I quote Dr Jennifer Kunst here, with thanks..
Maybe you know the saying, “When you point one finger, there are three fingers pointing back to you.”
Jesus had a version of this wisdom when he said, “Don’t focus on the speck in your brother’s eye while ignoring the plank in your own.”
When cruel accusations fly, we all need to hear the voice of reason that says, “Look in the mirror, sister. You might just be talking about yourself.”
Teacher’s Lu and Ling used to come to the UK regularly to teach Qigong to my students.
To date they have visited us six or seven times.
One of the favourite games my teacher, Teacher Ling like to play with me, and I’m guessing my colleagues, was the following..
We’d be sitting in the car, or at the breakfast table.
She’d say something like “We love coming to the UK, and staying with you and your family..
You know that out of the three teachers, you are our favourite, don’t you?”
For about the first five years, I would gush, say something like “ That’s lovely, thank you so much..bla, bla bla…”
Validation
I really wanted my teacher’s to like me — I wanted it too much, I needed them to validate me as a teacher.
It took me a long time to uncover that pattern. To see what was really happening.
Every year they came to the UK and tested my Ego.
Was Jeremy’s ego still huge and fully intact? Yes — tick — He’s still not understood our message and looked at his personal triggers.. he still needs our validation..
It started to dawn on me how often I had fallen into that trap.
If you don’t review and re-asses your life, you’ll just do it over and over again.
Last visit Ling said to me “You know you are my favourite teacher in the UK don’t you?
To which I smiled, and replied “You know you are my favourite teacher in China?” Which at least got a good belly laugh out of her..
Triggers
Slowly I’m getting there..
I’m certainly not suggesting that I have dissolved that trigger, but at least I’m seeing it for what it is..
West Norwood Roundabout was my teacher for the longest of times..
In the busy suburb of London that I lived in or nearby for nearly 20 years, this circulatory traffic system was my daily chore.
I’ve written about it before, which indicates how deeply I felt it.
If you knew the area well, then you’d select the correct lane, and wait patiently in line.
If you were new to the area, you’d suddenly find yourself in a whirlpool of traffic, find yourself in the wrong lane, and then be forced to cut in front of a seething me!
Brixton is also full of young lads in fast “whips” who’s sole avowed intention in life was (it seemed) to cut in front of me — AND I was 100% sure that they knew how the traffic system worked, but just did it anyway!!!
Cue smoke coming out of Jeremy’s ears, and a sharp stream of expletives that would make a Marine blush..
Why these triggers..?
We don’t need a huge amount of self-analysis here.
My lovely dad was a great one for shouting at traffic.
For the longest time I had “Impostor Syndrome” as a teacher
My rocky circumstances of my birth left me a needy person.
“Yi Dao, Qi Dao”
We use a phrase in Zhineng Qigong “Yi Dao, Qi Dao”
Essentially, it translates as “Where your mind goes, your energy flows..”
We often instruct people to put their “Mind to a task”
When we apply our minds, things can start to happen.
When we subconsciously apply our minds sometimes bad things can happen..
Did you know that 95% of your daily mind activity is totally subconscious?
Stop for a moment and think how busy your head can be, thank heavens we don’t have to listen to all the other rubbish that’s going on in the background, it would be like trying to read a complex book, in the middle of a football stadium filled with cheering supporters!
So in the idea, “Where your mind goes, your energy flows..” we start to uncover the roots that can lead to chronic illnesses.
Let’s take “Shouting at other drivers” as an example.
It’s almost hard-wired from a very young age, learned at a father’s knee.
Perhaps it’s symptomatic of an urge to shout at shop assistants, be rude to train guards, growl at ones children, and shout at one’s wife. The car thing is just the tip of an iceberg.
Maybe it comes from some deep-seated fear, or inbuilt hatred of “the other” also learned at a parents knee, or at a strict school..
Everything becomes a trigger, fired off from this deep root.
Anger, anger and anger, all day and every day.
Eventually — following Chinese medicine theory — we discover that this person has Liver Cancer. (Anger is rooted in the Liver, and suppresses the Liver function…)
Cancer
So, a pattern has eventually led to an angry person becoming ill.
I see it with my clients daily.
Lack of love, childhood trauma, distant parents, money worries, stressful jobs, or unkind partners, they all set up patterns that eventually lead to illness.
Your patterns lead you to illness. Let’s just underline that once more.
You find a pattern by looking at the way you reacted to a situation.
(It has to happen in hindsight first.)
You read something on the news, it makes you feel angry. You go to work and tell everybody about this thing, and you talk about it endlessly.
Remember — point the finger at yourself first, before you point the finger at …Boris Johnson..Joe Biden.. etc..
What is it that you have read, that has stirred something deep inside?
Is your social patterning so deep that you have disagreed with something at a gut level.
In these cases, we often have just grown up to be a Conservative or a Democrat, because our father was.
So many of our views are just short-hand gut reactions, without us every bothering to question why.
Do you want to run the country? OK then, stop moaning!
Look for the Trigger
Better than that, how can you start to find the ideas that rule your life?
If somebody asks you to do something and your first answer is always “No!” — why is that?
Do you always pick the same bad partner? Do you never want to go out, just in case..?
Why do you always tell you children the same things that your mother told you, even if you know it not to be useful?
How do you stop it?
Reviewing your day before bed is a great way.
Sit for a few minutes, pat yourself on the back (a little bit) for anything you did particularly well, and look carefully at the things you didn’t handle well.
(Could I have been kinder to that traffic warden, shop assistant, person on the phone…?)
Ask yourself “Why?” — what were the reasons that you reacted that way?
Where do these things come from?
Pigeon-hole
I’ve written before about my friend who explained to me “When I sit in meditation and sometimes my mind is TOO busy, I just decide to watch each thought, and classify it — eventually they quieten down anyway”
I made some pigeon-holes.. Money Worry, Work Worry, Relationship Worry, Children Worry… the list goes on.. you get the idea.
These are the roots that fire off the triggers and thoughts that rule our daily lives if we let them.
If you can start to recognise them for what they are, then you can control them.
“Ah, that thought came up because of my neediness, (driven by the circumstance of my birth) ..now I see how it’s controlling me, and what situation is likely to fire it up!”
You see these things enough times, that you start to realise that there are very few roots, but that they fire in very creatively different ways! (Isn’t the mind clever!)
Eventually, you see that there’s only a few of them. When examined in the cold light of day, you can start to see that what served you as a six year old child no longer works as an adult.
Point the finger at yourself often enough, they start to fade away, leaving a very different and more healthy mind, and therefore a more healthy body too.
This is an opportunity to change your life for the better!
Strong Information
The next time you receive strong information from your teacher, be it a teacher or a traffic system (look everywhere for your lessons) how will you react?
Do you respond badly to authority?
Will you complain that your teacher shouldn’t be teaching you because of the things they say, or will you see that there may be a plank in your own eye that needs removing first?
In our Universe of Yin and Yang, we always try to seek balance.
The pendulum swings back and forth. What is bad today, will be good tomorrow and bad again next week. It’s important to realise that there’s no such thing as “good or bad,” just the way you view them, or let them strike you.
It’s important to see the outside world as a series of events, not a series of things being done to YOU!
You Choose!
There is a choice in every moment, will you choose Yin or Yang?
You have the power to react to anything, in whatever way you wish.
If your first reaction is anger — ask yourself why?
If you get triggered by strong information — why?
Can you hear strong information, and allow it to pass through you, or will it hit you square in the chest and knock you flat (again, and again…)
It’s all about your level of self-mastery..
I really hope this article helps give you some perspective on what’s going on in your life..
You know you’re my favourite student right?
Love, love, love and bliss.