Button Button Who's got the Button

[Guest guest]

More on the nature of affliction, or as I call it co-dependence.

 

This goes back to the concept that we all come into this world with the

belief that we need love, but have to do stuff to get it.

 

In other words there is an implication from our parents, "I will love you

if..."

 

And after the "if..." they list things like, "behave,listen,do

well

in school,marry the right person,go to church on Sunday,"

"worship

Shiva on the 13th day of the month," etc.

 

Unfortunately its not that obvious, its much more subtle. In fact we are

taught to behave in certain ways to react to certain stimulus in certain

ways all with the understanding that if we do then we will be happy because

we will receive love.

 

For example: My mother believes that to receive love she has to do things

for others. This was impressed upon her by my grandmother who felt

non-existent because she was a middle child in a family with fourteen

children. This is a perfect example of one extreme, my grandmother, to the

other extreme my Mother. My grandmother at least gave my Mom a way to get

love, by giving of herself all the time. My grandmother didn't have that as

a child, she felt as if she wasn't there, that if she disappeared she'd not

be missed. I doubt that was true, but it was real for her.

 

My Mom has struggled her whole life to feel worthy of other's love. And she

passed that inherent quality on to me.

 

My Mom is a wonderful person, but she doesn't really know it. She only

feels it when others send it to her, reflect it back on her. She took

really good care of me during my first three years, then my sister came

along, then my Mom fell out of her fantasy and boom, the rest of my life up

until about three years ago happened. Almost all predestined based on the

afflictions of my parents.

 

Mom was taught that by doing for others she would press a positive button

in them yielding for her a little love. Likewise I was taught that love is

doing for others to get love.

 

So this is my working definition of a button, any condition within us that

causes a predetermined reaction. It can be a positive reaction to a

positive stimulus, a negative reaction to a negative stimulus or even

combinations of the two.

 

This is the process by which humans cope with existence. When we are

infants we take on our parents buttons and learn from them how to survive

in the environment of the afflictions. Survival is defined by the

affliction, not by reality. We equate our lives as children with normal and

we automatically seek normal in adult hood. We seek the dramas of our

childhood in adulthood, we expect others to have the same buttons that our

parents have, and we expect the same responses when we push people's buttons.

 

This is how humanity survived the hard times, by developing strong

unconscious coping mechanisms. Families with strong coping mechanisms

survived and the ones without them perished.

 

There are only two ways to survive, one is with coping mechanisms and the

other is with consciousness. It is only recently that we are capable of

having this consciousness on a grand scale, in our recent past, there

wasn't much consciousness to go around, so coping mechanisms that were good

at reproducing the species survived.

 

So the control freak male domineering type came from our need for survival,

and the household dominated by a man who brought home the meat for the

table, or the wheat from the field, generated children who could likewise

feed a family of their own.

 

The families who ran on guilt also survived. So did the families who played

with anger and aloofness.

 

When we talk about becoming conscious of all our baggage, we're not talking

about the baggage of one life time, we're talking about thousands of years

of baggage, if not tens of thousands.

 

Let me get more practical...

(This is overly simplified, its just an example)

 

Lets say that you and your spouse are in a restaurant eating your favorite

garden burger with cheese and you hear a conversation between a couple

sitting at the table next to you. Its a rather heated debate over something

the woman recently bought.

 

The man is upset because his wife did not consult him about a purchase, and

you sense he's right on the edge, about to lose control over his anger.

 

His wife is in tears. She's mortified that he's behaving this way in

public, and is terrified about what people are thinking.

 

Here's some background: the woman bought the object earlier in the day and

told her husband at this particular time because out in public he's less

likely to blow up at her. And she chose this place because if he did blow

up she'd be able to use it against him in the future.

 

The man is frustrated because he's over 100,000 dollars in debt (not

including their house) because his wife won't stop spending, and no matter

how hard he tries to get control over her spending she just won't stop.

She's gotten herself several credit cards behind his back and ran up huge

bills only crawling to him after the creditors threatened to put her in jail.

 

The husband's reaction is anger because he feels used and cheated.

 

The wife's reaction is fear, worry, and guilt.

 

She spends because to her acquiring things is acquiring love. Her button is

that money and objects equals love. When her husband buys things for her

she feels loved and she's affectionate back and hella wild woman in the

bedroom.

 

Which is of course one of his buttons.

 

But another of his buttons is debt. He comes from a long line of people who

were in huge debt and he swore he would never leave debt to his children.

He worked hard early in life to pay back his debt and the debt of his father.

 

Why did they get married? Because he bought her nice things and she was

hella wild in the bedroom.

 

Does that make them a good match?

 

Well sure as long as the money doesn't run out.

 

But it did, a bad business deal after their third child was born and

suddenly they found themselves in the poor house. She felt unloved because

he couldn't afford to buy her things and he felt unloved because she lost

interest in bedroom play. (This is Durga's wake up call for them, will they

heed it?)

 

Then, because she needed the love back in her life she started finding ways

to buy things on credit. This pushed his buttons even more and here they

are in this fast food vegetarian restaurant (its the hippest in town btw).

He's shouting at her to stop being so stupid and she's crying at him to

stop being so cruel and unloving.

 

They both wonder where the love went.

 

As they banter back and forth the husband slips up and says something about

not even getting sex anymore. This causes your spouse to giggle.

 

The husband hears that and stands up walking over to your table.

 

Your spouse looks down and tries to not make eye contact. Its just too

funny to handle.

 

He looks your spouse in the eye and says, "what's so funny? Are you

listening to me?"

 

Your spouse ignores him and that irritates him more.

 

He shouts a little louder and guess what, that presses one of your buttons

and you leap to your spouse's defense without even thinking. "No one shouts

at your spouse, the person you love!"

 

As you jump up, your spouse jumps up and the husband from the other table

pushes your spouse.

 

A ruckus ensues and you are all thrown in jail for disorderly conduct.

 

The only one home that night is the man's wife. And she has her new love

object to boot.

 

So when I say we only have control over our reactions, that's what I'm

talking about.

 

But its more complicated than that. The fact is we only have control over

our last reaction.

 

We are so complicated that we will react to many of our reactions. An

example of this is how when someone violates us (a boundary button) we

react with anger, then we may react to our anger with guilt. Then we may

react to our guilt with a desire to make up for the mistake and if we can't

make up for it then we react by feeling more guilt. Or if the person won't

let us make up for our anger we may get angry feeling more guilt, etc etc etc.

 

And that's just within one person. Imagine how complicated it gets when

more people are involved.

 

The last reaction is the one we can witness with consciousness. Even after

the fact we can look back and admit that we reacted badly and choose to

accept it and love ourselves anyway. That's when sincere devotion to Durga,

Chandi, or any other form of Maa comes in handy, because we can pray to

them to purify our reactions and defuse our buttons.

 

Consciousness is the only mechanism by which we can defuse buttons. We

can't make buttons go away, but we can rewire them and use them for good.

Remember every affliction has a positive and negative aspect, everything is

dual edged. Once we deprogram the reaction we can choose what to do with

the positive and negative aspects of the button.

 

Feel free to talk about this. This is a very real subject for me. I deal

with this on a daily basis and its one of my goals in life to be button free.

 

Thanks for listening.

 

Sincerely,

 

Brian

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