Patterns of thought: retrieving discarded data

Because I knew the Patterns exhibition was coming, I've been attuned to patterns for months now -- and I'm finding it a difficult habit to break.

Which shouldn't be all that surprising: don't we all find ourselves falling into patterns, habits of thought, habits of seeing, that are difficult to disrupt?

Some of them, in fact, are so deeply ingrained that we're often not even aware that the structure is there -- and yet we allow our thoughts to get sorted into those existing structures, and we toss overboard whatever doesn't quite fit -- which is kind of what I've done with this picture.

When this image caught my eye this morning, I decided to just follow my artistic instincts and pull everything that wasn't germane to the chairs out of the photograph, stretching as necessary to make everything fit.

And in a way, when I took the photo, this is what I saw.  Just the chairs, the shapes, the lines, the contrast between light and dark; the whole colored by the warmth of the day.

But here's what my camera actually saw -- and you can see that my mind just carefully erased the windows, the reflections, the dirty floor, the legs that hold up the chairs... and even added a sense of color that wasn't actually present.

That's what our perceptions do for us: it's almost as if our minds just aren't big enough to take in everything -- like my friend Martha yesterday, who told the story of standing in her kitchen, making a latte while practicing awareness; feeling so good that she could sense her body, and the sun on her back, and the smell of the coffee -- and then she realized she had forgotten to steam the milk!

So our minds make a decision about what data to discard without ever actually consulting us, and we are left with what we THINK is an accurate picture of reality, but it's actually just a subset -- which goes a long way to explaining how we get into arguments and wars: it's all because we each take in only part of the picture; like the blind men with the elephant.

It doesn't mean that the pattern you think you're seeing isn't there: it's just that it's not the whole picture.

So next time you find yourself leaping to judgment because you think you see a distasteful pattern of behavior, stop a minute: could it be possible you're not seeing the whole picture?

We were introduced to a dialog in class a couple of months ago to help us deal with difficult situations like these.  It works something like this:  if someone does or says something that you object to or that makes you uncomfortable, approach them and say this:

1.  "When you do/did/said X (whatever X is), it makes me uncomfortable/angry/whatever."

2.  "That's because Y (where Y is whatever history or patterns you have tie that particular action to a negative feeling)."

3.  "Could you tell me: What was your intention when you said/did that?"

This dialog allows each of you to clarify the hidden patterns that drove your interaction.  You get to know a little more about the other person, they get to know more about you, and each of you discovers a bit more about the parts of the picture that got tossed -- which means each of you has a piece of the big picture, and together you'll be able to see a lot more of what's going on.

Yes, it's challenging to try this; so much easier to let the brain leap to it's pre-patterned assumptions.  But think what a different world this could be if we could all be this open with each other!