January 15, 1987 was an extraordinary day for Lynnclaire Dennis. She had eagerly anticipated hot-air balloon racing over the Austrian Alps with her fiancee and a friend, what she didn't anticipate was losing consciousness at an altitude of seventeen thousand feet. As she did, she passed through a richly textured near-death experience, seeing an incredibly beautiful, highly dynamic and luminous structure she knew instinctively was profoundly meaningful, a structure she would come to call the Pattern.

Convinced that what she had seen was a crucial healing archetype for the whole planet, Dennis has dedicated her life to understanding the message she was given. It took years for her to bring what she had seen into physical reality; receiving it in pieces through dreams and intuitive exploration. I began with four diamonds, which, when seen in the context of the entire Pattern, are not four diamonds at all, but a window into empty space, she says. Next, the center circle emerged, then, four crescents crowning the diamonds. The Pattern was completed with an unbroken line surrounding the twelve pieces, creating within it seven bridges.

For a while, Dennis asked herself why she had been chosen to experience and birth the Pattern. Now, she says, I just figure, Why not me'? I've always been a people person; whatever Powers that Be probably figured that once I rehabilitated, I'd talk about it! The daughter of a minister, Dennis was raised in the Pacific Northwest with three brothers and a sister, in a family where feelings and emotions were suppressed. Not graduating from college didn't stop her from achieving a successful career in interior design (a talent, she laughs, that has been transformed into truly interior design) and starting a telecommunications firm, Success by Design.

I have a Ph.D. in tenacity and audacity, she quips. My nickname was Duck', because I was calm and unruffled on the outside, but paddling like hell underneath to keep everything together. Eventually, after years of trying to be the perfect daughter, wife, mother and friend, and a failed marriage, Dennis faced what she terms co-dependency issues', enrolling in a live-in clinic to discover and wean herself from self-defeating beliefs and behaviors. Gratitude is now my only attitude, says the attractive, soft-spoken recovery graduate. I really want people to know that when they're in pain, if they can think of just one thing to be grateful for, it will take you past the pain. The past is a key concept for her; Time is not linear, she says; Energy moves in a continuum and if we would consider the past a time passed we would release pain from the body. We get stuck because we stay in the past, instead of realizing that we have passed!

Dennis believes the Pattern has been released through her at this time as a matrix for physical healing as well as for inter-cultural understanding. After years of meditation and seclusion, she has great clarity as an intuitive, and uses her gifts working with healers in all disciplines. In working with the physical body, she says, we don't spend enough time hearing what's going on. Hearing precedes the seeing, if you look at the human ear, it forms one half of a heart.

Dennis is not the only one to have sensed the importance of the Pattern as a healing energy. Dr. Joan Borysenko author and co-founder of the Mind Body Health Clinic at Harvard's Deaconess Hospital, woke one morning with the sure conviction that there was a symbol she needed to learn about; A pattern I knew was going to unite the world. That same morning, Dennis awoke with what she calls a thrumming query ricocheting through my brain, Borey-who? When a friend mentioned Borysenko's name, she knew that was the connection. She called Joan immediately, and the two spoke for hours and later met in Boulder, Colorado to pursue their shared vision. Their friendship is one of many connections Dennis has found within the field of medicine. She has deliberately avoided focusing on the metaphysical community, believing that the established structures of science and medicine offer the credibility needed to build a bridge to unity in the healing professions. Along these lines, she is working with Dr. Elizabeth Targ, whose work in complementary medicine was recently Time Magazine and Dr. Helene Smith, a prominent cancer researcher.

The intriguing hyper-tetrahedral, holonomic structure is also gaining the interest of mathematicians, physicists and psychiatrists; some have expressed the opinion that the Pattern may be a fundamental structure of reality. Others feel it could reveal the mysteries of the relationship between mathematics and the physical world. Dennis herself feels that, what we're looking at is a subatomic particle of carbon.

Research is currently underway by world-renowned mathematician Dr. Louis Kauffman at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who says he was struck by the fact that the curve orbiting the central sphere in the center of the Pattern formed a trefoil knot, something he has studied for thirty-five years. (Some physicists feel the trefoil knot, which is the simplest form of connection, has something to do with proving the Unified Field Theory'.)

Kauffman's efforts to generate a mathematical formula for the Pattern had been frustrated until very recently, when he had a revelation on the same night that Dennis had a dream; the two compared experiences and found they were nearly identical. The Pattern now has a formula, which means that it can be computer generated. This will be incorporated into the Pattern Video which Dennis calls an open-eye meditation which will allow people to enter into the dynamic experience of the Pattern. Viewers will journey to sacred sites around the world and throughout the universe, witnessing the Pattern as a mirror of Nature's own patterns in the animal and plant kingdoms. The Music of Genesis', a mathematical interpretation of the Pattern found in the ancient Hebrew letters which comprise the first verse of Genesis, provides a stirring background. Dennis (who has been told by friends that she sings in her sleep) feels that the Pattern is a living structure which generates tonal frequencies important to the balance of the planet.

She also sees the Pattern as a unifying archetypal symbol, which may be a template from which diverse symbolic forms used by various religious, spiritual and cultural traditions have evolved. The Pattern is of utmost significance as an integrating symbol that drives home an all-important Truth, how we experience and relate to reality depends solely on the position or perspective from which we choose to perceive it.

Through meditation and revelatory dreams, Dennis has received many perspectives of the Pattern. Originally appearing similar to the Star of David, she found that, when turned 90 degrees, the Pattern appeared as a pentagon surrounded by five crescents, the sacred symbols of Islam. I was astounded to see that in one simple turn, hearts forming a six-pointed star became five half circles, she says. What I also saw, she remembers, were three perfectly balanced ellipses that looked like the symbol for the atom. And when she looked at it from above, Dennis says the Pattern of hearts and three circles became the yin-yang sign.

At a seminar in Boulder, Colorado, she showed her six perspectives to Israeli and Palestinian adolescent participants and asked them to comment on what they saw. They talked about seeing rainbows and other symbols from their individual traditions, says Dennis. Then, we talked about their cultural myths and they began to realize their common bonds. After a Christian upbringing, Buddhist initiations and a two-year reflective retreat, Dennis says her own spiritual practice now centers around Sha-bat, a Jewish ritual which translates as Welcoming the Sabbath Bride. It's the welcoming of the Divine Feminine, she says, noting the central sphere of the Pattern is its feminine aspect, the particle from which IT manifests.

An important aspect of Dennis work is bringing awareness into the use of language. Intentional articulation is how we manifest in this dimension, she says. It really bothers me when people say things like, I'm just dying to see that movie', or whatever. I try to gently bring it to their attention and get them to look at how they're using words. She winces at the famous Just Say No program and the Nicole Brown Simpson Foundation's motto, Hands Are Not For Hitting'. This approach teaches from a negative, she admonishes. We should be looking at where words come from and finding the heart of what's really there.

She uses the word, Goddessence frequently. It's a wonderful word, she says. It's God, Goddess and the Essence of Spirit and represents the Trinity. I want to rewrite and re-right language, because it's been what has separated us for so long.

Like so many, Dennis is concerned about the crisis in education, and thinks the Pattern can make a difference. Socrates said that the purpose of education was to kindle the flame, she states. The tragedy of education today is that we extinguish the flame and put children in a box. If we're lucky, an ember remains. I believe the Pattern is rekindling that flame. According to her experience, children readily see that all six perspectives of the Pattern are aspects of the same form, whereas it takes adults some time to be able to grasp it. The Pattern teaches us diversity and understanding, it can help keep the hearts and minds of our children open and discourage judgments and the dogma of separation. Those judgments, along with the tolerance teaching that's prevalent now, are the antithesis of unconditional love and acceptance. They presume a right and wrong, and lead to non-acceptance and, ultimately, war.

Dennis also sees the Pattern as a potential tool for negotiation; she is working with the Gorbachev Foundation and has found doors opening to diplomatic circles in many countries. She feels a powerful bond to China, which she visited in 1996 at the invitation of scientist Steve Bryson. Since her accident, Dennis has had recurring dreams about a circle of twelve elders, one of whom she says is Oriental and in physical embodiment. Within hours of arriving in China, she says, I was introduced to a man I recognized to be this elder...and the recognition was mutual! According to Dennis, he immediately saw the Pattern as an important symbol for the Chinese.

She recently returned from Costa Rica, where she was invited to work with twenty-one community leaders, whom she says are committed to peace; Costa Rica has no standing army, and you see the yin/yang symbol everywhere, along with signs stating that differences are honored and respected, she says. Dennis was so impressed with the ambiance of the country that she is planning to hold retreats there this summer. There will be eight day Playshops, she says. The first, June 15 - 23, is The Call Home; Healing Our Hearts, Healing Our Homes. Participants will address their healing issues and have a lot of fun doing it! Dennis has written a book about her discovery, along with a related book for children, The Pattern should be released sometime this year. Another forthcoming book discusses how the Pattern can be practically applied to interpersonal relationships.

Dennis is intent on her focus of making the truth of love real. Love, she says with conviction, is the one thing in all the world that never perishes. During the various trying periods in my life I knew that, in spite of my pain, I was impressed with the divine mark of Love through the Pattern. She reminds us that Jesus said, My yoke is easy and my burden is light'. We forget, she says, that a yoke is not a harness, but a connection. Looking at the Pattern, we can see that the connection is there for us...it's easy. It really is that simple.