When the Same Thing Happens Again
Perception, repetition and the moment choice becomes possible
A couple of weeks ago, walking uphill in the January rain to drop my daughter off at nursery, I suddenly saw something with total clarity: the repeating problem we keep coming up against is happening inside our own minds.
The problem is definitely happening, I’m not denying that. But it’s not out there. It’s happening in here.
Let me illustrate this by way of an example.
I grew up with a successful father, a public health doctor of international renown. When I was a child, he travelled often, doing important things all around the globe. He’s an intelligent and humane man, living a life of public service and driven to make a difference.
I think, underneath it, I always longed for him to see me. Specifically—I wanted him to see that I also had a voice. That I had a sharp mind. That I had things to do in the world. I guess there was an experience of coming second, in a man’s world, and to a primary focus that carried such richness and value.
And then here we are in the present moment. My husband is a consultant paediatric anaesthetist at a leading trauma hospital in the NHS. His job is very busy, and very important. He saves children’s lives. And that’s not hyperbole. That’s the nuts and bolts of his role.
So on that grey January morning, when our childcare fell through for the afternoon, and I had meeting I really needed to show up for, the repeat began: I come second. My husband gets to go to work and do his job, and I have to pick up the pieces. I’m stuck. I’m the one who has to carry everything, invisibly, alone.
Now my question is—where is that experience actually happening? Philosophers and thinkers have been contemplating this for centuries, and again and again the answer is unsettlingly simple: experience is not located where we think it is.
I’m not gaslighting myself, because yes, there’s a childcare situation. And yes our culture continues to fail working mothers in a multitude of ways.
But there is no father here who isn’t seeing me.
And there is no job that comes first.
There is just what needs my attention.
In the here and now of our family agreements, my husband is on a long shift and won’t be back until 9pm. And I have an important meeting to be at between 4 and 6pm. That’s it.
And because I could see the resentment and drama that was about to play out once more, I got a choice. I got a choice to work through this without any of the usual pain. And it is a choice that is available to us all if we can accept that we can’t see what we can’t see (the context from which we are coming) until we can. And then we can’t unsee it, which means we really are choosing, nor not choosing, to be responsible.
The idea that we have unlimited access to our own minds is an illusion. We know far less about what is going on in our heads than we think.
— Daniel Kahneman
I could have gone full throttle victim—Why is this happening? Why is it always on me? This is too stressful. I could have. I’ve done it many times before.
But then I saw: there’s no father. There’s no coming second. I have always been enough, and I have plenty of resources. Resources the child I once was did not have, but does now.
And when that bit switches on, when that part of me is present, I feel powerful in my ordinary humanity. Powerful simply meaning: I have the capacity to lead my life, rather than be led by the story my mind is telling me; I am fully able to attend to what is unfolding and redirect the flow so that something different to the repeat can happen.
And from that place (a new way of being) new options and new possibilities always appear (a new way of doing)—because there’s no tightness. I found a way through with lightness and ease, while taking full responsibility. There’s so little noise going on that life seems to sort itself out. I found the childcare I needed because I used my voice to ask for help, and if nothing had worked out, I would have simply missed the commitment I had hoped to attend. This example is a gentle one, but let’s remember the high stakes we’re really talking about: the life or death of a relationship, your mental health, systemic oppression, global conflict, our shared existence on this planet.
The only reason I can take up this particular position, and have this kind of relationship to the past that lives inside me, is because of my training, and my continued practice, as a BodyMind Maturation Coach. That’s the piece that gives me access to a different relationship with my own mind, and an awareness of context. To recognise that the repeating struggle you are experiencing is happening on the inside, given by the past. There is no such thing as a detached observer: experience is already shaped, embodied, and historical.
Perception is not a matter of a pure act of consciousness. It always already bears within it a sedimented history.
— Maurice Merleau-Ponty
It is so convincing that it’s out there, but it’s not. It never was, because it has already happened. And you can spend a lifetime acting as if it were still real—but notice the amount of energy that burns, notice the headspace, notice the levels of projection that this continuously places into your relationships.
There’s a different way. Maybe you can sense the spaciousness and possibility behind my words. And it’s definitely not about perfection, because I am just as human as you are, and I will be in this enquiry for the rest of my life. But if I can stay awake in this particular way, what I experience is that I release the past, something dies, and then I get to live. This isn’t about getting rid of these patterns. It’s about mourning the ache of the past and seeing the confusion: these patterns are not who you are, they are how you learnt to survive.
Which is where the creativity kicks in, the liberation arrives and genuine possibility opens up. Can you feel it? I carry it in my body. It’s not a theory or a nice idea. It’s not even a recommendation. It’s just what’s here.
If you want to go a little deeper, the questions you can ask yourself are these:
Who am I being? What’s that low-level vibration that’s always there for you, lurking quietly somewhere in the way that you speak to yourself, like ‘It’s all on me’, ‘I can never get it right’, ‘it’s not safe for me to thrive’ or even ‘I’m special’, ‘I know better’.
Where is that being coming from? Chances are you’ll catch an immediate link to childhood, to the place and time where that belief about yourself set in. And sometimes we can’t even remember a time when we didn’t feel like that, almost as if it’s been here since the very beginning.
What actions does that way of being give me to take? Look at the repeating patterns in your life and see the correlation—one foot in and one foot out, depression, withdrawal, shame, drama, disconnection.
The past is organising perception in the present, and we are mistaking that organisation for reality. In the words of Ruth Ozeki, “We live in moments. The rest is memory.”
Who we are being creates the world we get, until we can see it. And then, we get new choices. Then we have the possibility of being in relationship to our conditioning and our wounds, rather than being run them. The old repeating path is survival, the new path is flow, and context-aware — where that ‘someone’ we are so attached to gets to complete the repeat, and a new kind of ‘no-one’ shows up in the present moment, without any fixed idea about what’s going to happen next.
The moment we accept that we don’t know, we are free.
— Rick Rubin
I live and breathe this work, and it’s woven through my practice. There is a particular space where it comes fully alive, held over time and in relationship, and that is my Earth Matrix group (online). I have two places open to begin in April. If something in this piece speaks to you and you’re curious to know more, please reach out.
My purpose is not to promote a path or a way, but to stir within you the excitement and uniqueness of your own evolutionary process. May you discover your own river and may your life become a meaningful voyage.
— Hal and Sidra Stone