Every Trigger Tells a Story
So I’ve been literally herding cats… and their owners… for some time now. I wrote another story on this topic, so I won’t belabor the feline in this one.
I’m hearing the Brady Bunch theme song in my head. Thankfully, my brain is only regurgitating about half of the lyrics. I mean, seriously? They rhymed girls and curls? The urge to vomit is only overwhelmed by the urge to vomit.
I’ve been observing people I know trying to juggle the Brady Bunch archetype along with Super(man/woman), Hero/Goddess, Companion (genderless), Judge, Jury, Victim, Perpetrator… and the beat goes on. And they’re beating themselves and everyone else up for … being? Not being? When the ego senses its demise, it fights back. And then some.
My Apache mentor used to laugh and say that she and I had differing definitions of ‘ego’ and we’d nod and smile as she continued teaching how everything in nature has a character and a function and never questions its reason for simply being. I am grateful for hers.
Why is the ego so full of charges? Land mine central!!!
Truth? Because we have asked it to be. We programmed our ‘identity-basket’ to behave in this way to keep itself intact and to keep ‘us’ safe.
If I had the proverbial small coinage for every time a student or mentee has said to me “I’m becoming more conscious, sure, but this …. fill in the blank… still triggers the ‘$%$#!%’ out of me!”
Those of us who have been at the work for however long are smiling now, chuckling at our own experiences of having the ‘!@#$’ triggered… by family, or other known patterns, and, yes, by sometimes random and gobsmacking events. All opportunities for diffusing the depth charges. All pretty much up and center stage in the human collective right now. Land mine central!
Those new to the awakening process tend to flounder or swim in frustration, all the while holding on for dear life to the very things that cause it. Why? Because the programs were written to do just that. Failsafe upon failsafe upon failsafe… layer upon layer upon layer.
Each time we are triggered we have an opportunity to look at what the trigger has to teach us. Don’t get me wrong. I am not a saint. No aspirations in that direction.
My observation, during this existential experience in cat herding, is that the whole planet is massively triggered by massive issues right now. One doesn’t have to be a Seer to see that!
What the cat herding is reinforcing for me, is that the triggers of others are only story, after all. They do not need to affect me. I do not need to participate, except to look after the kittens, of course, because children of any species want looking after.
I found myself a bit triggered over kitten care the other day. I took that deep, inner-focused breath, asking for clarity, and the montage of memory flooded through. My dad’s story of being a latchkey kid, and the one day he was too big to crawl into the house through the milk chute so he ‘froze’ outside till my grandparents arrived home…my years of before and after school care of my younger siblings… the irresponsible way so many people throw their energies around and how it makes others around them, literally, ill. Ah. There. The irresponsible and sloppy use of energy. Bing! Land mine central!
And I saw how I did that, as I was waking up. “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.” We are all learning. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could learn through being a little kinder to one another and All Our Relations? Wouldn’t it be cool if the mirror really was the mirror and we could stop hurling broken glass?
Every trigger tells a story. Every story is about energy. We are the same quantum stuff (technical term, that) and we are all equally valuable.
Bless the beasts and the children… and the disenfranchised of every ilk… because in this world, at this time, it doesn’t seem to matter if ‘they’ have a voice. And there is always a choice.
Triggered-R-Us or Source-R-Us? Or maybe it’s both and we can learn to travel lightly together.
I recommend herding kittens as a graduate course in just about everything. Hardware re-set of every button, ever. Awesome!
~ Namaste ~
