What is an Engram?
Engram is a memory trace formed in the brain tissue to help facilitate the storage, retrieval, and processing of an information.
It is like an electrical pathway wherein only certain neurons are selected for the encoding of an event.
In an engram memory, a single pathway may contain a group of neurons where each neuron can itself be a part of several different patterns or memories.
While you remember a past event or a memory trace, with time these patterns may get strengthened through a process known as consolidation.
Herein lays the secret to creating your own destiny. How?
By focussing your attention only on the thoughts that feel good you consolidate those engrams that uplift you.
John C Maxwell in his book psycho-cybernetics has told that we need to develop a “success feeling” before we can actually taste actual success.
This feeling, no matter how small, prepares the mind for future successes.
On the contrary, by giving attention to past traumas or failures we activate and strengthen those engrams that evoke from us only faulty outcomes.
But this behavior is what most of us are used to. We keep replaying past memories that do not serve us in any way.
The result is us making those engram patterns more potent.
It seems as if some brain chemicals alter our state of consciousness and we began seeing reality from that perspective.
We start blaming destiny if an outcome doesn’t come up as per our expectation. But here it is the lack of mental work that is to be blamed.
This also means that while setting, wishing and taking action for our goals we owing to our default behavior keep harboring and strengthening those engrams which go against the likelihood of the desired outcome.
This clears why getting a single failure leads us to a continuous downward spiral.
So to desire a new outcome we have to either reactivate the engrams which have provided us the success feeling earlier or use our imagination to develop new success feelings.
Success breeds success. – Mia Hamm
Changing the past
As I mentioned above or perhaps what we have learned since childhood is that karma rules our destiny.
Not long ago, I also used to think that we have no other alternative but to bear our karma until I came to know about “pruning shears of revision” a technique given by the inspirational teacher Neville Goddard.
So here’s the technique
At the end of my day, I review the day; I don’t judge it, I simply review it. I look over the entire day, all the episodes, all the events, all the conversations, all the meetings, and then as I see it clearly in my mind’s eye, I rewrite it. I rewrite it and make it conform to the ideal day I wish I had experienced. I take scene after scene and rewrite it, revise it, and having revised my day, then in my imagination, I relive that day, the revised day, and I do it over and over in my imagination until this seeming imagined state begins to take on to me the tones of reality. It seems that it’s real, that I actually did experience it and I have found from experience that these revised days if really lived, will change my tomorrows. – Neville Goddard
How can revision help?
According to my interpretation, this technique simply changes the coding of our engrams and when we do it on a daily basis we are in a better position to change those engrams.
What neuroscience research says is that when we are reactivating any pattern by remembering it, for that very time, the bonds between the neurons weakens so that any new learning or knowledge can override the previous information for further learning to take place.
Also Read: Are Intellect and Intelligence the Same?
It is at this moment you can reframe the same event as you would have liked it to have happened. Dont worry! you can do this all in your mind.
This doesn’t mean that you won’t be performing any action for your goals but this technique ensures that your present and future actions are not decided by past default patterns.
Believe it or not we are habitual beings who perform most of our actions through these default patterns only unless we have a high level of awareness through meditation or deep spiritual practices.
These default behaviors can only be changed if we change the faulty memory traces. Doing so we automatically perform from a clear memory.
Thus revision allows you to slowly and subtly forget the effect past event or the memory trace have had on you.
Or you can modify it with further information so that with each reactivation continuous learning aids us in our mental development.
Related: Ho’oponopono-Healing Past for Creating New
Conclusion
Most of us are so used to blaming destiny or situations when we encounter defeat that we do more harm than good not on others but only on self.
Taking charge of the outcomes and applying revision to those memory traces we can retract the faulty approaches and infuse those patterns with knowledge and learning so that with the next try gets closer to the source.
It is this capability only that hard work leads to success since with each trial and error we hit closer to the source.
Having a perspective that is not defined by the previous engram memory we start becoming the creator of our destiny.
Also Read: 6 Hidden Secrets: Why Some People are Almost Always Successful?
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