The Anatomy of Response

We react to things that happen in our lives.Each of us has certain triggers that elicit emotional, reactionary responses.  These responses have us doing and saying things that do not necessarily serve our higher, authentic, unconditioned selves.These responses often do not serve us in our intentions, the way we want to live our lives, or the visions we have for our relationships and ourselves.For every event that creates an emotional reaction within us, there is an anatomy to the reaction.As Victor Frankl wrote:Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.At first we may be only able to discern the stimulus and the response, and with practice we can create that space, the pause before we act/respond.  This pause, this choice, is wonderful, powerful, and important.Still, if this is as far as it goes, it still feels very limiting. We are still trapped by our reactions, we are not very free, we are relating with part of ourselves like a dangerous wild animal that needs to be managed.  To me this does not feel like a whole self, working together; it feels like efforting.What we have discovered in the work we do together at the Mountain Experience, and on the phone, is that there is an anatomy to our responses, that there is not just stimulus and response but a much deeper dynamic that through inquiry can come apart and be healed, repaired.In the ideal, we would experience a stimulus, and the automatic response would be the authentic, inspired response that we can imagine when we re-think it hours later.In the ideal, we would respond automatically from love or for the highest ideal we can imagine given the situation.In fact, we have all the ability to create the appropriate response internally, a poetic and beautiful response, but the reaction gets in the way.We get trapped in our reactions.When our emotions or minds get triggered before our deeper unconditioned selves can respond, we end up with reactions that don’t serve us, or the people around us, very well.Through the awareness and letting go work we teach, we can dissect these responses and find the triggers. We can let go of the triggers and return to responses coming from our unconditioned, higher selves.  These responses always want to create more connection, beauty, and harmony, because they are automatically coming from love rather than fear, anger, jealousy, lack, shame, embarrassment, or insecurity.As we learn and practice the process of awareness and letting go through the Inquiry Method, we continue to upgrade our reactions.Imagine a world where we are surrounded by people who are all engaged and have healed themselves to a point where their automatic responses are all coming from authentic love.