Does Meditation Make You Forgetful?

Does Meditation Make You Forgetful?

Those who manage to push past the hurdles of meditation are fortunate enough to experience the benefits the practice has to offer. But can there be a contrast to that and can too much meditation lead to undesirable consequences such as making you forgetful?

Fortunately, meditation doesn’t make you forgetful, and if anything, it’s gonna achieve the opposite. You generally have everything to gain with meditation and nothing to lose, the major benefit of meditation is that it can increase your short-term and long-term memory and improve your focus, among other things. 

Now, meditation may aid in helping you forget things that no longer serve you or things that you want to forget, since the more you accept your thoughts in their present form and allow them to coexist like clouds, the easier they are to change.

Forgetting Anxiety or Fear

Upon meditating for a while, you’ll often find yourself being able to conquer parts of yourself that were holding you back before you started meditating, such as anxiety or fear. 

Meditation is, after all, a safe environment to clear or significantly reduce those negative emotions or undesirable thoughts you might’ve had, or at the very least, not be affected by them. 

We can’t always control what we think but we can always control our response by learning to not dwell on things that aren’t within our control. Fear and anxiety are major motivators that push people to start meditating so they can forget these emotions and outgrow them. 

So while meditation won’t make you forgetful, it can make you forget about the anxiety and fear, giving you a strong sense of courage that only grows in a favorable trend the longer you meditate

Short-term, you might be able to experience these benefits as well since everyone’s experiences with meditation are different and people experience what meditation has to offer in different stages. 

For some, it happens at the beginning, some call it beginners luck because if you see progress, you’re more likely gonna want to continue, which is why it’s helpful to combine meditation with journaling

The more you detach from a thought or emotion, in this case, fear and anxiety, the less you attach your identity to these thoughts, and go from having the mindset of “I’m an anxious person” to “I’m temporarily experiencing anxiety and observing it”. 

This kind of mind frame goes a long way in reducing its effects, because with meditation, we become observers, and there’s not much that anxiety or fear can cling to when we’re observing as opposed to participating and dwelling on certain thoughts. 

False Memories

Although you are unlikely to experience any false memories or hallucinations, meditating too much can make the line between a meditative state and a non-meditative state blurred, as some might always find themselves in a meditative state. 

But it generally works in the meditator’s favor, since it only means we’ve reached such a heightened level of awareness we’re touching the borders of what most would call awakening and becoming the best versions of ourselves. 

Now, with meditation, we can experience certain things that some might consider “other-worldly”, but this usually happens in deep states of meditation, and even then, although the experiences can vary from person to person, it’s often an intensified feeling of calm and alertness that only aids us in our day-to-day, to begin with. 

Forgetting The Notion of Time

When you are in a meditative state, you will often forget the notion of time and not want the experience to end, so in that sense, it’s another way forgetfulness can work in your favor. 

Now taking it a step further would be getting used to being in this state of mind perpetually, which is what most sophisticated meditators already are, and which is why you rarely see a long-term meditator in a negative state of mind or allowing their emotions to get in the way. 

For a non-meditator, it might not seem as glamorous or overrated, but the ability to stay calm starts being seen more as a scarce resource in moments of stress. You start appreciating the moments of calm you might’ve had once and if you’ve never meditated, it might seem like a far cry. 

But when you learn to be detached from time and more in tune with nature and the present moment, you’ll often see a correlation between that and happiness. 

It would be the definition of true living, as opposed to letting everything happen on autopilot. Thus, the more you meditate, the more likely you are to forget the past or obsess over the future, even if you can always choose to go back to the past and observe a memory. Just don’t dwell on these memories too much. 

Forgetting That You Are Meditating

Similarly to forget the notion of time, you can forget that you are meditating, and it ties in with that, and it’s the state you want to achieve as a way to indicate whether you are in a deep meditation session or on your way to one. 

The practice shouldn’t feel like a chore, but a natural part of your day that you’ve managed to integrate without putting any active thought into it. 

Changing Your Priorities

Meditation might give you the impression that you are forgetting things when in reality it’s reorganizing things to prioritize what’s the most important steps to take to become the best version of yourself. 

This only works in your favor and the change is barely noticeable, as your will often follows through and the change in priority comes from within. 

This can make you want to set aside smaller things that don’t contribute to your overall long-term goal, and these changes can happen subconsciously, but there’s always something to learn from observing and even documenting the journey if you choose to combine meditation with journaling. 

It’s a way to analyze who you were when you started meditating and who you are at the present and move on from there. 

Forgetting Someone With Meditation

If you’ve been wanting to forget someone else, or even get over a breakup, meditation can be a great way to forget, only to shift your focus on yourself. 

Meditating over time makes you less dependent on others and more self-reliant, and although something like a breakup can be hurtful, no matter how good of a meditator you are, the degree to which it affects you can vary, depending on where you are in your journey of meditation. 

Other times, it might be as simple as forgetting someone that you can’t stop thinking about but want to stop thinking off. Now, if you resist it, the thought will stay but the less you give it your attention and the more it gravitates to you, a byproduct of that would be to forget someone. 

There are meditation and hypnosis sessions tailored to forgetting someone. Now, don’t take for granted that you will forget someone with meditation, but you might. More than anything, it helps to be open to the experience and anything that comes with it. 

Final Thoughts

If you are worried that meditation will make you more forgetful, don’t, since it won’t and only has the potential to expand your memory while clearing what doesn’t serve you.

You might be forgetting some memories as a result of something else, but meditation is a way to get a clear mind and become unaffected by things that were often getting in the way before for you to enjoy your present. 

Now, meditation can help you forget things, but that doesn’t mean it will make you forgetful. Meditation could clear the junk you no longer need that you may not realize is there, which would happen automatically, should you meditate or not. 

The optimal way to look at meditation is as a practice you stand nothing to lose from, but instead, open your mind to expand the scope of what you know about reality, and make you question everything you’ve learned up until this point, partly thanks to the inner wisdom you get.