A work in progress

A reaction is an action that has been done before. Hence it is a re-action. Because it is familiar, it requires less attention and presence. It is the activation of a conditioned sequence. When a situation provides little time and adds intense pressure, reactions are what can be relied upon to help us function. They are emergency response tools. 

However, appropriated by the ego, reactions and reactivity become fundamental poisons.

If reactions are what we do when we aren’t fully present, the ego is who we are when we aren’t fully present. The ego is the sense of self to which we default when we don’t know who we really are. Therefore this ego likes to rely on reactivity to keep its form intact. This is why we can predict how certain people will behave in specific situations. While reactions serve a meaningful role in emergency response, the ego normalizes reactivity into a way of living. 

Why does normalizing reactivity in this way create suffering?

Reactivity holds no scope for nuance, for open-mindedness, or for receptivity. That is because all of those elements require attentive presence. You cannot do those things if you are caught up in attacking or defending or holding onto familiar patterns. 

Without receptivity, we suffer because life loses the sense of newness or freshness. What’s more, there is no space for the mysterious love and bliss of grace to enter our hearts and minds. 

Without open-mindedness, our head becomes like a closed computer system. It can break things down and rearrange them via analysis and synthesis and yet there is no room for revelation or epiphany. Maturation becomes stunted. 

Without nuance, over-simplifications give way to fragile and limited perspectives on all things. Subtle beauty is ignored like trampled flowers lining woodland paths. 

Be mindful of your behaviors throughout the day. How much of your activity falls within the realm of reactivity? Whose actions are they: those of the ego or those of a living conscious presence?

The divisiveness we see in today’s world is owed in part to the reactive ways in which we perceive and interact with one another. 

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” ~ Einstein

Do not wait for someone else to make the first move. 

Level 1: Your negative emotions no longer overwhelm you. You are the larger space within which emotions play.

Level 2: You no longer cling to negative emotions. Your mind doesn’t tune into the energetic frequency of your emotions, trying to fight or justify or win.

Level 3: You no longer cling to positive emotions. Your ability to rejoice for others increases and your capacity for jealousy decreases.

Level 4: Awareness as the background space of emotion shifts toward the foreground. Emotions lose their state-like quality.

woman: OOOOoOOH NoO!!!! It’s meelltIINNGG!!

*ring melts off woman’s hand*

woman: MY PRECIOUS POWERRrRR RING! GONE FOORRVVERrrr..