Guidance by patterns of events

Within the same week in 2013, both of my children lost their towels after their swimming lessons at school.

What did it mean? I knew about ‘throwing in the towel’. But that didn’t make sense. So, I googled ‘lost towel’ and found many youtube videos about naked people, covered by merely a towel, who let in the pizza service and then suddenly lost their towel.

What did this mean?

I had just started to share my spiritual journey with one single other person. And this pattern mirrored my feeling of vulnerability.

Sometimes there are several events in a row which have a certain element in common. This is a pattern.

The challenge is to notice this. What is the common thing in a series of events? It is not always as obvious as in the example with the lost towels. I have had other patterns where the common feature was, for example, ‘something black with something weird’ or ‘the lid is off and something is pouring out’. This is always a bit of a riddle and reminds me of the computer game “4 pics 1 word”.

After I have decided what the common feature is in all events, I try to find the meaning. The first question is, is it to be taken literally or metaphorically? The pattern of lost towels was an example of a metaphorical meaning.

Here comes an example of a literal meaning. A book by Ramana Maharshi was recommended twice to Renate McNay by different people. The third time, this vey book fell on top of her head out of nowhere when she was in a bookstore. Then she got the message. It is time to read this book. (Source: http://conscious.tv/text/12.htm)

Another example of a literal one: I needed to order a gift for an 18th birthday. At first, I tried to order an amazon gift card. I tried about 7 times, but it failed each time. Either the address was missing, or my bank account was missing, or I could not figure out how to add a text to the gift card. It was like running into a brick wall each time.

Exhausted, I gave up and listened inside. What the heck was going on? Why wasn’t I able to order a simple gift card on this usually very easy to use shopping portal? Because a gift card was not the appropriate present for an 18th birthday – probably.

So, I tried something else. This young woman was about to spend one year in Togo. I found a book about this country and decided to buy this instead. And, lo and behold, this time the shopping process worked smoothly as usual. So, sometimes running into a brick wall repeatedly can just mean that this is not the way to go.

When I have decided that the meaning is a metaphoric one, I try to find the symbolism via an internet search or with
associative thinking.

The next question usually is, is this pattern merely describing my present situation (as in the lost towel pattern)?
Or does it refer to the past and is it something like an explanation for something which just happened?
Or is it future oriented and suggesting an action (or is it an announcement or a warning)?

A subgroup of the descriptive patterns are mirrorings. They usually reflect something back to me which I need to look at. When I was stubbornly resisting the sharing of my journey, I encountered clogged drains, a clogged coffee machine, clogged showerheads, clogged everything in my house, all indicating that I am not allowing the flow of creativity through me.

Here is an example of a pattern which was not descriptive of the present, but a future oriented announcement. In 2014, I was informed by the inner voice and in a dream that I would get a ‘new job description’. Around that same time, I suddenly found myself being around strangers who just had a breakdown with a medical emergency. I would coincidentally walk by people who just had had a breakdown on the sidewalk. In all cases, the ambulance was already there, or at least someone else was taking care of them so that my help was not needed. I was just passing by. The events came so frequently that I suspected it is no coincidence but rather a message of some sort.

Now what did this mean? After some guessing around, I settled on the interpretation ‘you will meet people who have a breakdown’. And indeed, that is what happened. Afterwards, I found myself synchronistically coming into contact with people who either just had a burnout or were about to have one, and other people in transformative life situations, like leaving a job or going through a divorce. So, this pattern of events seemed to be an announcement of a future task or pattern for me.

However, what did not come with the task description was an instruction of what my role was supposed to be. Am I expected to do anything and what? Or would I just meet these people because I have been through a situation of breakdown myself (in the dark night of the soul) and I would attract people in similar circumstances? It turned out that we would just meet synchronistically, connect, and share our stories.

So, the communication via patterns gives me hints. Little clues about what is currently going on or what is about to happen. And to sum it up, the challenges are

-) to notice that a pattern of events is occurring and to notice what the common theme is.
-) to interpret them (i.e. literal or metaphorical meaning? Explanatory for the past, or descriptive for the present, or predictive or advice for the future?)