Responder or Reactor

When life controls you you’ll react to it with whatever protective tools you have developed. This is so you don’t get hurt, but the tools you develop for protection are the ones which cause you to hurt…

To live life by principles based in spirituality doesn’t mean life becomes passive and you just let things happen. It really is just the opposite. You become more aware of what is going on in your life, you learn to have more control and respond to it from a place of love instead of reacting to it from who knows where. Without awareness life controls how things affect you. The more you want things different the more you’re a reactor instead of a responder.

When these reactions occur it’s because there isn’t enough awareness to be with what is happening in the exact moment. Normally there’s carry of some past event into the present moment and this makes you be a reactor instead of a responder. It’s very difficult to remain in a state of presence on a continuous bases, but this is why the necessity to practice comes in. Without practice you stay the reactor because you haven’t developed the necessary tools to change and become a responder.

Life is always what it is, but the way you behave when certain conditions arise is determined by conditioned thinking. What makes life different for everyone is how we develop triggers to cope with what happens in the present moment; each of us develops differently. These triggers activate our conditioned reactions. The more we live in the past and future the more triggers have the chance of being activated. When we are aware of the present moment triggers don’t manifest as reactions because they aren’t activated. Triggers can only be activated when there’s unawareness of what they are. Life can be lived through the noise in the head or it can be lived in the quietness of what’s occurring right now, but there is only quietness when you are without attached triggers. It is up to you the level of quietness and what triggers make you a responder or a reactor…