Inner Work

For the week of November 28, 2005

Our Song

We each have our own characteristic set of patterns of thought and emotion that use our mind and heart to replay themselves again and again. These repetitive, mental processes sometimes retell a particular story of a trauma or triumph in our life. Often they look for triggering events to start them up. Examples you might experience include worrying about money or your job, about your health, your weight, or a habitual indulgence, about a difficult relationship or a non-existent one. Angry patterns may ruminate about past wrongs committed against you, look for new ones, or daydream about future wrongs. Grasping patterns may plot and scheme to get more of your current object of desire. Self-doubting patterns may dwell on what they hold to be your weaknesses and failures. Critical patterns jump on the shortcomings of other people.

Our major patterns are relatively few in number, but endless in application. Their siren song convinces us of their importance and seduces us into following blindly along as their unwitting host. They are so ingrained that we believe them to be who we are: “I am my patterns of thought and emotion. That’s my personality. That’s who I am.” But it is not really that way.

Some of our patterns are benign, simply serving to give us our style and flair for living. Others, however, sap our inner strength, distract us from presence, and kill our natural joy. We need to address these insidious robbers, first by becoming aware of them as they play on our thoughts and emotions. We do this by noticing our mind processes of thought and emotion, seeing the familiar, recurrent ones, and perhaps seeing what triggers them. These habitual thoughts and emotions often represent larger repeating patterns and provide a window onto them.

The seeing itself weakens the hold of our patterns. We see these frequent visitors with clarity as well-established pathways in our brain and psyche, but not as definitive of who we are. A further step toward freedom comes through gradual deconditioning: not clinging, not identifying with our patterns of thought and emotion, not reinforcing them with the emotional charge they typically elicit from us, and reclaiming our energy and initiative. We see the pattern arise and we simply watch as it goes by.

We cannot easily eradicate a pattern, nor do we need to. But if we can temper our response and limit our acquiescence to it, the song of our conditioned self grows stale. The behavior it once prompted grows rare. We begin to see that we do not need it, that it was only a limitation on who we really are.

For this week, look to see your own songs, your patterns of thought and emotion, particularly the ones that rob your freedom. Work to stop reacting to them so readily, to stop singing their lyrics and playing the role they write for you.

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