"Ignore Button" Meditation for Life's Trolls

“Ignore Button” Meditation for Life’s Trolls

February 24th, 2008

All instant messaging and email services have a function called the “ignore button.” If someone’s being abusive or just irritating, with the click of a button you can shut them out of your experience. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had something like this in real life?

Thanks to a technique I’ve developed and gotten a lot of good use out of, we do. It works well whether you want to shut a specific person out of your life, or you want to keep the person but want to shut out specific aspects of them that you don’t want any part of. Here are the two variations.

Your Life Is Your Castle

Get into a relaxed, meditative state. Picture yourself inside a large, stone castle fortress. This is to symbolize the self, and the fact that you are taking responsibility for who and what you will allow into your experience. In here, you’re safe — allow that feeling of security and confidence to build.

Picture the person in question at the gate. Outside is not only that person, but the universe in which you formerly associated with them — you’re leaving that universe, blocking off the entrance and crossing into a new one that they have no part in. Firmly tell them exactly why you’re doing what you intend to do. Explain why you can’t have that person in your life anymore. Say everything you would say to them in person (ideally you would do both, but sometimes this isn’t always practical, or even safe). Tell them that you refuse to allow them, their works and any of their influence in your life from this point on. I don’t allow the other person to speak during this exercise, because usually when I get to this point, the time for discussion is over and the fact that I can’t continue to have them in my life, abundantly clear. The next part is crucial: you then release your feelings about the situation into the old universe, and release the person as well. Tell them to go in peace.

When you finish, shut the door. I find it helpful to see and feel a heavy door that takes mental effort to push closed (an exercise of will, to further cement your intention), and seal. I then wave my hand over this door, making it disappear, leaving only a blank stone wall. At this time I turn around to the opposite wall where there’s another door. Outside this door is a bright sunny scene, with all your friends and loved ones whose company and role in your life you value the most. Stay in this scene for as long as you like, and then gently bring yourself back to full waking consciousness.

You can vary the imagery to suit your individual taste — if you’re more comfortable in a modern building with an advanced security system than a stone castle, use that. I just have a thing for medieval imagery.

Variation: Blocking Out Specific Aspects

By the time I got around to creating the alternate exercise, closing off to specific aspects of a person without shutting out the person themselves, I was doing this less with visual imagery and more by feel and will alone. As such I just held the concept of what I wanted to shut out, felt myself doing so, and opened up to their more positive aspects. I realize that explanation is a bit abstract and maybe not as easy to implement, so I’ve reverse engineered a variation of the original that should work the same way. In this exercise, outside the first gate you picture a situation where you encountered the aspect of the other person that you want to block out. See yourself in that situation, but instead of being annoyed, hurt or victimized, you say “STOP!” and then firmly explain that you will not allow this or situations like it to happen again; you will no longer allow this into your experience. Release your feelings about the situation as you exit that scene. After sealing the first gate, you walk out the second one into an experience you’ve had with the other person that you enjoyed.

Keeping the Castle Clean

These techniques can be extremely effective — but this depends largely on your willingness and ability to take responsibility for your own experience, and reactions. If you do the exercise but continue to simmer over what the person has done, or it’s still easy for them to “push your buttons,” then you’re still putting yourself in the victim role, which requires the presence of a tormentor. In other words, you’re sending out conflicting messages: you’re shutting them out and then inviting them right back in again to give them even more of your personal power. When we hold on to hurt and resentment, we hold part of the other person and the situation within us. In this case I recommend cord cutting, and doing the exercise from this post with the aspect of yourself that’s offended. That aspect needs to know that the other person is no longer a factor, but to keep it that way it needs to release the resentment. You may need to do the castle meditation more than once.

My experiences with this have been good and even surprising. Interestingly my most stunning success with it was with someone I’ve never actually met. This was the ex husband of someone I cared about who was harrassing her in various forms on an almost daily basis, and walking the fine line of legality. Since this was affecting me by extension, I did the technique to shut them and all their influence out of my experience. The harrassment stopped literally overnight, giving my loved one the breathing space to sort out her own perceptions and shut the harrasser out of her experience as well. What I believe happened was that by me doing the exercise, the aspects of the person being harrassed had to choose between aligning with me, and the harrasser, at the subconscious level, which was a no-brainer methinks. I have also used this to great effect with people I personally could not have in my life anymore, and it has become another powerful tool for me to take responsibility and determine the course of my experience.

–Palehorse

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