Pattern

Any cognition you make out of unawareness, which comes back to you again and again in some form or the other, is a pattern or samskara.

A cognition is any idea, perception, understanding, opinion or statements you create inside yourself.

Introduction

If you look in, you will see that your life is nothing but a bunch of patterns. From waking up in the morning to working in office to meeting people to going to sleep, most of your actions are pre-programmed ! There is very little space for Life to happen to you spontaneously, because you start defining the boundaries of your life with your patterns.

For example, if you feel you lose your patience very quickly, that is a pattern. If you feel you have stage fear, that is also a pattern. If you feel you always fail in everything you do, that is also a pattern. Anything that stops you from expanding and making progress in the inner world or the outer world, is a pattern.

Exercise

Tonight, before you go to bed, take a few minutes to make a list of all the patterns with which you have responded to life today - where your immediate response to a situation or an event was unconscious and coming from a pattern. For example, when you wake up in the morning, you want to sleep an extra hour! Or when you are under stress, you feel angry or tired.

Repeat the process tomorrow night. When you do this for three or four days, you will start becoming aware of the patterns defining your life.

You Are Not Born With Patterns

One of the biggest problems that people face is, ‘I understand what is right and what is wrong, but I forget and do my own thing!’ This is the one complaint I hear from everybody every day! You understand what is right and what is wrong, but when it comes to actions, you act as per the old patterns. You always feel powerless in front of your patterns, because you feel that they are who you are. No! Please understand, you are NOT born with the patterns with which you are living now! When you are not born with a certain pattern, it means that it is created in you. Anything that is created can be changed. You CAN destroy the old pattern and create a new one. But constantly, for years and years, you go on complaining – ‘I know what is right and what is wrong. But I cannot do, I cannot understand, I cannot change..!’

For all the people who think like this, I have a story: One guy, during lunchtime in his of ce, opens his lunch box and says, “Oh God, today again the same potato, brinjal and tomato rice.” Anyhow. he eats it.

Next day, he again opens his lunch box and starts crying, “Same potato, brinjal and tomato rice!” All his friends feel sorry for him. Third day, he again opens his lunch box and exclaims, “Oh God, same potato, brinjal and tomato rice!”

His friends started asking him, “Your wife doesn’t like you? Is there any ght going on between you and your wife? Why is she sending you the same food everyday, knowing that you don’t like it?”

The guy says, “Wife? What wife? I am not married! I cook for myself.”

Buddhi (intelligence) means knowing clearly, “Anything I created, I can destroy and create something new.” Every time you think, “I cannot, I cannot, I cannot”, you are giving strength to your ignorance. When you say, “I can, I can, I can”, you are giving strength to your buddhi. Clearly recognizing that your patterns were created by you, and can be destroyed, is acting from buddhi.

Exercise

Every morning, look at the patterns you have identified the previous night. Make a conscious decision to not act out of that pattern today. If you have a pattern of losing patience easily, decide, ‘I will have tremendous patience with myself and others today. I can do it.’ Consciously decide that you can do it.

As you practice this for a week, you will find yourself acting more and more out of awareness, and less from your patterns.

All Your Problems Are One Problem

Every time you think, “It is okay, what is the need for transformation with so much of struggle?”, you give strength to your tamas (unwillingness to act). Establishing yourself in intelligence means, at every step you are trying to change yourself one inch, trying to transform yourself just one inch extra – making progress with your transformation inch by inch.

Please understand, whenever you go to the root of the problem, whenever the root pattern is attended to, all major problems are attended to. Only on a super cial level it looks like there are many problems; when you go to the root, it is only one problem. Then when you go deeper, you will find that there is no problem other than your belief that you have a problem!

First you will have one thousand problems - waking up on time is a problem, traveling to work is a problem, eating is a problem, sleeping is a problem... when you see super cially, everything is a problem. When you go deeper, you will see that only a few patterns like boredom, tiredness or laziness that are making you experience everything as a problem.

When you go deeper and deeper, you understand there is only one problem – your resistance to the ow of life. If you go deeper, you will realize, even that is not there. Everything is just your own imagination.

When you don’t know the root cause, or the rst time you started responding the way you are responding now, you are called ignorant. If you know when you started the responses you are having now, and the root cause of those responses, you are called enlightened. When you can live beyond all the beginnings of all your responses, you are called an incarnation! When you go to the root of your problems, all your problems are attended to.

Contemplation

Only on a superficial level does it look like there are many problems. When you go deeper, you will nd that there is no problem other than your belief that you have a problem.

You Can Change Your Patterns

Understand: the moment you associate yourself with a pattern, it teaches you to suspect everything other than itself! Pattern becomes independently intelligent the moment your presence graces the pattern.

When the pattern is not touched by you, when you don’t associate with it, suddenly you see that the pattern doesn’t have life. Please catch the truth. When it doesn’t have your presence to infuse life into it, the pattern cannot exist. The moment you associate yourself with it, the pattern gets life. Now it becomes independently intelligent. It starts playing, making you suspect everything other than itself. That is why, when you nd somebody else with a problem, it is very easy to lift them out of that problem. But when you are facing the same problem, you will be struggling. You are not even able to remain balanced. Because when you are facing the problem, you will not be able to see outside of the problem, outside of your pattern. The doors of your intelligence shut down when you are operating from a pattern. Listen: anything which is extension of your personality is your own muscle. Anything which is forced out from you suddenly is cancer! Beware of patterns. Even your suffering is a pattern, even your depression is a pattern. The moment you decide to support a pattern, you have handed over the control of your life to the pattern. The first two days, you will be lying down in your couch saying that you are in depression. By the third day, you will find that the depression has overwhelmed you. Now you are not possessing the depression; it has possessed you.

Breaking free from your patterns is living enlightenment.

A pattern becomes independently intelligent only when you associate yourself with it. When you don’t associate with it, suddenly you see that the pattern doesn’t have life. The pattern cannot exist anymore.

Break Free From Patterns

No excuses for unawareness

Patterns can be dropped only by three methods:

• Through intelligence and awareness
• Through simple straight inspired will
• Through initiation

Only with these three ‘I’s can you drop your patterns.

The technique of completion uses the first method of these three.

Listen: a pattern can never ever be completed by going into it, never by struggling with it. Don’t work WITH the pattern, work ON the pattern. When you work with the pattern, you get caught with the pattern. Working with the pattern means respecting the pattern! Working ON the pattern is the way to come out of the pattern.

The most cunning escape route that the human mind uses is – ‘I did not do it knowingly.’ This is the continuous unconscious pattern with which human beings suffer. Who said you did it knowingly? But you did it on purpose! Understand, you may be doing unknowingly, but still with a purpose.

Being unaware of your purpose is no excuse for irresponsibility. Not knowing only means that somewhere, secretly, you are still comfortable with your patterns.

You are not yet feeling the suffocation of your patterns.

How often do you say, ‘I did it unknowingly’? The next time this happens, can you nd out what patterns are at work here?

Try a new response!

Trying a new response to a pattern weakens the hold of the pattern on you.

Even for your physical patterns or problems, start trying out new ways of responding. Start responding to them newly. When you are feeling really tired, when you are sick, when your body is hurting, just jump out of the bed, go for a run. See, actually, when you do that kind of thing, all your muscles and your bio-memory will simply wake up, just out of the survival need!

Same way, when you are cornered, put into depression, criticized, shattered, just go into meditation and unclutch from it, detach yourself from it. Because that is the response you have never tried before! Start a new way of responding.

See, the new way of responding is always very juicy. For example, when you are depressed, you usually pull your blanket up to your nose and sleep! Instead, just decide, I will jump out of the bed with energy and power. If you can do this once, even if your depression comes up again, you will not allow the old way of response anymore.

Breaking just one pattern makes it easier to break all your patterns! If you break your depression pattern, when anger, lust, greed, insecurity come up, you will respond to them also in a new way.

• 1) Write down three patterns which you regularly see in yourself. Recall your characteristic response to each pattern. See how your characteristic response causes damage to you and the people around you.
• 2) Now, consciously decide upon a new conscious way of responding to each of the patterns. At least the next eleven times you encounter the same pattern, consciously choose the new response.
• 3) You will see, by the time you make the new response for the eleventh time, your pattern will already be gone!

Every new response is a new birth

Let me first define the concept of rebirth.

Listen! You have had many bodies and many minds. You have had many bodies through many minds, and many minds through many bodies! Just to pass through one pattern, you would have taken twenty bodies. Just to pass through one body, you would have taken many minds. Sometimes, with one body you go through twenty minds, sometime without even changing a single mind, you would have gone through twenty bodies. Understand, I am not talking only about many bodies. So many bodies have passed. You need to understand that in so many bodies you lived with one mind, and with so many minds you lived in so many bodies. Sometimes, with many minds, you are still not liberated. Sometimes, with one mind, you are liberated from so many patterns. The moment you understand this, you have the power to transcend this bondage, this vicious circle. Now you have the power to be liberated from this.

Whenever a new way of response starts in you, one new janma (birth) starts in you. For example, suppose in every situation of your life, you always made the response of fear, withdrawing, non-confrontation or non-involvement. Suddenly you decide, from today I am taking the response of facing, acceptance. I tell you, from today your next janma starts!

Every time you start responding to any pattern in new way, your new birth starts. For example, there was an anger pattern in you which is 20% of you. If you respond to it in a new way, 20% of you takes a new birth. There is a lust pattern in you which is 80% of you. If you respond to it in a new way, 80% of you takes a new birth.

You respond to only ten or fteen patterns per day. If you have started making a completely new response to those patterns, your old mind is dead, and a new mind is created. That is why we say, every day with the Master is a new life. Every new response I teach you is a new life for you.

Listen: do you want to be the friend of the jailor who can liberate you, or do you want to be the friend of your fellow prisoner? You can be the friend of your co-prisoner, but can he liberate you? Instead, work with the jailor. He can liberate you when the time comes. But people are always more comfortable with the fellow prisoner! To be friendly with the jailor, you have to be intelligent and raise yourself to his level. Or you can be the friend of your fellow prisoner and be in the prison forever.

Constantly, you are either changing the body or changing the mind. In one body you can take new-new minds, or in one mind you can take new- new bodies. Which do you want? Decide now.

If you decide to put an end to the old ways of responding that are binding you now, naturally you will be liberated from taking new bodies.; you will be liberated from the cycle of rebirth.

For the next 48 hours, try responding to every situation you encounter in a new way. In some situations, it will be easy. In others, it will seem impossible. The responses that you are struggling to change point to where your patterns are hiding.

Never believe your beliefs

Never ever believe your beliefs. You respect your beliefs too much! Listen: all your beliefs are just a result of your patterns. All your beliefs are based on only one or two incidents of your life. For the remaining part of your life, you simply hang on to your beliefs and refuse to see anything that falls outside of your beliefs. After some time, you even stop acknowledging anything that doesn’t align with your beliefs!

Infuse awareness into all your beliefs. Become aware of all the ideas you carry about you. Become aware of your typical responses. Question all your ideas, all your responses. Don’t even bother about whether that belief has served you well in the past or not. Continuously break free of all your beliefs, all your patterns. One month is more than enough to see a change in yourself.

Every time you question a strong belief that you hold, you will start creating a new idea about you. Just by cancelling all the wrong de nitions you have created about you, you can go on creating a new you.

Are your patterns taking your decisions?

Look into how you make decisions in your life. Ask yourself - is it out of my mental pattern or will power or discrimination? Ask yourself - am I doing this out of an honest, truthful, right space? Am I taking decisions out of consciousness, out of spiritual strength? Or am I at least acting out of discrimination?

The poorest way of taking decisions is from your mental patterns.

Discrimination is, seeing the larger truths of life and making decisions. It means you will be completely honest and integrated to the highest truths of life in that situation. For example, someone has stolen something. If he is trying to hide even after being caught, he is strengthening that pattern. But if he says, let me be honest. I will be punished once, but at least I will be out of this pattern for lifetimes! - this is discrimination.

So move from one step to the next. If you are taking decisions out of mental patterns, move to intention. If you are taking decisions out of intention, move to discrimination. If you are in at least in the level of discrimination, then I can move you to Consciousness! How often do you act out of your patterns? How often out of discrimination? Watch yourself continuously, and you will see how simple awareness can move you towards conscious decisions.

Go to the Root of Your Patterns

Go to the root

Go to the root of every response. Find out when you started creating that particular response in you.

There may be ten qualities in you, positive and negative qualities, like courage, depression, insecurity, con dence – so many qualities. When did you start developing those qualities? Means, when did you start responding in this way to these problems? Go to the root. Find out when that pattern took birth in you. That was the time this version of you took birth!

Go to the root of every pattern you have and see when you started responding in that way. Now decide, from now on, you will not assume any pattern. You will assume only the ow which liberates you. Make a conscious decision to respond only from consciousness, from pure spiritual freedom.

See, when you function in a liberating way, you will radiate all auspicious qualities, but you will not even know it! You will not think you have those qualities, but others will think that you have those qualities! But you will radiate all of them!

Start with the easier patterns

When you start the war with your patterns, you unconsciously plan to play a losing game! One ne day you say, I will break my drinking habit of 25 years.

You can break a drinking habit even if it is 25 years old, but only after having enough tools and weapons to ght with your mental pattern, to complete with your mental pattern.

When you begin your relationship with you, don’t start ghting with the bigger patterns. First start completing the patterns that you nd relatively easy to drop, the patterns that are yet to be roote; you will have courage, you will have con dence. The relationship with you will start getting built. You will have the space to listen to you.

Once you develop listening, you can work on your stronger patterns.

Exercise

• 1) Make a list of all the patterns you are struggling with, and classify them as ‘strong’, ‘medium’ and ‘weak’, based on the hold they have over you.
• 2) Now, start working rst through the weak patterns. Resolve to stop responding through these patterns. After a few weeks, you will see that you would have broken many weak patterns and are ready for the next level.
• 3) Now move to the ‘medium’ patterns and repeat the process; lastly with the strong patterns.

In this way, you will be successfully breaking your patterns, and you will also the courage and con dence in yourself to break stronger and stronger patterns.

Examples

Why drinking alcohol becomes pattern, but drinking water is not becoming pattern? You drink both every day. In fact, you drink more water! Why drinking alcohol becomes pattern, but drinking water never becomes pattern? Because, drinking water gives you completion and you are not stuck. After drinking water, you are out of thirst, more energetic, you are not stuck in thirst, or you are not stuck in anything else; you move with your life. But unfortunately, all alcoholics are either stuck with elated mood, or belated mood, or depressed mood. It is the mood associated with alcohol, which makes you stuck, not alcohol itself. Please understand, when you drink alcohol, if you feel elated or belated, you wanted that mood again and again. Sometimes, even the self-sympathy, the victim mood, depression, you start enjoying even that! Else, you will not be having addictive pattern towards alcohol.

Process through which the needle of your consciousness moves again and again, stuck without progressing or feeling complete is “pattern”.

References

http://nithyananda.org/video/own-and-let-others-own#gsc.tab=0 http://www.nithyananda.org/Nithyananda-eNcyclopedia/My%20Default%20Page%2013.1.html http://www.nithyananda.org/sites/default/files/book/the-essence-of-living-enlightenment.pdf