Ep 7: Spiritual Triggers

What can help us when words and experiences make us feel isolated, shut down, and less than? 

In this episode, we contemplate the struggle that comes along with triggering words and situations. We explore the cause and effect nature of these things, visiting a number of great thinkers along the way. If you struggle with various triggers in your life, you are definitely not alone. Join us as we explore some themes that have encouraged us. And as always, you’re invited to add your voice in the comments. 

Note: There are a couple moments where Kristina’s internet wasn’t cooperating on this day. So if you hear a couple of blips, it’s not you. It’s us. :)

Additional Resources:
Author: Ronald Rolheiser
Video: Father James Martin on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert talking about Lent
Podcast: This Jungian Life
Book: Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics by Dan Harris
Book: The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck
French Philosopher: Paul Ricoeur, 2nd Naïveté 

#Completeness 
#Harmony
#Mystical
#SpiritualDirection
#SpiritualCompanioning
#SpiritualDevelopment

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Transcript

 SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Sabbath, contemplative, dream, spiritual, pray, lighting candles, naivete, rosary 

Dominic Kaiser: 00:00
Welcome to The Contemplative Life. Three pastors, friends and spiritual companions help us explore spirituality through a contemplative lens.  

I'm Christina Roberts. 
 I'm Chris Roberts. 
 I'm Kristina Kaiser. We're glad you joined us.

Chris: 00:21
Hello, it's great to be with you. Today we are going to be talking about Spiritual Triggers. I think people who have grown up in faith traditions often rub up against words that have not opened up faith, but have made faith feel small to them personally. And I think a story that comes to my mind is, whenever Christina and I were first in a relationship when we were first married, we would often go out to eat with other couples. And she would want to share. She would want to order one thing and get me to order another thing. And then she would like to share. And I did not like sharing. Sharing was sort of a trigger for me. And this probably went on for for a number of years before I figured out why sharing was such a big deal to me.

I remember being a kid and sitting in the lunch room, opening up my lunchbox and getting out my sandwich that had a bite taken out of it. And my friends were like, "Why does your sandwich always have a bite taken out of it?" And I said, "Well, my mom likes to share, she likes to take a bite of my food, so that she's sharing and eating the same meal with me." And they laughed. And you know, they just thought it was so weird. 

And so I was able to identify this experience of sharing and why sharing was such a trigger for me. And then, you know, we quickly discovered new words, like, "Can I have a taste," or something like that. And it wasn't as off-putting to me. 

And so of course, like anything in life, what is a trigger for one person is not a trigger for someone else. I was in a conversation a few weeks ago about spiritual trigger words. And we named words such as "salvation," "evangelism," "sin," "repentance." But then one person said "connecting to God" as a trigger phrase for her, which was one that normally one might not consider, you know. That's not a word people often consider. Another person said that they usually don't choose a word for the year. But this year, the word "connecting" kept coming up. So she decided to make that a focus point for the year.  

And they're not universal trigger words, I think we may stumble across trigger words without even knowing it. And one thing I'm learning about contemplative life is that when trigger words come up, to pause, and to lean into the discomfort with curiosity. What is about what is it about the word that causes a reaction in me? What might God be saying?

Christina: 03:15
I also appreciate what you're just talking about Chris, the contemplative approach to noticing what's going on in me, and having that as a starting point, rather than looking out to judge or getting hung up on the trigger word, because I think often what can happen is just kind of an impasse. And either you say: I'm not gonna think about it anymore. Or it just kind of gets stuck in you. 

And last week, I was on my Facebook feed and Stephen Colbert, I found out, had hosted Father James Martin on the Late Night Show. And I don't normally watch the Stephen Colbert show, but I was fascinated that there was a Catholic priest on late night TV. And I looked it up and it was a little bit over seven-minute segment. And then  after the commercial break, he was had another two or so minutes on Lent. And so I ended up watching that clip, and then another clip where Father James was talking to some millennials. 

And it was interesting because he talked not necessarily about trigger words, but sometimes even practices. So he was talking about prayer in that particular context. And this millennial was just so struggling because their mom prayed the rosary every day and was really into the rosary. And they just did not get it. It's like, "That does not bring me life. I don't get why my mom was doing this." And they had been discovering all these other aspects of prayer. And so basically, they kind of wanted to enlighten the mom on: Hey, there's like all these different ways that you can pray beyond the Rosary.

And so, I think this person's spiritual mentor was like, "Well, why don't you have a conversation and share your experience with your mom and ask your mom about her experience and share experiences together?" So he ended up going to his mom and saying, "You know, Mom, why do you pray the rosary every day," thinking he was gonna convince her. But her response was, "Well, when I pray the rosary, I see God, and God sees me." And in that moment, he realized: Wow my mom has this beautiful, profound prayer life that I had no idea existed. 

And I think the tables flipped. And instead of him trying to put his prayer practices on the mom, he was able to learn more from her about why this practice was so meaningful in ways that he hadn't understood before. And so I think that paying attention and noticing that contemplatives talk about all the time, and especially when there's discomfort, something about this triggers me: There's a discomfort here. I think it can actually invite us into different angles that we otherwise would never see.

Kristina: 05:45
Yeah, I feel like what you're talking about reminds me of this Stage Theory that we sometimes talk about from Scott Peck. I don't know if the first stage would apply this Criminal Stage, so to speak, where we're just young. But, we often do learn things in a Rules-Based way, which would be Stage 2. But, in my world, the Sabbath when I was a kid, was totally a Rules-Based scenario. The sun went down on Friday, and you dropped everything. There was no TV, there was no going out to eat, there was nothing. And as a teenager, I was super grumpy about it. Just, "You know, sometimes you've gone shopping, but you don't let me hang out with my friends!" 

So by all accounts, I was probably in Stage Three, this Rebellious Stage, of, "I don't want this for my life, and it's messing everything up." And I felt embarrassed by the Sabbath a lot of times because it felt limiting. And yet, I remember my eighth grade gym teacher saying, "Man, I would love it if somehow someone had given me a whole day to do nothing. That sounds great." And it stuck with me; it was a it was a comment that was in the back of my head, but I didn't nurture it in any kind of a way for many, many years. 

And so as I grew up, as I came into adulthood, I was like, "I am done with the Sabbath! I'm never gonna do this horrible thing again!" And then everybody in my spiritual world was so raving about the Sabbath. "I just love the Sabbath. I make it this thing. I schedule it into my day. It's so important to me." 

I'm like, "Why are you all talking about this?!" So I just kept taking it in and rejecting it, right? And eventually, I too, became very busy. I became an adult that would say to myself, "Man, wouldn't it be great if I had some reserved time to not do all the things that I'm doing all the time?" And I started to incorporate Sabbath again. 

So in the Scott Peck Stage Four that's Mystical, and Richard Rohr calls it "completeness." And is it McLaren that put out a new book that calls it "harmony." So there's all kinds of ways that you could think of Stage Four. But somehow, it's coming back around and understanding it differently. 

So now I do value the Sabbath. I do value this full stop, enjoying relationship and connection and breathe again and get restored. And it brings inspiration. But I had to come back and I had to see it, not from a Rules-Based perspective. And I don't know if that's how everybody experiences their Trigger Words, or if that's unique, but that's certainly how I've come into it.

Chris: 08:31
I like what you're saying there, Kristina. It reminds me of this term that I heard a few years back. And the term is Second Naivete. It's not the naivete a tale of a child. It's more coming into something that you have experienced in your life with a new wonder and looking at it more with mystery. And there's an author that I really love to read Ronald Rolheiser. And he tells a short parable about this idea of a second naivete which says: If you ask a naive child, "Do you believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny?" And she answers, "Yes." If you ask a bright child, "Do you believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny?" And she says, "No." But if you ask an even brighter child, "Do you believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny?" And she says, "Yes, but for different reasons." 

And I find that's what we come to when we sit with these words that are triggering, with things that trigger us, that we rub up against, we have to discover different reasons for why they're important to us and why we might want to continue engaging with them.

Christina: 09:54
And I think it's helpful when we are willing to sit with our discomfort and to notice what's going on in us. And then to, again, kind of engage with others where maybe it's not a trigger word. And I think that, that in my own life has helped me to move past some of my things that otherwise I would just shrink back from, and I think, miss out on some of the benefits. 

And so, for a while now, I've been trying to pay more attention to my dreams. And I think that dreams can communicate to us in ways that are symbolic. And so when I wake up, if I happen to remember a dream, I don't necessarily literally think that what was in the dream is going to happen, that I'm going to do X, Y, or Z. But sometimes it informs, maybe, just an awareness - someone that was in my dream that I'm thinking about or want to pray for. Or maybe there was a topic in the dream that lingers with me. 

And so I recently had a situation like that, and I had shared. I was like, "Oh, I had a dream about you last night," and kind of shared the dream. And I really appreciated her response back because she didn't take it literally. It wasn't like, "Yes, this is happening in my life." And she had to now go change things. But it was a very sort of light hearted, "Hey," just this exchange of, "Let me share the dream," and she shared back with me. And I recognized in that moment how healing that was for me because years ago, I was in another spiritual group and dreams were taken like gold. Like, if you had a dream, we would switch plans around for a dream and dreams became this literal, sort of, map, as opposed to, maybe, exploring some of the deeper parts of the heart. And I don't even think I realized that, that was, quote, "a trigger" for me until I heard this healthy response from this person. And I think as I'm trying to reclaim some of these dream things because I've been listening to a Jungian podcast about dreams, so it's not coming from a church angle; it's from different people. So t's interesting thinking about ways that we can reclaim or even not even recognize something's a trigger, unless you're faced with a healthy aspect of that, that invites you to maybe lean into that a little bit more. 

Kristina: 11:56
Hmm. I love that once you can see a healthy aspect of it...And I also feel like there's a friendliness to oneself to let it be journey. It's: Maybe you can't get it all in one day. Maybe it takes a little bit of time, but it doesn't mean that it's gonna stay the same forever and ever.

Chris: 12:19
Sure. I think, you know, this would be a point in the conversation that I would want to put a plug in for those who have never tried Spiritual Direction. I think Spiritual Direction is a great place for you to, number one, share your story. And I think in sharing our story, you know, where can you go, to have this opportunity to talk about your life for an hour, where someone just sort of asks questions about things that you've said, and companions with you, in your journey. And that's where I've discovered a lot of my trigger words, is in our Spiritual Direction sessions. And my Spiritual Director lovingly says, "Well, tell me more about that." And I get to share. And then he says, "Well, you know, what would make meaning of that word for you? Instead of that old way of looking at it, how can you make new meaning?" And I think Spiritual Direction is a great way to look at things in your life in a contemplative way.

Christina: 13:28
Yeah, I would agree with that. I think probably one of my favorite aspects of companioning others is helping to unpack some of these spiritual trigger words, because, ultimately, there's probably something good at the bottom of it, right. But there's just so much layering, and so it just becomes: Is it really worth it? 

But I think when when we are taking the time to clean up some of our thoughts and reframe, it's like, "Wow, there are some beautiful treasures," kind of what you were talking about, Kristina, with entering, re-entering into those spaces from, maybe, a mystical point of view. And so yeah, I think I would agree with you, Chris. That's probably one of my favorite aspects of helping to unpack some of those spiritual triggers for others.

Chris: 14:06
This is the part of our segment where we talk about what we are into.

Kristina: 14:18
So I think one of the things that I have recently become interested in is, I was reading this book, "Meditation For Fidgety Skeptics," and they talked about this thing called Free Range Meditations, which is, basically, you could be doing anything, and you could become aware of the present moment. So this is really a book about Mindfulness, all the way from "taking a shower" to "you're walking and you listen to the sounds..." There's many ways that one could do it. "You're just feeling your feet on the floor." And the idea, too, was that: 60 seconds of pausing and being aware of your present moment is meaningful. And so I am super into this idea of Free Fange Meditation.

Christina: 14:57
Nice. Well, this week I am into Bollywood Dancing. So our middle child asked if she could join the Bollywood Club at school; she wanted to try it out. So I said, "Sure," and she loves it. They're at the point where they have to get costumes and their outfits. And so we have some dear friends who are from India. And so I texted my friend and said, "Hey, you know, we need this outfit." And so my daughter went over last night - they have a large lobby in their apartment complex. And so this woman brought out a suitcase, a duffel bag, like, more bangles than you could ever imagine from a bazaar. And so she came home with multiple dresses to bring to school today to show the different costumes to her club. So I am thankful for the artistic expression of Bollywood and all the fun stuff that goes with it.

Chris: 15:49
Well, I have been into lighting candles. For the past week, I have been lighting candles and letting them burn all day long. And I've come into contact with a few friends that have had just these issues going on in their life. And, of course, when we when we have friends that are in need, we want to we want to pray for them. We want to send blessing their way. And I find myself, throughout the day, as I walk past that candle, saying, "Oh yes, these are the these are the individuals that I would like to pray for." And it's been helping me be mindful of my friends that are needing a little extra. And it's also helping me think of them and reach out with texts and things like that. So I've been into lighting candles this past week. 

We are so glad that you joined us, and if you would like to know more about the contemplative life, we encourage you to check out thecontemplativelife.net where you can find our podcast, other resources, things that would help you in your exploration of the contemplative. It was good to be with you. Bye.