Reactivity 101: Reactivity is mostly what blocks our growth

A Best Practices in Energy Healing system article from Healing Toolbox

Bertrand Babinet was my teacher on this topic and I credit him with the idea: if personal and spiritual growth is your goal, your best friend is your reactivity. Why? Because reactivity is what pulls us out of balance. Find and release where your reactivity is out of balance, and you are that much freer.

Not all reactivity is bad! We need reactivity to cross a busy street and not get hit by a car. This is our habit body. The term "inner child" is used synonymously with "habit body" here. Our inner child has our capacity to react and to respond "automatically" so we don't have to think thru routine behaviors each time.

Our habit body is our friend, designed to run on automatic; yet, if we do not monitor it adequately, it WILL run our life. Therefore, the larger problem is usually too much reactivity, over-reactiveness, reacting too quickly to life and to people.

You know you have excess reactivity if you find yourself saying:

I knew I shouldn't have eaten it but I ate it anyway.
I knew I shouldn't have said that but I said it anyway.
I knew it was bad for me but I went and did it any way.

Put simply, many times we react to life too quickly.

You can't "get rid" of excess reactivity

In clearing reactivity we mis-speak if we wish to "get rid" of reactivity. This is unhealthy self-talk.

Our habit body functions thru reacting, playing back learned routines, habits we have taught it thru our preferences. That's all it can do, play back the routines we create, promote and allow for it.

If we tried to "get rid" of a habit we did not like, it would be like telling a child, "I don't like what you are doing, so I am going to cut off your little finger."

So we do not get rid of reactivity--we transform it. We upgrade it. We redeem it. Habits are no more nor less than conditioned behavior. Only your conscious self, your objective self, is capable of assessing and changing your habitual responses. That's our job, you reading this, changing our behavior, upgrading our behavior.

Excess liking and excess disliking

The two major categories of reacting are excess liking and disliking. Truth teachers have suggested the work of personal and spiritual growth is, 'reducing our excess sympathies and antipathies' (Rudolf Steiner). That's a fair definition of personal growth. Reduce your own reactivity and your path of growth will be cleared of the habits and behaviors you have outgrown.

Excess liking - With excess sympathy, we react to things favorably--even when they are bad for us. We like chocolate cake, even when we are on a low carbohydrate diet. The battered wife returns to the abusive husband.

With excess disliking, we react unfavorably, even when the thing is healthy. The two year old says, "I hate spinach." The twenty year old says, "I hate putting money in my savings account." The fifty year old says, "I hate to exercise." If somebody we consider an enemy does something laudable, and honest, our antipathy says, "Yes, but they had ulterior motives." Excess antipathy towards an individual prevents us from seeing this person as ever doing good.

Without addressing our excess reactivity, maturity will always seem elusive. It's possible now to address your own excess reactivity systematically The tools are in your self-healing Toolbox: intention, follow-through, consistency, self-discipline. How much you can change how fast is up to you and your willingness to heal specific dysfunctional behaviors.

Body geography of reactivity

Where is reactivity relative to our body? Reactivity is primarily in the sub-conscious and unconscious levels of the solar plexus. The little circle below marks your belly button.

subconscious (feeling and desire)
------------------o--------------------
unconscious
(willingness, willfulness,
wont fullness, againstness

Navigating in your own habit body

We go into our habit body when we dream at night, when we daydream and so on. How do we navigate this realm? Fortunately self-muscle-testing or if you require a partner, Client-Controlled Testing, can always be used to find a direction towards resolving disturbances you wish to track.

Reactivity as "drama"

If you cherish an inner environment free of drama, a key I use is: drama is the enemy of peace.

The good news? Peace is the enemy of drama. You don't find peace and drama together often. Drama feeds on reactiveness. Romeo & Juliet died untimely deaths in their tragic story. If Romeo & Juliet has been just a little less reactive they might have out-lived the drama of the moment and both lived to a ripe old age in each others' arms. For those two lovers, their habits of over-reacting got the better of them. How about you?