PATTERNS & CELLULAR MEMORY
We have developed all kinds of unconscious and subconscious patterns over our lifetime. Adaptive patterns begin forming early on in life even while we are in our mother’s womb and continue accumulating throughout our lives.
Conditioning arises from many aspects of life – family, culture, religion, gender, society, education, work and other adaptive patterns, trauma, and learned beliefs stored in cellular memory.
Patterns such as learning skills make for much greater ease and efficiency operating in the world. Self-limiting patterns constraining our expression in various ways limit our creativity, flow, embodiment and evolution.
In Joe Dispenza’s book You are the Placebo, making your mind matter, he addresses how our thoughts, emotions, and intentions affect our bodies. He speaks of self-directed neuroplasticity ~ breaking down old neural pathways and creating new ones based on our experiences and how we meet them.
Lesson #5 of A Course in Miracles (ACIM) workbook says:
“I am never upset for the reason I think.”
Much of what triggers us in present time is due to old patterns. Most thoughts we have are past conditioning and habitual/”old” thoughts. According to the National Science Foundation 95% of the 50,000 thoughts we have in a day are repeated daily.
When we encounter things in life where we experience suffering, we may externalize (project) the cause of the effect to something or someone outside of us or we project onto ourselves (introject) in the form of self-criticism/judgment and negative self-image; while the real cause may be an activation of imprints/cellular memories from early life.
When cellular memories are triggered often we may not be not aware of the contraction/discomfort arising, the emotions/feelings being generated and subsequent thoughts around the discomfort . The missing of the contraction can show up in the multitudinous ways we manage suffering: reaction, avoidance, denial, indulgence, numbing, repression, suppression.
A single feeling can generate thousands of thoughts. Tending to feeling at the sensation level can be more effective at addressing patterns than tending to just thoughts.
Inspired thoughts have a more expansive quality, different from thoughts arising around negative feelings which are more contractive and can create a sense of separation.
When we give time in the present moment, unwinding, resolving, assimilating, absorbing; transmutation of the contracted energy into a more coherent form may occur. This requires meeting what is arising as best we can in the moment, being the experience of what is, participating at the sensation and essence level without identifying with the limiting thoughts, judgments, stories, beliefs or concepts.
A gentle welcoming without judgment allows for a more graceful unfolding, emerging, and remembering of what we really are. Each arising can be expressed as this dance of remembrance.
As we notice patterns and dwell more in the mystery and unknown of the unfolding now, we shift the deep grooves and neural pathways long ingrained over the years. We create new, different and more coherent connections and responses.
Often in life we have unrealized, unconscious subtle or not so subtle contractions/fears we may be experiencing. For years I lived in states of discomfort and hypervigilance not aware of the subtle ongoing contractions I was jumping over and not meeting in the moment.
When we feel conflicted, not at ease, discomfort, agitation or negative feelings, bringing awareness and giving yourself a PAUSE can begin to shift the old grooves.
A simple contraction fully realized can shift our experience and expression in the world. May we continue to deepen our sensing capacity and our ability to listen, receive, remember and live our essence with greater embodiment, expression and flow.
