What if memory isn't stored

A quote from my new novel, The Remembering.

Coming soon:

“Memory isn’t stored in the brain. It’s accessed through it.”

She moved to one of the alcoves. Touched a carved spiral.

“We think memory is neurons firing. Synapses connecting. Chemical reactions. But that’s like saying music is stored in a radio. The radio doesn’t create the music. It receives it. Tunes into a frequency that already exists.”

Gabriel frowned. "So where is memory stored?"

"Everywhere. In stones. In water. In DNA. In the field that connects all things." She turned to face him. "Have you ever wondered how a turtle, buried on a beach as an egg, abandoned by its mother, with no parents, no teachers, no instruction manual, knows exactly what to do when it hatches? It doesn't learn. It knows. It digs up through sand it's never seen. Runs toward an ocean it's never smelled. Swims thousands of miles to feeding grounds it's never visited. Returns decades later to the exact beach where it was born. To lay its own eggs. Completing the cycle."

"Instinct."

If this were true, and many believe it is.

Would learning be less about forcing information in,

and more about clearing noise out?

Would thinking improve if the environment supported it,

instead of constantly interrupting it?

Would clarity come not from more effort,

but from stillness?

Is this why meditation is no longer fringe,

but becoming essential?

And when we look at ancient sites around the world,

built with precision, silence, geometry,