[admin note: moved here from Mint 18 Sarah thread, it is a response to this post] I like to thank you Gizmo for as clear and comprehensive an answer as I ever hope to receive. I'm far from able to say that I grasp any more the the general outline...but patterns I get! ":O} Pattens that repeat yet cycle in change are the basis of all that is. In pattern we find not only the economy of repetition but the continuity within change that not only permits, but over time makes evolution not only possible, but necessary. One easily sees how you came by your understanding of these things. You are an engineer. I come by mine from the other side of human understanding. I mention this as it seems to me the the fact that our understanding of patterns is the same. yet comes to each of us from such different times, place and approach proves and express patten and conveys patten and seeks fulfillment of and in pattern. I have derived my understanding of patterns from the contemplation, over a life time, of this Line in the texts of: (You guessed it) The I Ching. ...it was written approximately 3000 years ago. It reads: " Continuity in change is the secret of the eternity of the universe." Continuity owes everything to pattern. This is actually why a bear never gives birth to a cabbage or a deer. The Bear is in change, she is re replicating herself, Allowing change to enter in by allowing the male seed to have it's say, change can occur without breaking pattern A new bear that remains a bear to become over time more bear. But that change MUST adhere to [pattern or she aborts! She never gives birth to a cabbage, she simply aborts when the patter is flawed the cycle does not complete, it aborts and tries again to gain that most precious thing, the bases of all life in the Universe, "Continuity in change." I would be VERY interested in your response Gizmo. Can you see the patterns in my words as easily as I see them in yours? I promise not to mind if you think I'm a presumptuous nut job, you'd be wrong, but I like you to much to mind. Thank you again for what was for me was a Very illuminating post my friend.":O} OH! I wanted to say that the bear is not the only point of flaw-ability! EVERY step in each process is capable of going wrong> Pattern protects us by creating only according to form and rejecting that which is not. Patterns genius is that it repeats until it gets it right or is forced to begin anew by to great and error. What I find most remarkable are birth defects, the imperfect among us...which would be all of us, so the imperfect within us.... I'm Dyslexic...why was I not aborted!!?? I failed pattern, that should have ended me, Why is my imperfect and terribly flawed ass sitting here at all? This is what moves me in all this! Pattern does not hate imperfection, pattern uses imperfection to fuel evolution!. When things go wrong and in beings of our complexity things always go wrong!! Pattern moves in a completely unexpected way!! This gets me every time I contemplate it!! Pattern moves to save all that can be saved! And upon occasion use the Very imperfection that called for abortion to create evolutionary change. I think Engineers have an easier time expressing these things":O}
I've looked for patterns to things all my life, though I've come to actively CONSCIOUSLY understand that only in the last 5 years or so. I've always sought to understand the WHY of things; it's never been enough for me to simply know that something IS. Even when I couldn't figure it out immediately, I'd file it in the back of my mind and mull it over, waiting for new information to try to fit the puzzle together. As you note, that's what makes me a good engineer. As I've gotten older, though, I've begun to see the patterns in things not just when I'm trying to solve problems, but in EVERYTHING. And it's opened a whole new vista of wonderment for me. It's something that I've tried to share with my son, who although only 16, is beginning to get a glimmer of the patterns that shape things. Not being disrespectful of my Father, but I'm smarter than he ever was. I'm not saying that he was stupid; far from it. But he told me himself when I was in my early twenties that it had been an enormous struggle for him to even begin to understand some of the things that had me so fascinated. Which makes what he managed to teach me all the more remarkable to me, actually. I feel the same way with Tony; I'm keenly aware that he is in that very narrow range of years where I have an opportunity to have an enormous impact on not just WHAT he thinks, but HOW he thinks. I've no desire to saddle him with the baggage of my own philosophies; I want him to be able to think for himself and then see what he does. I believe that will be ever so much more entertaining. But sometimes, watching him, I feel like he has already gone beyond what I have learned. Which brings me back to our topic. Teaching him to see the patterns for himself, and then watching him start to think about how things fit together is intriguing. Not TELLING, but rather asking him questions, getting him to think about new things, and in new ways, showing him the leaf and then watching him discover the tree. And in the process, learning things from him also.
I've always figured that EVERYTHING has a pattern, or forms one over time. I also believe strongly that when I think something is actually RANDOM, it's because I just haven't figured out what the pattern is [yet]. Like Chris, I work really hard to establish independent thinking in my kids. Thailand is a vacuum of lateral thinking; I see it in young people all the time. It is a major downside to living here. Visiting people think it's quaint, until they have to live with it every day. I don't want to go into what I believe are the reasons for this, because it would be a whole topic in itself, but IMO it is primarily cultural here. As parents we have to guide our children and allow lateral/critical thinking to take hold, until it becomes natural. I once read that this is related in some way to left brain/right brain characteristics, and the fact that Asian and Western people are opposite in this regard somehow.
Ah good! my fascination is shared with friends! Does pattern create the thing or does the thing create the pattern? Do they shape each other, which holds dominion? and does dominion ever change? In what circumstance might that change occur? And no chicken and eggs cop outs! The egg is the chickens means of re-production, a thing must be to be reproduced! The chicken...or what would become the chicken came first...it just may not have e looked much like a chicken":O} I forget where I got this so very many years ago but you will see why I kept it!! ":O} "The energy carries the law and the law regulates the energy" My god, is that not beautiful in it's simplicity and depth of insight!! ":O} I consider that line as one of my treasures, one I just had to share with you guys! ":O}
I Goggled it and got this, I'm sure this is not where I got it but just might be it's point of origin...You don't expect me to read it do you! LOL STUDY GUIDE FOR MARIE-LOUISE von FRANZ'S NUMBER AND TIME ... www.jgsparks.net/guides/vF/Seminar1.pdf STUDY GUIDE FOR MARIE-LOUISE von FRANZ'S NUMBER AND TIME ... The energy carries the law and the law regulates the energy. Law does not manifest itself ...
Ah! As I read the intro I recalled that Franz was a mathematician captivated by charts found in..you guessed it... The I Ching... I should have known, I never read anything else! ":O} It's found in the intro by CG.. Jung....I haven't read that forward in literally 50 years! Jung mentions his work and no doubt used that quote, I'm sure now I got it from the Ching. Maybe I should take another look at that forward something (me) might have changed (me) since then! ":O}
Want you kids to be independent in their thinking...give them to me...Oh wait you'd probably want them to remain sane and rational when I was though... Well ya can't have everything so make up your minds and let me know. ( A completely vivid picture of John Baluche (sp ?) informing a family of dinners that he wanted to buy their children floated in my mind as I typed my offer...I hope that doesn't influence your decisions! ":O}
A corollary of 'everything has a pattern' would/could be that one man, looking for a pattern, does not see it regardless of his efforts; but another, looking at the same scene, but from a different location, sees the pattern clearly and effortlessly. Would that not be the same as not seeing the pattern as a young man, and then suddenly seeing it clearly as an old man? Or is it that some men are resistant to perception at any age? LOLZ, that is one of the most brilliant moments in the Blues Brothers. And Pee Wee Herman was the waiter. Jake: 'How much for the women? Your daughters? I want to buy your daughters. Sell them to me.' Diner: 'MAITRE d'...' But my favorite Blues Brothers restaurant moment: Jake and Elwood go to a soul food restaurant. John Lee Hooker is playing outside. Aretha Franklin is the waitress. It goes something like this: Elwood: Do you have white bread? Aretha: Yeah. Elwood: I'll have 2 slices of white toast. Aretha: Do you want butter or jam? Elwood. No, ma'am. Dry. Aretha: And you? Jake: Do you have any fried chicken? Aretha: Best in the county. Jake: Give me four fried chickens and a Coke. Aretha: Do you want wings or legs? Jake: Four. Fried. Chickens..............And a Coke. Aretha goes in the kitchen to give the order to the cook: 'Crazy honkies.'
I JUST finished listening to "John the Revealater" from the Album, gets my metaphysical guts churning every time I do! WHAT an incredible moment that song images! John receiving revelation from the very hand of God! What a timeless moment in time! Todays up chuck went like this. There is not one shred of physical proof the The man Jesus of Nazareth...ever exited. Yet his teachings are every where. May my Christen friends forgive me but I am and have always been in love with the Soul of a man who never exited...who has always existed. I like thinking of Jesus this way...as one of purest expressions of mankind deepest yearnings When I contemplate him I see my self freeing him of all the crap that's become attached to his ONE simple and singular always repeating message to us... That is that we are loved, cherished. And man Jesus expects the same! That a new adherence to pattern wipes away even blood guilt! Why does this image persist in our consciousness thought out the centuries, both before and after Jesus in the west as well as the East. Jesus seen as a simple man is the perfect image of the I Ching's "Superior man" who represents in the Ching all that good men strive for. , But most particularly the Holy man or Sage. There IS a repeating and evolving pattern here! There IS an imprint upon man's mind that constantly emerges from the "garbage and the flowers" to seek expression in each man's life. EVEN the most unclean see this image of mankind. Mankind at last able to love herself. Indeed this image is what they are trying to rip from their minds. This image comes from the deepest stratum of our beings. Evil men do not see pattern differently.!! ALL MINDS ARE THE SAME! They respond differently to it's insistence upon moral uprightness, they want "Things" Poor babies. They want and they don't want there to be consequence. Pattern always comes with consequence! Weather we align ourselves or we do not there is consequence or this world would be as the poets like to tell us, But a dream. Pattern requires consequence to have an enduring expression. This image is at the the core of the human side of our animal natures. This image has evolved mankind. It is this image and this image ALONE that separates us from the beasts and reunites us with our own natures by allowing us to enter into our own natures and know them, hold them in awareness for the first time! "To enter that unknown yet remembered gate and know it for the first time." T.S. Elliot This holding in awareness of this image is the re-uniting of our spirits and our natures. "The energy carries the law, the law regulates the energy" Here I see energy as "Spirit" and the law as nature. The Ching calls this Yin and Yang. I see every thing I look at in this light. I see this pattern in every good thing I see, I see it's denial in all that is wrong with men. To rebel against this pattern is to hate ones own deepest being. When this occurs men Like Trump...they just want to see this world burn... and so it has ever been since pattern raised us from animal innocence and required of each man that he re-gain the innocence of nature that instinctively follows its patterns. Mankind is nature becoming aware of herself and both the law that governs her and the spirit, the energy, that is so desirous of her. Jesus got it right, only love is both natural and the perfection of the spirit within nature; the spirit that created nature as well as our natural selves. So this image...how do we use it? It's mankind's reference point. It tells us what we SHOULD BE!! We should be of the spirit and do as it does and care for nature as if it were our own natures, because it IS. Love tells us how to get there! So we are required of image to understand our selves and our place in nature. Pattern is demanding this of us! Why? WHY! who or what wanted, needed, wished for how ever we say it a self aware being? Nothing in natureelse seems to need it, indeed our mis-alignment with pattern and image are killing nature... Killing her! THAT"S how important this is to the energy and the law, it, they, him or perhaps only pattern is at work here, is/are willing to sacrifice all of planet Earth to have it's way in this. To bring man to awareness of good and evil. That he might stand upright upon the grassy plain to give praise to all who went before him and that he might sing his songs before he follows all his fathers and mothers into what cannot be known. I'll go get a mop and clean up this mess!! ":O} Just remember, we are cherished, we are loved. WE got it all, now we must decide what to keep and what to throw away. If your not sure consult the pattern within yourselves...it's not perfect, but it beats listening to Trumpet! ":O}
And this matters why? Not to be flippant, but that is rather the point of Faith; to help us find the Truth when the purely Rational no longer suffices. Yes, that is indeed a challenge. Christians have managed to take and twist his teachings in ways that I'm sure would horrify him were he to see us today. Christ in the Temple indeed! To be fair though, I think similar things have happened with the teachings of Mohammed and Buddha (not that it makes things any better, only that it proves we all still have our failings). My favorite line from the 'Lost in Space' remake back in the late 90s was when Gary Oldman (Dr. Smith) was confronted by Mimi Rogers (Maureen Robinson); she says: "We trusted you. You tried to kill us all." and he says "Do not mistake my deception for a character flaw. It is philosophical choice, a profound understanding of the universe. It is a way of life." We may occasionally aid evil inadvertently, but to actively BE evil is a CHOICE. This is why I hesitate to label a person as evil, even when I vehemently disagree with them. One's actions may aid evil, but that is usually not the intention. Evil works by getting us to do things that are not in our best interests, while making us think that they are. Not that the end result is necessarily any better; MILLIONS are killed by 'good intentions' every year.
This is a Zen thing, right? That pattern shapes us, but we also shape the pattern. How could it be otherwise? I think that we exist in tension with the pattern. It's not that the pattern has any great plan, or that we do either, but the laws that allow our universe to exist, and that allow us to exist within the universe, require balance. The universe ITSELF is a pattern, full of myriad smaller patterns. We exist now, at this time, in this place, because now, at this time and in this place, we CAN exist. The pattern has developed in a way that allows us to exist, but it neither knows nor cares about us; we are simply part of the expression of the pattern, which requires a balance if it is to be maintained. The pattern developed in a way that allows us to exist, but our continued existence requires us to maintain the balance of the pattern. If we disrupt that balance, the pattern will find a new balance and it probably won't include us. This isn't some great metaphysical construct; everything in our universe that we can see and measure exists in tension. There is a balance, and if that balance is disrupted, Bad Things happen. All the things we see exist because of that balance. When we see things being destroyed (supernovae, galactic collisions, death in all its forms), it is because the balance that had been found within the pattern has been disrupted. At the same time, however, we see new things being created, as the pattern finds a new balance (neutron stars, stellar nurseries, new plants growing in the dirt). Not quite sure where I'm going with this, but there it is....
It matters for this discussion as we are looking for patterns. The Christ story predates Jesus by at lest 2000 years. Even our current birthday was taken from the sun God Ra! EVERY ASPECT of the Christ story repeats throughout time...Where does it come from, why does it contently reappear? My assertion is that it is part of man's basic pattern, the pattern that tells what SHOULD be when it is not there. When it's been culturally abandon... It remains to serve any who seek it. You don't need a bible or a chant, though no doubt both can be helpful! The Christ is our prototype...perfected man looks just like him...over and over again! We strive to attain what was in the beginning of our journey in order to meet a good end. "Be ye as little children!" The pattern prototype said that! ":O}
Err.......I thought it was based on the celebration of the Feast of Saturnalia, (honoring Saturn, the Roman God of Time and Agriculture, among other things), itself based around the celebration of the Winter Solstice? Regardless of the exact origin, we can both agree that it's not the ACTUAL birthday of Christ (which, assuming he was a real person, is more likely to have been sometime in September). However, you are making my point; in this case we have to look past the Facts to see the Truth. The FACT is that much of what we have established in a religious context in Christianity is Myth, Legend, and Superstition. But that doesn't invalidate the Truth of the teachings; the intent of the Myth, Legend, and Superstition is to try to help us illuminate the Truth. That we get lost in the maze is a consequence of the fact that we are all flawed beings. But to your point about the pattern, yes, there's nothing particularly unique in the teachings of Christ; at best Christianity is little more than repackaging of materials that were already thousands of years old. Which only proves that, as a species, we've understood our place in the universe AT LEAST since we developed language; we just forget it as individuals from time to time.
NO NO NO! LOL Again this is not something external to ourselves. This arises over and over again in our dreams until we remember the dream. The unconscious PUSHES this upon us until we receive ourselves or spiritual death. That monster that chased you though puberty every night? Say hello to Jesus. Or as the old Gospel states: "God might be trying to tell you something" My thesis is that "God" is trying to tell us something. He's trying to tell us what we are supposed to look like. he's pushing his schematics. Not as a force from without but as a birth from within. All this religious stuff? In my view serves but on purpose. To remind us of who we are becoming. We would become it without reminders as it's kinda a, looked like this when were done, or get recycled until you do. become what pattern demands of each of us. Gizmo posted: You Christians! LOL Did you think we were the only ones to "borrow" from what went before, like Ra was around a long time before the Greeks came out of their Shepard caves. That's really my point. This lies within us all, blueprint. Here's a Western Koan: What happens when a irresistible force encounters an in-movable wall ? Here's a hint . Joplin MO. Knows! Not in the mood for games? See below for what I came up with for "My " answer" by reading the next post. Your pretty sharp cats so I expect you will snap to what I'm thinking here pretty quick. I'm just surprised it took me 68 years to see this!! I always just assumed that there wasn't an answer and didn't spend any time on it. Silly me!!! LOL I''m in my 5th day of detoxing myself and have not slept more than 8 hours total in that time. These "explorations" give me peace.":O}
Picture a tornado! If neitherhot nor cold can prevail, then they circle, Imagine the Yin and yang circular symbol Showing identical half's differently colored. As they circle, each becomes the other; separated by a single curved line. It occurred to me this morning that a tornado gives us a picture of what would take place. The hot air MUST rise, the cold air must sink,Nature permits no true refusal of her laws so they circle one another and incredible power is released in a controlled way, each receives it's due . Oh! Controlled in the sense that the two powers do not destroy each other. but empower themselves.! OK My engineers time to wake me from my dream and tell me where I went wrong! ":O{
Crap! Patti has taken an interest! ":O} Patti would like to know if any of us (I have not) has read " A Pattern language" by Christopher Alexander.? Berkeley cat writing in the sixties. Environmental structures at all lever are looked at.
I've not read it, but roomed with a guy at NYU who was an architecture student. I remember he was very excited by this book, but at the time, I had no real interest. It was published in 1977, so it was new when my housemate had it. [I graduated in '78] I have, though, recently bought this: https://www.amazon.com/Patterns-Nature-Natural-World-Looks/dp/022633242X This is an extraordinary book, particularly if you like photography. The photos are stunning, and the explanations are for laymen, and not overly technical.
As so often happens with us, I feel like we are both saying the same thing, but in different ways. LOL
