Patterns of Renewal: Dissolving into the One

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“Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” — Catherine of Siena

“The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind.” — Caroline Myss

“Nothing is far from God.” — Teresa of Ávila

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There is something about patterns that quietly shape our lives. They show up in how we think, how we react, and how we move through the same situations again and again. Over time, they begin to feel like who we are. But they are not who we are. They are what we have repeated, what we have identified with, what we have unknowingly strengthened. And if we want to move closer to God, we cannot stay unconscious within them. We have to begin to see them, and then slowly, slowly, to stop holding onto them. That is where something deeper begins, not just changing patterns, but dissolving beyond them.

Kathy said, “Sometimes we get so caught up in the circumstances of our life, we wind up habitually directing our energy into patterns which cause us to develop a state of disease… it really means the opposite of ease” (Satsang, January 4, 2009). These patterns pull us into a sense of separation, into the idea that everything is happening to us, that we are defined by what we think and feel. But the path toward God is not about reinforcing that identity. It is about loosening it and seeing that these patterns are not the truth of who we are.

This past week has felt like a physical reflection of that process for me. My hardwood floors are being refinished, and our two big dogs and I have been living in the basement with very little ability to leave. There was constant grinding and sanding, the sound of the old wood being stripped away again and again. Then came the stain, and the smell was so strong it made me physically ill for a couple of days. There was no escaping it, only moving through it because I have Covid-baby dogs who are not socialized and could not move out to a hotel. After the sanding, grinding, and staining came three coats of finish, each one another layer that had to settle before the next step.

Now the floors are finished. We can walk on them in socks, but not fully yet, and my pups still cannot go on them. So we are still in it, but there is light at the end of the tunnel now. The hardest part is behind us and me and my pups have now moved back to my master suite. What remains is just a little more time and patience before everything opens back up again.

All of this is representative of the path Home to God, to Oneness. You are still in it, but something has already shifted. What needed to be stripped away has already been stripped. What remains is not the same as what was there before, even if you are not fully living in it yet.

Kathy pointed to this larger truth when she said, “There are patterns reflecting throughout this whole seemingly complex oneness. We exist in one pattern depending upon and interweaving with all the others” (Satsang, May 11, 2014). We are not separate. The patterns create that illusion, but underneath them, there is only One movement, One life, One presence. And to move closer to God is not to become something new, but to stop identifying with what we are not.

Today is Good Friday. It is Spring. And we are moving toward Easter, the day representative of Christ’s resurrection. A stripping away. A surrender. A quiet letting go of what no longer serves. And then, not a return to what was, but a rising into something new.

Kathy captured that movement so beautifully: “If cycles come and go, if the future only mirrors the past, then what’s the use of trying when the wave is high? I think the Spring reflects the answer because when it returns it’s never the same. Each wave is new and drinks from all the others before it builds and grows and intensifies so that each crest is a new crest” (Satsang, May 11, 2014). Even when it feels like we are repeating patterns, we are not standing still. Something is always shifting. Something is always being refined.

Kathy taught that this path is one of love and surrender, of returning again and again to the present moment and letting go of the mind’s hold on us. That is where patterns begin to loosen, not by force, but by lack of attachment. And one of the reasons that we are told to focus on a mantra and at the third eye during meditation, bringing our attention back and back again.

I remember reading that the thoughts we repeat actually create pathways in the brain, almost like grooves that get deeper the more we travel them, something rooted in what Donald Hebb (1949) described as “neurons that fire together wire together,” and later explained more fully in modern work on neuroplasticity (Doidge, 2007). That made so much sense to me because it explains why patterns feel so automatic. Meditation is one way we begin to shift that. Each time we bring our attention back, each time we return instead of following the same thought pattern, we are gently creating a new path. Not forcing anything, just redirecting. Over time, the old grooves lose their hold, and something new begins to take shape.

Kathy brings this into focus in such a powerful way: “We are not separated. We are as much a part of its pattern as it is with us… though we don’t always perceive it directly and no matter what the pain, no matter the desert of the mind which kidnaps us, we are always moving in rhythm to the harmony of the whole” (Satsang, May 11, 2014). Even when we feel lost in our patterns, we are still part of the whole. The movement toward God is already happening.

And then she gives us something to hold onto: “Watch your own patterns come and go within the greater design. Pull away from your separate universe… watch the peaks and pits flow through when they’re most jagged to your peace. You have simply crossed another desert or scaled another peak. Pour into the crest of the waves to gain the strength to leap over the next pit. Wake up. Wake up and live in God” (Satsang, May 11, 2014). This is where patterns begin to dissolve, not because we fight them, but because we no longer cling to them.

And that is how this path can feel. You are still in it, but something has already shifted. What needed to be stripped away has already been stripped. What remains is not the same as what was there before. Not instant transformation, but a gradual loosening, a softening, a returning.

And that is what is asked of all of us. To recognize our patterns so we can release them. To allow them to fall away instead of allowing them to define us. And in that releasing, to come closer and closer to what has always been true, that we are not separate, that we have never been separate, and that beneath every pattern, every cycle, every rise and fall, there is only One.

References

Hebb, D. O. (1949). The organization of behavior: A neuropsychological theory. Wiley.

Doidge, N. (2007). The brain that changes itself: Stories of personal triumph from the frontiers of brain science. Viking.