What are you attracting?
Attractor is a general term used by mathematicians and physicists for any pattern that defines the repetitive motion of a system. For example, a pendulum that is subject to friction eventually stops swinging. The point directly underneath it when it stops is called a single-point attractor, for it appears to attract the pendulums motion on each successive swing, eventually bringing it to rest over that point. A pendulum not subject to friction (in a vacuum) swings back and forth in a continuous manner, constantly tracing out the same pattern of motion. This is called a limit-cycle attractor. It defines the perpetual pattern or path that this pendulum will follow.
According to Chaos Theorists, attractors are what influence any system (the dripping of a tap, the weather or the cycles of the stock exchange) towards order. All creation myths refer to an organizing power which acts upon the chaos then in existence and causes division (light from darkness; water from land)) and order to manifest thus creating the world or universe as pertinent to that mythology.
These same attractors are constantly at work in our lives, causing the circumstances and situations of our own lives. Fate is nothing more than the beliefs which we have decided to accept about ourselves and the world which now act as strange attractors to draw to us the circumstances and situations which will fulfil the conditions of those beliefs. Literally self-fulfilling prophecies, which will prove us right, but not necessarily help us to win.
Of course none of us lives in a vacuum, the thoughts and beliefs of others act as friction to slow down and often stop our self-fulfilling prophecies from holding complete control. Have you ever wondered why being in close relationships with negative thinkers seems to drag you down and retard your plans? The converse of course is also true the optimistic, buoyant attitudes of those irritating people who are so damned positive all the time is what often literally saves us from ourselves.
Our lives seem to swing from order to chaos and back again, from psychic balance (contentment) to destruction (discontentment). Carl Jung, the renowned psychologist and father of psychoanalysis and dream interpretation as a tool to understanding the psyche, referred to this phenomena as the pattern of life and a vital ingredient for our real purpose here on Earth the evolution of our Soul, through successive cycles of strain and ease. We do not, as a general rule, grow during times of ease and contentment. We seem to need stress, manifesting as problems, disasters (man-made and natural) and hardships as a counterfoil to strive against and overcome in order to grow and develop.
The quality of our thinking (mindset) seems to peg our level of development and determines which lessons we most need to learn, by way of the problems, disasters and hardships we attract into our lives.
Once the lesson is learned, we move on to more complex patterns. Progressing from physical problems (survival, illness, deprivations and danger) to emotional problems (relationships, co-dependencies, fears anxieties and various emotional imbalances) to mental problems (logic and reasoning) and finally spiritual problems (issues of faith). This is obviously very simplistic as most growth patterns are complex spaghetti bowls of intertwined physical, emotional, mental and spiritual themes.
Who was it that said, Goals are not about what we achieve, but about who we become in the process of achieving them?
Take some this week to explore the patterns of your life:
~ What are the recurring problems you face?
~ What are the lessons behind these patterns?
~ What would your life be like if you had already learned these lessons?
~ What do you need to do to learn these lessons?
~ What is your plan?
