Learn from nature’s patterns: radiate


Learn from nature’s patterns: radiate

 

This one’s pretty obvious. Nature shows us endless examples of the radial:

  • dandelions

  • the sun and stars

  • hands and fingers

  • the iris of our eyes

  • a drop rippling outward in the water

  • sunflowers

The lesson of the radial?

Let yourself shine your radiance—in all directions.

Throw yourself out there—in all directions. 

AND

Receive from all directions.

Draw nourishment from all directions.

Put out feelers in all directions, so they can draw in the nurturing you need—into your core.

Let your own radiance feed your core: your heart.

This may be the secret wisdom of the radial: that it flings itself outward in all directions… because it knows all roads lead back to the heart.

Shine on, wild ones. Happy rewilding.

Learn from nature’s patterns: spiral


Learn from nature’s patterns: spiral

 

Have you ever noticed that spirals are everywhere?

Snail shells.

Pinecones.

Galaxies.

Flower petals.

Hurricanes. W

hirlpools.

Cabbage.

DNA.

Fingerprints.

Clearly, it’s a pattern that works—physical matter somehow knows how to organize itself this way.

In my mission to NOT recreate the wheel, again, that’s good enough for me.

This is the heart of Creative Rewilding, my sanctuary/launchpad for paradigm shifters:

  • Exploring macrocosmic patterns and applying them to our individual circumstances.

  • Realigning with the universe’s natural intelligence so we can tap into our own true nature and create what only we can create.

Our desires are what inspire us to journey. Patterns in nature are our guideposts.

There’s a theory of evolution called spiral dynamics that states that growth occurs along a spiral, not a straight line.

A spiral implies movement, but also expansion—it’s not a line drawing over itself, it’s a line expanding incrementally outward as it moves. Over and over again.

The spiral creates itself through repetition. One trip around isn’t a spiral. It needs to repeat the motion—while also expanding.

This pattern helps explain why we as humans repeat patterns—as we move along the spiral, we revisit the same spot, over and over.

BUT—we’re see that spot from different perspectives.

We’re not backsliding, we are seeing the same thing from a different vantage point.

It’s a great lesson in perspective-shifting.

When we can learn how to consciously move along the spiral with curiosity and compassion, examining it can give us incredibly rich information—about ourselves, and about life.

I invite you to play with spirals in your life.

Where are they showing up?

Where are you repeating a pattern, and how could that inform you if you were to look at it from a different perspective?

How are you expanding, even as you repeat motions?

Where are your desires leading you?

If you’re willing to share your insights, I’d love to hear about them! Share in the comments.

Learn from nature’s patterns: ebb + flow.


Learn from nature’s patterns: ebb + flow.

 

One thing I’m clear on is that we don’t need to change the world—we need realign with its natural intelligence.

We are the ones who need to regain our balance.

If we can return to our true nature as creatures who are meant to live in a symbiotic relationship within an ecosystem called Earth, we’ll naturally create healthy, healing communities, practices, systems, environments, and psyches.

Nature’s patterns are guideposts for us—they are feedback for us as we seek balance.

  • The reciprocity of ebb and flow, like our friends the tides, the breath, vibration.

  • The self-nourishing, regenerative torus, like our friends the trees.

  • The spiral of growth and focus, from the snail’s shell to spiral galaxies.

  • The fractal of iteration, like the fern’s fronds.

  • The exploration and delivery system of branches, like our rivers and arteries.

  • The radiance of the radial throwing energy in all directions, from our friends the dandelions to the life-giving sun.

These patterns are repeated, over and over, throughout space and time, from macro to micro.

If these patterns work that well at every scale, for billions of years, I figure they’re good enough for me.

We really don’t need to recreate the wheel, just look around to see what patterns already surround us—and embody them.

One of nature’s most basic patterns is the simple dynamic of ebb and flow.

Growth + rest.

Give + receive.

Spend + replenish.

Day + night.

Yin + yang.

Expansion + contraction.

Summer + winter.

Let’s not fall into the trap of thinking of these as polarities. They are simply different parts of a circuit, a self-healing cycle that balances itself as it moves through the journey. A beautiful balance of reciprocity and symbiosis.

What if we could embody the full pattern ourselves? What if we didn’t shame the contraction, the need for rest, the shadows in the dark as enemies locked in battle with their opposites, but rather saw them as integral parts of an ongoing process?

Not saboteurs, simply agents of balance.

Try it out: play with ebb and flow.

Where is your life in flow?

Where is it in ebb?

Where might you need to spend more time or energy in order to find your own balance?

Honor your cycles and seasons as journeys you get to walk, not fixed destinations—there is simply no such thing in a universe as dynamic as ours.

Rediscover your true nature by reconnecting to nature’s patterns. Tell me how it goes? I’d love to know!