We all live our lives to patterns in one way or another. Let me explain the current patterns we try and live our lives to:

We are all born entering the world never having heard the language we now speak, without the opinions we now hold and without the experiences we have had so far in this life. From that moment of birth we are conditioned to think and act in certain ways. Most of the conditioning happens without awareness. It is about behaviours, words and deeds, passed on from generation to generation. Let me give you some examples of what I mean:

The first thing that seems to be taught to babies is the idea of judgement, of good and bad, e.g. a baby smiling and gurgling is praised and told they are good, however crying in the middle of the night is not. A baby eating messily is invariably told that it is bad. A big smile is deemed to be good. A pungent nappy and the child is told that they are smelly and nasty.

Children are continually learning as they grow. They are taught about the world around them, social skills and the value of judgement, what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong. As the child grows it persistently asks questions Why this? Why that? What does this do? after a while the exasperated parent tells the child to shut up. The child interprets this instruction to mean they are being bad. Another example is when the child is trying to be helpful or doing something useful and is finding it a bit of a struggle, they are then pushed to one side with words like "get out of my way." or "I haven't got time for you to finish that, let me do it." All these messages are interpreted by the child as an indication of their badness.

Following on from the good and bad, children are quickly educated in the scarcity and value of material resources e.g. A request for an object is usually met with "..can't afford it" "...costs money and I haven't got any" "..they don't grow on trees you know."

In summary, the child grows up with an unconscious pattern of what they are like: too slow, incapable, not worth loving, clueless, not good enough, unworthy, bad, fearful, etc. This is what they carry with them as they grow up. By the age of 4 or 5 children have all their own core beliefs. They are unlikely to think of themselves as a perfect example of a human being.