Ever Remember Something You Didn’t Know You Knew?

What is going on when we remember something we didn’t know we knew? It is through remembrance that we are brought to a spiritual life. Remembrance is a meditation that awakens us to the deeper reality of the soul.

When we suddenly remember something that is totally unfamiliar to us, we may be getting a soul memory, something we may have even known before we were born. When this happens, it provides a key to knowing where we have come from and where we are going.

According to a number of sacred traditions, we have a mysterious innate knowing about our life to come before we came into it. Our birth into a strange new world caused us to forget what we once knew, so we spend the rest of our lives trying to remember what we forgot, in order to come into the knowing we started out with.

We’ve all had those moments of wonder when something happens to make it seem like we already knew what we just learned. This is part of a cognitive process of coming to our soul consciousness.

The soul is the storehouse of eternal memories. When something new feels familiar, it may not be new after all. Each time something pops up from that deep reservoir is just the right time for it to appear.

The key is being conscious of when this happens, of knowing when we have remembered something we could have forgotten. James Hillman’s “Acorn Theory,” that our destiny is written in our soul, can be very helpful in this process. It is a theory that not only takes us to the core of psychology (the study of the psyche, or soul), it also takes us to the heart of all the world’s religions.

Carl Jung, the psychologist, said that memory (memoria) is more than mere recall; it is actual storage place that we have the ability to access and return from, bringing with us eternal images back to the conscious mind. Memory, therefore, is soul. An important function of the soul is helping us remember who we really are.

The entry to this storage place is often through the doors of life review, or by telling the story of our life. When we start down this path, we can also find images there that may be beyond our own capacity to imagine, but nevertheless come to us from some universal well-spring that enables us to feel more than we thought we were, and that make us more than we could have imagined.

Remembrance, the conscious effort of reflecting on and listening to our thoughts in prayer and meditation, helps us to achieve transcendence. Transcendence helps us remember more of what we may have once known, as unborn souls having come from an eternal realm.

As a regular practice, remembrance can help us become and remain conscious of who we are as spiritual beings, how we see ourselves in the world, and how everyday events and circumstances affect and influence us.

Remembrance is a meditation that creates gratitude, gratefulness, and strength of faith; this is essential preparation for spiritual transformation. This practice helps us not only remember the important things that add meaning to our lives, but to let go of the unimportant things too. This helps us get to our essence.

Remembrance includes the recognition of what we would not want to live without, what gives us the simplest joys in life. Remembrance is also honoring both our joys and sorrows, because surely the sorrows provide some of the greatest meaning in our lives, too. Remembrance helps us find and give a constructive meaning to what we thought were the sorrows of our lives.

The soul’s greatest challenge, not surprisingly, is with the physical body it is connected to on its journey through this world. The constant pull between the physical and spiritual realms creates a series of trials and tribulations for both.

The ancient legends, shedding light on the unborn soul, tell us that we already know where we came from and where we are going. Our remembrance of where we came from and where we are going will fundamentally change us and will transform all our relationships into relationships of authenticity, respect, and compassion.

Our daily discipline in the world is our training ground. The prophets make it clear that our call is to worldly action. Not escape from the world, but work in the world, is the real goal. There is a distinct service orientation to spiritual growth and the ascent of the soul.