★Unknown White Male

Have any of you seen the documentary Unkown White Male (Official Site, Wikipedia)

It’s probably the most interesting and thought provoking documentary I’ve ever seen. From Wikipedia: a documentary film … covering the life of … Doug Bruce, a British resident of New York who appeared to suffer from sudden amnesia, who woke up on a subway train in Coney Island in 2003, not knowing who or where he was.

One of the first lines in the film is the narrator:
How much of our past lives, the thousands of moments we experience, helps to make us who we are? If you took all of these remembrances, these memories, away, what would be left? How much is our personality, our identity, determined by the experiences we have, and how much is already there – pure “us”?

The personal history concept is huge. Who would you be if your personal history couldn’t give you excuses or justifications for your current situation? What would you change in your life if you felt no sense of obligation? What would you spend your time doing?

I was reminded of this documentary by Sue’s post on Energy Seekers – Relating it back to personal history, if you had to meet all of your friends again for the first time, who would you spend the majority of your time with? Whose company would you still enjoy? and of course there’s the flip side of all this.

Have you seen this documentary? What are your thoughts on it?

I saw half of it at a party. It was screened onto a wall, and not much could be heard over the loud music.

Memory is a huge part of who we are. Without memory, we could not function.

True you can still have a very happy life without memory, but you would depend on others to keep you.

As a part time Buddhist I have strived toward the concept of enlightenment and in.the.moment.ism. I have realised to get there means to die. Without our egos (and memory) we cannot function in our society. This is all so scary to write down because I do not talk about, write or communicate about these topics, as I am unable to tell you how I came to them :)

i haven’t seen the doco but i loved Memento so i’ll have to check it out, did he lose all of his long term memory but was able to make short term memory after waking up on the train?

our pasts shape so much of our present senses of self but that doesn’t mean we should let it control how we act in the present – but liberating ourselves from our pasts is easier said than done especially if you do not savour the prospect of hitting yourself in the head with an hammer until you achieve it.

even after years and years of amazing personal development sometimes i find myself regressing into previous patterns of behaviour when i find myself in the company of people from my younger years. its silly but the mind likes to access “Imprints” (patterns of behaviour) in different social situations and when it remembers that you have acted shy or submissive around certain people in the past it will automatically access that imprint again.

the cure for this? PRESENCE. there is no moment like the present because the past has already past and the future hasn’t happened.
more and more i’m realising the Power of Now, Echart Tolle is a great author if you want to research it a little more.