Reverse Mental Journaling And Similarity To Dream States

[Spider Jerusalem]

I've been experimenting with memory recall at the end of the day. Here's what I generally attempt to do:

• Before calling it a night, work backwards recalling the general outline of everything that occurred during the day. Do not write anything, just form mental images/thoughts in your mind.
• Do not interpret the events, simply note the basic details around them, in detached fashion, as if simply "replaying" the day.
• Work backwards trying to reach a decent level of accuracy in the sequence without any kind of reordering until you reach a point where no further recall is possible or would take too long (more than 2-3 minutes) to recall.
• The idea is not to recall older memories, just very recent ones, both mundane and not-so-mundane). Nor is the idea to perform some kind of analysis of the events, since that will likely interfere with the simple recall exercise.

What I've found so far is that:

• Barring some unusual or exciting events, most events are forgotten the very next day no matter how hard I try to be "awake" during the day (following Ouspensky's idea of "self-remembering"). It's nearly impossible to recall even what I ate for lunch the previous day unless I try really hard.
• Recalling the events (even for the same day) backwards is hard! In some way, exactly the same distractions appear as during meditation. The mind struggles with forming a continuous "event" thread in the right (reverse) order, and wanders off within a minute or less. At times, this recall process is incredibly difficult, and I just go halfway and then stop. It gets worse when the day is filled with "usual" or "mundane" activities, which I suppose is what happens most of the time. Obviously, events that have some kind of "colorful emotion" attached to them as a lot easier to recall.
• It seems to me that this exercise shows that the waking state might be a lot closer to the dream state that we might generally assume. Obviously, recalling waking state events is a bit easier that recalling dream events, but it's really surprising how much of the waking state is insanely hard to recall (we all have those dreams we try so hard to recall, but just can't!). I feel that the waking state is only marginally better for recall than the dream state.

Wondering if anyone else has tried this reverse mental journalling exercise (or even just the simpler forward one), and if they've had similar experiences and/or insights.

[goodguy]

I will try it today and will post my experiences later.

[goodguy]

 Any ideas how we can self remember easier? Having in mind those moments during the day that leave a memory, how can we use that as some strategy to induce more self remembering moments that leave a memory? Today I remember pretty much only the moment when 2 friends visited me, you open the door and the surprise of the 2 friends standing infront of your door makes you remember yourself momentarily, thus leaving a memory. Edit: I can remember way more moments if I really try.

Edited February 9, 2016 by goodguy

[Spider Jerusalem]

2 hours ago, goodguy said:

 Any ideas how we can self remember easier? Having in mind those moments during the day that leave a memory, how can we use that as some strategy to induce more self remembering moments that leave a memory? Today I remember pretty much only the moment when 2 friends visited me, you open the door and the surprise of the 2 friends standing infront of your door makes you remember yourself momentarily, thus leaving a memory. Edit: I can remember way more moments if I really try.

I'm stumped. Self-remembering cannot be made automatic, so it's a bit of a paradox. One technique I use sometimes (but then forget again obviously ) is to let my attention linger on objects for just a few seconds longer that I normally would. Another method is to prime my mind when I wake up by having an intention to remember myself throughout the day. These techniques might actually work, it's just that I forget to apply them consistently, so I'm back to square one.