Trigger, trigger, everywhere a trigger…
Just yesterday, I triggered my partner… accidentally, mind you, via her wound from a very traumatizing past relationship. And then I was triggered last night into three massive cries, for three different reasons that had accumulated. I think triggering is the most fascinating thing… if only we knew how to walk that razor’s edge. It’s an edge that often claims us on the side of repetition… up until the day we write an entirely new sentence in our book, one we’ve never experienced before.
In the tarot, that’s one of the roles of the magician, and it’s not for the faint of heart. From the wound we have an opportunity, a window whereby we can plant a momentary wedge in our pain in order to be present with it, to dissolve its staying power, its so-called illusory mass, and move into something greater, whatever that may be. And it is painful… and so slippery, not unlike the snake Mother Mary puts her foot on.
Ha… the saying “No pain, no gain”, I suppose, applies to the healing life. It’s what we fear the most: our pain. It’s our pain that will bring us to our own fear of death, which is what I’ve discovered every fear connects to, even if it’s irrational. The little child is left alone to suffer, and helplessly, it squirms with sheer panic. We see red again… and again, and again. We’ll fight tooth and nail to avoid death or pain. We’ll waver through all form of vice, like pride and and apathy, envy and addiction, before we can alchemize any of that dross into gold.
Just this morning, I read my friend Keith Ashford’s daily message. “When pain arises, don’t shrink away from it. Move toward it. Invest all your awareness in it. Pain is our best opportunity for spiritual growth. Compared to pain, pleasure is a stalling tactic.” That’s good gold. And then we’re offered pleasures on every corner as a palliative, because, lo and behold, this system knows our bodies are rigged against us (up until we re-rig them completely to suit our spiritual purposes, ie. our urge for freedom). When my wounds surface, my perception changes, and if anyone is around, they are projected upon. I can speak ad nauseam about the kind of wounding I’ve processed. I’ve learned to name it from such modern teachers as Chuck Spezzano, Richard Schwartz, or Andrew Schneider, to name a few.
I often get projected upon as well. Walk around in your life, and soon enough, someone will project upon you. Not only do I get to discover the depth of my own illusion in healing, but, I can then see it play out clearly in the world in the lives of others as a witness. For me, that’s where compassion may come in. One can become like an undercover agent of sorts with seeing more correctly. And to this extent, not only have I tried to learn to not take people and events personally (since I realize we’re all insane to some degree with respect to the lenses we “adopt” at any given point), but moving further than simply applying Don Ruiz’ agreement after getting stung, I’ve also “learned” to heal any wounding that would lead to taking it personally.
I feel the point is to get somewhere where nothing sticks. “Become touchless” is a line for a t-shirt that came to me the other day. We all must learn to drop the mud, in a way, whether we fling it or it’s flung at us. It’s all the same, in the end, since we’re all One, right? We all have learned how to ingeniously squeeze a curveball in… yet in the end, it’s always what the doctor orders, even if it stings.
I’ve discovered that we all have cinematic glasses on, we’re all projecting upon each other via the past, and reality just is left there, staying real. It’s theatre because repetition is a role we don’t really write. There’s nothing creative about it, and yet it never feels rehearsed. We’re all there with 3D glasses on, they’re all tuned to whatever frequency we’re in at the moment, and sometimes someone takes the glasses off, like with Plato’s cave, realizes the whole schtick is fuzzy, and walks out into the sun. I’m simply amazed at the depth of my illusion I’ve had to shave off (and keep shaving off to the extent I have no idea what the future will bring), layer by layer. I’m befuddled at the depth of the trauma I’ve encountered, at the amount of separation it’s led to in my life (and sometimes still leads to, if only at a less noticeable degree).
Sometimes I feel it will never end because the healing keeps coming, adding greater depth to my being in the world. And so last night, I grieved for a few hours. I didn’t think I could do more than two cries with respect to my wounding, and yet, I’m always up for surprising myself. I’ve become accustomed to (nearly) always owning my own stuff because I know when it’s around the corner. But it’s so easy to be fooled because we require repetition, illusion, to fool us into this pain, this window into gaining greater breadth of reality. I call it receiving a pronouncement, and until I sit with it so that it can become like a deliverance, I’m stuck, I’m a wayward son, I’m insane in the right sense of the word, and the world is being perceived incorrectly (as I’ve recently re-learned from A Course in Miracles).
I’m grateful that Spirit has taught me ways to deal with my own burden, this bag of pain I’ve carried from the past and have had to alchemize. After crying so much last night, I told Samantha that if this weren’t the case, I’d be a weapon with my lens, and to the extent that you’ve either been granted power (or taken power in the world, god forbid), can you be a benefit or a danger to the world, whatever shape illusion may take for you. I suppose it depends on where you are in a cycle (if you are in one, that is, because defences can last a very, very long time, and have us smiling or attacking for years when we should be grieving instead).
I told her I am truly grateful I haven’t lashed out at anyone yet, like with a past-life lens I felt yesterday arise (just to use one example), one I’m familiar with and still integrating as best as I can, slashing my way through enemies somewhere in Mongolia. I’m grateful I was able to be present with this one, otherwise, I was ready to do battle with frisbee-wielding npcs nearly hitting me with their missed shots, drinking Pabst in the park, while here I am trying to do some qiga and getting visions of throwing their frisbee in the river and/or entering Mr. Beast on all of them, all at the same time. It was very cinematic… something I can laugh at now… but yesterday, that kind of heat was coursing through me.
Thankfully, grace visited, the wedge I needed came, I took the high road and said I’d leave to offer them space, told them, Have fun, have a lovely day… and so they smiled, with one person, I could tell, smiling anxiously… perhaps he felt I was up for lunging at anyone… but regardless, I avoided the vice of outer attack (as opposed to the one of inner attack), and I won a momentary victory for inner and outer harmony. I alchemized it, right there in the park, I expressed my need to the extent that I could. And thank God… but it hasn’t always been this neat, mind you. Just ask the driver I was ready to take out after he started berating me this past January, after running in front of his car. Construction workers were egging him on to do battle with me while I was doing my beast dance in some back alley… in minus thirty weather. Oh illusion…
To put a wedge in our usual way of doing things (with respect to getting triggered) takes the growth of mental strength, it takes a certain measure… it requires composure and enough presence of being, a glistening awareness and grace (if a miracle is needed)… but it’s the only way that I’ve discovered I can alchemize my dross, my bag of illusions (or tricks), my receding schtick that sticks to me until I sit or become present with it, open enough to it that due processing may occur… just like a vaccine passport-wielding traveller through the system.
