When you have healed to a great extent from the patterns and wounds of the past, you can bring up anything from the past or share without pulling up the emotional triggers that were once attached to it. You can share it without any filter or even a second thought because there is nothing there vibrationally to affect the present. You will be astonished at how even deeply traumatising and triggering events can be shared merely as one's story or stories that have led one to this point of growth.

Does one completely heal? Healing is always work in progress. But, as one heals, the triggers are less. One reacts less and responds more. There is a gap that is created between the fresh trigger or tower moment and the invoking of an earlier wound. That gap is pure self-awareness indicating the pause. That gap is growth. That gap is full of choices in the now. What do we do with this trigger ? How do we respond ? You would be astonished at many new 'you's are born in that moment of gap. The possibilities of fresh events that can arise. You cannot choose a reaction. But you can choose a million responses. Each reflecting how much you have healed. Have grown. It gifts you, and the other a new possibility of a fresh connection. And, when the other person too is almost healed, and is responding instead of reacting, a million possible 'us' possibilities are born. It is the highest sacred space of rebirth possible.

On the other hand, if we have not yet healed patterns from the past, understood our own triggers, worked out our deepest fears of abandonment, insecurity, inadequacy, even if we never bring up the past in conversation, the impact of the past is there in the present. It affects everything when the triggers arise. Just like a live wire that is dormant as long as it is untouched. The minute there is a trigger, the reaction sets in. There is no space for any awareness. Any step back. It is raw, bleeding. Old wounds that never closed. So, even if one is almost healed, and the other is not, the connection would still be volatile.

It takes two to dance together. When one person is offering a response, and the other is reacting, it still is not synchronous. Nor fluid. It is a dance with the people who cannot match their steps. The reactive person has to reach a stage of healing to permit themselves to a response. To allow that window. The gap.

Talking about the past is never an issue. Whether it is personal, professional, religious or global. It is about whether the space that arises triggers responses or reactions. Whether there is a window for fresh connection, meaning, purpose or enhanced healing. Never talking about the past but carrying dormant emotions, wounds is not being at peace or healed. It simply means the trigger is yet to be faced.

We cannot heal through avoiding triggers. We heal through our fresh responses instead of reactions to triggers. And, the measure of our response is a measure of how much we have healed.

The world today is wired to trigger. It runs on trigger. There is great effort to have everyone react instead of respond.

The highest victory and journey as individuals, partners, families, friends, communities is to move the entire planet to response instead of reaction. To create the window for fresh connection. For bringing healing. Self-awareness. So, when the past is brought up it never brings the patterns along. It is merely respecting it as part of the story of how we got to the point of a response instead of a reaction, healing instead of wounding.

We do that one trigger at a time. One connection at a time. What can we commit to ? Our response instead of our reaction. Can it promise that the other won't react ? That is not in our control. It is their journey. But, by simply responding instead of reacting, working on our healing from past patterns and triggers, all we can do is to make our own pasts easy to talk about it it ever comes up.

Not wanting to talk about the past is not healing. Burying the past is not healing. Choosing to not talk about the past is not healing. Getting angry that another is bringing up the past is not healing. Avoiding anything from the past is not healing. Meeting the past in the present with response, ease, compassion and truth is to comprehend and experience healing. Creating that window for reconnection is healing.

The future of everyone on the planet is in that window. Where we can respond. It is not in pretending our past never happened. It is in reaching the present where there are absolutely no shadows from the past. Merely an immensely rich present full of brilliant possible futures.

- SS 31/3/2025