Eliminating Reactivity

This will transform all aspects of your life, and it's truly possible!

I am writing this on Thanksgiving Day, but by the time you receive it that event will have passed. Perhaps you felt some triggers arising at your gathering, at this extra sensitive time in our collective experience. Or maybe you were able to dodge that successfully, if you were at a table filled with especially like-minded people, if you went prepared to keep yourself out of trigger-territory, or if you had a quiet dinner at home. I visited my family in Michigan last week, and even with all the inner work I’ve done around my triggers, and the steps I took to prepare myself for the visit, I did still find myself triggered a couple of times. Not by other people’s opinions or sharing of their views, but by their readiness to abruptly close the conversation as soon as I offered a fact or perspective they found uncomfortable in themselves. It’s just not a 2-way conversation yet, and I admit I am having a hard time accepting that. I long for a day when people are grounded enough that we can all benefit from freely sharing and discussing our ideas about life. We can learn a lot from each other, when we are open.

Another thing I noticed though, is that I am increasingly able to own my triggers, know exactly what is getting triggered and why, and let it pass through me quickly, without shame or blame toward others or myself. This is awesome progress! When I tell people that I have a goal in life of eliminating my reactivity to potentially triggering people, words, situations or events, they tell me that’s impossible. Is it really?? I think all that is required is a willingness to get serious about the inner work of seeing, owning, and transforming our triggered parts. We feel a trigger first in the heart, and if we catch it right there before the mind starts yacking about it, we can make efficient work of letting go and letting the pain move on through before any damage is done.

I just re-read a powerful and helpful book: “the untethered soul,“ by Michael A. Singer. Here is an excerpt from the beginning of the book:

“You will come to see that the mind talks all the time because you gave it a job to do. You use it as a protection mechanism, a form of defense. Ultimately, it makes you feel more secure. As long as that’s what you want, you will be forced to constantly use your mind to buffer yourself from life - instead of living it. This world is unfolding and really has very little to do with you or your thoughts. It was here long before you came, and it will be here long after you leave. In the name of attempting to hold the world together, you’re really just trying to hold yourself together.

True personal growth is about transcending the part of you that is not okay and needs protection. This is done by constantly remembering that you are the one inside that notices the voice talking. That is the way out. The one inside who is aware that you are always talking to yourself about yourself is always silent. It is a doorway to the depths of your being. To be aware that you are watching the voice talk is to stand on the threshold of a fantastic inner journey. If used properly, the same mental voice that has been a source of worry, distraction, and general neurosis can become the launching ground for true spiritual awakening. Come to know the one who watches the voice, and you will come to know one of the great mysteries of creation….

Your inner growth is completely dependent upon the realization that the only way to find peace and contentment is to stop thinking about yourself. You’re ready to grow when you finally realize that the “I” who is always talking inside will never be content. It always has a problem with something……The bottom line is, you’ll never be free of problems until you are free from the part within that has so many problems. When a problem is disturbing you, don’t ask, ‘What should I do about it?’ Ask, ‘What part of me is being disturbed by this?’”

The book goes into great depth about the process of transforming our relationship with our thoughts and emotions, thus transforming our relationship with ourself and the world around us. We can learn to free ourselves from the habitual thoughts, emotions, and energy patterns that limit our consciousness and our joy. And when we embark on this inner journey with sincerity, our triggers lose power and begin to fall away. The less energy we use up by reacting to what’s happening in us or around us, the more energy is available for simply meeting life as it happens, and enjoying the ride wholeheartedly. It truly is akin to the idea of not squandering energy on trying to digest or process inappropriate food and toxins, and noticing how light, free, and naturally joyful our body feels after releasing its unnecessary burdens!

One of my children sent me a note just prior to my arrival at her home, requesting a firm boundary around certain topics - in other words, don’t bring them up at all. I understood where her request was coming from, and I could even feel proud that she was aware of where she is on her journey and what boundaries she still needs. I agreed to honor her request. But I did have a bit of a reaction to it in my mind - truth is, I prefer that everyone feel free to express themselves (respectfully, of course), without having to self-censor or tip-toe around sensitive topics. But that requires that everyone be actively doing their own inner work around their triggers….or else a free-flowing conversation can quickly become miserable and unproductive.

While I can’t make other people want what I want, I can be inspired by my own inner journey, and view every single encounter as fodder for my own growth. One thing I have noticed is that people who place limits on other people about what can or can’t be talked about in their presence, often don’t realize how readily they themselves are saying whatever is on their mind without awareness of how it might land with someone not sharing their perspective. In other words, unless I also request boundaries around what they can talk about in my presence, it becomes an imbalanced equation where only one side feels censored. And I will only very rarely ask for a boundary around what someone is free to share from their thinking in my presence, so I am finding myself in these imbalanced encounters lately. If I simply offer a response to something they have said, and my response doesn’t fit their view, they don’t hesitate to close the conversation quickly.

People have always had a struggle with getting triggered by whatever makes them uncomfortable. But these years of the covid-era, and exceptionally contentious elections, have created what I am experiencing as a seemingly unprecedented level of trigger-ability in people. The way I see it, we are caught in the world’s biggest psy-op, crafted cunningly by people in power behind the scene (way beyond our politicians), to make us believe we are on dangerously opposing sides from anyone with a different perspective. Only if we wake up and SEE this, can we free ourselves to actually think for ourselves, see the divide for what it is - an illusion - remember our true connection to all our fellow humans, and reclaim our natural joy of honest sharing with each other.

A few more words from Michael Singer:

“What would your life be like if it wasn’t run by pain? You would be free. You could walk around this world completely free, just having fun, just being comfortable with whatever happens. You can actually live a life full of interesting experiences and just enjoy these experiences whatever they are. In essence, you can simply live your life and experience what it’s like to be on a planet that is spinning around in the middle of nowhere, until you die. To live at this level of freedom, you must learn not to be afraid of inner pain and disturbance….If you want to be free, simply view inner pain as a temporary shift in your energy flow. There is no reason to fear this experience….You must look inside yourself and determine that from now on pain is not a problem. It is just a thing in the universe. Somebody can say something to you that can cause your heart to react and catch fire, but then it passes. It’s a temporary experience…..Laugh at it, have fun with it, but don’t be afraid of it. It cannot touch you unless you touch it.”

The skill is in releasing pain when it arises in the heart, rather than avoiding, rejecting, or suppressing it. If we are not afraid of the pain, because we know it is just a temporary shift in the energy flow through our body, it becomes much easier to assist the releasing of it. This can all be accomplished in our inner space, even right in the midst of a triggering conversation. The hardest step for me has been to actively take a conscious pause right when I feel the pain first arise, giving myself a chance to make a choice not to react verbally.

Mr. Singer says, “When you walk through a beautiful botanical garden, you feel open and light. You feel love. You see beauty. You don’t judge the shape and placement of every leaf. The leaves are of all sizes and shapes and they face every-which-way. That’s what makes them beautiful. What if you felt that way about people? What if they didn’t all have to dress the same, believe the same, or behave the same? What if they were like the flowers, and however they happened to be seemed beautiful to you?”

I am humbly on this journey of relaxing, releasing, and learning to just enjoy the amazing ride. I find the deepest kind of inspiration in this conscious process toward liberating myself, and I hope that perhaps I have inspired you to pick up the book by Michael A. Singer: “the untethered soul: the journey beyond yourself,” and read it with your whole self.