An article by Sha'Tara, local writer and friend...

Patterns and Freedom

[thoughts from the Other Side—Sha’Tara]

We talk of chaos and order and we talk of freedom.  What do these have in common? Patterns, or lack thereof.  To try to understand the process of life—that should be a primary concern of all evolved consciousness—we must stand still and ‘feel’ it move around us and within us.  Life is movement.  It flows through everything… or everything flows through it. 

When we do stand still (I mean in the mind, not physically) what do we observe?  Do we not see patterns in the chaos?  Our own little orbits as we exist, or pass through, the greater movements, are these not made up of patterns?  What do we call that which does not fit our patterns?  If it’s good, we call it ‘being lucky’ and if it’s bad, we call that accidents.  Depending on the severity of these chaotic events, we create new patterns from them.  If we win a lottery our life changes: we make new friends (hah!) and possibly move to a more exotic location.  We express our life on a broader canvas.  If we lose our legs in an accident, or suffer a brain damaging stroke, we learn new ways to express our patterns, to cope, and our orbit grows smaller, tighter.

Without patterns life disintegrates into chaos and that brings everything down with itself.  Note for example the downfall of this society as it plummets from the controlled, quasi-anal, patterns of the Fifties to today’s mindless, undisciplined chaos of slovenliness, foul-mouthed expressions, blatant law-breaking with little consequence to the perpetrator, increasing violence increasingly acceptable, planned obsolescence, educated ignorance, laziness, gratuitous noise that pretends to pass itself off as music, lack of respect for private property, gross misbehavior on the part of so-called leaders, greed and gluttony the likes this world has never experienced, mindless rituals of religions designed not to curb sin but to exonerate it (which accounts for the dichotomy of religious organizations growing in numbers to the degree they become utterly irrelevant to the day-to-day behavior of their adherents). 

It seems to me that patterns are necessary to life if it is to evolve; that without patterns it disintegrates until a new set of patterns is formed to carry a new base for the jig-saw puzzle.  A major problem is that patterns must, of necessity, confront and control freedom.  Which means that in creation (well, that’s what I call it and does it matter if it’s some other kind of ‘spontaneous’ expression?) there can be no real freedom, only aspects of it.  In our patterns we sense a need for freedom; we long for it; seek it in rebellion, in the breaking of patterns and when we do find it, it’s chaos once more, until we re-establish patterns.  It has been said that every revolution contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.  What is a ‘revolution’ but a breaking of patterns?  And why do they fail?  Because they can only re-establish patterns, not create a new working concept.  A true break with the patterned past would mean destruction and annihilation of everything we are familiar with.  It’s as simple as that.

Ancient teachers spoke of achieving balance between chaos and order.  In such a gigantic see-saw struggle between the forces of ‘creation’ (of patterned order) and the forces of destruction (of disorder and death) how can one individual achieve a healthy, comfortable sense of equilibrium, of peace, of harmony in equanimity—and note the importance of this next part—without giving up or running away from reality by hiding behind secure compounds or in the Never-Never land of TV sitcoms, in the programmed violence of organized sports, in closed groups of family and friends excluding the strange, the painful, the uncomfortable, the threatening?  Caught between the struggles of these two giants, what do we do?  What can we do? 

One, we can rely on old patterns.  We can cling to old ways and carry on as if there was no war going on—the conundrum explored in the movie “Pleasantville”.  We can seek to make our personal life as safe and comfortable as possible; we can rush out to suck as much out of society as it will let us take and damn the consequences for tomorrow we die in any case.  Or we can become addicted to the fantasy world of documentaries or pseudo-documentaries, join groups of conspiracy theorists and meaninglessly gloat over the downfall of the rich and mighty.  In other words we can turn from worshipping ‘God’ which represents order and worship chaos instead.  Another addiction.  Another blind alley.

Heaven takes sides.  Nirvana exists only in wishful thinking.  As below, so above.  There is no place that guarantees peace and freedom.  Yet it is possible, even here, even now, to experience a kind of peace, a kind of freedom, that is real. It doesn’t come from security forces nor from the legal right to do whatever one wants.  It comes from understanding life’s purpose and realizing that each one of us is ‘life’ and has that same purpose.  In these worlds, at our level of spiritual/mental development and understanding we should be able to ‘see’ that life is all about giving.  Life gives.  Giving means emptying.  You cannot fill a glass that is already full.  It must first be emptied.  If we are to become comfortable with the concept of living, that is giving, we must learn how to empty ourselves.  The wonder of life is that it only needs emptying, never filling!  The filling is what ‘spirit’ does.  Or, if that is an uncomfortable term, use the word ‘source’ instead. 

Life discovered itself by emptying itself, thus creating a flow, from emptying to filling to emptying to filling.  If we busy ourselves in the process of emptying we won’t have time to worry about stuff.  We will find that detachment becomes not only easy, but absolutely necessary.  And what happens in detachment?  We become self-empowered.  What happens when we are self-empowered?  We cease to take sides out of fear or for personal gain; to struggle; to worry: we become selfless. What else happens in the emptying process?  We discover the power of compassion.

Once we arrive at this stage of understanding and we function thus, we see the patterns of order in the chaos as part of the fabric.  We observe the changes, whichever way they take us but we no longer fear them nor try to impede them.  That is not what self-empowerment is about.  Seen this way, spiritual evolution becomes a very simple process, a very desirable process.  But is this what we want?