The Condition of Your Conditioning
Sometimes it is difficult to see beyond what we have experienced in the past. This happens in everyday life. But also during eclipse season (which is now) I’ve noticed a higher frequency of the illusion of “history repeating”. As unique situations arise, we unconsciously run them against our traumatic history and as they say, the rest is history. Or, so it appears.
I recently decided to explore a new healing tool, for instance, and it felt right to reach out to a new healer with experience in this area. My gut said “all go- green light!”. Then self-preservation (fear) kicked in. My mind started objecting, “well maybe we should go to Yelp to confirm this idea/person”, which I knew would only open me up to a host of strange external energies. Gathering opinions from people I don’t know is a good way to work a triggered Mind into a frenzy.
When I asked myself what was happening I realized my Ego was trying to protect me from past bad experiences. Here’s a sample of those:
-“You are from another planet that isn’t like Earth at all. Wow. You must be very lonely, here.” (a psychic)
-“If you hadn’t come to see me you may’ve had an accident with your hands that resulted in permanent damage.” (a healer)
-“Your mother’s spirit wants the happiness you have in your marriage. That’s what’s causing you trouble.” (energy healer)
…There are more. On the upswing, hearing utter baloney uttered from the mouths of healers has strengthened my compassion and integrity as a healer myself. But since history has repeated, many times, it is understandable that this fear would arise, or stop me altogether from reaching out to someone new.
At the core of all of this, a belief: there is something wrong with you. That was the conditioning, eerily reinforced. It began in early life and was reinforced by New Thought/New Age movement which often blames the victim. Whether through law of attraction, ie, I was attracting healers into my life who reinforced being wrong or broken, or whether this idea was so insidious in the New Thought movement that we were all swimming in the same paradigm of lack…when we are in a trauma state we adopt beliefs about ourself to help us survive. When these beliefs aren’t accurate, if left unchecked, instead of protecting they threaten our survival. My survival logic was: there must be something wrong with me and that means I can fix it. This gave my Ego the illusion of being able to control the uncontrollable, which helped for awhile. I held onto this belief for a long time.
As believing oneself to be broken will do, it led me on a long hairpin journey to attempt to fix myself. From healer to healer I went. I learned much in the process, but the belief was toxic and had to go. Eventually, I realized that my experiences were different from the norm but they didn’t make me wrong. Recognition was the first step. Nothing changed until I deeply, totally, became and embodied the new and accurate belief about myself: There is nothing wrong with me and there never was.
Triggers Happen for a Reason, So Acknowledge Them
Conditioning is the interaction of environmental factors (social, familial, religious) overlaid onto our life experiences. When the Ego needs a belief to survive something traumatic, it finds one – no matter how faulty. Like a computer program we download a belief without fully questioning its validity. We do so because it’s there, and we need it. This perception, unexamined, can run roughshod over our life. It can prevent us from having new experiences, or keep us in old ghostly loops from the past.
How do we work through such deeply wounding conditioning when it arises? How can we release it so we can allow each fresh experience to be uniquely new?
The first thing to recognize is when we are triggered: it is happening for a reason. The racing heart, heightening of our senses, feelings of foreboding or excessive thinking… all ask us to pause and integrate what is happening into our awareness, with the wisdom of our Self, today. We might think, holy hell why am I having such a strong reaction? The Ego is self-protective. It doesn’t throw up roadblocks to thwart us; it is trying to help us survive. Even if that thing we are trying to survive happened years ago, if we have more to integrate around it, a reaction from decades ago can happen now (especially under a Pluto transit!).
It’s the way a friend doesn’t return a call, and you take it personally and feel abandoned.
It’s a feeling of overwhelm and threat of full on collapse at a seemingly minor event.
It’s a racing heart when (and endless analysis after) you talk to a relative.
All are signs pointing the way back into our felt senses for deepened awareness. Despite how uncomfortable it is, with loving-kindness and conscious awareness, the repetition of old/ancient triggering responses always present opportunity true healing. I like what my former astrology teacher Steven Forrest has said about Pluto transits. I think it applies, here: ‘When you have a Pluto transit it means you are finally ready to heal.’ If you are being triggered, you are finally ready to heal.
Commit to Being in the Body
How do you work with a four alarm fire in your body? A feeling of the bottom falling out? A full-on shutdown? As the adage goes, the only way out is through. These triggers don’t just “go away”. The challenge is staying present to the feelings and finding some neutrality. When these sensations come up, it’s vital to stay in your body.
For me, becoming really present to the moment I feel triggered, and deciding to experience this in my body, is key before I cognitively address any of the energies and feelings arising. I will lay down and feel into the stable and impersonal energy and support of Mother Earth. I set the intention to slow my energy down. I wait to feel connected to the Earth and to the Now. I may look around me while feeling the stability underneath. I am incredibly patient with myself.
Only once I am grounded in the Now do I feel safe enough to explore what’s arising. I identify the sensations in my body, which are considerably less now that I’m in my body and the Now. I allow the feelings to arise, identify them, and I bring in my own present-day understanding and wisdom to them. I might say to myself: “Since something traumatic happened in the past, it makes sense I’d feel this way.” I pay attention to the feelings: hurt, abandonment, helplessness, betrayal, sadness, overwhelm, anger… and I also try to ask my body if it wants to do anything. Shake, yell at an imaginary person, punch into the air etc. all have been helpful. Trauma is easily trapped, and stays, in the body through conditioning that tells us we can only have certain responses, ie, “don’t cry, be strong” “don’t be so dramatic” “anger is bad” etc.
For instance, I was doing this exercise and I felt some anger arise surrounding an ex from many years ago. The triggering emotion and event was feeling unsupported by others. I recognized this was “out of time” (that is, I could see that while the triggering event could perhaps be perceived as neutral, my emotions about it weren’t). Then this guy from years ago popped up. As I finally felt the depths of not feeling supported in my experience back then, I also realized I was too busy care-taking his response toward our breakup to experience my own feelings. I hadn’t been there for me! I felt the fierce, repressed, desire to be dramatic and loyal to my own experience – unconcerned about others feelings, to be utterly “selfish”. This reflected early conditioning where I learned to put my parent’s feelings, first, to survive.
To move past old wounds, integrate and finally heal, it is vital to create the internal space in our self, and find the space in our daily life, to feel what we feel, fully and completely. Without judgment, without shaming, without a mental story. Otherwise, it is easy to overlay an old traumatic story onto a neutral experience.
What is the Condition of your Conditioning?
“I pushed my soul in a deep dark hole and then I followed it in
I watched myself crawling out as I was a-crawling in
I got up so tight I couldn’t unwind
I saw so much I broke my mind
I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in
Yeah, yeah, oh-yeah, what condition my condition was in…” -Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) by The First Edition
So, what’s the condition of your conditioning? Most of us need to keep working on it throughout our lives, in varying degrees. As I’ve mentioned, Pluto transits stimulate our core wounds, as well as our ability and strength to finally, truly, heal from them. If you are Plutonian, or having a Pluto transit, life often feels like peeling a never-ending onion, the layers just keep coming! Yet if you’re committed to becoming aware and awake just the awareness of what is surfacing is most if not all that is required of you.
On that note, I will leave you with a story. Pluto, Saturn and Jupiter transiting my fourth house has kept me busy on fourth house matters (home, psyche integration). I have been dealing with a maggot infestation in my carpet. Yes, it’s disgusting, and understandably triggering especially because an easy resolution (one that doesn’t harm my family or ruin my carpet) is not within reach. The only thing I’ve been able to do, so far, is to deep clean the carpet and keep on top of the situation as it unfolds.
At first, I panicked because I wanted those worms out right away and no one and nothing was coming forward to help (how Plutonian is that!?). The exterminator had no ideas. The solutions I researched, boric acid and diatomaceous earth; the latter questionably works the former could cause harm to my pets. As I went into the feelings of it, the helpless feeling of being out of control, surfaced, triggering that ancient trauma “no one can help me”. As I allowed those to be there, the panic dissipated and I wondered: since there was nothing I could do, could that be the solution? Awareness, acknowledgement and presence were the solution(s). It often always is.
This is often the place I end up with clients, too. Only by becoming aware of a dynamic that has been operating underneath the threshold of consciousness, in the precise moment it is happening, do we have the power to change it. Always, presence, witnessing. Coming back to the body, into the Now. It’s how we change the condition of our conditioning.
much love & aloha,
Jessica
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