Anti-Triggers: Introducing Glimmers.

TRIGGER: “A trigger is a stimulus that elicits a reaction. In the context of mental illness, ‘trigger’ is often used to mean something that brings on or worsens symptoms. This often happens to people with a history of trauma or who are recovering from mental illness, self-harm, addiction, and/or eating disorders.”

Everyone’s favourite term nowadays. Ol’ Reliable—the great excuse. I’m triggered. This is triggering. You're triggered. Sneeze the wrong way. Call someone the wrong made-up label. Walk down the street too slowly. Exist. 

Nervous systems so chronically red-lined that the most minor inconvenience sets off a cascade of bio-psycho-social freakouts.

However, as our favourite French existentialist Albert Camus may have once said… “in the midst of my trigger, I found, within me, an invincible glimmer…”

The existence of triggers implies the reality of glimmers…

GLIMMER: “A glimmer is an event that elicits an opening. In the context of personal growth, ‘glimmer’ is often used to mean something that brings on an increase in energy or excitement, usually alleviating negative symptoms and/or circumstances. This often happens to people who are following their curiosity, actively engaging with the world, and listening to the deep wisdom of their body.”

There you have it—Dr. Brown’s clinical definition of glimmers. 

There’s a whole new-age self-help book right here for the taking. Shove this into ChatGPT and ask it for a 400-page manuscript (obviously 250 pages longer than necessary to appease publishers). Make sure to give it some edgy title like ‘F*CK TRIGGERS: Find peace and have great sex in a world on fire’. People like fake-swearing on book titles. It’s provocative. It gets the people going.

Jokes aside, glimmers will change your life. That's what they are designed to do. It's their very reason for existing. Let’s start here:

You don’t choose what interests you.

Your interests ‘choose you’ far more than you choose them. Was there ever a time you sat down, deliberately sampled every genre of music, and rationally chose the style that was best for you?

Hell no! You overheard a song on the radio and it spoke to you like a message from the mouth of God. It plucked your DNA like a Spanish guitar virtuoso, and you knew you had to have more of it.

Everything you care about is like this.

You find something, be it a woman, some music, a philosophy, a hobby—and it shines. It radiates lifeforce energy toward you. It glows brighter, sounds clearer, and looks more beautiful than the rest of reality. 

God only knows why it beckons you. But you know it does. 

Glimmers are unique to you.

Not everyone likes the music you do. Some people despise it. Other people could not care any less about the world-changing idea you have devoted your life to.

No problem! Because it is here you find the seeds of your dharma, your calling, your purpose, your great adventure here on Earth. 

There is only one thing guaranteed when you find and follow your glimmers: you will have the adventure of your life.

That doesn’t mean it will be easy. Glimmers often thrust you into the most challenging crucibles you’ve ever faced. But they will be your crucibles. Your destiny. Your dharma. 

Just like Fool’s Gold, some things look like glimmers but are only distractions. Diversions that suck up all your vital energy and adventurous spirit. Drugs do this to most people. False glimmers. They look like shooting stars, but turn out to be satellites hit by a meteor. Be careful. Be discerning. Trust yourself. 

But do not ignore glimmers. If you ignore them, your world stops shining, literally and metaphorically. The world becomes grey, mundane, and hopeless.

Signs and Symptoms of Glimmers.

How do you know you’ve found a glimmer? What are you looking for? If you want to write it in medical shorthand—the S/Sx of Gx:

• Intellectual Curiosity/Fascination: You can’t stop thinking about it. It comes to your mind first thing in the morning, it bubbles up when you’re by yourself, it’s a rabbit hole you want to dive headfirst into.
• Physiological Opening: You get more energy around it. You feel calm, open, excited, optimistic, loving, strong, ALIVE. You sit up straight, you pay attention. It evokes a positive, physical, life-affirming response in your body.
• Mythopoetic Significance: Something about it calls to you, beckoning you. It’s not a logical answer, nor easy to put into words, but the deepest part of you has an intuitive, instinctual knowing that this is for you.
• Emotional Superpositions: It evokes multiple emotions simultaneously. It’s scary and exciting. It’s empowering and limit-testing. It makes you feel like a King and a Peasant at once. It’s mundane to others but meaningful to you. While the exact emotion may not be obvious, the emotional response is undeniable.

Now what if you sit there and tell me, “There’s nothing in my life that glimmers to me?”

1. First, I’m sorry. What a painful life it is when the brilliant jewel of existence no longer shines to you. Who hurt you? What pain are you carrying? How long ago did you abandon your dreams? 
2. Second, it’s time to explore. Radical intervention is needed. Maybe nothing glimmers to you because you’re in the wrong place. Your glimmer might be waiting for you on the beaches of Thailand, the monasteries of China, the café’s of Argentina, or back in your hometown with your parents. 
3. Third, cleanse the lenses of perception. The glasses you see the world through are dirty. Psychedelic therapy may be the best tool for the job here. Psychedelics are uniquely effective at bringing the shiny brilliance of life back. They attune you to the signals of your body and make your senses sharper. 
4. Fourth, clean up. Your mind-body complex is the most sophisticated sensing instrument this organic planet has ever created. SSRIs are uniquely poisonous, numbing bodily sensitivity and emotional receptivity. Detoxes, flushes, fasts, donating possessions, clearing your schedule, and more time in nature will re-attune your delicate instrument.

What a beautiful life it is when you see every moment and material thing for what it really, truly is: the crystallized light of God, glimmering brilliantly like a thousand suns.

All of it here, for you, setting the stage for your next adventure. Waiting for you to notice...

Go play,
EB.