The ideas below are simply a reflection of my direct experience applying the wisdom of many great teachers to my life. They are not my prescriptions on how others should live their life. I share these thoughts and experiences not to gloat or cast judgment, but rather to feel the joy of creatively expressing myself and to potentially help others on a similar journey.
“The task that confronts the spiritual student, devotee, or aspirant is how to actualize conceptual spiritual information into subjective, experiential reality. Thus arises the necessity for application of practices and techniques that evolve progressively into that process whereby the potential becomes the actual.”
-Dr. David Hawkins
The most impactful work I’ve done in my personal evolution has been becoming aware of my underlying patterns and then either releasing or transmuting them into something more aligned with open heart qualities such as unconditional love, gratitude, and trust.
This post is an overview of the concept of patterns and the 3 different methodologies I’ve used to work on my own patterns that you can use to experiment on yourself.
Below is a table of contents to this guide.
What Is A Pattern?
Patterns are mental impressions or recollections we inherit through experiencing the world which directly influence our behavior. The hindus and buddhists call these Samskaras. Many who believe in reincarnation believe that we might also inherit and carry in patterns from past lifetimes in our current consciousness that manifest as behavioral propensities. This, along with our underlying level of consciousness at birth, can be considered our Karmic inheritance.
Think about the idea that your consciousness comes into this world as a relatively blank slate, ignorant of all the potential experiences you had in other lifetimes. And as you encounter ideas and experiences, mental impressions become imprinted on your consciousness and stored in your body. If your psyche was a computer, these impressions would be like the programs its running.
These concepts can be helpful in that they enable us to navigate life safely. For example, you are taught or experience directly that if you play with fire you will get burnt! This would be considered a helpful pattern.
At the same time, they can also be very challenging for human’s ability to experience unconditional joy and peace. Take the common idea in western society that having a lot of money is indicative of how intelligent and capable you are. This idea is something that is unconsciously imprinted on you through merely observing all the influences around you. One day you find yourself in a situation where a bunch of people have a lot more money than you. For seemingly no apparent reason, you start to judge yourself for having not having as much money and making choices that resulted in financial abundance.
You didn’t want or ask for these feelings and thoughts to come up. They just kind of materialized on their own…
Most of us go through life completely unaware of the source of all these thoughts and feelings we have accepted as part of life. We think that it is who we are vs. a collection of patterns that we inherited through conditioning.
In this way, your consciousness is conditioned not by the truth of reality, but by the programming that you have encountered in your unique life experience. This, along with our innate level of consciousness, is why one person thinks something is good and another person can think the same exact thing is bad. All circumstances are evaluated from the context of one’s experience which is inclusive of their level of awareness around reality itself.
After experiences leave an imprint, every subsequent experience that comes into our consciousness intersects with these imprints we’ve developed. This is the basis of forming judgements and even the conceptual model of the self. If a particular experience or idea meets our model, we like it and welcome it. If it doesn’t, we resist it and avoid it which causes patterns and negative emotions to be stored in the physical body. And as we further indulge in the pattern by reacting to any external stimuli, the pattern becomes further reinforced to the point where we think it’s who we are.
When many animals experience trauma, you will see them physically shake as they allow the energy of that emotion to flow through their system.
Because of our developed frontal cortex, humans have a way of avoiding or suppressing confrontation with these emotions which means the energy can’t express itself and becomes stuck in our systems. This lack of energetic flow results in disharmony of the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual bodies and eventually can manifest as disease. This is the core concept behind many eastern and indigenous medicine systems such as acupuncture.
With all of this in mind, we can then view the process of spiritual ascension not as one of adding things to our being, but rather removing the impediments (patterns) that block our natural essence which is infinite light, love, and joy.
I like to think of the imagery of the sun shining brightly as your natural essence that has clouds over it. And as you transcend patterns and conditioning, the clouds fade away and the true self emerges with all its radiance. This process coincides with a greater sense of wisdom, unconditional love and well-being
I think the mental model and imagery here is powerful enough to repeat it!
So…we obviously want to avoid this entire phenomenon of accumulating and indulging in negative patterns.
Lots books talk about the process of letting go or surrendering, but don’t do the best job of teaching how to actually do this process and so you can free yourself from the patterns and return to your natural state of unconditional joy, peace, and love.
I’ve tried many different modalities over the years and have found 3 techniques to be most helpful. One is not necessarily better than the other. I’d just consider them all tools and try each one to determine which one resonates. I generally use whatever one feels right in a given moment.
In order to perform these exercises, you need to first cultivate a level of awareness that allows you to witness the pattern vs. immediately indulge in it. This is ideally done in the moment if you can become the watcher of your thoughts through meditation, but it can also be applied after the fact by reflecting on a given situation or scenario during a time like meditation.