Before the retreat

The Nine Patterns

A mirror, not a test.

All of us protect ourselves. When something we need feels at risk, we reach for a pattern: a way of holding on, or a way of going quiet. It usually works well enough that we stop noticing we're doing it.

There are nine of these. None of them is a flaw. Each one has carried you somewhere, and most of what you've built, you built while wearing it. This is a chance to see yours clearly, and to notice what it may have crowded out along the way.

There is no score, and no type to land on. You're looking for the one that makes you nod, or wince.

Read thirty-six linesSay how true each one is of you. Answer for how you are most of the time, not how you'd like to be.

Then five situationsEveryday moments with two ways to go. There's no better answer. We all do both.

Meet your patternWhat it gave you, what gives you energy, what may have gone quiet, and how it holds on and lets go.

Bring what you find to Devils Thumb. Nothing to decide before then.

1 / 41 The patterns

How true is this of you?

Part two

Which way do you go?

When fear rises, we leave ourselves in one of two directions. We grip, carrying more than is ours, taking it over, forcing it. Or we collapse, carrying less than is ours, going quiet, pulling back.

Everyone does both. Most of us have a first move. Read each situation and choose the one that's more you: the honest one, not the better one.

You're reading another pattern.

Your pattern

What this has given you

What gives you energy

The part that is hardest to see in yourself

What may have gone quiet

Not taken from you. Set down, usually for a good reason, and never picked back up.

The two roots

What has to happen, and what's hard not to know

Neither one alone lights the fuse. Together, they force fear to act.

The outcome you're attached to

The certainty you hold

How it protects you

Two ways of wearing the same pattern

Turned outward to push, or turned inward to hide.

When you grip

When you collapse

GripCollapse

The space between isn't the middle of this line. It's the moment you notice you're standing on it at all.

What it costs when you stay in it too long

Your doorway

Not something to achieve, and not something to believe by Tuesday. Just the pause before you reach for the pattern, long enough to notice there's a choice.

Close behind

Most women wear more than one. These sounded almost as much like you.

All nine

Read any of them

You know yourself better than any set of questions does. If another one sounds more like the inside of your head, that one is yours.

One last thing

You are not here to get rid of it.

Your pattern isn't coming off this weekend, and it isn't supposed to. It kept you safe, and a good deal of your life was built inside it. We're only after the moment before it decides for you.

Between now and December, notice it once or twice. Not to stop it. Just to catch it happening. That noticing is the whole practice.

The goal isn't to arrive and stay. The practice is to return.