Breakthrougharticle

BreakThrough
By Terryann Nikides

What Pushes our Button?

Some of have our buttons pushed: in traffic jams, with rude people, when kids are disrespectful, when
someone pushes you in a line up, someone takes your place in a queue, or when we feel our husbands or
wives are not sympathetic to us, when we feel that we are too emotional, when we are in a job we don’t enjoy
and would rather being doing something else, the list of daily things that push our buttons is endless. A
pushed button means that we are in conflict.

What happens when we are in conflict?

The mind, because it is dual, it is in conflict. To understand concepts, the split mind must know dark to know
light; to know right it must know wrong and so forth. The mind runs amok in a stew of paradoxical beliefs
grasping here and there between one belief and another- thinking all the while that this is sanity!

When beliefs are held rigidly they run up against each other as two opposing forces conflicting consciously or
unconsciously wreaking havoc. Obviously when we understand that the mind sees only in paradoxes we
understand that the mind is constantly over-reacting. In addition, we are strongly identified with the mind as
with our emotions and our bodies which exacerbate our conflicts. When we believe we “are something” then
anything that tells us that this is not true causes conflict.

An over-reaction occurs when our emotions are not commensurate with the situation at hand, whether the
emotions are overt or covert. We over-react today over something that happened 20 years ago, as though it
happened just minutes before. When the mind is busy thinking about emotions the emotions do not have free
expression which in effect is an over-reaction. The mind is only doing its job but when the mind usurps the job
the of emotions and intuition then all three are disrespected.

When we over-react we ask: why is this happening again? I know better? I should be able to control this! Yet it
is happening and no, we cannot control it; and if we knew better it would not be happening; but it is
happening! We are over reacting!

The Problem with Coping:

When we over-react we look for ways to cope. While coping we pile one more false construct on top of
another until we no longer feel. We desperately say we want to feel and live fully while doping ourselves with
coping mechanisms to avoid experiencing. All the while filled with false pride we make utterances like “I no
longer do that” or “I used to be that way now I just take a deep breath and it goes away”. If we understand the
over reactive mind then the latter is impossible. We cannot make anything go away especially when we talk of
wanting to live fully! When we say things ‘go away” we are only saying that we have put it into a place where
we no longer can see it. We throw out our trash but where has it gone. Out of sight out of mind! Though our
trash might manifest as a cancer later on isn’t of consequence in the present - all we know is that it is gone
now. Until we find one day that everything we have ever done to cope is coming right back at us and we hear
ourselves say the words – I thought I dealt with that!

We spend untold hours defending our beliefs no matter how paradoxical and ridiculous they are. We build a
lode of constructs to defend ourselves, our beliefs, and our false identities. The more rigid our beliefs the
bigger are our defenses. The defenses are insidious; sneakily we justify, manipulate and abuse ourselves and
others to prove that we are right! We become increasingly deceptive telling ourselves that we know or don’t
know the truth. When we know the truth there is no need to justify it or find proof if it is the truth. When there
is a need to prove, justify or defend we have doubt. Yet we defend something we doubt as though our lives
depended on it. We end up trying to prove a doubt which essentially is proving a lie!
The truth, we feel, will reveal something so terrible that even we cannot face it. When, in reality, what is
revealed are the lies that, once brought to consciousness, only free the psyche and the heart from the burden
of defensiveness. Defensiveness laudably, though painfully, protects only the lies about our selves while
bolstering our over-reactions.

Self –honesty and responsibility for our Selves and our lives must be where the journey begins. If not the
latter then only blame and victimization can result. When we do not take responsibility we then thrust the
responsibility for our experience on the world around us. This dishonest behaviour only results in further
conflict, unhappiness, and defensiveness; but as self honesty grows we unravel the unseen fortress of
constructs that keep us from fully experiencing life.

t is only natural to defend. We want to feel safe and to do that we protect ourselves; but our defenses are self
deceptive honorariums to our inner weaknesses, insecurities and hurts. By acknowledging the latter, we
begin our journey from this place of hurt, low self-esteem, and false strength we, then, can take responsibility
for where we are now. We begin to understand that there is no blame. We cannot blame ourselves or another
for our predicament. Though our life stories or mythologies differ one from the other; we are all in the same
boat. We have all been children who have not been parented by a parent with compassion love and honesty
for themselves. As our parents knew no better nor did their ancestors that leaves no one to blame. We cannot
blame ourselves either. As little children our consciousness could not discern. Our consciousness did, on
one hand, the wondrous task of learning more that we would ever learn again in such a period of time, while
on the other hand, we could not keep out what was painful. So in with the good went the bad.

When it happens that we take responsibility for our experience we finally say that the buck stop here! Once we
are honest with our selves we can live into the lie. This means that even though we will blame we recognize
the lie and then we can do the work of becoming conscious; of living fully into our experience rather than
defending against the experience. Instead of trying desperately not to blame; we examine our blaming.
Instead of defending; we examine our defensiveness. Instead of avoiding conflict; we examine our conflict. In
doing so we bring into awareness what we have been doing which results in a shift in perspective. We can
now behave in ways that were previously closed to us. We can live fully into life rather that living reactively.

Plato said that the unexamined life is not worth living. When we examine our lives we do it through concepts
or our beliefs about life. One concept can be known through another concept and another. We examine our
beliefs or concepts by examining the concepts that we hold as true. What we hold as true, more often then not,
is what has not been examined. Hence we believe things that we have not even questioned? We pay lip
service to most of what we say. Much like saying we want to be free. Yet freedom is a far cry from blame-victim
consciousness and defensiveness that results from our daily conflicts.

We know that if we blame someone for making us feel then we become their victim. Though we know this we
feel that there is no other way out but to blame either ourselves or another for how we feel, behave, and
respond. In the deepest throes of conflict, it seems, is knowing that no matter how much you are sure that it
another’s fault and need to change their behaviour or you blame yourself and want to change your own
behaviour to make it all better you are stuck in this cycle of blame victim consciousness that seems to have no
reprieve. It is here at this point of desperation that we know the way we have been doing things is just not
working! At this point we decided that we must be coming at the conflict from the wrong perspective. We
decide that the buck stops here and we take responsibility for our lives and our Selves. From this point on we
can examine our lives.