Patterns One of the things that makes it difficult to pin down an event on the journey, is that information doesn't drop on our heads all at once, nor is a message always immediately clear. If this were so, there would certainly be a lot fewer sleepwalkers. We may in fact be headed in that direction. Actually, sometimes it does drop all at once, but I've found that usually it's a trickle. Perhaps this feature is a test, just to see if I'm really awake and paying attention? Still, despite one's awareness, revelations are rarely delivered in a leather-bound volume with a handy index and quick reference guide. In my case, most of my information has been gleaned by the eventual accumulation of enough pieces to make a pattern. This is the concept of synchronicity, where seemingly unrelated bits begin to converge. I still have to draw my own conclusions or decide where to look for the next piece. Ever hear of Water Torture? I have no idea if there was ever such a thing, but the concept applies. There are times when there's a slow drip. At first I don't notice it too much, then it gets to be a little bothersome or I start to wonder where it's coming from. Then, it can really be an annoying perpetual tap-tap-tap OR the faucet is opened up and I'm suddenly under a waterfall. Time to get out the hip waders or put on the swimsuit and dive in. For most of my life I've known that I have three innate skills: Association, Assimilation and Pattern Recognition. These are not skills or tools which are unique to me, but they're not always found together and they're not always as sharp for others. These are not the only skills for accomplishing the same tasks as I may describe. They're just the ones in my own basic tool kit. Association is like.... that. When you've worked on awareness for a while, everything starts to look like something else and in a good way, familiar. It almost becomes a game to see where you can draw similarities between two seemingly different things. I'm at the point now where I certainly have not seen everything, but when I come across something 'new', I'm confident that I've seen something like it. I can at least extrapolate the parts I recognize such that I don't have to learn the whole new thing as one piece. I can recall the familiar components and just add in the new bits. Maybe I can even define the new thing completely with segments from other things I already know. For instance, suppose I see a clock for the first time ever. I know what numbers are. I know that numbers usually follow a particular sequence. So, I look at the clock face and that feels good. I recognize that these are numbers which I've seen before. It's familiar. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... I can handle that. I also recognize the (clockwise) direction of these numbers, because of the familiar sequence. I understand the idea of things (ie, hands) pointing and maybe how someone could pin something in the middle of a circle and spin the pointers around and around. So then I watch that tiny pointer on the clock and I see it moving a lot faster than the other two. I watch the next one sweep then begin to notice that the big pointer is sweeping too, in the same direction, past the numbers, but much more slowly, and so on. There's more to a clock than displaying the time, but after a while, I take for granted that there's a motor and gears and the pointers are called hands and the numbers only go to 12, but because of that, even a broken clock is right twice a day! I eventually learn how to determine the time by looking at that strange new thing. I learn that I have friends whom I may ask for the time and they will tell me how to build a clock. I learn not to do that anymore, especially if I'm strapped for time. This brings me to Assimilation. No, I am not referring to being assimilated, I refer to information which I assimilate. I absorb it. I take it in, chew on it a while, then digest it. It becomes second nature to me or at the very least, it is readily available for use in Association or Pattern Recognition. I don't keep ALL information that handy. Sometimes my recall is pretty sluggish or just plain faulty. However, it's still important to be aware and take in as much as possible. The important stuff and repetitive stuff will eventually stick and keep rising in the heap until it's right where I need it, when I need it (hopefully). Then I have Pattern Recognition. I feel that this is the toughest of the three. It requires massive amounts of awareness and a lot of processing by way of Association and Assimilation, which can be seen as sub-processes of Pattern Recognition, at least in my case. What IS it? Well, it's the water torture. Tap One: I store it away, identified or not. No big deal. Tap Two: Hmmm. It seems a little familiar but no urge to check just now, so, I store it. Tap Three: Perhaps it makes a little ripple and I almost recall some other taps but still no urge to really look. I store it and make a mental note to maybe look into it later. Tap Four: Okay Now this is getting to me. This tap felt a LOT like the third tap and maybe even the second tap and I start to wonder if it's like the first one as well. So, NOW it has come to my full attention. Now I start to wonder what the tapping really is and go to investigate, using what I have in my arsenal of Association and Assimilation and, if I need to, I go look up more stuff that may be relative to this set of taps. The trick is to recognize the possible pattern, ie, for my awareness to set off a signal when I encounter multiple, seemingly unrelated events that actually had one or more elements in common. I need to acknowledge some thread, however thin and frail, that may indicate they are connected to each other. Sometimes it was a pattern. Sometimes it was a coincidence, but I must tell you that the longer I am on this path, the less I believe in pure coincidence. I always look for the patterns. After a while, even randomness and serendipity seem like they must surely be guided by someone, somewhere. Pattern Recognition is a practiced art. It may be a birthright for some but still requires practical application. It may be learned in early childhood by others but like most skills, it can be learned later, just not as easily perhaps. It begins with cause and effect but advances to much more complex equations. For example: I learn the concept of heat, so I can identify with the word 'hot'. I learn that if I touch a hot thing, I will hurt. I learn that if I wait, a hot thing may not be hot anymore. I learn that I can take one hot thing and make another thing hot. I learn that many hot days in a row means summer and that means no school but summer will end and I will go back to school but there will be another summer. I learn that after many many summers, people die and I won't see them anymore but the Sun is still there to warm my summers until my own body dies. And so on. As I learn to advance this kind of thinking from an elementary level to a cosmic one, then the patterns excite me, even more than all my carefree summers from childhood. Sometimes Pattern Recognition is useful for figuring out the theme of something, like the usual behavior of things. This would be following threads along their path. It may be used to verify, contrast or compare and thereby allow me to see what will likely follow or narrow the possibilities and take an educated guess. It's a bit like intuition but less mystical, more logical, based on empirical (observed or experienced) evidence. A pattern is usually a quantifiable thing. Once I see it, I can sketch it out or describe it and 'prove' how I came to the conclusion that it is a pattern. I have explained these things before to many people in many ways. I've tried to associate my concepts with things they already know and feel comfortable discussing. I draw from my assimilated information to do this. I reference the patterns I've seen so that I know approximately what will work with which people, based on what I learn about them in the process of teaching. Of course, in teaching, I learn it all again, in a new variation. This too is a pattern and I relish it. (Patterns)

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