Sometimes when you’re reminiscing over your past life, your mind for some reason focusses on a particular place that you know you have been to and recognize, and you know that that place triggered particular thoughts and concerns at the time you were actually there. You cannot now quite remember what those concerns were, but the memory of them is still strong, and you know that if you keep returning to this scene in your mind, and with a bit of extra effort, you will eventually remember what that scene and triggered emotions were about.
It is nothing that should worry you now, only arouse your curiosity, but it is fascinating to inwardly reflect on these tricks of the mind, and possibly gain an insight into how the memory part of your brain works. It is an association of a place with memory, of a particularly stressful time, or a period of change, or an exciting event. Sometimes you cannot even remember where the place was, but you know you have experienced the thoughts and emotions that the picture evokes.
In writing, my mind wanders up and down my life, and in almost every situation of a place that I remember, associated thoughts come with it. I must be particularly sensitive to my surroundings because if I put my mind to it, I can remember many small details of places I’ve been to. This may be because I have an artistic eye, an eye for color, an eye for detail, line, and beauty. I like order, patterns, symmetry, design, plans, visual aesthetics, and have an interest in history and the unusual. I can associate a place with emotion, and this triggers further memories, sometimes good, sometimes bad.
In Nepal, the climate and environment are particularly conducive to memorizing places. I am sure that I subconsciously pick up the spiritual blessings that are endowed on a building or physical structure such as a street, a market or a temple at the time of initial construction, by the Hindu or Buddhist priests, because I either feel empathy with my surroundings, a sense of wellbeing, calmness, and happiness or alternatively a sense of foreboding or danger, that I should get out of the place as quickly as possible. I seem to be more prone to these feelings in Nepal than other countries, perhaps because Nepal is such a spiritual country. Or is it just a trick of the mind?
C. Tim Taylor. 2018