Triggers - Flashes of Emotion or Opportunities for Insight?

Human interactions can sometimes be so difficult.  We sometimes beat ourselves up after certain interactions thinking, “Why didn’t I say this or say that or why did I say anything at all!”  You need to understand something about us humans.  Environmental psychology and, well, the stuff we just come in here with leaves us with trigger points.  These are those little internal flash points we people do or say that one thing or many things in just that special way that pushes our buttons.  It is so easy to look back in hindsight when calm and un-triggered and see clearly what someone said or did wasn’t about us at all.

But wow those triggers, huh?!  If you realize that the thing that gets your goat is a trigger and you learn to own your triggers, the impact starts to lessen a bit.  Sometimes it is good enough to get to the point where you recognize you have been triggered and then in those moments following, just breathe forgiving yourself for being triggered.  It is okay to be triggered, its okay to find you’ve got goats for someone to get.  What’s not okay is living in denial and blaming everyone else for your triggers.  Here is a very harsh reality, triggers are not the fault of the person pushing your buttons.  There, I said it.  It’s the truth and I know all too well how much it hurts.  There is a part of us that becomes so angry that we’ve been triggered at all and we just want to blame someone, something…anything for the terrible toxic energy that seems to be the instant result.  But, that only damages our relationships and makes it harder for us to establish new ones.

So, what do we do with these triggers?  How do we make them go away?  More harsh news, I don’t know that everyone can make them go away.  Sometimes I think the best we can hope for is understanding and maybe even some compassion.  If someone makes a joke at your expense trying to aggrandize themselves while terribly minimizing you or your efforts and you have a trigger point around this, terrible things can begin to happen in your mind in a split second.  If you do not learn to recognize this anger, or this toxic emotion being generated by you seemingly as a result of someone else’s words or actions, this trigger point can really be damaging for you.  But, if over time you can learn to see the trend of the types of things that trigger you and you begin to understand this is about fear that you hold and that the interaction truly only serves to give you a chance to understand the trigger point is there, you will have made great strides towards recovery. 

There are wounds we all carry and you can spend a life time trying to figure out why something is there and maybe some of us should – maybe through therapy.  But, sometimes we just have to understand, accept ourselves, wounds – trigger points – and all and just learn to take a breath, disengage and get peaceful again.  Whether someone meant to trigger you or not isn’t really the point at all.  The point is you recognizing you have a trigger point.  Living with them isn’t so hard if you can understand that they exist and you don’t have to beat yourself or others up because you became triggered.  You really don’t. 

This is a whole new way of living with love and understanding towards yourself first and then others in a more healthy way.  Revenge is a message.  Anger is a message.  Sadness is a message.  What is that message?  Simply put, it is that there is a wound.  No matter how it got there, there is a wound and wounds need care and healing time not thrashing, bashing, avenging and threatening yourself or  others.  In a calm and cooler mind, you can acknowledge that you’ve been triggered, get some space for yourself to recover from the moment and then just be with the trigger.  Looking deeply and fearlessly within, you can do this.  It doesn’t mean you did something wrong or that something is wrong with you.  We all have our triggers and their levels of severity vary.  But, the realization of our own body’s messaging system through emotion and energy can truly be your saving grace.  We don’t need to internalize our anger.  We just need to understand that its there for whatever reason and give it space in non-action (other than awareness) for the intensity of a moment to shift.  That is damn hard!  But there are positive actions you can take.  If there are people who continually trigger you, do your best to spend less time with them – get some counseling to help you deal with your own emotions about what these people do that triggers you or even go the no contact route if need be.  Every person deserves the right to set boundaries to protect themselves  but we must always remember to also protect ourselves from our own negative thoughts.

There are so many tools available that can help us learn to be with emotion rather than running from, stuffing, projecting or transferring our emotion onto others psychologically.  Some of this stuff happens so quickly we don’t even know its happening consciously.  But we can learn to become consciously aware by listening to our emotion, knowing emotion isn’t always fact but it is a message.  Clearly and rationally and also, very safely exploring is paramount. 

We’ve all got our triggers and flashpoints and we may not ever be able to stop them.  But we can learn different behavior that better supports us while we learn to accept ourselves wounds and all.  No matter what you’ve been through, you are worth the effort of understanding, awareness, breathing and peace.  But in the end, it’s all about what you want to do and how you choose to live your life.  If you wish to live it blindly being triggered, that’s okay.  If you want to live it with more peace, serenity and support, you may have to learn better coping strategies for those times you become triggered.  We sometimes think this stuff is the end of the world in a heated moment but it doesn’t have to be.

It just doesn’t have to be horrible or result in terrible things said or done in a moment of emotion.  We can learn if we want to, we can become more aware if we want to.  I guess we just have to get to the point that we can’t live with our own toxic emotion.  These are great opportunities to learn from.  We just have to be willing to do the learning.  Just some food for thought today.  Blessings of great awareness, love, healing and understanding to you all.

 

© 2017, Jaie Hart (photo/words)

Malware in the Conscious Operating System

We’ve all got some form of what I like to call “malware in the conscious operating system.”  Malware as I use the term in this context equates to belief, which is like a computer virus or adware that infects a computer system and renders it less than optimal and only partially functioning in many ways.  Some of our beliefs are very much like a virus as they are formed and seep into our conscious operating systems unconsciously.  To understand this completely, we really need to look at these terms in a little more detail so we can clearly understand what is plainly right in front of us in terms of our daily existence.  Until it’s called out, we are unaware of the existence of a thing.  Without said awareness, the “malware” so-to-speak, lives on unfettered by understanding creating some interesting challenges for a soul to deal with.  That isn’t bad or wrong, I’ll say.  Keep in mind this is just a framework for understanding.

When we look at belief alone, we can begin to understand precisely what it means.  In fact, dictionary.com defines it as:

noun

1.     something believed; an opinion or conviction:  a belief that the earth is flat.

2.     confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof: a statement unworthy of belief.

3.     confidence; faith; trust: a child's belief in his parents.

4.     a religious tenet or tenets; religious creed or faith: the Christian belief.

A belief in a thing does not make it real or a fact. A very quick and simple example of this fact is our common belief for the sake of convenience that the sun rises and sets each day when in fact, it is the Earth that is turning.  We might even think the world turns slowly when in fact the truth is that the Earth spins on its axis at the speed near the equator at approximately 1,070 miles per hour according to starryskies.com.  So, we can believe the sun rises and sets all we want to or that the Earth turns slowly but we can see from the facts, that these things are not true.  The beliefs are not real. We have come to believe the sun rises at sets or that the Earth turns slowly from things that we have read or been told by others who held these beliefs.

There is another term I have often used, “Environmental Psychology.”  This term references the things, situations and influence of the outside world upon a person that leads to the forming of belief about one’s self, one’s life or life in general that has more of a psychological nature.  Such things might include beliefs that we are worthy or unworthy, gifted or cursed, lucky or unlucky, loveable or unlovable and the list goes on.  Again, our environmental psychology has shaped our beliefs about ourselves, other people and the world.  But if our beliefs are not true and we’ve built the entirety of our lives upon a false premise in the form of belief or holding unconsciously to a belief created by environmental psychology, how might that affect our experience of life?

So above we have defined how our beliefs are formed.  Let us get into the now and sit very comfortably with our new understanding for just a moment.  How might this new information assist us in how we live our lives right here and right now?  Well, it can help us in a great many of ways but we must first steer clear of any form of blame for the series of beliefs that we hold that limit us in any way.  We’re going to start living in the now positively because that puts our power right where it belongs, in our own hands.  So, let us be accountable for our beliefs because whether or not they were given to us or we formed them in response to environmental psychology, it is we who decide to continue to hold the belief or not.  Right?  Give that some thought.  No one is holding a gun to your head forcing you to hold that thought from your childhood where you overheard Aunt Martha or Uncle Harry say to each other you were a "this kind of child" or a  "that kind of child" that left you feeling either bad or good.  Belief is not real.  It is untested hypothesis. 

Moving right along, we can unleash an anti-virus program for the Malware running in the background of our Human Consciousness Operating System in the form of belief given us by environmental psychology.  But to do this, you must realize it will take effort, commitment, courage, tenacity and a little bit of reflection and critical analysis.  You have to find the malware first before you can remove it.  If you do not know it is there, you will never find its source and never be able to remove it successfully and will always resort to behaving as if old beliefs are facts.  So, the simple way to find them is to look for them.   

An easy way to spot them is to think about something that you really want right now in this moment.  Go ahead, think about that for a moment.  Have you got something in mind?  Good.  Hold that thought.  Now, think about what in your mind prevents you from having what you want?  Jot down all the reasons or rationales that have you believing that you cannot or do not have what you want.  Continue until you have every possible reason whether real or not real, vetted and noted.  Don't judge what you think, just write it down.  Now, take a look at your list.  I am willing to bet that there will be at least one if not many more life limiting beliefs representing themes of malware that you’ve lived with your entire life staring right back at you hidden quite conveniently in simple thoughts. 

Choose one of those thoughts on your list that you’d like to investigate further.  Take that thought and ask yourself is the thought you chose real?  Is the belief behind it real?  Can you prove that it is real?  How can you prove it is real without using an assumption and only dealing with independently verifiable facts that stand up to repeated testing with the same outcome?  By critical thinking I mentioned above, I did not mean to think of yourself critically.  I meant to start critically analyzing your beliefs with the rigor of a scientific researcher.  Is that thought or belief true?  How do you know?  If you run across a belief on your list that cannot be independently verified as definitive truth or fact, I invite you to introduce yourself to your first piece of malware.  Now, if you’d like to eradicate the malware you have to be willing to let go of the belief no matter what that means.  Sometimes letting go of a belief can be simple and at other times it can be very difficult.  Letting go of the idea of Santa Clause was not easy at first as a child now was it?  Letting go of the idea of monsters under the bed also wasn’t easy but getting to the truth and dealing with reality is how we can set ourselves free from malware.

You see, malware is a prison we commit ourselves to for many very good reasons but mostly due to lack of conscious understanding.  You may have full understanding at the spiritual level and any malware you hold may be the very premise from which your greatest life lessons are learned.  However, if you find at some point that your beliefs limit you in ways that you no longer desire, you can relinquish the beliefs that don’t bear out under the scrutiny of testing and in so doing you reveal to yourself the hiding place of the key that unlocks the door to your self-made prison cell.

Do you remember I said earlier there was no right way or wrong way to learn life lessons?  In this wonderful piece of wisdom from the Kybalion written by the Three Initiates early on in the last century, the following phrase comes:   "Every Cause has its Effect; every Effect has its Cause; everything happens according to Law; Chance is but a name for Law not recognized; there are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes the Law."--The Kybalion.  There is cause and there is effect.  Your beliefs create the path from which you learn about your life.  If you find your lesson plan enjoyable, proceed without change.  If you find it isn’t and you seek greater understanding, then look to your malware, beliefs and environmental psychology.  The emerging patterns and themes will be your guide and will help you to understand you.  It’s one tiny part of the reason you are here.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little bit of food for thought.  If you'd like to learn more about this topic and how the concepts of it can help you remove the obsticles in your life that prevent your growth, let me know.  I've got a course for you that can help you discover more about yourself called Exploring the Conscious Self. With the self-study guide book and work-book, you'll be well on your way to discovering a good many things about you that you may never have given thought to.  If you're interested in more details, please contact me at jaiehart@gmail.com.  Blessings!

 

© 2015 Jaie Hart (photo/words)

The Toxicity of Gossip: A Heavy and Dark Path From Which to Learn

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We don’t think about it very much but perhaps we should.  Engaging in or propagating gossip is toxic for both the bearer of it and the receiver.  I hear gossip constantly and while I understand it deeply at a psychological level, I have to tell you that there is something within me that sinks and cringes whenever I hear it.  Now, having said that, I think there is a difference between momentarily venting when you’ve missed those Nano seconds to seek true understanding and have taken something into self and engaging in something wholly unhealthy due to pure psychology.  The Oz Principle, by Roger Conners talks about giving yourselves a moment to vent below the line, realize you are just venting and then bring yourself back above the line.  With Senn-Delaney (the culture shaping firm) concepts, which I also love, they acknowledge that as humans we react at a certain level in the negative when under stress but can bring ourselves back up to a level of curious which is neutral.

I wish more of the populace had exposure to these principles and guides so they would better understand why we operate the way we do.  I have to admit that I love these two specific sources of understanding that I’ve mentioned.  I also have to say that we can go deeper with our understanding by just cutting straight to the heart of a few things about life:

1.     No matter what we go through, we are going to experience something only from our ego’s very limited perspective.  That limited perspective is formed by our environmental psychology and its resulting conditioning.

2.     The ego seeks to protect itself first and foremost so will deny it’s part in any wrong doing, make assumptions and seek revenge if it feels in any way threatened by its conditioning even if passive-aggressively.

3.     The level to which you are affected by or engage in any of these things depends upon your own personal growth and development.  Everyone operates at a different level, please understand.

4.     We seek these experiences on purpose to learn from and hopefully some day, transcend.

At some point when we tire of the toxic engagement and stop doing the same things we’ve always done just to receive the same result, we may seek understanding instead.  Once you understand that your perspectives and assumptions are not truth, you’ve just lost half of anything there is to gossip about or become ensnared with.  When you reach for understanding and take the next step, setting boundaries for your own level of engagement, you realize you neither have to engage in the toxicity of gossip or take it in to you (as Mooji might say) when someone brings it to you.

Please understand, that gossip, assumption from skewed perception, victimizing thoughts and revenge all come from a wounded space of the armor that is our own egos as well as the ego's conditioning.  Just understand that and realize you don’t have to do anything about it.  The ego judges its safety and security by the level at which everyone else is perceived to reside within.  The ego does not, however, perceive the truth.  Thankfully within you there is the alternate experiencer who bears witness to all you see, hear, feel and engage in and seems quite separate, the observer (as Eckart Tolle and many other luminaries write about).  From that watcher or observer, if you will, stems true feeling once you learn to tune in and listen to it.  Your own inner voice is no voice at all…but is rather a very wonderful inner guide in the form of feelings (sometimes physical ones if need be) that exists as part of your being.

The next time you engage in gossip or receive it, I want you to pay very close attention to your solar plexus area or your heart area…does it feel a bit tight?  Does it feel like it’s sinking?  Does it feel like there is something not quite right like fear, dread, anxiety, or even a faster heart beat? Provided you do not suffer some form of sociopathic tendencies, you’ll notice that feeling and that feeling is a message.  That message is trying to tell you something – that something is either to stop blaming, victimizing, comparing, contrasting or trying to make yourself better at the expense of someone else you have most likely inaccurately perceived, or you are sensing what someone else is bringing you is just truly toxic and no good for you.

I dislike gossip.  I do not like how it feels.  I am a human being also and if I miss that Nano second to grab understanding instead of the ego’s perception, I’m going to need to vent my emotion just like the next person.  The only difference is that I find even as I begin to speak, my own body starts to tell me I’m wrong.  It starts to tell me through feeling that I’m not seeing the whole picture and so what I have judged may be inaccurate and that I may be missing an opportunity to get calm and centered and seek truth through real understanding rather than assuming my own assumptions are facts.  What I begin to understand is that my emotion is based on an illusion and so, may not be necessary.  That emotion must be understood better before acted upon.  Emotion based on assumption cannot be fact until validated.  Assumption, if left unchecked forms belief. Belief engages egoic emotion.  Before long this process leaves you with a mess of anxiety, anger and hurt feelings.  Understanding that belief is untested hypothesis, assumption is only deduction from information without the facts validated and that you can free yourself from generating or taking in toxicity is one of the key modes of self-actualization.  When we face these egoic emotions, the better cause of valor is to stop all action and go for a walk, breathe in and breathe out – repeat until the egoic emotion stops and we recenter ourselves in normal reality whatever that is for each of us.  Then, with a calm and cool head, go validate the facts and respond accordingly with  a compassion for self and understanding for others (this does not mean be a doormat - this means seek the truth and respond in a healthy way for you and others).

So, we are human in form at the moment.  We seek out interactions from which to learn.  We grow when we understand the life lesson presented over and over again.  Gossip is an opportunity to learn.  You can hear it and not let it in.  You can stop yourself from engaging in it by being accountable and honest with yourself about assumption and perception.  If you can do this, you can learn to operate from a healthy space of compassion.  This is an optimal state from which to learn and live positively in a way that helps you create and learn differently.  It takes change to learn and grow. Why not shift your own perspectives into a higher gear and steer clear of the one thing that will drag you down like cement shoes?  One more thought I’ll leave you with, if you, like me – tend to be the receiver of gossip, instead of taking it in, ask questions about the assumptions others are making.  The payoff of gossip is not worth anything the ego might think it will gain.  Just food for thought.

Blessings of higher love, compassion, healing and understanding beautiful dreamers!

 

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©  2015 Jaie Hart

Chasing Rainbows is a Worthy Endeavor - Just Don't Mind the Rain

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Watching the sunrise through gray skies and rain is no less beautiful than when the clouds are all gone.  The colors change but even the shades of gray broken up by fresh green grass and the few leaves left on the trees washed clean can be incredibly inspirational.  The quality of the color of the skies leading up to and then following those rainy days are like magic to me.  Sometimes I think I know all of the colors and then I’ll drive into the sunrise awestruck at having discovered new shades of smoky neon pink and silver and golden tinged peach.  Oh, can you just imagine it?  For nearly half a century I’ve watched the sun rise and set and still I am learning about new colors?!  What?!

Okay, maybe that’s a bit too peppy for this cool rainy Sunday but I don’t really care.  I love it when it rains and I love it when it doesn’t.  I love every day and when I think of my life in this way I find the colors change.  Blue is not just blue, it’s cerulean or azure.  Red isn’t just red, it’s scarlet or crimson.  Your perception is what you allow it to be.  It can be heavy with the filters of your experiences in life that limit the colors right in front of you OR it can be transparent and open allowing the full spectrum of unanticipated or before known to you colors to appear on your horizons in the blink of an eye.  It’s amazing when you notice the befores and the afters.

I have seen dark stormy days that seemed like they’d never end.  Sometimes this or that created this filter of experience that left me feeling as if I were trapped in this vortex of absolute dire distress, doom and gloom.  Lucky for me I figured out that such moments are usually short in duration if and only if I decide to shove the negativity out of my perspective and open up to the lesson instead.  What caused the darkness to enter my realm of experience?  Was it the lingering past hurt I forgot about?  Was it that one that occurred so long ago I allowed to be reinforced over and over again unchallenged?  Was it just an unfortunate series of tragedies and stress?  No matter.  All can still eventually be dealt with through greater understanding. There is a reason we encounter the things we do and it is up to us regarding how we wish to integrate that into our experience. 

At first it doesn’t seem like we have a choice.  Environmental psychology may have dictated our deeply ingrained beliefs laced with fear and wounding.  But, when we begin to understand the true source of those things, challenge all facets of thwm in terms of proving the beliefs to be truths or a series of misguided falsehoods, we can learn to embrace a new experience all-together and one free from the filters of the past psychological trauma and drama.  It can be done.  I’m telling you from experience and not just some made up positivity mumbo jumbo that won’t do you any good.  I have walked through the darkness of despair.  I have challenged my beliefs and rooted out their misguided existence and I have faced the pain, the terror, the fear and worry and then a light appeared at the end of a very long, dark and lonely road…freedom….the colors of life in a full spectrum…and all the love in the universe.

I won’t lie, it’s not an easy road and there is no one that can bring you there, give you a pill or point you to a drive through where you order up some healing to lift the filters of a life filled with malware and pain.  You have to be the one who wants to do the work first and then it is you who must map out the steps, find a way to leave behind you the fear of the dark and embrace hard work, roll up your sleeves and dig into the stuff that just prevents you from experiencing the beauty and magic of this world.  Sometimes you do need help with that – so get it. What are you waiting for anyway?  (smiles).  You can do so much to create joy, beauty and magic in your life.  You don’t have to spend a lot of money, but you do need to invest in yourself in some way.  Figure out what makes you tick; figure out what you really love without the filters of worry, fear and pain.  Find something healthy to do to lift your spirits knowing that THAT is your true state and if you are not now in it, you can be.  You really can be.

The picture above is not the prettiest picture or the best shot I could have taken and that doesn’t even matter…what matters is I saw it…a beautiful rainbow right there in the sky and I shot it to remember that the memory of the rain coming in to cover the sun brought me the gift of a rainbow.  There are so many gifts in life if we decide to look for the beauty, the color and enjoy life even if a storm is rolling in.  We were meant to enjoy life.  Find a way, a very whole and healthy way and walk that road not with hope born of fear it cannot be but with the very strong faith born of love and truth that lies deep within the heart of you to get you there.  You can.  Really!

 

© 2015 Jaie Hart (photo and words)