Did you know triggers are your friends?
You are the experiencer and not the experience! Fear, Jealousy, anger, despair, resentment, and sadness, are but some of the emotions or more specifically denser energies. Who experiences them? Your awareness or soul is the experiencer, and not the experienced energy. The soul does not judge anything as good or bad, it just experiences it without getting attached.
Ego, on the other hand strongly holds onto a sense of identification both labeling and limiting us to attach ourselves to an experience or emotion causing energy blockages. It creates a mind-driven illusion that causes us to forget the difference between the subject and the object. I have always wondered why Bhagvat Gita, a revered Hindu scripture teaches detachment before I truly understood this concept.
On the path of spiritual awakening, one will discover various levels of truth and one’s perceived truth will always have higher dimensions that we may or may not have access to based on where we are in our path of spiritual evolution. This borrowed analogy from a very gifted spiritual teacher, Carolyn Myss goes a long way toward bringing more clarity to that concept. Imagine you are on the ground floor of a high-rise building and assume you see a huge trash can that’s placed across the road from your vantage point, that becomes your truth. Whereas, when you view what’s outside from the penthouse of the same building you experience a whole different view, maybe that of a tall mountain and a beautiful sky, which then becomes your truth or reality. That is exactly what happens as we awaken spiritually. The more light we enable ourselves to carry, the more we can see a higher dimension of the same reality. What used to trigger us at one point does not trigger us anymore as a result of our spiritual growth and evolution through healing.
Now the question evolves into how does one enable themselves to carry more light? From what I have learned through my journey and from various teachers there are two paths in yogic culture, the Shakti Path, and the Shiv Path, feminine and masculine energies are present in each individual representing destruction and creation energies as they beautifully intertwine with each other to uplift a being into higher dimensions of awareness. Shiva, in Vedic culture, is known to be the destroyer, he destroys anything that does not serve us anymore, including our traumas, negative patterns, and shadows that hold us back!
An incomplete experience stays in our being as blocked energy and while we may move on from that experience/memory with time, any repressed emotion stays within us as blocked dormant energy highly inflammable for triggers. Next time, we come across anything similar this energy awakens from its dormant subconscious and we consciously experience it as a trigger. That is why we all experience the same thing differently. For example, you may have had a dog chase you when you were six years old and you may have experienced immense fear at the time. With time, that memory fades away to the point of seeming non-existence but each time you see a dog, even as an adult, that fear stored as a neural pattern and blocked energy comes out of its dormant state and triggers you! That’s exactly how traumas show up as triggers in our life. If something triggers you, it is because there is blocked energy there that has not been addressed from your past. The energy didn't just pass through you when the first triggering experience happened because of its traumatic nature. Your mind at the time went into an overactive mode as a fear response and you unconsciously repressed that energy and prevented yourself from fully feeling it. If you are very present as an individual, you will notice how the universe brings back the same kind of triggers to your life. Why is that?
It’s true that the universe will remain on your case, and will always bring those triggers to you in different ways as it tries to help you complete the experience and truly heal! Contrary to what anyone believes, the universe is a benevolent place and the lesson here is for us to be brave and do our shadow work to unlock our natural state of Joy! The less talked about trick however is to do so not through the incessant chatter of our minds or random projected reactions that damage others or ourselves but to experience it fully through our soul by letting the energy come up in the form of emotions and feeling it without resistance or judgment until it passes through.
In today’s world, we have become masterful at distraction and know a thousand ways to distract ourselves and not feel things when we experience such triggers. It’s often unfortunately even encouraged, more often so in men with statements like “be tough”. Truth is experiencing things and feeling is what makes you tough, not running away from it and that is the only way to truly get past it completely. The longer one avoids feeling these triggers the more sensitive one becomes and the more difficult the experience.
There is a difference between thinking our way through it and feeling it. Feeling involves you observing how the emotion feels in your body, giving it a voice, holding space, not judging or repressing it in any way, and most importantly not identifying with the energy! Imagine a small shard of glass has pierced your hand and it’s uncomfortable. Now you are hyper-aware that your hand is super sensitive with that glass piece inside but because you are afraid of further hurt, instead of dealing with it by picking it out, you have come up with an action plan to protect it from any external touches and carefully tie a bandaid over it and then you are ever so careful to ensure nothing touches it! That’s how most people live their life, shards of glass here being our past traumas. Another misconception being traumas need to be major, it can be something as simple as the fear you felt on seeing a big dog as a child. Basically, any repressed incomplete experience.
Looking at triggers as gifts is a game changer! Each time you experience a trigger, recognizing it as old energy wanting to be set free makes all the difference. Just feeling it and holding space for those feelings to come up can go a long way towards healing yourself! You can combine it with many healing modalities like grounding or being in nature to seek help with the experience.
Meditation can also lead to those feelings/fears coming up and the guidance is for us to be brave enough to go beyond by letting those feelings come up and pass through. Your mind has very little to do with this, it’s to do with your emotions and how it FEELS! Let it flow and rest assured it’s not going to kill us but doing so will beautifully unblock dormant energies and enable us to carry more light through self-inquiry and unlock dormant gifts instead! So, next time, you feel triggered, recognize them as healing opportunities, they are but your friends!
