A New Earth

TRIGGERS

Some pain?bodies react to only one particular kind of trigger or situation, which is usually one that resonates with a certain kind of emotional pain suffered in the past. For example, if a child grows up with parents for whom financial issues are the source of frequent drama and

conflict, he or she may absorb the parents' fear around money and develop a pain?body that is triggered whenever financial issues are involved. The child a adult gets upset or angry even over insignificant amounts of money. Behind the upset or anger lies issues of survival and intense fear. I have seen spiritual, that is to say, relatively conscious, people who started to shout, blame, and make accusations the moment they picked up the phone to talk to their stockbroker or realtor. Just as there is a health warning on every package of cigarettes, perhaps there should be similar warnings on every banknote and bank statement: Money can activate the pain?body and cause complete unconsciousness.

Someone who in childhood was neglected or abandoned by one or both parents will likely develop a pain?body that becomes triggered in any situation that resonates even remotely with their primordial pain of abandonment. A friend arriving a few minutes late to pick them up at the airport or a spouse coming home late can trigger a major pain?body attack. If their partner or spouse leaves them or dies, the emotional pain they experience goes far beyond the pain that is natural in such a situation. It may be intense anguish, long?lasting, incapacitating depression, or obsessive anger.

A woman who in childhood was physically abused by her father my find that her pain?body becomes easily activated in any close relationship with a man. Alternatively, the emotion that makes up her pain?body may draw her to a man whose pain?body is similar to that of her father. Her pain? body may feel a magnetic pull to someone who it senses will give it more of the same pain. That pain is sometimes misinterpreted as falling in love.

A man who had been an unwanted child and was given no love and a minimum of care and attention by his mother developed a heavy ambivalent pain?body that consisted of unfulfilled intense longing for his mother's love and attention and at the same time intense hatred toward her for withholding what he so desperately needed. When he became an adult, almost every woman would trigger his pain?body's neediness a form of emotional pain and this would manifest as an addictive compulsion to conquer and seduce almost every woman he met and in this way get the female love and attention that the pain?body craved. He became quite an expert on seduction, but as soon as a relationship turned intimate or his advances were rejected, the

pain?body's anger toward his mother would come up and sabotage the relationship.

When you recognize your own pain?body as it arises, you will also quickly learn what the most common triggers are that activate it, whether it be situations or certain things other people do or say. When those triggers occur, you will immediately see them for what they are and enter a heightened state of alertness. Within a second or two, you will also notice the emotional reaction that is the arising pain?body, but in that state of alert Presence, you won't identify with it, which means the pain?body cannot take you over and become the voice in your head. If you are with your partner at the time, you may tell him or her: What you just said (or did) triggered my pain?body. Have an agreement with your partner that whenever either of you says or does something that triggers the other person's pain?body, you will immediately mention it. In this way, the pain?body can no longer renew itself through drama in the relationship and instead of pulling you into unconsciousness, will help you become fully present.

Every time you are present when the pain?body arises, some of the pain?body's negative emotional energy will burn up, as it were, and become transmuted into Presence. The rest of the pain?body will quickly withdraw and wait for a better opportunity to rise again, that is to say, when you are less conscious. A better opportunity for the pain?body to arise may come whenever you lose Presence, perhaps after you have had a few drinks or while watching a violent film. The tiniest negative motion, such as being irritated or anxious, can also serve as a doorway through which the pain? body can return. The pain?body needs your unconsciousness. It cannot tolerate the light of Presence.