You are what you think.  It’s an ancient saying that describes the way our thoughts have the power to shape us and our world.  If we think we’re worthless, for example, that’s how we will behave and how others will come to treat us.  The actions of others eventually vindicate the original sense of low self-esteem.  It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and one we just don’t see.

 But what causes us to have those thoughts in the first place?  According to the Time-Light model, all thoughts are the brain’s interpretations of energy pulses or waves, which originate from one of the time centers – present, past and potential.  These in turn are created from the traces of experience – or, rather, the emotional or sensory distillation of an event.

 So, your sense of worthlessness is your brain’s interpretation of a poorly-remembered event.  And here’s the trick of the brain: when it has thoughts of worthlessness, it needs someone to be worthless, otherwise the thought has no significance.  The thought of worthlessness almost simultaneously creates the ‘I’ who ‘thinks’ he is worthless!

They say the world splits between those who’ve read Lord of the Rings and those who haven’t.  For me, there’s another split: you’re either a systems or a process person.  A systems person tends to hold to mechanical/physical explanations for most everything – which is why I’m a process person.

A process person holds to the idea of energetic – rather than physical – causes, and the inter-relationships between things; everything affects everything else, rather than a top-down pyramidal structure that the systems people hold to.

Take depression for instance (I did for years, which his how I came to write Time-Light) – an appropriate subject for Depression Awareness Week.

What’s your earliest memory?  Probably it will be of an event that happened when you around the age of three, and then it will be more of a sensation – such as warmth or sunlight – than a detailed recollection.

Even after that time, memories will be of specific occasions, possibly separated by long periods, often weeks and, sometimes, even months.  Again, most of our memories are sensory – the distilled sensation from an event.

Yes, some of us do have very early memories – but most of us don’t.  And there’s a good reason for it: when we’re babies, there’s nobody there to remember!