REPEATING PATTERNS

© 2011 Howard McQueen

REPEATING PATTERNS

© 2011 Howard McQueen

My behavior is disrespectful to myself when I:

- contribute to and sustain a relationship where mutual respect

  is out-of-balance, and is not recognized consciously by all parties, as the

  most important thing to strive for.

- believe that I can nuture a loving relationship with anything less than

  honesty.

- attempt to control someone else's behavior believing they or their behavior will make    

  me whole.

- believe I can actually grow by sedating and manipulating myself

Repeating Patterns

Until we recognize them,

we will remain under-the-spell

of patterns that we perpetuate.

Perceive these patterns.

Invite into your awareness as expanding through your perception,

Put forth an willingness to not become micro-focused with any specific character (such as a key perpetrator, or yourself or another as a primary victim)

or any recurring symptom (such as an ever-declining amount of money, I’m being evicted again, I’ve crashed and burned again)

Open your awareness to gain a bit of distance from the epicenter of your anxiety.

Allow yourself to consider the possibility for a shift in your relationship with your circumstances.

Imagine how this would contribute to a lightening-up of your burden, a lightness returning to your being.

Believe it or not, you are the ONLY Experiencer, the ONLY Witness to your own personal and unique experiences with the external world.

It is YOU, what you perceive, the judgments you make, the choices you make, that make you the Gatekeeper to everything you experience with the outside world,

The ever-changing, constantly in flux,

sometimes beautiful, sometimes calm,

sometimes frightening,

never stable-for-long external world.

Everything you experience in this outside world

lands inside your inner world.

You are the Steward of this inner world.

It is in this inner world that you, and me, and everyone else is invited to

ultimately face up to - the challenge to forge our intentions and responses to the external world.

We’ve tried withdrawing

We’ve tried hiding.

We’ve tried becoming angry and mad.

We’ve enjoyed brief islands of peace, calm and the deep affection of others.

Our pattern we are each familiar with is that

We are disturbed that our experience is always interrupted,

  those we love fall into confusion

  and are distracted and fade away from us

  or yanked away

  some (and way too many these days)

  never returning

  :-(

This is the external world experience we all, in unique and common ways, share.

We all live among the great suffering in the external world.

We need not suffocate in this suffering or embrace the patterns leading to victimhood and our disempowerment.

This inner world is our deepest dreaming.

You and I, we are the Keepers of our Dream.

It is this inner dream that you have complete stewardship of.

Put your energy, your nourishing, your love on the steward of your inner dream,

and allow the external world to be however it is going to be.