The Opportunity To Grow And Evolve

Each meta pattern adds a layer of hypnotic sleep, which we often experience as a sense of inevitability, fate, or just the way things are here on planet Earth. This, of course, is what we call a systemic trance. However, like family systems, meta patterns also offer us the opportunity to grow and evolve. We cannot learn from that which we do not see. What worked for one generation likely won’t work for the next precisely because we are evolving. Unfortunately, we tend to demonize what came before us, judging our predecessors for their beliefs, lifestyles, and actions. We look at the youngsters who come after us and call them reckless and irresponsible precisely because we are not seeing the world through their generational lens, facing their generational issues. We sneer at the future, unable to see beyond the limits of our old rules. Instead of celebrating the steps forward and the steps behind us, each generation excludes the other instead of learning from each other. We can sometimes fail to put into evolutionary context what looks to us now like errors and limitations. Those were the solutions the system came up with for its time and place. When we only negatively label our forefathers and mothers, we exclude their lived wisdom from the system and set the stage for old patterns to repeat.

No Ordinary Pain

Growth comes with a commitment to look at and learn from past and future generations with appreciation and informed perspective, not with hate, blame, and judgment. When old and new systems collaborate, we benefit broadly. If we can garner wisdom from the past and be open to and curious about the future, we take our foot off the brake and grow and elevate. Realizing that the conscious creation of positive meta systems and patterns of cooperation is what shifts us all toward greater possibilities, the great sleep of humanity fades. Our gender roles are evolving rapidly, yet if we don’t see that we’re evolving and acknowledge our growth, we will be troubled by this evolution. We’ll remain fixated on the individual misconduct and inflammatory issues raging in the daily headlines and lose the big picture, blaming this person and that group instead of finding ways to come together to support mutual growth. Bottom line, we judge the other instead of valuing and embracing each other and asking what we can learn. Overall, people yearn for the freedom to express who they really are instead of being stuck in rigid gender roles. Many women develop careers out in the world and find satisfaction and fulfillment with that as their primary focus. There are men who want careers and other men who prefer a domestic lifestyle. Family structures are being reshaped. Of course, some changes have only recently become possible.

Bent, But Not Broken

I see multigenerational anger toward men, and judgment, resentment, and a growing distance from them. I see men who feel unappreciated and threatened, distancing themselves from women they deem too demanding or unkind. Old, patriarchal system views shine through in systemic sentences like, We take care of our women and Women belong in the home. I hear women saying, I have to do it all. Sometimes men feel trapped too. He just can’t seem to do it right, they complain. I don’t need a man or Men are never there when you need them. It’s time to see the good, acknowledge it, and give what’s no longer relevant a place of wisdom rather than try to exclude it. Systemically, exclusions create patterns that expand and repeat. The old gender system was useful for its time. That time is no longer. Now we need to examine the current gender system and its inhabitants mindfully and appreciatively and build from a place of higher, inclusive understanding.

We Never Change

Nationalism is defined as an identification with one’s own nation or group and support for its interests. Any time one group of people perceives themselves as better and more entitled than other groups, the others become victimized and angry. When this happens under the auspices of national identity, it has additional power, creating a vast blind spot where we no longer really see ourselves or the other we have created. We lose our humanity and create imbalance in all three principles in the system, creating exclusionary belonging, a sense of bigness or smalless, and a desire to take or receive without appropriate balance. Other countries are seen as harmful, threatening, or inferior. When a nation starts following the individual rather than its government, the whole country’s system is out of order and division ensues. Rules become tighter for some in order to control opposition. Foreigners are seen as a threat and often harassed and told they don’t belong anymore. This often leads to the rise of dictatorships and eventual genocides until the system is corrected and the citizenry, once again, sees the greater truth that all belong and that connection is important for growth. Negative nationalism makes enemies of any who dare to oppose the leader’s goals and ideologies. War is a huge meta pattern with a number of survival patterns that arise from it. Systemically, I see its stark effects on clients and their families. Thou shalt not kill. In war, participants are stretched, tested, and reshaped by a system far bigger than them as individuals. The problem is, when soldiers return to civilian life, they are not the same people they once were. They have been immersed in a system diametrically opposed to normal civilian life and are now split between the two. But none of that is acknowledged. They are not offboarded from the war meta pattern and onboarded back into civilian systems in a conscious, systemic way. With no exit strategy from one system to the other, they frequently find themselves feeling lost, abandoned, incomplete, and confused. They are still over there. Until they can be brought back home intact and a new purpose can be established, they are literally stuck between two worlds. These higher emotions give us wings.