Pause Before you Draw a Pattern

What do you think of when I say Patterns? Repetition, influence, design, rhythm, shapes, growth, cycle, life. What is it to you?

Patterns to me are lines and circles. Lines take me up and down like climbing mountains, except there is no end to this trek; circles are a pattern of life and death. Will we ever stop living in circles?

As long as we are made to think and function the same, we will never discover what shapes we truly are.

Yes, we human beings are made up from the same stuff; atoms are inside all of us. But did you know there is something else too?

A Unique Flame. A Fire that burns within all of us!

It is this Flame which can break the patterns because it is the shape we truly are.

Our patterns are either this or that, extreme with our emotions. Conflicted with dark and light, greed and generosity, desire and passion, power and knowledge; these are examples that make us draw patterns. Identifying with our emotions makes us feel like human beings.

Yet are we our emotions, or are we more than that? Being driven by our emotions is one of our patterns, like having a variety of masks in a closet matching the weather of our mood.

So, why not pause before you draw a pattern?

Our patterns have made us stuck in greed and desire for power. Competition has made us compete for the wrong reasons: we only think about ourselves and race behind money when we should compete in breaking patterns and the system of hierarchy based on wealth. Competition should be the driving force of evolution to bring change.

So why draw such patterns? Because it is hard to pause and notice them and eventually break patterns we always draw.

Patterns condition us and make us lose our authenticity; instead, fear is the driving force in each one of us. Fear of surviving! Fear of not ‘fitting’ in our own skin, a dress, a box and the society.

Because of fear, we human beings have become ignorant to the needs of ourselves and the planet. We are digging up every bit of earth left to gain our own satisfactions, we cut down living beings who have been rooted on this earth longer than any human life. All this to consume and buy the stuff we “need!”

The Flame must burn Fear.

Planned obsolescence: now, why would such a thing be invented? Products that are designed to fail! In the 1920s it all began with renewing the auto industry but naturally it took over the entire economy, it got people enthusiastic to consume! In that time, sustainability was not a priority... But today’s world is not the 1920s; we are a population of 7.3 billion people who are responsible as consumers. Manufacturers give exactly what we ask for, with manipulation. We get attracted by what we don’t have; a slim, shiny, smooth working lightweight laptop is much better than my wired box, old, slow, fat, ugly computer.

The Flame must burn Greed.

Today we live with words, terms, labels and judgements. Blaming people who we think are “bad” makes us feel better. Comparing ourselves to models and being bombarded by social media which promotes a “nice” way of evolving. Complaining about the world and its politics has become a form of entertainment. Gossiping, such an “effective” way of bringing change! We suppress and put people and ourselves into boxes, just like we put “stuff” into boxes. We are being classified by names and numbers we own. Nobody is interested to hear our passions or dreams that are hidden deep under the superficiality of things.

The Flame must stop being intimidated by social confines.

It is all about the bloody pieces of paper we value for education, work, marriage, identity; and above all it is money! Money, a man's value, based entirely on trust!

The Flame must not worship money.

Flame needs to pause before drawing a pattern.

We need to think of our future generation, in what kind of a world will we bring them up in? A world of war and destruction? Or a world of Peace and Harmony between nations and people… I read somewhere a beautiful message which says: “We are not inheriting the lands of our ancestors, but we are borrowing them from our children… so let’s give them back in a better state than that in which we found them.”

This is where Auroville comes into the picture. Is Auroville trying to change the system and redesign it? We are not trying to change the world, we are looking for change within us. We need to be the change for the world to consciously transform towards Human Unity.

“Auroville is a place of unending education and constant progress.” We learn by doing and giving our service for something Higher than ourselves.

The Flame must burn within all of us!