Our Pathway Home, Emotional Healing: People, Pain and Patterns

What Is a Pattern?

	Patterns are repetitive behaviors or modes of response, created by frozen or denied pain. They are mostly outside our conscious awareness, existing in our blind spot, although often fairly easy for others to identify in us.
	Patterns are both a way of behaving in the world, and a way of seeing the world.
	A pattern helps create our Belief System, and is also then influenced by our beliefs. We may have patterns that have created a set of beliefs concerning how to survive in the world, what we deserve in life, how to get our needs met (or beliefs that we will never get our needs met), etc. etc. And we may also have beliefs that hold the patterns in place and keep us from being able to heal the pain and see the world differently. We call this interlocking system of beliefs and patterns the B.S., because that's mostly what it is. The beliefs held here in this maze of the mind are mostly untrue and can be healed and changed.
	A pattern is also a cage, which imprisons us and locks us into ways of interacting that do not serve us. The daughter of an alcoholic, who repeatedly finds herself with alcoholic men ... The sexually abused man who sexually abuses his daughters ... The woman who can't seem to keep a job ... The man who repeatedly chooses women who pound him with their rage ... These are examples of patterns, repeated ways of behaving and interacting with the world. Repeating realities. We continue to act in the same ways and yet we expect different results. That's because we are not really expecting different results. What we consciously think we want and expect ... is not what is running our lives. In other words, we are not really living from our consciousness. We are operating mostly from the basement of the Unconscious. And the backlog of pain stored in the unconscious is both creating a reality that will outpicture whatever inner expectations we have there (failure, abuse, rage...) and causing us to respond (and PREspond) to that reality with old, programmed behaviors. It's time for a new path. It's time for a change.

What a Pattern is NOT: The Person - Innocent, Creative, Loving

It's important to know that there are three different things going on in this recovery process.

1) The person - the real person inside, who is essentially good and blameless.

2) The pain the person experienced. And in most cases, many repeats of that pain, so now pain is piled high, layer upon layer upon layer.

3) The behavior pattern created by those layers of unmoved pain.

These three things are sometimes hard to separate, because they are tightly woven together and often look and behave the same. The important thing to know is that the pattern is not the person.

We can start with the assumption that people are basically good, and that most of the acting out, most of the causing of pain, most of the hurting of others is caused by pain and patterns. And once the pain is cried, the patterns will cease, and the true person will begin to shine through. The true person has the capability of being creative and loving, in ways that we have not yet truly known here on earth. We have never been whole and healed and free of pain and patterns.

Fragmentation
In order for this model to work, we need to understand the problem of fragmentation. Much has been written recently about fragmentation of self. Soul fragmentation is now a fairly well-accepted concept.

What we need to know about patterns and fragmentation is that it's possible for you to be interacting with a person who is so badly damaged and fragmented that they are mostly, if not entirely, pain and pattern.

These fragmented-people can appear to be wholly heartless or cruel. We've all met people like this. People who seem to have no shred of consciousness, who seem to be completely hateful or totally mired in victim-ness. But in the context of soul fragmentation, it's possible that many, if not most, may simply be fragmented essence - so fragmented that there is very little heart or consciousness in them with which to balance out the pain.

If they could cry their pain in a safe environment, they would cease to be heartless, etc. It seems very possible, however, that there are people who are so fragmented that they are unable to cry the pain and heal the patterns they are acting out. There is simply not enough consciousness in them to be able to find healing. It will be up to more parental aspects - other members of their soul family, if you will - to begin the healing process. But that's another topic. We'll assume that if you're reading this, you're one of the more parental aspects, and you have the ability, consciousness, and heart to do this healing work.

Love the Person
It is almost impossible to love a pattern. Patterns "act out" the reality they hold, often in dramatic and self-fulfilling ways that can infuriate and frustrate. If you're trying to reach a person who is acting out a pattern, they often won't hear you, or won't hear you correctly. Anything you say or do will be re-interpreted to fit within the drama they are acting out.

The Victim / Little Match Girl, as a pattern, unmoving and frozen, IS a pain in the ass... stuck in being a victim. She'll suck you dry and abuse you all in the name of her "poor me". But telling someone who is stuck in the Little Match Girl starvation pattern to just "stop being a victim" will either cause her to run away from you, or send her into rage that you "just don't understand how it is".

But when the person is crying and focused on moving their stuff, we can see through the pattern to the true pain beneath it. And seeing that vulnerable, hurting person, elicits a very different response. We can feel very differently listening to someone actually crying and healing than if we just see them standing around complaining about their lot in life and saying 'poor me', or ranting and raving and calling us names.

The important thing to remember is that
at the heart of all essence is an innocent being,
who carries the seed of great lovingness and creativity.
What keeps us from being and expressing lovingness and creativity
is layers and layers of unhealed pain.

Separate the pattern from the person.

Love / Forgive Yourself
It is especially important to make this separation when trying to heal our own patterns. So many people see themselves acting out of a pattern, and then get sunk in self-hate, and once THAT spiral starts, once the self-hate pattern takes over, it's hard to pull up out of it.

Remember, you are not your patterns. And no matter how much acting out you have done while IN a pattern, the damage can be repaired. No matter how many people you may have hurt (or even killed), you can cry the pain that made you act out in that way, you can break the behavior pattern, and you can break the hold unloving light may have on you. Patterns can do an awful lot of damage, and we need to heal and stop the perpetuation of pain and denial. But no matter what the patterns are, the pain can be cried, and we can be healed. The ones who have been hurt BY the patterns can cry their pain. Forgiveness can be found all around, not by force, not by guilt, not faked or phony forgiveness, but true healed forgiveness and understanding of how frozen pain has created all of this mess. It CAN be healed. All of it.

With that assurance, you can go forward knowing that no part of you is so lost or evil or bad that it is unredeemable. Open your arms to all your essence, even parts that feel heartless and hateful. They need your loving acceptance - not to allow them to continue to act out their patterns, but to allow them to cry their pain, and find healing and loving light. At long last.

There will be times in this process when you'll feel hopeless and you'll want to give up. Keep this in your mind if you can at those times... your reality springs from your emotional body. From your soul. From your unconscious. From your Soul. There is great power of creation built in to each and every one of us. We are a great untapped, misunderstood source of creative power. Imagine what we could do if we were fully healed!

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