Pattern Consciousness

Patterns are portals. The patterns of nature, with their wonderfully wavelike, sensuously spiralling, curiously cracked or fantastically fractal formations offer us a glimpse of another dimension. They open a gateway to a sense of wholeness and reconnection that is much needed in today’s increasingly fragmented times.

Patterns viewed with reverence and awareness can become portals. These visual clues can act as guides back to the unseen, mysterious world that we long to return home to, from our own world that often seems flattened by disconnection. Playfully, sometimes dazzlingly, often gently, patterns invite us to delve deeper and uncover bigger questions about the times in which we live. What patterns do we create, both personally and collectively? What kind of future patterns am I creating now, to be lived by the loved ones of those I love? What role do I play as a fellow traveller with a limited time here on planet Earth?

Patterns have the power to lead us to a deeper state of consciousness that brings us home to ourselves, to each other and to our place within the universe. Through pattern we are invited to stand at the threshold of creation with childlike curiosity, humbled by the magnitude of patterns we behold. In seeing and honouring patterns, we become witnesses to the wonder of life. We attune to a universal language that has the power to transcend all languages, belief systems and differing ways of being. Patterns speak to the depths and beauty of our sacred interconnectedness with the natural world and all that is, all life that that has ever been, and all that will be. 

We are witnessing perhaps one of the greatest breakdowns of man-made systems and patterns of all time. After wearing blinkers for so long, we are finally being asked to wake up and reconnect the dots – to become more conscious of our interconnectedness and interdependence with the natural world, and with each other. We are realising that, in order to survive and thrive, we need to open up, not lock down. We need to ask many more questions, to explore regenerative new patterns of both seeing and being. We start to ask what patterns we need to both break and make, in order to live.

This remembrance is both timely and humbling, and offers great insight. Should we wish to continue living here, we as humans must redefine our sources of wisdom, restore nature to her rightful place as teacher, and find more sustainable and peaceful ways of being. We often desire perpetual summer, both as a culture and individually. We define ourselves with constant action and doing. Busy is good in Western culture, growth is best – but we are seeing where our growth mindset is taking us and we are being called to deeply reflect. Nature does not work like that. As we become more aware of the limitations of our unsustainable man-made systems in modern life, perhaps we can compensate for a deficit of rest and time during which nature and we ourselves can lie fallow. And perhaps – just perhaps – this is the only way forward.