How Can We Stop Ourselves from Reacting?
Some asks, "I can understand going back to the source of emotional trauma and bringing awareness to it
, but how exactly does one heal it? Especially as one is not supposed to analyze it. How does the healing take place?"
When we become aware of a pattern of behavior in our lives that is repeating from childhood, simply becoming aware of the particular childhood event or events that caused us to form such traumatic templates in and of itself does not heal the dysfunction.
What heals the past is the present. Only in the present can we heal painful patterns that we learned long ago and that we continue to repeat in our lives today.
In The Presence Process, Michael Brown shows that the key to changing behavior that is repeating from the past is to become aware of the emotional signature of such behavior. In other words, we take note of the thread of oft-repeated behavior that runs back into our past and pay attention to what it feels like.
Once we are truly aware of the feeling, we can spot it when it begins to arise in the present.
Simply being aware of what happened to us as a child changes nothing. Recognizing how we repeat behaviors learned back then opens the door to total transformation, so that the behavior ends.
The key is to become aware of the emotional signature so that we notice as the tendency to react to a situation in the same way arises in us in the present moment.
With this awareness comes the ability to choose. We recognize that to behave in a certain way would be to react as we have always done. Then, we make a choice not to react.
Awareness supplies a second ingredient for transformationthe realization that our essential state of being is very different from the emotional signature of our reactions.
Our basic state, often buried from our conscious view because of past conditioning, is one of peace. There is an innate peacefulness about our essence that never leaves us. This peace is suffused with a joyousness. It is also permeated with a sense of deep connection to everything that exists. Realizing our oneness with everyone and everything, not as a concept in our head but at the deep feeling state of the essence of our being, is the source of love. So, in our essential selves, we are in fact always peaceful, joyous, and loving.
When we are aware of our essential state, and also aware of our tendency to react to situations according to their emotional signature, we realize that in any given situation we have a choice. We can go with the reaction, or we can simply flow from our essence.
As awareness of the choice we have dawns on us, at first we may not be able to make the choice in time to stop a reaction because it has become habitual to react. There is a well-worn groove going back years. Often, only after we have already reacted will we realize that we were not in fact being true to ourselves in the situation but were living out an emotional signature.
In due course, if we continue to bring awareness to our actions, we will become aware that we are reacting while we are in the process of reacting, instead of hours or days or even weeks later.
Still, we may not yet be able to stop ourselves in the middle of the reactionbut we will be able to take reparative steps, for instance if we have damaged a relationship, immediately afterwards. The benefits will begin to show in our lives.
As awareness intensifies, and we become astute at noticing what is going on within us, we will notice the emotional signature the moment it arises. At this point, before it has become so strong that it overwhelms us, we are able to choose to enter into the stillness of our essence. There, the peace, joy, and love that are our basic state become a bulwark against the tendency to react.
In every moment, we have a choiceto be true to our essence, which is always peaceful, or to allow ourselves to be taken over by the painful experience of dysfunctional emotional behavior learned long ago.
We don't have to do anything to effect transformation. No self-suppression, or "efforting" of any kind, is required. Just awareness. As the awareness grows, our choice at any given moment becomes obviousto react to the emotional signature from the past, or to respond from the stillness of our essential being.
How Can We Stop Ourselves from Reacting?
By: David Robert Ord
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