[Richard T]

Hello Rustanddust.

Memories act as a shield upon which the mind is forced to reflect.

They are crystalized energies to allow impressions to leave imprints.
Think of butter. The harder it is the clearer the imprint.
The butter is crystalized energies, lowered in vibration, and the experience leaves an imprint. So, the energy is 'encoded' with the signature of the experience.
It is not just a psychological process of remembering events and evaluating them with emotions though.

The imprint is also left from the science of cellular consciousness that produces visceral reactions to experience in order to prolong its activities. Animal instincts.

But this is an artifact that ends up being used for the creation of a model in another plane.

The ego is then forced to reflect upon the imprints of the hard surface of the envelope that keeps it in a state of experience. And this reflection prevents him from probing what lies beyond the periphery of his self.

We are getting to a point where he must be capable of probing up the thread of his reality.

And for this, the formed periphery must be diluted sufficiently to allow the energy to escape its reflective state and get answers that are real and that are inconditioned by the state of experience.

This is why tomorrow we won't live by experience but create.

So, the ego must become transparent.

The denser the energy that is carried by the ego results in a relatively wider cone of distortion, of refraction, of the ray of consciousness that comes from what people called the higher self.

Unfortunately, this cone prevents razor sharp penetration without interpretation. The more transparent the ego, the less distortion in the ray.

This means that the more transparent the ego is, the less he works out of memories and the more he works from the ray. The source behind the ray is the real identity and the reflection process returns a false identity based on the experience.

The ego is so used to work from his false identity that he freaks out when he starts losing what he believed to be him and the whole process behind his reason, that is the reflective process. But the reflective process forces him to reflect upon his limited memories instead of reflecting upon his reality.

The astral is very close to the memories of humanity and know how to invest the psychic territory in a way that will agree to the reflective process of an individual.

So, this means that if someone does not even believe himself, he becomes immune to influences that would agree to his reflective process. Then he is less corruptible and it is by vibration that he considers his environment rather than by comparison.

The reflective process is a comparative process. Memories are sorted, categorized, compared, and a conclusion is reached. If new information comes, it is memorized, sorted against memories that were already concluded upon, and the edifice of memorial knowledge grows as more complex conclusions are reached. This is how the intellect developed. The intellect is quite capable now to evaluate by vibration rather than by emotional identification. But the ego is insecure and does not let go easily without proof. But since he won't be given a proof, he remains attached to the periphery of his consciousness onto which he reflects. He has a hard time stepping into what is unknown to him, because he mixes faith with beliefs. And faith is not a belief, it is a certitude in one's own reality.

This is how I would explain it.