Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0334: Memorize Matthew 5 using a new memory palace method

Episode Date: June 18, 2015

A listener asks about memorizing Matthew 5 using a memory palace. How do you find a room big enough, and how do you place the verses in the palace in order to memorize it forever? What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army […]

Master of Memory 334. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Today's question is from an anonymous listener. Hey, Timothy, I really appreciate the show and I appreciate the James course. I've just, praise God, I've gone through chapters four and five, and I'll be going to chapter three. So I appreciate the James course, and I'm excited to hear that you're going to be another course for another book of the Bible. You said you were changing the way that you were memorizing scripture, though. You said instead of,

you said for each chapter is going to have like its own big room. I was trying to memorize a chapter from Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount, chapter 5. But I was trying to find a memory palace with rooms big enough. So how big does the room have to be for your new scripture method? And any suggestions on where to find a memory palace with rooms big enough? And any more thoughts on your new method of memorizing scripture? Thanks for listening, and thanks for the show. Thank you so much for the question, anonymous listener.

There are a few aspects to this question, and the first is choosing which room you use as a memory palace. The size of the room, I would argue, is not that much of a big deal. You can choose, I mean, some people have rooms as small as little closets and are able to store hundreds of items in them because they use them very efficiently. They might imagine everything that they used to keep in that closet and then use each of the items in that closet, you know, just go around those different items

and place their mnemonic imagery on those items. So it doesn't really have to be a big room. You should choose your room based on what Matthew 5 is going to be triggered by. Or what I mean by that is whatever you want to associate with Matthew 5. So what's going to happen is you're going to think of this room and you're going to remember Matthew 5. So you can choose it for whatever purpose. I would choose it based on, you know, putting it inside a larger palace that would represent the whole book of Matthew. Don't get hung up on that for now, though. Just pick a room and let's run with it. So that's the first step.

You're going to choose a room to associate with Matthew 5. The second step is you're going to place the key verse from each section throughout that room. So here's what I would recommend. Choose 10 verses for the 10 sections of Matthew 5 if you think that it's divided into 10 sections. I personally use the ESV when I memorize scripture in English, and so it's typically divided up into 10 sections. And the 10 verses that I would choose, you might want to make note of this, will be verse 1, verse 10, verse 13, verse 17, verse 22, verse 28, verse 32, verse 34, verse 39, and verse 44. Now what you're going to do is you're going to place these verses around the room in order using mnemonic imagery to tie the verse to its location.

Now an optional thing that you might do if you're an advanced mnemonist or if you want to, if you really want to remember which verse each of these verses is, is you could involve a major-based character with number 40 for the book of Matthew, because it's the 40th book in the Bible as it's ordered, probably in your Bible, and then major-based objects, meaning that each of these objects, object 1, object 10, object 13, and so on, each has an object that represents that verse. So you're using that character, character 40, and that verse, verse 13 or whatever, and involving that character and that object in the place that it is in the room. And what that character is doing with that object in that place represents the verse somehow or triggers the verse for you. So do that with those

ten verses and if you're able to think around the room and list off those ten verses in order, you have the basics of that whole chapter memorized and everything else is a downhill battle. Or I don't think downhill battle is a real phrase, but anyway it's downhill. It's not an uphill battle. Everything else is gonna be easy because you have all of those 10, you know, those 10 essential verses in place, those 10 key verses. So you have the whole chapter laid out geographically around the room, and you can find your way around the chapter easily by just thinking around the room. Step three is to listen to Matthew 5 and recite along every day and notice when each of those verses comes up. So you'll be listening actively because your mind will perk up, your ears will perk up and you'll listen as soon as you hear any of these verses that you recognize.

And so your mind is going to stay active as you're listening to the passage. And then you're going to memorize all of the verses in between gradually and use the same technique that you used for those 10 verses, but just place them in between those 10 verses as they lie in the scripture, in the chapter. The end result is that you'll be able to recite the whole chapter easily from beginning to end by thinking around the room and just reciting along. And not only that, but you'll be able, if you've used the advanced technique of using the objects that prompt numbers, you'll be able to remember any verse from any reference and vice versa as we teach you to do in the James course at masterofmemory.com slash James. Although, as you've mentioned in the voicemail that you left,

that's not the best method. It doesn't use this exact method that we'll be using for future Bible courses at masterofmemory.com. Now, as far as those future courses go, I'm never going to charge anything for the information at masterofmemory.com. There are always going to be free courses. But if you want to keep it that way, how many times do I have to ask you to leave an iTunes review? This is what gets the show visibility. And every single review, your one review, has a multiplying effect of how many people iTunes will allow to see the show.

That is what keeps us going and what's going to allow me to help to create more scripture memory courses for you so that we can hopefully eventually memorize the whole Bible together at masterofmemory.com. So leave your review in iTunes and I'll talk to you again soon. Dude, leave a review already.