LOVING YOUR TRIGGERS
“No way is the way.” -Zen proverb
My friend Jim Dreaver suggested the theme, “Loving your triggers” for a satsang and I really like it! Because it’s exactly what no one is doing and thus staying stuck for decades, even a lifetime!! It’s our triggers that we see as separate from us, e.g., anger, fear, frustration, confusion, unworthiness, etc. and so we try to push them away/get them to change as quickly as possible.
Why? Because I fear them. I am afraid to look at all of me. And if I won’t look at something, won’t even acknowledge it for however long it appears to be showing up, how on earth am I going to be genuinely present with it??
But this ruse can only go on for so many lifetimes. Eventually it begins to dawn on you that you have been completely wrong about everything and everyone, including yourself. That the way you thought/imagined believed it was, is in truth not the way it actually is, because it isn’t any way. Or in Zen it’s said, “No way is the way.”
It takes humbleness to meet your pain. Because you have to first stop pretending you know what pain is. Or anything else. Which means starting from 0, and not 1. If I am a 1, I already know something. But what does a 0 know? Nothing.
Michael Jeffreys
Michael Jeffreys 