Timeline slips

[paigetheoracle]

Both me and my wife can clearly remember our neighbour having a Gerbil or hamster but she denies any such thing. Could this be a sign of wavering reality or a timeline shift? I think people become confused about such things when these kind of things happen because it simply confuses them ('Is it my memory that is at fault or their reality?). I think that if you have a solid hold on reality, then this kind of thing doesn't happen but if your hold on it is slim, then it probably happens all the time but people don't realize it or deny it because they don't want to admit the world isn't as solid and certain as they'd like to believe.

[Anthony Peake]

Intriguing. That you both remember this does rather suggest that it is a shared reality that you are perceiving that your neighbour does not share. Keen to have opinions and thoughts on this from other Forum members.

[Espiralli]

Interesting thread, Paige…one I've wondered about, too.

Both me and my wife can clearly remember our neighbour having a Gerbil or hamster but she denies any such thing. Could this be a sign of wavering reality or a timeline shift? …('Is it my memory that is at fault or their reality?)….they don't want to admit the world isn't as solid and certain as they'd like to believe.

…That you both remember this does rather suggest that it is a shared reality that you are perceiving that your neighbour does not share. Keen to have opinions and thoughts on this from other Forum members.

Having encountered through the years a disparity of memories between a particular family member and myself, I've on occasion thrown up my mental hands in exasperation and said to self, "Oh well, maybe he's just living in a different reality than I am…" internally conceding that perhaps the world isn't as solid and certain as I'd like it to be.

Fact is, however, our human MEMORY isn't as solid and as certain as either one of us – maybe most people - would like to believe. Research is ongoing in the "false memory" arena. Quick Google search http://www.google.com/search?q=false+me ... 1I7GGLL_en

Our immediate personal experience of the common reality is colored by a myriad of psychological and physical factors, making our interpretation of the present for us at least slightly different than another's present is interpreted by them. Just so are our memories of the past - it's more likely that either he or I or both of us have undergone some memory distortion through the years, rather than that we've been participating in actually different common realities all along – realities where what existed and happened in my world shared with him did not exist and happen in his world shared with me, and vice versa.

Shifting and individually disparate realities, in order to be truly exposed, would likely require immediate instances not subject to the vagaries of memory, such as, "My wife and I are at our neighbor's house today. We see that she has a hamster in a cage in the living room. But she doesn't see it and she can't truthfully acknowledge that it exists, though she's obviously sane and rational."

As with Tony, I'm keen to see some input on this from other forum members (and/or from some of the many lurkers out there).

espiralli

[CFTraveler]

I've experienced the same, and decided that it was probably a time slip. Not often, thank you very much, but at least twice.

[paigetheoracle]

Well Espiralli that seems a reasonable explanation as I'm well aware of false memories and the vagaries of memory as we get older but the question then arises, where did these ideas come from and why? To me a firm grip on reality ensures that time is linear but what happens if we let go? Do events all happen at once or do we slide into alternate realities where the me here does things different there? The trouble with a lot of scientific research nowadays is that slides into the category of the bleeding obvious and says nothing you couldn't figure out yourself. It's all so shallow, like celebrity culture. I don't doubt my experience, I doubt their explanation.

[CFTraveler]

Well Espiralli that seems a reasonable explanation as I'm well aware of false memories and the vagaries of memory as we get older but the question then arises, where did these ideas come from and why? To me a firm grip on reality ensures that time is linear but what happens if we let go? Do events all happen at once or do we slide into alternate realities where the me here does things different there? The trouble with a lot of scientific research nowadays is that slides into the category of the bleeding obvious and says nothing you couldn't figure out yourself. It's all so shallow, like celebrity culture. I don't doubt my experience, I doubt their explanation.

Especially when two people share the same "wrong memory"- points to the 'timeline shift' explanation, it seems to me.
In this case, the 'scientific' 'wrong memory' explanation seems the more convoluted, less 'Occam's Razored' explanation, IMO.