'Where there is matter, there is geometry '- Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)
It’s true that there are very few new ideas in the world. There are lots of new perspectives and presentations of old ideas. To my joy, I happened upon the statement from Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), ‘Where there is matter, there is geometry.’ That statement opened my mind to reality of patterns all around us; but not before my own self discovery. When you choose to be aware, discovering universal truths through your own experience has a transformative effect. Universal truths are impersonal and when the experience of them is personal they change you.
Patterns Matter
The same familiar little black cloud of sadness appeared over me as I walked home from the gym. I recognised again I was plunged into the same familiar depression. I was sick and tired of myself. How long had I been experiencing this? For how many years? Here I was, perpetuating another relationship, long ended, yet fresh with wounds that kept me held, static, believing my inability to ‘let go’ convinced me we were, ‘meant to be together’. Again, the face of the person associated with my feelings was different and I realised there had been a few different faces over the years yet the only commonalities were me and this sadness. In an attempt to get closer to the familiar sadness that seemed imprinted on my psyche, I cast my mind and heart back and found a song on my iPod perfectly associated with this sadness. I had cried many tears to it about a seven years earlier and although I felt I was creating trouble for myself by searching for a song that had been relegated to a painful past, I was so intrigued by my stagnancy and what it meant I chose to wade deeper into my sorrow.
The chorus of ‘Tears and Rain’ by James Blunt filled the middle of my head;
'I guess it's time I run far, far away; find comfort in pain,
All pleasure's the same: it just keeps me from trouble.
Hides my true shape, like Dorian Gray.
I've heard what they say, but I'm not here for trouble.
It's more than just words: it's just tears and rain.'
Tears poured down my face in familiar streams. It was a very old song to me, yet more than that, it was filled with fresh pain. I wasn't crying to memory, I was crying to my life right now. Just as I'd cried in this familiar pain so many times before, observing myself I thought ‘Is this a pattern? With that, the questions came.
What is this pattern?
Where and how did it start?
What is it that I need to say to myself, tell myself, acknowledge, absorb, and/or adopt to change this pattern?
Can a new pattern be chosen to integrate which will disintegrate this painful pattern?
The repetitiveness of my steps on the path and the song on repeat, allowed me to slow to a stillness within to explore which allowed the answers to the questions flow.
The pattern I revealed to myself was that I have a propensity to be devastated when someone I have grown to close to chooses to walk away from me. It breaks me, leaves me powerless and leaves me with a deep sense of loss and abandonment.
I then looked back as far as I could to hunt for the original wound. I found that it was first experienced when my father turned his back on me and became seemingly disinterested from a very early age. Similarly others have devastated me in the same way and my desperate pleas and metaphorical tapping on the shoulder asking if I exist, has defined a pattern of powerlessness and loss. Each person I got close to was symbolic of my father. Further back still the deepest sense of abandonment I felt was from my mother’s reduced engagement with me when my twin brother demanded her attention. It was as if I regressed and went back to three weeks of age asking ‘where has all the love gone?’ and recognised myself as an abandoned baby. That sounds melodramatic, but stop and consider how it is for an infant who for three weeks has had cuddles and closeness with his mum and then, abruptly, because he accepts food easily and sleeps readily, realises through his primitive instinct of survival begins to doubt the authenticity and security of the care he is receiving because it had diminished abruptly. With that I felt I understood the beginning of the pattern.
After some reflection, to regain power in my state of loss and depression I chose to examine the individuals who I had allowed to perpetuate my pattern. My perception, not judgement, of them was they were all damaged in their own way. I knew from each of their histories they had walked away from others before or had been left by others, because they hadn't fulfilled what was reasonably expected in their relationships. In each case it was usually reciprocal nurturing. Very quickly I saw that in their own stories, because of their pain and triggers, they would have walked away from anybody. I had personal histories with each and yet as I saw the pattern of their imprint on me, they were all the same. I realised that sometimes it can take years to create a pattern and that for a pattern to exist there had to be a lesson in it somewhere. I experienced each personally and received the pain personally, yet when I saw the pattern, it became impersonal. Impersonal in the sense that, I believe, that all pain is common to us all: Meaning the lessons are learnt personally, but the patterns of pain are universal and therefore impersonal. We experience things subjectively, yet universally we can understand them objectively.
If it were impersonal, but I took it personally, I had to take personal responsibility for the pain, by seeking out the lessons. First, I acknowledged that these people were here to teach me something and so I chose to love, honour and let them go as ’noble adversaries’ and teachers. Then I set about examining my own patterns of ‘woundedness’ that would have attracted people like them and reasoned that I needed them and their wounds for me to face my own. In an instant I felt that I was embarking on a journey to free myself from old patterns. My wounds, I saw, had traceable patterns, rather than benign, stagnant sources of pain. They had vibrant energy and purpose. I figured that if I saw the patterns from one side, maybe all I needed to do was flip them over and see what the opposing side looked like. Then, like a dawn opening up a landscape awaiting revelation, I recognised a bigger pattern! I hypothesised that if I can see my own patterns of behaviour, then there must be other patterns of behaviour that we all can resonate with. On the day and days subsequent to my revelation, I pondered this existence of patterns and how it related to myself. I had heard the phrase, 'it was impersonal, but I took it personally' before but I hadn’t truly engaged with the meaning of it fully until seeing it in myself. When I examined my patterns I was more objective, less attached, less dramatic and less hurt. I was feeling a renewal and healing occurring. The sense of repair I felt came from viewing my experiences objectively through pattern recognition and the lenses of detachment and symbolic perception, in other words my experience of my wounds had shifted from personal to impersonal. I must add that my shift in focus was not the solution to my wound. The shift allowed me to see the solution with clarity, which revealed my abandonment issues. Knowing the solution, I went in pursuit of it. More on that later.
Due to my fascination with simplifying the human condition my awareness to find more patterns that create pain and their counterparts was increased. I saw that psychologists unravel peoples issues by following patterns they agree, for the most part, work. People learn by following models of success, which too are patterns. Further on, I became aware of patterns in all things. Chefs and cooks follow patterns set out by those before them to recreate favourite dishes and cooking styles and follow the patterns of behaviour of ingredients to create new flavours, textures and contrasts. Horticulturalists and gardeners follow the patterns of plants to create new hybrids and manipulate their growing patterns to create new ones.
I wanted to know what defines patterns and where else would they be beyond the human experience.
When preparing to build anything that will last it’s important to create a solid foundation. I went to work on rebuilding myself by understanding where and what I had come from, making peace with it, letting go, forgiving and a lot of the time, forgetting. Once my foundation had been sorted out, I began to rebuild myself. I recognised there were aspects of me that I really like and others that were a part of me that made me laugh which I could see I had inherited from people or circumstance. I kept everything that felt like me, even the dark bits that hide in my secrets. These parts, which I found so funny, made me laugh because they seemed inappropriate yet they belonged and although I tried to find a way to escape from acknowledging my darkness but in the light of authenticity I had to accept that parts of me, especially my cynicism and fiery anger, could make me laugh. Everything within me was checked off against a new universally truthful pattern, just like a council will check to ensure all precautions and appropriate measures have been adhered to which will ensure a building won’t crumble, I continually checked in with myself and changed, shifted, ‘let go’ or amplified appropriately.
Further on in my exploration of patterns and my relationship with them, I realised that while I was healing there was constant renewal each time I learned something of my relationship with universal truths. What that means is I found myself circling back around to engage with my ‘Self’ and discovered myself renewed. It seems I got closer to the untampered innocence of childhood, while engaging with the wisdom that decades of experience affords you. This work on myself involved constantly discerning and diligently checking in on my alignment with universal truths.
Ok, time for a reality check! Being so honest with yourself usually has a cost, which is why a lot of people resist change. Truth ignites change, so why be honest with yourself if you are unwilling to accept that change is an inevitable consequence? Years prior to discovering patterns in this way I had been in the process of truth-seeking without intellectualising the process. I gradually dismembered my life and my self-crippling devastation demanded that I rebuild from nothing. Although it’s a frightening place to be, it’s very liberating to discover how fearless you’ve become by being vulnerable and losing everything, while having doubts about where the future might lead. There was a time when I had no home, no job and no idea where I was meant to be in the world. I was shattered, insecure and uncertain. A dear friend and her husband opened their home to me, which allowed me to gather myself together and decide where I should go to next. In those strange days of standing still and diving into my sadness, I felt I was pulled into trusting what my energy was doing.
SIMPLICITY
To connect, we exercise detachment by becoming observers of ourselves. Being an observer of self mimics the impersonal nature of the Universe. To do this we choose to see everything as a potential lesson to get us closer to our own Divinity. To feel it, we need to engage personally with the pain, which is the motivator and go onward in search of the lesson. Choosing to ‘search’ is when we cross the threshold from ego attachment into soulful detached observation. Becoming detached is a choice and the process is created by finding a pattern to unravel the pattern that which was ravelled in the first place.
The energy of the universe does not differentiate between us. It is there for ALL of us to access and channel, irrelevant of who or where you are.
TORUS flower of life
In his fascinating book, 'Fractal Time', Gregg Braden, who is brilliantly expert in marrying science with the Divine, introduces the cyclic nature of time, rather than it be linear which is how most of us would perceive it to be. As a way of explaining fractal time, Braden introduces us to the concept that patterns are presented as natures keys to the universe and 'fractals' is the name assigned to these patterns. Fractals are patterns that nature uses to fill the space of the universe. In addition, another component of fractal repetition is the 'golden ratio', which determines how frequently nature repeats the fractals that fill space. To illustrate this, Braden introduces the work of Benoit Mandelbrot, a 1970's mathematics professor at Yale University. Mandelbrot proposed a way of seeing things and called it 'fractal geometry' and devised a way of illustrating the underlying structure of the world: which is patterns within patterns within patterns. As Braden explains, 'the key to a fractal is that each fragment, no matter how small, looks like the larger pattern that it's a part of'. A simple code was programmed into a computer by Mandelbrot and by depicting everything in the natural world as fragments and combining smaller fragments that are similar with larger fragments that are similar the results looked exactly like nature! Braden explains, 'Nature builds itself in fragments, and each one is made of patterns that are similar yet not identical. The term to describe this kind of similarity is 'self-similarity'. Self-similarity is what makes us different and the same. It is what makes following patterns to understand our behaviours and how they were created, as well as how we change them possible. It was found that this incredible discovery of process was able to replicate everything from fern fronds to coastline, to the universe itself! Cast your mind back a couple of chapters to the ’The Shape Of Things’ and see how this fits in with gnomonic expansion.
Finding the right formula, the right program, the right words and marrying them with the simplicity that repetition offers, I recognised that we are built physically, mentally and spiritually in the same way fractals build nature. We all follow smaller patterns of behaviour and create lives which become the larger patterns of behaviour. For many years I've said that smaller things are indicative of bigger things, not realising the bigger truth I was speaking. These patterns are often handed down from parents, guardians and extended family to children. I'm not talking about perceived 'good' or 'bad patterns, but we all recognise how the abused become abusers, just as the compassionate have learned compassion from those upstream from them. We develop according to patterns. The difference between ourselves and nature is we are blessed, or sometimes not blessed, with choice. Therefore we have a choice of pattern to follow. Sometimes a change in pattern is created for us, such as when trauma enters our life, especially at an early age. Patterns allow us to understand each other, they allow us to help each other and are the key to how we hurt each other. They are what allow us to help heal one another because although different stories come from different people, the way we heal ourselves is a matter of following a pattern.
Nature replicates patterns over and over. Once again, look at the spiral (Fibonacci sequence) within a shell and how it is replicated in the spiral of the formation of seeds in the face of a sunflower. ‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix it!’ From nature to mathematics a simple pattern is replicated. In finding patterns, or creating them we can align ourselves with the universe, become intimately involved with the nature of it and in doing so be more responsible to it. From our exploration into the mathematical explanation of everything from the smallest particle to the far reaching expanses of the universe as well as how everything interacts in between, we can believe that anything is possible. To take that thought a step further we could comfortably suggest that choosing an alternative pattern is the same as choosing an alternative equation, which, reason would demand, will create a different outcome. That’s a pretty cool way of looking at things!
In keeping with the practical nature of this book let’s look at how can we incorporate our understanding of patterns in everyday life.
This is a kick-start to assist your assimilation of this sort of self observation. Firstly, discover your patterns, which are usually sitting around your wounds, by walking chronologically through your history. You can walk backwards or forwards; just do what is comfortable for you. Patterns are recognised by their repetition. The same types of people, the same or similar situations occurring. When you begin to examine potential patterns over time, often they will be cyclic, such as the same thing happening around the same time each year, month or day. Once defined, you then choose new or alterations to your patterns to create the life you want. In social learning, people use models, observation and imitation to learn from one another. Following the model of how someone successful does something is the same as following a pattern towards the same end. Try on alternatives, or learn more and see how the fit works for you. Be willing to change, to learn, to grow.
This book is all about patterns. The feelREALlove pattern in part four is an easily replicated pattern to follow that allows you to work through the toughest and simplest of life’s issues utilising methodologies and concepts such as Chakras, Affirmations, Ritual, Numerology, Archetypes and so on. In their own way they are all patterns of understanding and in most cases unravelling. Patterns lead you into the world of seeing things symbolically as well. Symbolic sight leads you into detaching from the drama of life.
So now, the work begins. My intention up to this point has been to ground you in a framework of spiritual and scientifically factual concepts with an esoteric approach, upon which to build and discover your loving and lovable Self. Most of it has been structured, just as most foundations are. Now we step into the flow of life with a pattern we are all familiar with. This is most natural and obvious place to begin; Breathing.
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