Symbolic Memories

"First came songs, clay pots, drawings on cave walls.  Then tablets and scrolls, paintings and books ...

Then came repositories for the preservation of these items:  libraries, monasteries, museums; also theater troupes and orchestras.  They may consider their mission to be entertainment or spiritual practice or the celebration of beauty, but meanwhile they transmit our symbolic memory across the generations."  Jack Geick

Symbols come to us through what we see and what we hear.  We could be anywhere and hear a favorite 'oldie but goodie' and we are immediately transported back in time.  We can be in busy city department store when a baby cries and the sound, a symbol of all babies, alerts us.  When in a distance we hear a police car siren or a fire engine siren, it registers within us as the sirens symbolize emotional memory.

As we close our eyes to the world for meditation, our hearing is heightened to either silence or to calming music.  They are symbols alerting our body to slow down.  The same is true for speeding our systems up by listening to rock and roll or hip hop.

We are filled with symbolic memories and the visual ones are usually obvious and the symbols we hear are not necessarily registered. The memories triggered by fragrances are often experienced but not consciously recognized.  The smell of a pipe might remind us of an elder from our life, just as freshly baked bread.  Colognes may trigger memories of parents,  and sadly, the stench of a rapist never goes away.  We are emotionally triggered every day as our memories are filled with symbols.