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One of the experiences of the spiritual path I am just beginning to understand is the aspect of “getting your buttons pushed.” You know what I’m talking about: someone who manages to get to you. Repeatedly. Incessantly.  Even when you’ve vowed in your mind that you’re not going to be stimulated in this particular way by this particular person on this particular topic ever again, somehow “Mom” or “My Boss” or “The Neighbor” manages to do it again. It’s over before you even realize it’s happening, and you walk away shaking your head, thinking, “now how did that happen, AGAIN?”

I once remember a meditation teacher of mine saying, “the role of the teacher in spiritual practice is to push your buttons,” that is, to find every button and push it repeatedly until there are no more active buttons to push, nothing reactive left. In terms of what this feels like inside, I have experienced it as “getting clear.”

During times of my life when I was more highly reactive to others, overly sensitive to criticism, hypervigilant about acceptance, praise, recognition, or rejection, exclusion and evaluation, I felt tossed and blown around by the opinions swirling about me. As those buttons have slowly gotten worn down from being pushed hundreds of times, I’ve had the sensation of getting clearer and cleaner inside, more able to set the course of my own boat without being unduly influenced by a disapproving glance or undue attention from someone else.

Ironically, this realization has elevated each of the annoying people in my life to the role of teacher. Thank you, oh annoying ones. Each of you has managed to find, and repeatedly push, a button, and that has served to teach me, leading me to a stronger, cleaner and clearer sense of who I am–who I really am, apart from everyone else’s opinions and judgments. Seriously, those who bring irritation often bring a gift, a flashlight shining on an area of interest, a grain of sand for the oyster. And not surprisingly I often look back on someone I experienced as “annoying” with an odd sense of appreciation and acceptance.

Another way of looking at these “buttons,” or perhaps a different angle for viewing them, is in the stories I write to set them up. One of the stories I used to write is “my boss doesn’t appreciate how hard I’m working.”  I realized, at one point in my life, I could look back on five or six bosses, all of whom I had rather testy relationships with, and see that in each relationship, I felt unappreciated. I was working harder than the boss ever acknowledged. I was giving 110 percent, and he or she never noticed. I rarely got thanked, but the minute there was a minor error in a press release, oh boy, did I hear about it.

I can see now, of course, that it was not my bosses who were creating this situation. It is highly unlikely that six completely unrelated people in different states working for different companies would somehow manage to construct exactly the same relationship with me.  The only common link here is ME, and I realized years after the fact that I was writing the “my boss doesn’t appreciate me” story myself. Once the story was in place, all it took was for a new boss to enter the stage and, presto, the button was pushed. Repeatedly.

I stopped writing that story recently.  Just stopped.  Realized that whatever else might be going on with me and my boss, being unappreciated doesn’t have anything to do with it. That was my idea, and it’s a bad idea, so I’ve substituted a different story: “my boss DOES appreciate my work, just like she appreciates most of the other 400 staff members that work here, but like me, she’s focused on getting the job done, taking care of her family, getting to her doctor’s appointment for the condition that no one else at work knows about, sometimes forgets to write thank you notes and yes, generally feels so close to this team that she sometimes takes other people for granted…just like I do.”

And just that fast, the “I’m unappreciated” button seems to have disappeared from the panel. One by one, I’m disconnecting the wires, so all I’ve got is these old buttons that don’t light up, don’t make any noise, and don’t distract me from what’s actually going on.

The more “clear” I get, the less I react to the feelings of others about me. I’m beginning to understand that their feelings are about them and their experience of this life, just as my feelings are about me and come from my experience. The more clear I get, the more I understand that we are so interconnected that no effort on my part is needed to establish connection; all I have to do is be in it, acknowledge it, participate. It’s already there. No effort on my part is required to prove goodness; I share in the goodness of all that is, the beauty of all that exists, and I am part of it.

Connect your last half dozen bosses, or girlfriends, or interactions with your parents, or next door neighbors; connect any set of dots you like, and see if there are any strange common connections in those experiences.  For me, it was surprisingly easy to stop one story and start another. Especially one I like better. I wish I’d done it sooner.  But, I suppose, as is generally the case on the spiritual path, the timing was just perfect.

Safe journeys, brothers.

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