Remembering who we are

It has been a very full week following our inaugural Syntropic Global Summit. Threads to be picked up, post production to be completed, connecting with people who have reached out, and commencing the annual Syntropic Immersion program.

Syntropic Immersion is a deep dive into the models and principles of a Syntropic World, applying the principles to an enterprise or project over the course of four months. A mashup of learning, mentoring, gestating, incubating, creation, and support. Syntropic Masterclass graduates are invited to attend as we share a common language and common maps and models as a result of the Masterclass.

This week I asked the participants of the Syntropic Immersion program to express their expectations for our four months together.

Any group of people will have their own unique group Pattern Integrity expressed only through this specific group. No one can predict what that Pattern Integrity of the group/team might be. Add or subtract people and the Pattern Integrity changes. This is the magic of teams, of human relational dynamics. That weightless invisible warm data rich space between people that weaves the relationships together or has them fall apart.

The Pattern Integrity that arose from the Syntropic Immersion group was to remember who I am as a unique individual. To become, in the process, more loyal to my dreams and aspirations than to my fears.

I have written many times before about Pattern Integrity here.

And here.

This is a short video clip taken from the Syntropic Summit of me describing what Pattern Integrity is:

Individual humans, as an idea that is made manifest through our birth, arrive into the world with our unique Pattern Integrity fully intact. If you are a parent of more than one child with the same genetic background, you know this well when you look at your children. Same biological root yet so very different. As parents we find ourselves wondering how that is possible.

There is a truth to our Pattern Integrity that is clearly evident very soon after birth. My first words as I hurtled in great haste and determination down the corridor of our home after my elder brother was “Bugger bugger bugger!” followed by a spitting sound, the words I was seeking to express my frustration and anger not yet available, yet my body and my mouth clearly managing to demonstrate my feisty temperament. Determination, feistiness, easily expressed anger, focused attention…yep, that is me.

Not all of me. Yet intrinsic to who I am.

Somewhere along our journey of life we can lose ourselves. We are told to do this, be that. Do not do this.

We might be bathed in fear in our homes. Constantly on a knife’s edge. We might be shamed at school. Forced to conform.

We are moulded and modelled into a consensus something.

To be clear, some of this is appropriate: learning to respect others, consider consequences of our actions, apologise with heartfelt sincerity for our mistakes, develop empathy, know when to speak truth and when to hold our tongue, know that all rights come with responsibility. These are skills that enable us to become healthy adults.

Parenting is this complex field of boundaries. Not too loose. Not too tight. Different for each child and context.

A significant aspect of the role of parents is to create the ecology in which the unique Pattern Integrity of the child can become fully manifest. The difficulty is that we live in a world that is constructed to shape each person as a clone.

Remembering who we are is an enquiry that lives in multiple domains simultaneously.

Finding the thread of our true Pattern Integrity — present no matter the success of the conformity enforcers — can often become so buried it feels like a strange beast to us when we encounter it as adults.

There is also a soul remembering. Our arc of time goes back, that Pattern Integrity eternal, held in different forms that are likely to be completely unrecognisable by us in human form.

We must also find the thread through the noise of our own adopted stories. What is true for us? What no longer serves? Why do I believe this? Who said I cannot, should not? Why not? Why?

And then we must navigate culture. Culture that comes with a set of rules to belong, or not. Those dastardly conformity enforcers, this time in the shady apparel of a cultural blurb.

Remembering who we are is not a weekend workshop. It is often an unravelling to remember. Throwing our life, our choices, our stories, our values, our beliefs on the threshing floor. Discovering which slim small chaff of wheat is a harmonic of our Pattern Integrity.

There is a YESness to this discovery. A one hundred percent coherence and alignment.

We might have fear about how and what and with whom, but the honest reflection is YES!

I look back at the experience of arriving to myself that started to become grounded in late 2018. My unravelling was a deep existential crisis. A depression that I didn’t admit I was in until my yearning was to never wake from sleep. Even now, writing this, I have no real idea just how dark a place I descended to.

There is a purity in being brought to our knees, even if I would not recommend it or wish it upon anyone. JK Rowling wrote about rock bottom. Nothing left. No shame. No guilt. No fear. No thing.

Bucky Fuller spoke of his seeking to end his life at the age of 32 years, feeling a failure as a business person, parent and human being. Knee deep in the waters of Lake Michigan he heard a wiser part of himself speak. “This is not your life to take.” He decided wholeheartedly to commit himself to serving — from this day forward — the highest number of people for the highest good of all. He called his experience ego suicide.

We must care so much about our work to support a better world that we do not care what others think of us. (This is the founding principle of a program I created back in the early 2000s, Dare to Care, that will be reintroduced later this year into Syntropic World.)

In my own process of a literal resurrection, rising from the comfort and safety of my bed, placing my feet once again on the ground with that determination to get back into life, I made several clear commitments.

I would spend the remainder of my life refusing to try and fix the broken. Refusing to fix anything from the old system. Refusing to see people as needing to be fixed.

I would no longer spend my time re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic and hoping for a different outcome.

I would not spend my days defending myself. Or hiding. I would not spend my days in fear of what people might think, the names they might call me, the results or lack of results I may or may not achieve.

I would dare, oh yes, dare, to be naive. I would embrace my idealism. The crazy possibility of the work I hold as coming true, against all odds.

I would turn and focus my precious life energy, my decades of experience, my skills and tools accumulated, on the more beautiful world that I know is possible. That I know we know is possible. On creating new models that make the existing obsolete.

I would refuse to exploit. To extract. To colonise. To be exploited. To be extracted from. To be colonised. Meaning that I would speak for my worth. My value. For my own dignity with as equal fervour as I speak for others. Not from ego but from a choice to be the model of a world that does not exploit anyone or anything. I have worth. I have value. I stand for that, for me, for others.

The strange part of this journey is that I look back at my lost self, my broken down self, the part of me lost in the victim for so many years — so subtle a victim — that ran as the oxygen for my life in the background — and I know that truly every step to here counted. Every tear, and there were many. Every hard conversation. Every fall. Every climb. Every time I found myself being exploited. Every time I trusted and was abused. Every time I gave my power and authority to others, reducing myself to a whisper of a shadow in their light, not realising that only two can play that game of servant to master, powerless to powerful.

Remember who we are. Remember who I am.

There comes a time when the purpose your life has crafted for you to embrace is far bigger than any fear. Far bigger than doubt.

Our journey gives us everything we need to say YES! To get started. As we say YES and begin to do this sacred soul work, we become more fully who we are, gathering all the elements — including that feisty swearing child.

Remembering who we are is to embrace power. Our power. Not power over, not power that dominates, rather power that flows from the deepest trenches of our soul into the world and becomes a transmission of the gift our Pattern Integrity provides.

The most delightful aspect of this experience for me is how I spend my days laughing. Sure, I bend over with the pain of what humans are doing to each other and the world, Yet I find joy in that power surge. The task to be done. The possibility my naivety holds as absolute.

And when I forget myself again, when the embrace of hubris, arrogance, ego or righteousness emerges, I go surfing. Mother ocean has her way with me, tumbling my little body like a cork in her waves. Reminding me that my power is in reverence and respect to the greater powers. The path is alignment, coherence.

In remembering who I am I become the flute through which life plays the more sacred game. Not separate. Integral.

*For fun, re-read this article, replacing the conversation about self/me with your business or project, and the words parent with steward. It is the same. To steward an idea to life we must know the ideas Pattern Integrity. If we forget we must remember its Pattern Integrity and be sure to create the ecology in which the Pattern Integrity of your business can become fully manifest.