(Thanks to Titus for sharing this…)

Jun 2012

We all have experienced times when our ‘feathers get ruffled’. It may be a difficult person at the workplace, a spouse or a child. Their behavior, their way of being or utterances seem to get on our way or ‘steal’ our joy or even ‘make’ us angry. Welcome to planet earth! These people are called “button pushers” and if you were hoping to change your workplace, mate etc to a better work place or a more understanding lover I’m here to inform you on very good ground that your next workplace or lover is still going to be a ‘button pusher’. Probably even more advanced in their button pushing skills. The world is full of ‘button pushers’ and they are not going anywhere! Isn’t that great news?… Indeed it’s great news (there’s not a shred of sarcasm in that statement) and as you as shall gradually see, you may end up buying a gift for your ‘button pusher’ or even take him /her out for dinner.

Whenever someone behaves in a way that irritates us, such as when someone says ‘hurtful’ words or becomes indifferent or difficult, it is literally a gift unwrapping itself right before our eyes yet most people bypass this gift, some reject it and others even fight their gift hoping to emerge victorious over ‘the enemy’. Whenever someone ‘pushes your buttons’ and you find yourself feeling angry, furious,feeling resentment or feeling fear and irritation, it is of great importance to remember that these feelings are inside of you not outside of you. And the good news is that you are fully responsible for your inner world. If you feel anger, hatred, resentment, bitterness etc it is because it (whatever emotion, feeling that arises) was already in you. It is not caused by the ‘button pusher’ it is revealed in you and for you by the ‘button pusher’. It is emerging from your subconscious mind. It‘s here to reveal something to you. So instead of reacting, accusing the “button pusher’’ or even fleeing from the situation it’s important that you put your ‘curiosity cap’ on and explore your own inner-turmoil. Explore it with an intention of healing and releasing any feelings of resentment, bitterness etc.

In relation to the mind there’s no such thing as ‘it’s not a big deal’. Yet most people downplay their emotional signals normally in a bid to flee from a particular feeling (because it ‘makes’ them feel bad) or they just repress their anger, bitterness, fear etc in order to avoid expressing or appearing to experience ‘bad feelings’ in the presence of others because this would give them a ‘bad name’. Truth is; our experience and our interpretation of experience (whatever our experience maybe) is not just some random insignificant happening. It is embedded in our subconscious mind and it plays a key role in our co-creation of reality.

Consider this, when you squeeze an orange what do you get? You get what’s inside it. You get orange juice. We all would dismiss one who answers ‘mango juice’ as insane yet in our daily lives we fall for the ‘mango juice’ idea whenever the ‘button pushers’ are at play. We very easily blame external circumstances for our internal turmoil that has been ‘squeezed out’ by our ‘button pushers’. Some religious people may even label it as “attacks from the enemy” and this dichotomous, dualist approach to life issues is responsible for very many wars and conflicts. I love this passage from ‘Awareness’ written by Anthony de Melo about 30 years ago, “Do you know where wars come from? They come from projecting outside of us the conflict that is inside. Show me an individual in whom there is no inner self-conflict and I’ll show you an individual in whom there is no violence. There will be effective, even hard, action in him, but no hatred. When he acts, he acts as a surgeon acts; when he acts, he acts as a loving teacher acts with mentally retarded children. You don’t blame them, you understand; but you swing into action. On the other hand, when you swing into action with your own hatred and your own violence unaddressed, you’ve compounded the error. You’ve tried to put fire out with more fire. You’ve tried to deal with a flood by adding water to it.”

When you squeeze an orange you get orange juice! Whether you squeeze at midnight, noon, winter, summer, whether it’s a child, tweezers , priests , girl , boy or 80yr old man who ‘squeezes the orange’ the result is the same: orange juice. Whether it’s an orange from china or Kenya or Greenland or Israel. Similarly whenever a particular life experience elicits a particular reaction it’s important to observe the reaction in you instead of projecting it and observing it outside in another. It’s important to be curious as to what that situation is availing for you to recognize, heal, and release. To do this requires a lot of self –love (unconditional love for self) so that during ‘button pushing experiences’ you observe yourself none judgmentally in order to understand the trigger as well as the sponsoring thoughts behind the trigger that make you react in a particular way in certain situations.

With each successive ‘button pushing experience’ you get to know yourself even better and deeper and heal your psychology. You get to release thought forms that no longer serve you and experience greater joy. You get to love yourself and accept yourself, not in a pity party but in growth and Self-evolution. To embody your highest self in your present life experience.

The people we think are difficult and unreasonable are the ones who really help us grow. They teach us to LOVE, to be less rigid and exclusive and become more flexible and inclusive. They help us to know ourselves, to take life easy , to learn that it’s important at times to recognize that you would rather be kind instead of being right. This is normally a challenge as we tend to project out ‘truth’ on to others because we know it’s ‘the truth’(this can be quite insidious because it was instilled in us very early n life). What is the point of being right yet lose your joy? After all, if your truth is the truth why do you have to or need to defend it. No one needs to write a thesis to defend the force of gravity or the fact that lightning precedes thunder and not the other way round. It’s obvious to all. It’s self evident. It’s unnecessary to ‘defend a truth’. So friends, in your next encounter with a ‘button pusher’, choose to respond to the situation from a place of Love rather than from reaction. Observe the reaction trying to emerge from within but this time without flowing with it. Choose to respond from a different space and soon all button pushers and their drama will become non-issues. You will radiate so much love and peace from within you that all drama peddlers will enter into a cease fire agreement with you. You will become like the sea floor. You will remain undisturbed, unperturbed by the ripples on the surface. You will become an alchemist transforming the lead of dramas and conflicts into the gold of understanding and acceptance. Wherever you go you shall become as the great book says ‘the Light of the world’ not through avoidance of people opposed to your ‘truth’ but through inspiration that will touch even the people farthest removed from your particular world view. In my own life I reached a turning point when I came to the realization that when I say ‘I am hurt’ or ‘I am frustrated’, the ‘I’ that is speaking in this case is not my soul. It is simply a mental-emotional response to a neutral situation. The mind always wants to attach meaning to situations based on its ‘inner chatter’. The Ego always seeks to protect itself because it sees itself as ‘Separate’ from others, from nature etc. It resides in reactive Consciousness. Yet the SOUL knows the inter-connectedness of EVERYTHING that IS. The Soul wants to Love to the Max, to Give to the Max, to Forgive to the Max, to Share to the Max. It resides in Creative Consciousness.

I conclude my article today by sharing a story that truly inspires me in relation to ‘button pushers’. It’s an incident that took place many years ago during the civil rights movement in the U.S. Dr. Martin Luther king jnr was once in an Assembly one Evening when a man in the Assembly Hall walked up to him and said, ‘Are you Martin Luther King jnr?’ and dr. king said ‘Yes I am’. Then the man spat on him…Dr king looked at the spittle on his suit and reached into his pocket, took his handkerchief, wiped the spittle off, neatly folded the handkerchief, handed it back to the man and said calmly ‘I think this belongs to you’.

Dr King’s response is such an inspiration. He responded from a very high space. He could have reacted, yelled, screamed for help from security (and this would have been normal) brace himself for a fight etc. Yet as an architect of non-violence who had been in deep prayer and meditation He responded from Soul rather than from Personality.

So, when the rubber meets the road, as we encounter ‘button Pushers’, the Priceless question as we observe our inner response becomes, ‘Is this coming from the Personality that I created in order to fit in or is it coming from the Soul part of me that wants to express eternal qualities?’

Blessings and Light!

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