the revolution within

When we want to create change, see change, on any level: the community, country, global culture— we must begin within ourselves. The revolution, the revelation, always begins within.

Real change requires that we reach real deep. It requires not as much time as it does patience, clarity, and a courage to leave behind what we knew and defined ourselves by. When we look deeply, we see the baselines, the resting points, the molds that we filled when we were at turning points in our lives: small children, high schoolers, first careers. And we see the role we played in the definitive relationships in our lives.

The patterns we find in our lives, in ourselves: these are the structures, the boundaries of our life. We return to them again and again, as if we were ice skaters who swirl freeform and unbounded until we are in need of support, guidance, rest, and then we skate to the walls. Sometimes we run full force into the walls. Sometimes we cling there for a while; other times we ricochet, or bounce back to center.

What we do in the center is the joyous work of our lives. We learn what we are capable of, in relationship to the people who come and go around us. We practice, we become skillful, we learn tricks. That center space, where we feel free and unlimited, is our best life.

But the walls are present and to create change, we need to create changes in those structures, and our relationship with our boundaries. Do we visit the resting points, the habitual patterns, by choice, with awareness? Or do we find ourselves reliving the same stories and unhappy relationships over and over?

Patterns, cycles are integral to nature. We find them inevitably. And it is possible— hard work, but possible— to change the structures, the patterns of our life.

To do that we need to first recognize the pattern, see the actions/feelings/sequences that repeat themselves again and again. When we find ourselves there, we must explore, search out the nature of the structure, see if it is made of straw and easy to blow through or if it is made of a stiffer substance.

Most often the boundaries are layered. We visit the same patterns so many times that we create memories layered on memories, feelings layered on people, past versions of ourselves that block our openings to future possibilities.

When we find these layers, and continue to visit the same patterns, we have the opportunity to change something each time. The repetition allows refinement. We can clear, clarify, work to undo. We can pull apart the layers, see the interchangeable parts of a complex pattern. And in that undoing, we can see what was left incomplete last time, and put the finishing touches to create what will restore and uplift us next time.

These changes require stable memory, unwarpped by emotions or dull fatigue. The clarity of memory allows us to recognize the repetition, to see the structure. And when we find the structure clearly, we have to change our memories, because memories are the residue of the past that we hold alive in the present.

That conscious reworking, or blowing up, of past memories is what allows us to undo the patterns. Patterns are always relationships between the past (memory), the present (conscious awareness) and the future (the change we envision). We change the structures of our mind, the thoughts that represent the past, and this is what changes the reality as we experience it.

Then we recognize that the work we do within is revolution, is a transformation that requires upsetting the balance. We transform the potential into the actual, the latent to the kinetic, manifesting dreams and desires into the stuff of here and now.