Lucy

A lit­tle more than three weeks ago, my wife and I, adopted a res­cue dog from our local SPCA. This dog, which we call Lucy, was recently spayed. When we first saw her she was calm and serene. She was recov­er­ing from her ‘pro­ce­dure’ and was under the effect of the minor surgery.

But after tak­ing her home and started to get acquainted with her, we saw why some fam­ily aban­doned her into the streets of Philadel­phia. Inside she was mostly calm and extremely sweet, but once she was out­side she was over­whelmed by fear and became vio­lently aggres­sive with every dog she encountered.

She pulled with all her might on her leash and when she even thought another dog was near, she would go absolutely crazy with rage and feroc­ity. She would throw her entire body against the leash, growl, and act like she wanted to kill every­thing in sight. When she actu­ally encoun­tered a dog, she would attack.

And then when we returned home, she was noth­ing but sweet­ness and love.

Our dog suf­fered from emo­tional trig­gers that made her extremely fear­ful. This is a com­mon prob­lem, espe­cially among res­cue dogs.

But there is a far more inter­est­ing story here and that was about my own trig­gers. Her aggres­sion, matched with my inabil­ity to con­trol her behav­ior, trig­gered my own sense of help­less­ness and inef­fec­tive­ness. I dreaded tak­ing her on a walk and often after one of our har­row­ing walks ended, I was filled with the sense that I was totally inad­e­quate to the task of liv­ing with this dog.

We hired an expert dog obe­di­ence trainer who was not at all over­whelmed or dis­cour­aged by our Lucy’s aggres­sion. She showed us many tech­niques we could use to start trans­form­ing Lucy into becom­ing a real com­pan­ion. We were inspired by her many sto­ries of suc­cess­fully deal­ing with these kinds of dogs. I started using these tech­niques and I could see improve­ments in Lucy.

But then on one walk, on a very quiet path near our house, she encoun­tered a fear­ful girl and excited by the girl’s fear she became even more aggres­sive and truly ter­ri­fied her. I sim­ply broke down in my own dis­tress and decided to return her to the pound where she would surely be killed. I even knew the prob­lem was me and yet my emo­tional dis­tress was mak­ing it pos­si­ble to make her death a fact.

Lucy became my ulti­mate trig­ger. My Fear-Self, which was con­fi­dent and self-assured, was bro­ken by this dog and I was in direct con­tact with my under­ly­ing Wound. I was not only mis­er­able, but I was sud­denly filled by an iden­tity that was entirely char­ac­ter­ized by my per­sonal inad­e­quacy. I was even filled with thoughts of self-destruction. This lit­tle dog had taken me to the depths of depres­sion. I would never have thought it was possible.

If you have read my book Lib­er­a­tion from the Lie you will know exactly what I’m talk­ing about it. The brit­tle Fear-Self, the enlight­ened Eric mask had crum­bled and what was revealed was the scared and ago­niz­ingly painful Wound that lay under­neath. My fail­ure with Lucy placed me in direct con­tact with my own pri­mal inval­i­da­tion expe­ri­ence and I was in the full embrace of my inad­e­quacy belief.

That day, when my wife returned from work, we talked about every­thing that was hap­pen­ing. I said that acquir­ing Lucy was a huge mis­take, it was like hav­ing a baby with devel­op­men­tal prob­lems and at the age of 60 I no longer had the energy or capac­ity to han­dle the chal­lenge. I said that I believed that Lucy was an insane dog, a kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. She sar­cas­ti­cally called me “Mr. Zen” and asked why I was so effected by a com­mon dog prob­lem — why was I so quick to give up — why was I so ready to give this lov­able dog the death sentence?

We decided that the prob­lem was much more about me than the dog and I agreed with this. I knew I was the prob­lem and I knew that I was dis­cov­er­ing some­thing that needed to be dis­cov­ered and explored.

Lucy’s main trig­ger was sim­ply being out­side. Away from the safe con­fines of her home she became hyper-reactive. She was in a place where poten­tially lethal dan­ger was around every cor­ner. She could never let her guard down. So she scans her envi­ron­ment for dan­ger and her way of deal­ing with that dan­ger was by killing it. As her owner, I knew that her thoughts were crazy, that her insane behav­ior was the out­come of liv­ing a life in the streets of a big city; a place where threats to her well-being were everywhere.

Peo­ple are no dif­fer­ent. Our psy­ches are filled with dark, vul­ner­a­ble places where our most extreme fears are given life. To some­one else, our fears may appear strange and unnec­es­sary. But to the per­son expe­ri­enc­ing the fear, these trig­gers are the most real thing in their lives. This is the land of the Wound. The details of why we are so prone to suf­fer are com­pli­cated and go way beyond a sim­ple blog post. If you want to learn more about the source of our fears then I urge you to read the Lib­er­a­tion Book. You can do so for free (see the left side of this page for a link to the book online) or you can pur­chase a mobile edi­tion for 4.95 (see left side as well) or pur­chase the phys­i­cal copy of the book here.

What are your trig­gers? What causes your mask to crum­ble into unhap­pi­ness, frus­tra­tion, and hope­less­ness? Often they are chal­lenges with chil­dren, work, health, spouses, friends, par­ents, and poverty. Every trig­ger is a bul­let that goes straight to the Wound. They are rev­e­la­tions into our own deep­est mem­o­ries of pain and suf­fer­ing. In these cir­cum­stances, we are no dif­fer­ent from the dog Lucy or her owner Eric. We are in face-to-face con­tact with our orig­i­nal inval­i­da­tion expe­ri­ence long, long ago.

The vast major­ity of our trig­gers are much sub­tler. The more sen­si­tive we are to these trig­gers, the more we real­ize that they are almost always present. We also make the unex­pected dis­cov­ery that we have count­less “pos­i­tive” trig­gers as well.

We come to real­ize that trig­gers are mem­o­ries and that mem­o­ries are thoughts. Trig­gers are the legacy of our mem­o­ries oper­at­ing ener­get­i­cally in our moment-to-moment expe­ri­ence. Seen this way, they are all point­ers to our past express­ing them­selves in our present. Ulti­mately we see some­thing even deeper. Trig­gers are who we take our­selves to be! We come to see that we are our triggers!

I can watch polit­i­cal adver­tis­ing on the tele­vi­sion and notice trig­gers hap­pen­ing in how I react to what I’m watch­ing. When I see a beau­ti­ful Ver­meer paint­ing, I can under­stand that as a trig­ger. When I smell a rose, that trig­ger con­nects me with a world of flow­ers that I have enjoyed through the years. Every emo­tion, every expe­ri­ence of stress is the result of a trig­ger. Each is an invi­ta­tion into who we believe our­selves to be.

Trig­gers that cause undo stress are those that will tem­porar­ily destroy our con­fi­dent Fear-Self mask and bring us into con­tact with our unseen, under­ly­ing Wound.

Awak­en­ing is the real­iza­tion that we are not our trig­gers. We are what is that notices them and that which notices them is not effected by them.

Per­haps our great­est trig­ger of all are books, videos, and blog posts that sus­tain the belief that we can become per­son­ally enlight­ened through our inte­gra­tion of their mes­sage into our own lives!!!

And we see this final truth: that all of life is a sin­gle vast trigger.

Ulti­mately, trig­gers are sources of heal­ing. In those moments we need to draw on our even deeper capac­ity to see (SEE) what is hap­pen­ing. We see the pain. We see the inad­e­quacy belief. We see the breaking-up of our Fear-Self. And then, from within that see­ing, we draw on our capac­ity for self-understanding and com­pas­sion to our own child selves that are aris­ing pow­er­fully and painfully into our con­scious­ness. And we allow the emo­tions to flow within that greater chan­nel of self-compassion and patience … for the storm will pass.

When life is too com­fort­able, we loose touch with our own trig­gers. But often hav­ing a child, los­ing a job, or sev­er­ing an impor­tant rela­tion­ship are sources of suf­fer­ing that can wake us from the dol­drums of every­day life. In my case, it was get­ting a chal­leng­ing dog. Lucy became my own mir­ror and in a way she has become my guru.

When we can allow life to become our guru, espe­cially in times of great per­sonal suf­fer­ing, we can allow the light of chal­lenge to become our own healer. Life can always be counted on to pro­vide just the right cir­cum­stances to get the heal­ing we need. It takes us to the next level of self-realization. The deeper we go, the tougher it gets … but if Life pro­vides us with the oppor­tu­nity, then it must mean that Life believes that we are capa­ble of tak­ing on the chal­lenge. We release into the pain and we are deliv­ered onto the other side wiser, more com­pas­sion­ate, and stronger.

This sin­gle post has the power to change your life. Just these words can change every­thing. A lot went into it. If you can afford it, would you con­sider treat­ing me to a latte? If so, just locate the lit­tle wid­get on the top left on the top of this page. Thank you