Shae. Using pattern thinking and understanding can enable us to relax the fixedness of our sense of identity and being, to support engagement with relational dynamics and flows, whilst also providing some parameters within which to operate. These parameters are not the fixed structures of society but are more playful because they are patterns. Patterns are inherently dynamic; they are parameters for life itself to emerge; they enable holding and stability for engaging in greater flow whilst also engaging in sentient relationality, without control, without linearity. I think about patterns as a language to assist us in accessing the quantum dynamics of life ā the process of coming into being. I feel that pattern thinking and understanding as an experience of embodied sentience is one way toward the quantum holotropism you explore in your 2020 article. I understand Indigenous people to have patternings that are sacred and agentic expressions of holotropic co-generative relationality.Ā
The Language of Patterns
Shae. The pattern-based language of Complexity Patterning is very different from Western identity and/or psychological language. It is very different from educational language and structures; it doesnāt have any of the associated qualities. It is truly transdisciplinary, even postdisciplinary, really. Such a patterning language bestows capacity for holding to enable flow: there is enough repetition of the parameters to enable you to get into the flow with stability and dynamic change. I have not done martial arts, but I imagine there is a similar principle, with enough repetition of the parameters to enable you to get into the flow and better your technique.Ā
I relate it also to horse-riding. If you get your balance and your seat right, and you are breathing right, then you can let go into the flow of the ride. So in a sense, these are parameters that enable flow and constraints that enable stability. And so we are back to paradox again. I am hoping, and trusting, that this kind of material can open up the capacity for engaging and navigating an increasingly complex world for young people, into the future to come.
Alexander. I like the ideas of parameters that enable flow and looking at Complexity Patterning as a way to explore those parameters in educational settings. And as you say, with the martial arts and horse riding and so on, that flow can be found when there is a certain degree of mastery and letting go that enables you to do what you are doing without efforting, without trying. It enables just being and doing.Ā Ā