In preparing for my upcoming SoulCollage Facilitator’s Training, I have been rereading SoulCollage Evolving by Seena Frost.
She includes a long list of archetypes that may be guiding our individual lives—Great Mother, Warrior, Creator, Healer, Compassion, Shaman, King, Dreamer… There are so many unconscious patterns that weave our lives into the Greater Story!
In this list I found one new to me—one that I realize has been a primary guide for me as an Enneagram type One:
Pattern Keeper
This archetype, when in shadow and overdone, forces me into rigid rules about how things should be done—from organizing clothes, to making beds, to where to put the dishes, to how to behave…
But that’s just the shadow side.
When she is allowed to flow freely, she is very creative!
- She intuitively knows how things fit together.
- She sees, honors, and respects how things belong.
- She constantly looks for and apprehends the deeper patterns, the natural harmony of things together, of beings together.
We are getting ready to move to the Pacific Northwest this summer, so this is a perfect time for her to come out to play!
Recently, she’s been helping me to dance these patterns:
- The patterns of how to pack, let go of, and move things so that we can set our Minnesota house up for staging;
- The patterns of understanding in what order things to do things so we are ready for each contractor to come in and finish up the home reno work in time;
- The patterns of the new ways of living we will be moving into, so I can let go of things we won’t need.
If I let her,
She helps me to keep, to see,
and to participate in weaving
the patterns while staying in touch
with the greater pattern of life.
She helps me to understand how this moving pattern we are in exists side-by-side with the pattern of my relationship with myself, with Dave and friends, with my work, with my greater living and wholeness.
If I forget this, other fragmented parts like the Pusher or Perfectionist or Inner Critic run the show, without seeing the wholeness, hyper-focusing only on one pattern right in front of them!
And when they do this, there can be some rough-going… (Just ask Dave! 😊)
I realized the other day, that one way to keep the pattern and stay with the wholeness of the full tapestry Pattern Keeper weaves is to keep connected to the natural, rhythmic pattern of my heart.
According to HeartMath, the heart is the pattern keeper for the whole body.
The body and brain rely on the beating of the heart. In fact, the heart will keep beating with no input from the brain at all!
When we experience uplifting emotions such as appreciation, joy, care, and love, the heart rhythm pattern becomes highly ordered, looking like a smooth, harmonious wave, a coherent heart rhythm pattern.
It sounds to me like this is the rhythm of emotions belonging together…
So, if I stay connected in love, gratitude, and appreciation, instead of pushing, criticizing, and perfecting, my heart prepares the soil for Pattern Keeper to work through me, synchronizing the autonomic nervous system and the body’s systems for greatest harmony and functioning. YAY!
This is also the secret of Feminine Flow!
If we stay with our heart, with our relatedness, with our loving connections to ourselves, our friends, and our family, everything works better, and the patterns we follow and create reflect this awareness of the whole.
If I follow the PIG (Perfectionist-Pusher-Inner Critic Gang), I cut off from my heart, moving into a wounded Masculine, head-centered, rigid or idealized structure instead. A far cry from a living, breathing, beating, weaving pattern.
Staying with Pattern Keeper’s heart-relatedness can also open me up to the “things” I am handling—sorting, organizing, packing—as not just “things,” but forms of existence in their own right, in different physical expressions.
What I usually think of as “things” or non-sentient objects, are also forms of being. While I usually take them for granted as simply useful items for housekeeping, life-management, auto-repair, etc., they are also made of the stuff of the universe.
And as I sort, pack, or find a new place for each of these items, I understand that each has its own need to belong to the greater pattern.
When each has its own place of belonging, its own home, it’s not out of place. It is part of the greater pattern of home, and, right now, of moving.
So, as I continue this intense process of sorting and moving,
may I stay connected to Pattern Keeper—
within my beating heart, within my creative hands, within my kind and loving eyes, within all my relationships,
within the whole universe.
How is Pattern Keeper manifesting in your life?
Nourishing Wholeness 
FYI, Katy, the instant I glimpsed the email and your new SoulCollage archetype “Pattern-Keeper”, my mind flew back to a 1955 narrative poem by Amy Lowell … its theme/s and its pattern seem (to me) linkable to the new figure in your Inner Family. So I will re:acquaint myself with the womanly voice of the poem before going on to explore this page re Letting Pattern Keeper Guide and shall return to say more if my notion of ‘synchronicity’ at work here pans out! There has to be a pattern at work in my flashing back to a poem not thought of in many years, methinks …
The poem by Amy Lowell, “Patterns”:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42987/patterns
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wow, that’s quite a poem! certainly about a woman caught in rigid, Masculine patterns, yearning for her Feminine flow. phew! i’v been there… thank you for this waving of patterns, Kit! ❤
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Yes, she feels fully entrapped by social expectations and on that level IS so. Interestingly, another synchronicity, I just began reading a novel recommended as a ‘historical mystery’: “The Concubine’s Tattoo” set in medieval Japan. The hero’s bride is caught just like the agonized woman in the poem, yet she is doing all she can to resist her personal journey’s being prevented by her culture. We know that too women today are punished, even killed, for taking such a risk. And we know that some, ‘then and now’ do find ways to be free to be themselves, often by a circuitous route.
I am wondering what those still stifled by such external patterns could possibly do spiritually to ‘feel’ free and to use their unacknowledged skills for good — is there a way to create internal patterns toward a sense of freedom? Emily Dickinson and Dame Julien of Norwich pop into mind as examples, as well as Malala Yousafzai and more. So many are as doomed as the intelligent wife in that famous/horrifying story, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, yet a few do find the courage and confidence to break free internally, thank goodnes, including many we do not hear about. Anyhow, Katy, thanks so much for this — onwards to contemplating my Inner Pattern-Seeker’s role. She may already be here awaiting recognition among the Tribe Within who’ve arisen to consciousness to guide me over the past forty years, or she may be a new presence: exciting, that! Warm hugs to you for this stimulating bouquet of insights.
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LOVE this exploration, Kit!! and i think you found the fragrant flower–the deepest freedom work we can do is within.
regardless of our outer trapping patterns, we can work to bring Conscious Awareness, Compassion, and Curiosity to our inner world. this opens us to be more present. the more present, the more free, and the more clarity and heart we can bring to whatever action is asked of us.
would love to hear what you discover about Pattern-Keeper or Pattern-Seeker, as you wrote above! 🙂
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