Patterns

 

Buried deep in all of the teachings of the entire world of knowledge, you will find equations. Whether you are a physicist, a doctor of medicine, a mechanic or a seamstress, these equations will eventually serve you well on your journey toward some goal.

There are drawers, in a specific chest, down at my mother’s house. In those drawers, there are old newspaper clippings, but they were not saved based on the written or printed content, they were saved based on their shapes. See, back in mom’s day, a good seamstress would copy a pattern using newspaper. Mom would cut out her shapes with newspaper before she traced the same design onto her cloth. This worked wonderfully. She never wasted material; if there was a mistake, it was caught in the “newspaper stage”. Of course, with these newspaper cutouts, it was possible to save the entire project in the event she wanted to make a duplicate of the same pattern.

Now, for a moment, imagine a future, historical researcher who happens upon those newspaper clippings. It is possible that the shapes could be completely overlooked in favor of the printed content. Perhaps a team of interpreters are given the task of making a book of the patterns and their printed content. With stacks of these special clippings, the book would need to be “forced” into some sort of meaningful outcome.

It seems almost silly to suggest this, but it is possible that, in 3,000 years, those newspaper cutouts which mom had saved in order to make dresses, could be the equivalent of The Dead Sea Scrolls and a new religion could be developed from the material that was completely unimportant to the very person who put the clippings into jars.

I am saying this for a reason. There is a very old saying, “You can’t see the forest for the trees.” This is a simple way of saying what I am saying about the patterns. Sometimes, I think we ought to look at the same data again. Some of Einstein’s equations are not as famous as the one everyone knows:  E=mc²

 

What about the other ones? Well, I won’t pretend to be a mathematician or a physicist and Einstein was brilliant as both, but I will say that he also worked out the fact that time varies in nature throughout the universe; always based on other, physical variables. If I look at the watch on my wrist, I cannot expect the light from a distant star to have the same time on its wrist.

Of course, it is far more complicated than I can even make it out to be.

Here is an interesting thought, for instance: I can look at the stars in the night sky and if I knew which one to consider, the very light I see tonight, would have been sent my way on the day my father was born. That light, you could say, is 96 light-years away. This would be accurate. So, in the case of that light, I could physically see something as it physically existed on the very day it was produced, 96 years ago.

In that ray of light, if there was a reflection available to my naked eyes, revealing the universe of that day, I could zoom in and find a real-time reflection of my father, as an infant, being wrapped in a warm blanket for the very first time.

Of course this theory is both true and impossible. The only data available to me on earth is the tiny, shimmering light, barely visible and almost indistinguishable in the night sky. But, at the same time, it really is a brand new light, just being born on earth, for me, and 96 years old to itself.

What does this have to do with patterns cut out of newspaper clippings?

It is the same as missing the forest as a result of all the trees in the way.

I am saying that we may be missing the most important shapes by considering the material they are made of.

When I see a light, brought to my eye from 96 years ago, it should remind me that time, as I experience time, is only a part of the data and the entire universe, itself, exists as it was, is and evermore shall be.

As myself, I may have an experience of this day. But there is more to consider: Myself represents all selves and the experience of day is but a fractal experience attached to all days.

If you are really on a journey to discover the journey of the hero in you, you will ultimately come to the conclusion that we are all One, at Once, Everywhere.