We all have patterns that affect our view of the world. We start building these patterns the moment we are born. Over time, they accumulate, layer upon layer, like stalagmites and stalagmites in a cave, formed by an almost imperceptible drip drip drip — an unbroken chain of repetition.
Many of these patterns are related to survival. As a child, you reach out to touch a bee buzzing around a flower and your mother cries out to warn you away. The next time you see a bee, you hesitate — the pattern is already forming — before reaching out; if your mother isn’t there, you may actually touch the bee. But then the bee stings you, and the pattern — don’t touch that! — is reinforced.
Other patterns are psychological, but serve the same function, protecting you — your Ego or Inner Child or sense of identity — from the dangers of the world, many of them related to relationships with other people in your life.
For example, if you were in a difficult romantic relationship where you fought about money all the time — with your partner saying something and you reacting in a certain way — that pattern may stick with you. So in your next relationship, when your new partner mentions money, you project your past pattern onto the conversation, and that is what you hear, not his or her actual words.
Your patterns affect not only how you react to the world, but also how you experience the world. They cloud the “lens” of your system — body, mind, and emotions — so when you interact with the world, instead of seeing “what is,” you see the patterns that you project onto the world.
So you don’t see the beauty of the bee or its essential role in the ecosystem, you see only fear or pain or the scolding from your mother. And you don’t hear what your partner is saying about money, just the anxiety you felt in the past when this topic came up.
When you project your patterns onto the world, your actions are based on those patterns rather than reality. It’s as if you were acting out a monologue from a play that you learned earlier in life, not noticing that everyone else on stage — along with the sets and scenery — are all part of a completely different play. This creates a feedback loop — you project your patterns onto the world and react to those patterns, which reinforces those very same patterns. You become stuck in a cycle.
Break free from your patterns with yoga
Yoga provides a way to break free from your patterns. Yoga is not just the physical postures that most people are familiar with. It is the intentional directing of the mind and being able to sustain this focus. When you develop this kind of stable attention, you are able to see the world more clearly — which means not just seeing with the eyes but also understanding the world with your other senses, your mind, and your emotions.
How does this work? Imagine that your body is a lens through which your inner Self “sees” the world. When your attention is not stable — flitting from object to object, distracted by thoughts and emotions and sensations — it is impossible to see the world clearly, because your lens is moving all over the place. But once you can direct your attention to one place and keep it there, clarity becomes possible — you are then able to pierce the patterns that you project onto the world.
The clarity that comes from having stable attention allows you to be present with what is actually happening. As a result, you can differentiate between an impulse to act based on your patterns from a more authentic response. In effect, yoga brings you in contact with your true nature and helps you act from that nature rather than from the patterns formed by past experiences. Over time, “seeing clearly” becomes the dominant pattern in your life — you become a new person.
So now when you notice a bee gathering nectar from a flower, you see the bee that is right in front of you, not the one that your mother warned you about as a child or the one that stung you when you ignored her warning. And when your partner is talking to you, you hear his or her words, not the echoes of another relationship from many years ago.
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“Our habitual patterns are, of course, well established, seductive, and comforting. Just wishing for them to be ventilated isn’t enough. Mindfulness and awareness are key. Do we see the stories that we’re telling ourselves and question their validity? When we are distracted by a strong emotion, do we remember that it is part of our path? Can we feel the emotion and breathe it into our hearts for ourselves and everyone else? If we can remember to experiment like this even occasionally, we are training as a warrior. And when we can’t practice when distracted but know that we can’t, we are still training well. Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what’s going on.” ― Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion
