Guidance Patterns

I’m looking at the way humans discern and create patterns. We create so many patterns. We generally spend considerable energy looking for human thought patterns that provide guidance for our lives rather than looking for patterns in nature which we can better trust. We too often search for patterns in human thought and try to align ourselves to them.

Patterns of human thought require careful consideration, but they should not be quickly considered an optimum source of patterns for personal guidance. The power of our imaginations is huge. We have the capacity to think of things and imagine things that are beyond our ability to truth-test. We tend to believe things too readily, things that are not true.

We certainly have the power to create patterns. Those patterns that we create can often run against observable natural patterns and against testable truth.

Share Not Share

There’s fine twisting curls.
If it were not climbing me it would have no height at all.

There was more that I could not say.
I loved you but you could not understand me.
You loved me but you could not understand.

This seems to happen often.
All over the world.
It’s hard to try on an idea to see how well it fits,
If you cannot listen and hear the whole idea.

You may die of thirst in the presence of a big glass of water.
You may die of hunger unable to see your place at the table.

Stone upon stone your glacier retreats,
But you are no more lost than you want to be.
We each need to want to not be lost,
And we each need not to define lost by what people around us think of us.

No Real You

I’d like to encourage you
to stop trying to be the real you.
What would you even suppose that might be?

Someday, notice how you change.
Notice the you that claims to be you when you wake up in the morning,
then notice the you that starts working or doing whatever you intend to do every day,
notice the you that stops for lunch and the you that needed to,
notice the you that watches the clock in order to go back home,
notice the you that greets whatever shares your home that makes it home for you.
Notice the you that eats dinner.
Notice the you that sometimes goes out in the evening to meet with other folks and
Notice how that you differs depending upon which folks you’re meeting.
Notice the you that protects itself from the things you don’t understand.
Notice the you that sheds its height as bedtime approaches.
Notice the you that wakes to pee before you’re done sleeping.

You can detect a different you at these and so many other times each day.
So which one is the real you?

None of them.

I recommend that you give up the idea of even discovering the real you.
It doesn’t exist.
But you can do this…
Write the old you off.
The more you write off all these old yous what’s left is rather precious.
It’s not that you will discover the real you, you will discover that there is no real you.
You’ll discover that our capacity for me-ness is huge and dynamic.
Our identity can continue to grow and grow and grow daily even hourly with the things that we see and discover each day.

I ate some snow today.
No big deal.
But I bet you did not.

The little things that each of us does
can mean so much to us,
and we may not realize how unique they are to us.

Fractal Trees

Where I live there’s daylight on the south side
and there’s moss on the north,
And vines wind up and around
and then release near the bottom.
Some of the vines are evergreens
climbing up the deciduous.

Who does not feel this weight and warmth?

The remarkable yet hollow Tulip Tree has fallen.
You can see it is already decayed far more
than the American Chestnut that fell many years earlier.

The wind and the rocky soil make the trees fall.
All of the fallen trees become more soil
for the next generations.
While we see this readily,
we generally fail to recognize
the fractals of our minds that also fall.
They fall around us haphazardly
and become the soil for new generations.

We generally fail to recognize the fractals of our minds.
Can’t we all see this?
When we don’t it is difficult to converse.

What is more disparate than trying to live linearly in a fractal world?
I had to unlearn and relearn so much just to see this.
Deep, deep joy is here for those who learn to participate fractally.

Imaginal Domains

I generally think you are referring to our “experience of ourselves and other things in the classical world”, right?

If so, I think you may be regarding some statements as solipsistic assertions that reality arises wholly from our imagination. But that’s not what I think it is. Our senses only assess a tiny fraction of the vibratory spectrum we might call ‘objective reality’. If we want to understand what we sense or discover more than we can directly sense, we employ the pattern-recognizing and pattern-making power of imagination. We settle into patterned ‘grooves’ of personal and social functionality and creativity. These become our realities, but I think they would better be called imaginal domains, or memetic vortexes.

I don’t concur with the suggestion that imagination is the antithesis of reality.
To me they are an integral fabric.

So, for me,
Truth is grokking the well-woven;
Responsibility is the ability to respond within our imaginal domain;
Validity or authenticity is recognizing other domains as co-real.

Stresses

I remember considering stresses –

Seeing the troubles of
too little
and too much.

We too often fail to regard
how stresses form us.

Too much stress in our youth
    leads many to avoid any.
To little attracts the wrong kinds later.

It is good to attract formative and positive stresses.
They become a healthy delight.
They make it easy to avoid useless, negative stresses.

Consider your stresses,
both self-generated
and from life situations.
They are your gift,
able to transform and develop you
into a positive and uniquely formed person.

Laughing Woods

The woods are full of laughter.
I’m where the limbs are fallen.
Many are around me
fallen gracefully
as is often our privilege.

Some are flat on the ground.
Some are leaning on the living.
Some are standing tall, dead, bark-less.
The variety is beautiful!

Some still alive have fallen on dead ones
which had fallen on the living
which hold up all of them, yet.

The laughter resounds!
The peaceful decay at all angles,
breathtaking !

Patterns and the Seeming Chaos

Shapes and images advancing, developing,
sometimes dissolving before ever reaching clarity.
Orphaned lines floating in the mindscape and aching for,
yet resisting connection.
It’s a wonder that anything ever manifests at all,
even more so that perceivers should arise.

Patterns and the seeming chaos are generally so subtle or so huge
that they are missed altogether.
If it weren’t for advancing perceivers
surely all the bits and pieces would lose coherence and float apart.
But, bless them full, they are, and they pursue patterns
relentlessly defining more world and
encouraging more perceivers constantly.

Perhaps patient observation is the central characteristic.
Some say it is love.
Sadly,
a few accuse them of mind-jamming or
perception manipulation
for personal profit.

Art

Yes, to genius capture
the instant precious
open flowing contours of
the image righteous
in mirrored words protected
from the lefteous flood
descending – the sparkle moment
that changes things
where only blind ones
glimpse the subtle path
where birds have flown above.

Scraps of the Indivisible

This unity
and its seamlessness,

The impunity
of our squeamishness,

Just listen to us
Scream like fish.