The reactive pattern we refer to as our life.

Nearly everything in our 3rd dimensional experience is a consequence of an automated reactive pattern designed to create a neuro-chemical equilibrium within the body. It is a process of the higher or involuntary mind to maintain this energetic vibration, for within this state of being is encoded all of the crucial instincts for securing our survival. We will suffer in our lives of being powerless to enact our will on this automated pattern by the degree to which we remain ignorant of its operation. We will be unarmed in our war to override the responses of the automatic mind. Or easier said - we won’t have much (if any) control over our reactions or what is ‘going on’ in our lives. Without a clear agenda and knowing why this outcome matters to us so much, we won’t be able to bend the meaning of an event or understand how it may actually be working to our favour. Might be aligning us or moving us closer to the goal by some weird act of fate. (Just wants to test our resolve beforehand.)

While this process is designed to create an equilibrium, and a feeling of safety, there is an unconsidered side effect. How very difficult it is to override this constitution of the higher level of our minds. Better said – we feel trapped in a cage of how we feel, and by the plight of the conscious mind to improve how we feel. We are driven by the desire to expand and improve how we feel. But because of this ploy of the higher mind, it never feels like we do. It is by this unconscious process that our experience is turned into something that resembles Ground Hog Day from which there is no escape. The minds overriding tendency to diminish even our greatest steps forward as meaningless and trivial. Our tendency to overlook the thing and imagine “anyone can do that - what have we really done or changed”? It never feels like we have done anything praiseworthy or have grown by any conceivable measure.

The mind is in a constant and overriding effort to turn the infinite of moving parts and possibilities around us into a familiar seeming experience. So that we feel safe? It is so much bigger than the mind we use, and its primary function is to turn a world that is in a constant state of expansion and flux into something that appears to be standing still. Turn the infinite into something that seems as normal and known as the back of our hands. A cruel twist of the human fate. Where it would appear we are unable, from the conscious mind, to ever gain the feeling of satisfaction – it might come tomorrow or at some point in the future when we have finished some goal. But for many, of not all people, what is familiar is not aligned with what we would gauge as desirable.

This job of the mind that is designed to make our lives easier and less stressful, also makes it impossible to change how we feel or escape the reactive cycle we ordinarily refer to as our life. No matter how hard we push and ‘try’- the pattern is the underlying driver of our experience.

However, when we are in the state of mindfulness – so immersed in the senses that we are oblivious to what we would consider our life situation, we have also temporarily removed ourselves from the effects of this unconscious pattern. When we are the observer of what is happening in our life without getting emotionally drawn into having reactions without thinking about it. When we see what’s ‘going on’ in our lives from above, as if we were the director of our movie rather than the emotion charged actor. We enter a realm that may seem subtle, but we are not only freer to respond in a way that would be more to our liking, we also elevate our awareness to the level where we understand how mind made the situation is in the first place.

Or when we are in the state of reflection – considering what type of person we want to move towards being, and what type of things are most important to us, we are also operating from a level of awareness that transcends the reactive pattern. We are not in the pattern - we are in a mode of mind that has temporarily suspended judgment of what is ‘going on’. And although as with mindfulness these states may well be temporary (because the mind has a strong preference towards the automatic.) they have a longer lasting effect on perception and what we experience as ‘reality’ long after our return to ‘normality’. When we are trying to create some clarity for our lives, or we are doing some form of energy work, (creating states without the need for evidence) we are always rising, to some degree, above the involuntary patterns of mind. It is not only an elevation of the normal vibrational pattern – each and every time we loosen the grip this powerful part of mind has from limiting our will to feel as we would choose to.

Consciously altering our state through visualisations, imagining how our dreams would feel if they were true, or casting our mind back to remembered great times in our life, are all means of taking the wheel of our lives back from something that would equate to a non-feeling robot. It is a crying shame that most people imagine we are the drivers of our lives – we are the ones making the decisions and doing all of the thinking. We are not. We are the passengers to an aspect of mind that operates above our level of awareness to ensure we never get carried off by the type of elevated emotional states that would see us ostracised and disconnected from our group. Because that is also the highest priority of this aspect of mind – strengthen our relationships. Ensure the dynamics of our personal bonds are not disrupted. We have an unconscious and overriding will to remain the person we think we are seen as. We must not disrupt the group dynamic because we rely on the members of our tribe for sustenance just as readily as we do our food and water.

It is by these relationships that we come to understand who we are. And the better we come to know others the better we can come to know ourselves – the more joy we can extract from any relationship depends on how well we know them. People are our life blood – we have to stick around the ones we know are good for us.

Without consideration of how unconsciously by far the majority of our lives are led, we quite literally are letting go of the steering wheel of where we are going, and will to choose how we feel and respond. We forgo our ability to enact our will on the environment. We can’t change anything in the outside world until we understand it is all made from within us. Change our energy, and we change reality itself. But how we feel ordinarily almost always comes from the involuntary aspect of mind. Without the tools of mindfulness, being the observer, and exercising our ability to create states without reason, we will forever be stuck within the prison they refer to as our circumstances.

To recap – the mind is designed to keep us trapped in a prison of circumstance. Anytime we are in the state of mindfulness, being the observer of our lives, reflecting on what we want, or creating states of mind by choice, we have risen above the vibrational level of the reactive pattern. We are more in control of our feelings which are intimately connected to what is happening in our lives. And while it may seem completely innocent to allow the involuntary aspect of our minds to take the wheel of our lives, (as it was designed to) we have reached a new climate in this era of informed consciousness, and with it a new urgency to be responsible for the energy we add to the whole. What we do doesn’t just affect us, and those closest to us – it effects the whole. We are all spokes in the wheel and have a role in elevating the consciousness of the planet. In elevating the level of joy, truth and freedom our planet experiences. All by the little things we do.

We are of course the primary beneficiaries of any improvement in how we feel, but the pebble we drop in the pond affects the whole. It affects the whole on this day and all going forward. And I say this not to burden us with a huge responsibility we have to our fellow humans, but the honour that comes when we realise we matter. No matter who we are and how infinitesimal it would seem our contribution, what we do carries profound implications.

If we have an ambition to feel better, it can never come from how we imagine we are seen by others. That flaw in our perception is the only real hurdle we need to overcome. We can only improve our vibration by increasing the level of service we provide here on our beautiful planet. What we came to add to the place will never occur to us if our desire is to first be rich and seen. We are uniquely suited to solving a problem, and in a way that only we can. We have to love the work we were called to do so much that we do not cling to the results and attention we receive for our effort.

If we are in it for the recognition, the chances are flimsy that we will ever help anyone as well as wanted to. If we want to help anyone, we just have to put our heads down and do the work we think we are supposed to. And even when that role may seem trivial, pointless, and not in any way aligned with some profound meaning, we have forgotten an important key. It is what we do over and above what we are trained to that we improve the soul of the world. It is what we give of our hearts that brings the pieces back into the whole – and at the same time makes us shine.

We are a gift to the world, and that is an important truth that it has crippled us to forget. If we don’t feel like what we are doing is our ‘sacred calling’ then one day soon when we are head down in the midst of performing what we think of as trivial we will realise. It will come over us like a tidal wave that we have helped others in ways we could never imagine.