Today I wanted to talk about our patterns,
The things that we do that are mostly unconscious.
They are things that we have learned,
They're ways that we interact with our environment,
With our situations,
With our mind,
With our body.
Everything we do,
Say,
Think,
Feel,
Typically comes from a pattern that we have memorized from something that happened to us,
Something that we witnessed,
Something that we made meaning of in a certain way.
And all of these patterns live inside our body and they all have a breath that goes with them and they all have a shape of what they look like in our body.
And the more that we can become aware of these patterns that live inside us and become part of who we are and our personality and create the world before us and our reality in a certain way,
The more freedom we can have in our lives,
The more connected to our intuition we can become,
The deeper connection to spirit we can have.
It takes really paying attention to what we're doing in each moment.
And in the beginning,
That can seem a little daunting because it is.
Our mind has been allowed to just run amok for years and years.
And then we come to this place where that's not working anymore.
So we start this practice of having a different relationship with our mind,
With our body,
With our breath,
With our thoughts,
With our behaviors,
With all these unconscious programmings and patterns that are running below the surface.
The more we connect in with it,
The more that we practice,
The more that we hold our attention,
As with anything,
It becomes easier.
And we start to notice more quickly,
More fine-tunely when we're engaging in a pattern or when an unconscious part of our self is arising.
And it's always an innocent part.
We tend to want to make it bad or wrong or go away all these ways that we chastise ourself or need to fix ourself or believe we're broken.
But essentially,
They're just innocent parts of ourself that have learned how to survive through repetition of going through a particular emotion.
When we can approach our unconscious behaviors from a place of curiosity and love and interest,
We can create a different rhythm.
We can create a different pattern,
A different relationship.
And slowly,
Sometimes quite quickly,
Change our lives,
Change what we believe,
Change our whole reality just by showing up in love and service to ourselves and to understanding what is it that makes us revert to this unconscious place,
To this unconscious behavior,
To this unconscious pattern that we just get caught in.
So what do some of these patterns look like?
Well,
At a real basic space,
If we were to just look at sitting in meditation as an example,
A pattern can show up as interestingly as my foot always falls asleep when I sit this way.
Oh,
You know,
My back hurts when I try to sit in this position or I always fall asleep when I'm in meditation or my mind starts to run away with my to-do list.
A deeper form of a more unconscious pattern is that when my child does XYZ,
I feel frustrated,
I get upset,
Or I might have this giant to-do list and rather than move towards it,
I decide to move away from it.
My pattern is avoiding.
My pattern could also be people-pleasing.
Whenever I feel uncomfortable,
I rush in to help everybody at an expense to myself.
Other ways they might look is I've had a really tough day at work.
I just can't wait to get home to sit on the couch and eat ice cream and watch Netflix.
It could look like always needing a glass of wine after work or biting your fingernails when you're nervous or eating too much chocolate after a tough conversation with your mother.
So many ways that we fall into an unconscious pattern rather than turn towards what it is that we're feeling.
What is underneath the pattern?
Why do we engage in the pattern?
What is the pattern protecting and what is the risk of letting the go and really feeling what wants to be felt underneath?
Really being in intimate and kind loving relationship with those tender parts of ourselves that are so desperately trying to get our attention and asking for our love.
So my invitation to you is to really get curious about what are those things that you do when you don't want to feel?
What are those things that you do when the feelings are too much and you are trying to hide from them?
There's so much beauty and freedom when we learn to include all of the parts of ourselves and get beneath the patterns and programming that are running our lives.
