Wisdom is an intelligent understanding of Creation, particularly in our human experience. It’s an insight into the unfolding design of life. It is the knowledge that lets us be creative participants in our own life story.

So, what makes us wise?

There are two primal words that have found their way into English—mater and pater. Through German, they became mother and father. Through Greek and Latin, they became such words as maternal and paternal.

The word matrix refers to the substance in which something else takes form. It comes from the mater, and its original meaning was womb.

The word pattern originates from the word pater, implying that the design of things comes from the father, or the father principle. Of course, in a literal sense, in human beings and other dioecious animals (species with distinct male and female organisms), only half the DNA of the offspring is from the father.

Mother and father are very powerful realities for us as human beings. And so, they are very powerful symbols for essential dynamics of the human experience—so powerful that they have become embedded in our everyday language.

To see, know and understand the unfolding pattern of life is to be wise. It is said that humility is the beginning of wisdom. A humble person sees reality as it is, not how they want it to be, or how they are afraid it might be. But what is it that a humble person sees?

It is interesting that the English language seems to imply that the unfoldment of life comes from the pater, from the father principle. We use the word pattern, as if the father principle is going to impose a pattern on the mother principle, the matter. But that’s not actually how it works. There is not only the pattern coming from the father but there is the matrix from the mother. And how does all that work together?

Cymatics is the study of the effects of vibration, particularly sound, on physical substance. Cymatics experiments have introduced various sound frequencies into various substances—water, metal filings, sand, etc. What you see in a given experiment is that as the frequency changes, the pattern that shows itself in the substance changes, almost magically. So, the pattern comes from the activating principle, the pater. But wait!

If you change the substance into which you introduce the sound, the same frequency can produce a different result. So, the emerging pattern is dependent not only on the pater or the mater. It emerges out of the union of them both.

Cymatics is telling us something about wisdom and a human life. So often, a person thinks that they know the pattern that should shape their world. In a religious context, perhaps they even think that the pattern in their mind is God’s will. However they conceive of what they have planned for their world, they might not be paying attention to the emerging pattern in the substance. And they may not be noticing the quality of their vibration that is activating the substance.

And what is the substance? In our human world, the first ring of substance is the substance of consciousness. Spiritual vibration resonates in our thinking and feeling, creating patterns of thought and emotion. Those thoughts and emotions create changes in our physiology.

Collectively, spiritual vibration shifts culture.

And so it is in our lives every day in everything we do. We have the opportunity to bring the vibration of the Creator into the substance of our lives. We are called upon to be sensitive to what that vibration is that is uniquely true for this time in the unfolding cycles of Creation. And then we are called upon to bring it into the substance of our lives, caringly and sensitively.

In the process, there has to be a sensitivity to the substance and how the vibration we are bringing is entering the substance. Then there has to be the wisdom of noticing what’s happening in the substance. And we are not just dealing with metal filings here. We’re dealing with human culture and human consciousness as well as all the physical things of the world in which we live. Wisdom is the sense of the fitness of things as we bring vibration into the substance now. Wisdom is being aware of what the substance is doing, and then caring for the emerging pattern in the substance. Wisdom is noticing the pattern that is emerging in the matrix.

We are speeding through the universe on starship Earth and there are constantly changing vibrational factors at play. Who is noticing? We could be trying to re-create the pattern of yesterday; we could be believing that we know the pattern for tomorrow, and now we’re trying to impose that pattern on the substance—and the substance says no. The people around us probably say no. Here is the deeply thoughtful part: Are we noticing what’s happening? Do we understand what’s unfolding and have a growing sense of our part in it, and the desire to let it go where it needs to go?

To become wise, we have to admit that, for us as human beings, truly thinking can be a scary matter. It seems so much easier to bring up a thought that has already been thought, by yourself or somebody else, and just adopt that thought. Perhaps we call it a belief. But having a belief or thinking a pre-thunk thought doesn’t allow us to be wise. We have to think to be wise. Our mind allows us to participate in the process of Creation if we let it. That’s an amazing thing. If you open up your mind, you start thinking thoughts that are telling you something about the part you are playing in Creation. It brings to you an awareness of what’s happening in the mater. But you have to be open to think the thought to see it.

These words are from a teaching of Jesus that I first encountered when I came to Sunrise Ranch in 1975. They have always been deeply meaningful to me.

I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep….

I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.

As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.

And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.

(John 10:11, 14-16)

 The part that moves me so deeply is this: They shall hear my voice. When we, as human beings, tune in to the vertical connection and we allow the reality of the Pater to descend into us and express truly through us, love radiates in the Mater. The substance of the field recognizes the activating vibration of the Divine. They shall hear my voice.

Isn’t that your experience? That when you bring true vibration into your field, it resonates in that field, initially in your own consciousness? And then in the substance of consciousness of the people near you?

And when we come in the name of the pattern that we want to impose upon our field, we get all kinds of No, no, no, no, no. We get a big No because the substance rejects the imposition of what doesn’t belong in the field.

That doesn’t account for all the tendencies of human culture and all the ignorant things that people do. But I’m not really talking about that. I’m talking about the substance itself. The substance itself wants to respond to the voice of the good shepherd. It’s tuned in to that. And when a human being speaks that vibration into the substance itself, it wants to respond. It wants to be activated by that vibration.

This is true in an individual human experience. When we ourselves bring to focus the vibration of the Most High in us, everything in us responds and loves that, gathers around it and resonates with it. And then, if we stay with it, that vibration comes more and more deeply into the substance, and more and more the substance of heart and mind and body says Yes, yes, yes. The mater reverberates with it.

At a collective level, the same thing happens when someone brings that vibration. But it has to be brought clearly, and it can’t be brought clearly if we are imposing our pattern on others.

These words from the Palm Sunday story speak of these things. Jesus was coming on a donkey into Jerusalem, and throngs of people waved palm fronds to honor him. In reality, it was a very dangerous time for him because he was becoming publicly exposed and raising the awareness of the authorities.

Some of the clergy of the day told Jesus to instruct the crowds to stop lauding him in the way they were. This was his response:

I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.

(Luke 19:40)

It’s about the substance. Where the true vibration of Love is present, the substance can’t help but respond. And what was he to do—try to shut it off?

He couldn’t stop being that vibration. That was who he was. So, he wasn’t going to stop being that vibration and he had no desire to turn off the natural response that was present in his world, even though there were results that were likely from what transpired. Ultimately, the result for him was his victory.

Here we are in our world, with the same principles at work and the same opportunity.

Let us be wise. Let the true Pater enter the Mater. Let Creation unfold beautifully in our world because we are here.