Conditioned Patterns
Can the ego/habit become stronger as one grows more conscious?
People will often ask if they are “getting worse”, because they can still detect dysfunctional or reactive patterns within themselves. It’s not as if those patterns will simply disappear as awareness grows; you’ll just be more aware of them.
Ultimately as you become more aware of reactive patterns, you can see them whereas before you were them. There’s a huge difference between seeing a pattern inside yourself and being the pattern—or being used by it, merging with it, or acting it out totally.
Conditioned patterns—or egoic/habitual behaviors, one could say—don’t go away immediately as you become present. They have their momentum—especially patterns associated with emotional residues we call “pain-body.” They may act out for quite a while, even as presence is arising.
Usually the sequence is that after a person experiences anger—or any unconscious reaction related to the emotional body or to certain mind patterns—awareness comes in later, after the energy of the pain-body attack has subsided.
Fortunately, the time gap between the actual event and the return of awareness tends to get shorter as you become more present—and eventually it will arise immediately after it’s happened, or even while the energy is still there but no longer at its highest—at that point you’re already aware of what’s happening. And then the great step forward is when in the middle of it you become aware.
In the middle of it, there’s already an awareness while it’s still happening. The awareness is there just at the moment the anger, for example, comes in; and just before it externalizes itself and expresses itself. When the impulse comes to be angry, the awareness is there; and at that moment then, you will have a choice in how to express it—not to keep it down—but to take one conscious breath, or walk somewhere, or simply be there as the presence and let it pass through you.
Then after that, you may find the impulse is not as strong as before and you notice it just as it comes in—and immediately you’re there as the presence. And the impulse meets the light of presence and it melts. So be patient with yourself!
So, whenever you discover a dysfunctional, unconscious pattern in yourself, it doesn’t mean you’ve failed; it means you’re there. It’s always a great thing to see it in yourself.
