Essay for
June 2005

Patterns of Living

Patterns of living begin their formation when you draw your first breath upon this planet. From that moment onward your entire life is spent forming and reforming patterns of living that are normally all security based.

Your original patterns of living revolve around your personal survival needs, creating a security blanket of safety. As your experience increases those early patterns are transformed into new updated patterns. However, the outlines of the original patterns remain. They are just filled with new information, making it appear as if there are new, but the reality is that it is just the same old pattern existing within a new façade. The façade is just that, nothing more, and is continually updated, repainted and sometimes totally renovated as new information is added or old information deleted. But it is still the same façade with a new appearance resting upon the foundation of the original pattern of living.

As you grow older you can witness the effects of these patterns shaping and reshaping how you act or respond to various situations in daily life. All those patterns of living are safety and security molded to protect your sense of being or wellbeing. The façade of those patterns of living is your armor but it can also be used as a sword. So on your life goes winning a battle here, and losing one there, but the war rests upon the original survival patterns you created. Those original patterns are subliminal in operation as they are hidden by the ever-changing façade of new updated information.

By stripping a pattern of living to its core, to its initial conception, you will discover a safety or security requirement. It is right at that discovery point where you will uncover all those original, and now subliminal, patterns of living that rest upon either trust or fear. Do not take my saying that as fact, instead trace your patterns back to their core and you will discover it for yourself. That discovery will always reveal a trust or fear base for all of your patterns of living. Any new information you add to that original trust or fear base, creating a pattern of living façade, resides within or upon one or other duality.

If you do not have the time, or inclination, to lay bare your patterns of living to discover their birthplace, then simply use trust or fear like a pair of glasses to observe those patterns, and you will witness what the façade of a pattern exists within. With ease you will observe either trust or fear existing at the base of all those patterns, subliminally guiding how you construct and reconstruct the façade for your protection and security. That one simple act will inform you what is guiding your life, trust or fear. With that witnessing you can uncover the true motivation for all your thoughts and actions, as they will rest upon trust or fear.

What do you do with that knowing? Knowing and doing something about that knowing exist in two different worlds. Knowing is normally intellectual. Doing moves into the realm of change and change can be a monster of megalithic proportions. Changing patterns of living impinges upon your perceived safety and security and any alteration that does not enhance that security is not easy to implement. That implementation rests upon the examination of your motivation but that motivation is easily camouflaged by security requirements, and is effortlessly fudged over by that need.

Laying bare your motivation for every thought and action rests upon recognition of trust or fear laying at the foundation of that motivation. The choice then rests upon the question; how do you choose to live your life, in fear or trust? Moreover, that choice cannot be trust here and fear there, but one or the other all the time, or it becomes a hypocritical choice as you only use the choice when it suits your needs. If you choose fear, you will with ease witness the results of that choice, as somehow and somewhere that choice will be destructive to yourself and others. If you choose trust, your entire world can be turned upside down and you may feel yourself to be falling out the bottom of that choice, no wiser than when you made it. It is here where you enter another very interesting dimension of trust, as you must initiate a trust to trust your own trust. Herein lies all the difficulty as the initiation of trusting your own trust takes courage, determination, perseverance and tenacity. What that persistence creates is a new subliminal pattern of trust that slowly obliterates all old patterns of living until one day you no longer trust your own trust, you become that trust. This may appear as a strange way to say it but when asked to explain your trust you no longer say I trust this or that, but simply I am trust, and it stops right there as there is nothing to add.

Putting that into one-paragraph sounds like it is easy but your one choice to live in trust and remove all forms of fear creates chaos and havoc in your life. It is like a clean sweep ridding yourself of all the old debris that cluttered your life. In the empty house that is left you will discover a personal freedom that will astound you. Trusting your own trust is the broom that sweeps it clean. When clean there is nothing 'standing in your way' of perceiving the essence of your trust, which also disappears with that seeing. You are left totally open and receptive as pure trust contained within itself with nothing added. There is nothing in your house to collect dust and nothing for anything to stick to. Everything comes and goes leaving no footprints allowing one to recognize that it was there, as there is no dust to mark its coming or going. It is absolute freedom and liberation from all forms of fear. With that liberation how you view the world takes an about turn as you no longer witness everything through the filter of altering security patterns, but from within the integrity of a pure trust motivation that remains unrestricted and uncontainable. It is truly a different life encased within the same body.

In daily life you no longer have to struggle with old security patterns as a new form of security has replaced all the old dependant ones. From that new ineffable security, integrity of motivation arises of its own accord. There is no more effort as your motivation has become effortless. From within that new position your sense of freedom has no boundaries, no walls and no containable structure. It is totally unrestricted and free, which is enlightenment and joy. However, within that non-structure, there exists an unbound and unrestricted structure resting upon a feeling of correctness or a sense of what is right and what is erroneous. Your new unrestricted integrity now accesses that new base as what you are, which is pure compassion expressed with equanimity, witnessed as unconditional love.

The entire process, although stated in a page, can take a lifetime of struggle, or it can be experienced in a millisecond. The struggle is the effort. When the struggle is over it transforms into effortlessness. The journey begins with making a decision to trust your own trust and it ends as you being that trust as 'I am trust', which is also unrestricted faith. To begin is simply making a choice to use trust rather than fear. The choice focuses your attention upon your motivation. This is where the chaos and havoc have their inception, as you will witness all your fear-based security patterns coming under threat. To continue with pure trust is where perseverance, determination and tenacity enter, no matter what the cost. And the cost can be high, which is where trusting your own trust enters as reinforcement. It is a tough and trying journey and anyone suggesting that it is not is living in an intellectually conceived appreciation and not as an experiential fact. No matter what the cost, and no matter how long it may take, the results are worth the struggle.

It all begins with trust negating fear, and then slowly allowing that trust to reform all your patterns of living, creating a freedom that will endlessly provide you with sustaining joy and peace; a peace you may now be looking for outside yourself, but will never find it in that environment. It is a choice and the choice is always yours as no one anywhere can make that choice for you. Trusting your choice is motivation. The pathways that motivation may take you will always be instructive and revealing. Inch by inch your destination is slowly drawing you to itself. Inch by inch is day-by-day, moment by moment. It is within each moment of every day where you witness your motivation come into fruition. It leads you without any effort on your part. You simply have to recognize the leading and follow the direction it is pointing.

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