my father brought a cat home (which lived with us until I was 21). I can remember seeing the basket in the back of the car as if it were yesterday.

Oh, that reminds me of another memory I have. Not the earliest one...I'm not sure exactly how old I was...maybe 3 or so I'm guessing. But my parents took me to a farm and there was a mama kitty with kittens. I was told I could choose 1 kitten. There was a pure black kitten and a pure white one. I was torn; I wanted them both! But they let me have only 1, and I just couldn't decide...I wanted so much to take both of them. Finally, my mother made the decision for me, and we took the black one.

So that memory was bittersweet. Cats weren't allowed in the house, but that cat knew how to open the back door and let himself in! They would sometimes find him in the morning, curled up on my bed next to me. My mother would remark that, with 12 people in the house, the cat always chose my bed.

There is no need to 'go back' to a certain time in which to heal trauma. This is, quite simply, the foundation of 'letting go'. We choose to hold on to distortions, thinking them as part of our personality. That itself is the distortion that causes long term disharmony of the Self.

Let go, and love, and you heal the Self. That's all there is to it :¬)

Not so easy to do, for those who were severely traumatized. In many cases, it is necessary. There are neuropathways in the brain that need to be rerouted, and, although "just letting it go" is of course fined if they're able to do that, in many cases of severe trauma, the only way to reroute those neuorpathways and clear the cellular memories, is to first access the memories. As Ankh said, it doesn't matter if the memories are accurate or not...what matters is the emotional charge associated with them.

I think it's important to note that just accessing the memories for the sake of wallowing in hate and anger, obviously isn't productive. One of my sisters was told by a therapist to explore her feelings of anger, and was encouraged to write nasty, hateful letters to my parents The therapist also prodded my sister and made suggestions about what happened. There were some really awful things that happened to her, so there was no need to add to them with more awful things that hadn't actually happened! So my sister sent those nasty letters, which only increased the separation and hostility between her and our parents. It made it worse because, even though she accessed the memories, she never replaced her hatred with love and forgiveness. She just added fuel to the fire. Nothing ever got resolved. Our parents both died without ever healing the rift with her, and to this day she lives in a self-created fantasy, continuing to suppress what really happened. It's sad.

I'm a believer in the value of accessing old memories. I don't think they should be dug up unless there is an effective technique for healing them, as rie described. There is no point in opening an old wound, unless you have a way to heal that wound! But if the memories surface on their own, then that probably means the person is ready to tackle them.