How do you delete the bad memories of the past?

Returning from the morning almsround in Thailand many years ago, Ajahn Chah picked up a stick by the side of the path and asked, “How heavy is this stick?” Before anyone answered, Ajahn Chah threw the stick into the bushes and said, “A stick is only heavy when you hold it. When you throw it away, the heaviness is gone.”

Adapting this principle, I suggested to my own students that we perform the “stick ceremony.” You write down on a piece of paper as many troublesome bad memories as you can recall. Then find a stick and wrap the piece of paper around one end of the stick, securing it with a rubber band or some tape. Next find a secluded place in the forest, hold the stick in your hand, and contemplate the weight of all those bad memories. When you are ready, with all the force that you can muster, throw that stick as far away as you can!

To let go of bad memories, you first have to acknowledge them. They need to be honestly recollected. Hence, writing them down on paper. Next, some physical act or ceremony is required to give the letting go some force. Simply thinking “I will now let this all go” does not work. The steps of wrapping the paper around the stick, walking into the forest with the purpose of letting the bad stuff go, feeling the weight of the stick in your grasp, and then the moment of release when you chuck it all away as far as you can: all these steps reinforce the intention. They give it power. It works. You have pressed the delete button.

Then someone complained that I was responsible for others making a mess in the forest. That I was encouraging environmental vandalism! So I adapted the strategy as follows:

Write out all the bad memories on a piece of paper as before. They need to be brought to the surface before they can be deleted. Only this time use a special type of paper, the most appropriate material for shitty memories. Write them out on a roll of toilet paper. When you have finished with the writing, take it to your bathroom, place the paper with the stinky writing in the toilet bowl where it belongs, and then flush!