It is one of my favourite things about myself: often I forget many things and when people tell me what I said or did, I rediscover myself with joy. It is like a dog hiding a bone, forgetting it, then discovering it with joy. It is like burying treasure only to rediscover it. I believe my mind does so like a parent for its child, holding away wonderful things so it can rediscover. I know this, because my memory has never failed me when it counted. Much like a watchful parent.

Moreover, it has always failed me when I needed to grow. Again like a watchful parent who might not make food to see what the kid does in hunger. We may say it is negligent and can cause fear in the child, but there is a difference between fearing the parent and fearing incapacity. A good parent, I believe, ensures a feeling of safety. That the child will not feel abandoned if they are put in a difficult situation. Let my children never be raised with fear, even against myself. So one day, if I do abandon them, they will have the courage to love.

I digress, my mind sometimes takes away memories. The most frequent example I see this in is argument. I have often found myself helpless to defend or attack with facts against someone who feels wronged by me.

For example, someone once blamed me for causing them trauma. I was distraught. I was distraught because it went against my perception of myself as a kind human beign who can do no harm. I got angry and hurt that someone would say such a lie, but I had no arguments to defend myself. I simply do not recall what happened that night. Perhaps I accept the fact that memory is not to be relied upon.

So I like to think now that my mind took away my memory because I intended to defend myself. You defend or attack with weapons. My mind took away my weapon. The problem in owning a weapon is you never know whether you might use it against your loved ones, or even yourself. My mother always discouraged us from keeping a gun in the house- she narrated instances of brother shooting brother. Now keeping in mind that everyone is my brother, who am I to shoot?

So I am grateful I have no weapons. You may say that sometimes you must defend yourself. If we look at the ideas of oneness, then the other person is a reflection of you. Has your mind ever tortured you? You think of the mind as your own, yet it harms you. So why can you not think of the other as your own, and let it harm you.

I believe the answer is in our ideas of separation and scarcity. Separation refers to how I treat you separate from myself. Also, how we treat the mind as separate from our self, When we do so, we create competition for attention of the soul. The soul, think of as love. We create competition for love. In the above example, where I am the oppressor and the other oppressed, I create a competition to win. So I can hold on to the belief that I am good. Why do I need this belief? For whom do I hold it on for? I feel when I see myself as better than the other, I look for a pat on the back. That was my childhood, full of praise. But this child did not gain praise because he wanted to be better than another, he got praise because he did his own thing. He did not look for praise. He won because he won.

In my later years I developed a desperation for that praise. I began to confuse being the best version of myself with being better than others. I sought this praise and ran behind it, causing me much pain when I was not noticed. This became bitterness.

In the second scenario, there is an entity I look for for praise. There is separation. In the first scenario, there was no separation. I did not look for praise because everything was me- how can you seek something which is already there? Well, this idea is difficult to write about- I wonder if I will rewrite this in a few years.

Still, let us try.

To recap, a situation where you must defend yourself means there is an attacker. This means there is conflict. Conflict cannot exist in a whole, there are always two parts. When I treat the person who blamed me for trauma as separate, I have conflict. I need weapons. When I lose my weapons, I have no choice but to listen. And always, always, listen hard. Because in their words I realised that yes, I did trigger trauma. If they say so, it is their experience and I wish to accept it. I do not know what happened, and so what they say is what it is for them. And since there is no other, for me.

We may then say that such an attitude is defeat. Okay, one way to look at this is that okay it is defeat. If the other person wins, you win. It is far easier to win, than to truly let go and accept defeat. I choose to do what is difficult than to do what is easy. If I do not do so, the burden falls on the person I have hurt.

In my rumination I discovered that yes, I can truly see how my actions may have triggered trauma. Initially, I looked at the word caused trauma, but this was false. The logical truth is I triggered it. The difference is that in the former there was evil intent. But I know my soul is not evil. My mind may be, it may cause havoc. But my soul is not.

This identification matters- what do you identify yourself with?

The mind and body they say are changing. They are not to be relied upon, just like memory. However, that does not mean we are not accountable. If my soul is eternal, how can it perish? If it cannot perish, why must it be defended? And if it need not be defended, I do not need weapons.

It sounds idealistic. It was not as easy as typing this. But when I realised that yes, my mind caused actions that triggered their trauma, I was at conflict. And somehow, there was comfort in knowing I can set things right by apologizing. So I did. This is not to say I am good. I do not wish to deal with morality. I mean the concepts of good and bad we use to judge our behaviour by morality. I choose integrity over it. What separates integrity from morality for me is that the latter has judgement. We act to be moral instead of acting for the sake of acting, because it is in our nature. There is thought in morality. We act good to appease someone in morality, including ourselves. In integrity, we act. There is no good or bad. This neatly deals with the problem often presented to morality- if a friend is in danger but morals say he deserved it, do I let him die?

If you are in touch with your integrity, I believe you will act accordingly. In morality we look to others to judge our behaviour. In integrity, we look to our soul. I say soul, because the mind is susceptible to morality. I believe acting in integrity, with our soul, is what Krishna means by being in your own nature.

In morality the ‘bad’ is suppressed. Often, people labelled as bad are nothing but suppressed. Yet, the worst of people seem to me sometimes to have the greatest integrity. Think of that peer who disrupts status quo for selfish reasons. Be selfish, because there is integrity.

In integrity, I can learn from my mistakes. I do not apologize to appear good, but to feel whole. And you will know the difference between a sincere apology and a fake one. The latter is attempted as a quick fix. The former needs time and reflection. So if you have hurt someone and look for reasons to apologize, don’t. Let it go, forgive yourself and do not hold ideals which are not yours. Think about what happened, meditate on it, speak to the person you hurt in order to listen. Ask genuinely ‘How have I hurt you?’ And have the courage to listen. Because when you listen to them, you listen to yourself. You listen to where you hurt yourself. Morality is nothing but a system meant to see us fail. And integrity does not mean you will become terrible. No, in fact integrity will unveil to you a goodness that no man made morality can dream of.

We say children are intrinsically good. No child is born with morality, but it is born whole. The only difference between you and the child is where you lost your integrity. This is natural. Do not panic. You will return to it. I promise. And when we do, we will no longer need memory to defend ourselves nor expectations to define ourselves. The past and future are no more, all there is is the now.

Phew, sorry, that was too preachy. I hope to live up to these words. And let us say one day I lose my integrity and carry up arms, I trust my soul to disarm my mind.