Breaking Patterns by Mark Nepo

Breaking Patterns
Mark Nepo

We go into change rehearsing the history that brought us to this point.

-Parker Palmer

Often we have to rehearse the truth, until we find the courage to live it. In this, repetition is not failure, but the heart’s way to learn how to be in the world. Yet like everything else of significance, this process has an attractive yet false counterpart waiting nearby to distract us. We can describe the repeating that is unnecessary as the reliving of scripts, or unconscious repeating, and the repeating that is necessary as the rehearsing of truth, or conscious repeating. And we could say that the near enemy of rehearsing the truth is being trapped in reliving scripts. Though the difference between these is hard to keep in view-especially when in the throes of either.

Nevertheless, the way an actress rehearses the situations she is given until her character is one with the character she is playing, the drama of life demands that we put in the effort to consciously work with what we’re given until we practice our way into honest living. Without such effort, we lapse into unconscious entanglements, like a dog that incessantly tangles itself in its leash. And as such a dog will push its ball out of reach and whine and pout, we can nudge the truth of who we are beyond the reach of our self-created limitations and whine and pout and grow sad. In this way, when we repeat our reactions to living and not our attempts to live, we find ourselves trapped.

In contrast, Paula Underwood Spencer wisely states,“If you want to be truly understood, you need to say everything three times. Once for each ear, and once for the heart.” The implication is that things that are worth experiencing and communicating have to be repeated in order to grasp and share the fullness of their meaning. We must enter them more than once, receive them more than once, articulate them more than once, and listen more than once. This brings us back to rehearsing the truth. So when something is working you and you’ve only barely spoken of it, don’t limit your growth because you have no one else to talk to. Find a willing stranger and make a new friend. The growth of our soul demands that we break all hesitation.

When feeling the press of the patterns that govern our lives, these distinctions are muddy. Often, it is a slow and unclear process to move from unconscious repeating to conscious rehearsing. But this slow clarifying is part of self-transformation. The process is powerfully distilled by Portia Nelson in her poem, “Autobiography in Five Short Chapters”:

I walk, down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in
I am lost . . . I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
But, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in . . . it's a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

I walk down another street.

So breaking patterns involves repeating. There is no getting around it, though we are always pressed to discern whether we are reliving what doesn’t work or peeling away of what is false. In addition to this, we are frequently swimming like salmon against the current of a disposable society that discourages us from looking at anything more than once. It reminds me of the lonely woman and the second flower.In early spring, she is stopped by a burst of sun on a peony on the north side of the city. A few days later, she sees another peony in her friend’s yard. But she thinks, “I’ve seen this flower before.” And so she doesn’t pay attention.But it is the second flower that holds a secret for her.Pretty soon, she thinks life is repeating, when all that is repeating is her want for a flower she’s never seen.

These reflections are excerpts from several books, including a new book of poems, Surviving Has Made Me Crazy, CavanKerry Press, and a new book of spiritual non-fiction, Facing the Lion, Being the Lion: Inner Courage and Where It Lives, Red Wheel/Conari Press. For more info, please visit www.MarkNepo.com.