Now and Forever
Fear, desire, and why the pattern-seeking mind fails to grasp the inevitable
“You write about inevitability as if it’s liberating, but isn’t inevitability also terrifying? How do you distinguish between inevitability and fate or fatalism? I sometimes feel afraid that what’s inevitable for me is not what I want.”
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Our minds function on pattern-recognition and so when it encounters a pointer like inevitability it seeks to ‘understand’ it by converting it into a pattern.
A pattern is something that is repeating and has continuance. If something was, is, and will be - then it forms a pattern that can be understood. Our understanding of the world, ourselves, our relationships - are all based on patterns. And when those patterns change or collapse - we consider it the end of those things.
Democracy is a certain pattern. Marriage is a certain pattern. Self-identity is a certain pattern. These patterns shift subtly over time and these shifts are interpreted by us as change, growth, evolution, healing - or oppositely crumbling, dismantling, breaking down. Sometimes these patterns shift in very drastic ways - and when they do we struggle to comprehend them. Because we are left with unfamiliar patterns - and because patterns relate to how we understand the world - life feels incomprehensible to us.
That is why tragedies feel ‘senseless’. Sudden loss of employment feels ‘disorienting’. An unexpected divorce feels like ‘being lost’. A collapse of societal institutions feels ‘disillusioning’. It is not the events in themselves that carry these qualities - rather it is the sudden interruption of patterns of meaning-making that temporarily casts us into a ‘surreal and meaningless’ existence.
In other words, our sense of reality is predicated upon the meaning we are able to make of it. And the meaning we make of it relies upon certain patterns we see and come to rely upon for a sense of existential security. As an example, consider how our definition of a ‘reliable human being’ is ‘someone who will always show up’. It is the repeatability and the predictability of the pattern that makes it a reliable one.
So, although we may not consciously recognize it - our minds are designed to seek out experiences that have a high-probability of recurrence. We find comfort in people, places, events, beliefs and institutions that are repeatable and predictable. This holds true even when those experiences are negative or harmful - which is why addiction, toxic relationships and oppressive institutions can be so hard to break away from. We find more security in a familiar devil than an unfamiliar god.
Or to put it more simply - in an impermanent world, we are always seeking out the least impermanent objects to attach ourselves to. Meaning builds identity - and if the meaning we make is consistent and has a high degree of continuity then so will our identity.
This same phenomenon is true of how we approach spiritual pointers. We think we are seeking wisdom and insight - but what we are really seeking are newer, more reliable patterns of thinking. Which is why regurgitation sells - it reinforces patterns through repetition. It doesn’t matter what the teaching is - it doesn’t matter how true or insightful. The reader’s mind is actively scanning for recognition - it is scanning to see how this new pattern fits in with patterns it has already established in its understanding of the world.
It conflates truth with ‘meaning’ - and sets about trying to find the pattern that pertains to truth. And when it thinks it has found it - it sets about trying to establish and repeat it - even defending it if it has to. It builds its identity out of this new meaning it has labeled ‘truth’.
That is why seekers often express and behave so similarly. That is why the culture presents in a stereotypical way. Having conflated truth with meaning, they then attempt to establish that meaning by repeating patterns - of dress, of ritual, of speech, of thought, of behaviour, of relationships.
Which brings me to your question of inevitability - which you appear to have conflated with fate or fatalism - which then evokes fear within you. And this is natural because your mind, like all minds, is attempting to understand inevitability by converting it into a pattern.
But inevitability is not a pattern.
