Why your Dump Button isn't working for you

How to work through things and not royally screw yourself up

In media there is a seven second delay for live events and what is broadcasted. It’s often used for call in guests. It’s called ‘The Dump Button.’

This delay allows the producers in the booth to respond to an unexpected F-bomb, or a guest who decides now is a good time to express their true and radical opinion on some third rail topic. This 7 seconds provides a buffer between cause and effect. The button allows them to avoid the effect.

We all have a Dump Button. We take in experiences and register responding emotions as a result. Our emotions are a lot like a movie soundtrack.

Our Dump Button steps in when something good or bad is happening and diverts traffic. It breaks off the live feed of energy and emotion, parking that rather than allowing you to observe it, experience it and move on.

The good you cling to, wishing for more. Revisiting what you’ve locked away. When the bad happens, your Dump Button steps in and says, “we are NOT prepared to deal with this bullshit and it is dispatched to the sub-basement.” So you don’t deal with it. You might experience some of it usually at the front end or on a surface level, but you avoid most of it and instead just store it.

Problem is, this behavior doesn’t serve us well. We don’t grow, we don’t get stronger, we just load up with negative energy which in turn makes us anxious, angry, hopeless, depressed, addicted…and ultimately sick.

My accident on May 28th of this year is fading into the past. Even for me it is now a memory resembling a faded like a Polaroid picture left out in the sunlight too long. After the accident, I worked really hard to deal with the trauma.

Getting unexpectedly destroyed by a large moving vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed, then driving off leaving you for dead will do that. And, for two minutes I actually was dead. Yes, that creates trauma. Spending time in a Level One trauma ICU will add another dollop to the dish of pain and trauma being ingested. A TBI, not being able to read and living in a perpetual fog for an extended period of time with balance and other symptons that come and goes unexpectedly will fill the dish to overflowing. Never finding the criminal who hit you avoids any form of closure. A big second helping of negative energy.

Afterward, I did everything you could imagine to own my healing process physically and mentally. Everything. Talk therapy, journaling, meditation, walking in the neighborhood with traffic as the F350 landscaping trucks rumbled past me. Nutrition, sleep, physical therapy. I mean, I researched and did everything. I leaned it. Recovery became my job. I healed in record time.

Sort of.

Last week I was out on a training ride. The middle part, about 40% was out on a lonely gravel road. At an intersection, I slowed. It was a 2-way stop, the cross road was paved and it had the stop signs. Nonetheless, I slowed down reflexively.

At that moment, a large black Dodge Ram pickup truck blew past me over the gravel doing about 50, kicking up a massive cloud of stones and dust. He was in the middle of the road so about 2 feet away from me. He didn’t speed up or slow down as he passed me and disappeared into the giant cloud. Whoever it was, was just doing his farmer thing in the country. That’s it.

Things for me went a little different. My 7 second delay button started. Clanging in a ear splitting metallic CLICK - CLICK - CLICK.

Each click brought back a single frame from the movie sequence of that terrible day out here on the same road on May 28th. One slide after another. Sort of a twisted ‘This Is Your Life’.

I was no longer on my bike. I was standing for a moment, then unable to stand any longer, I was on the deck. There was no up or down. There was no forward or back, past or present. Each CLICK brought another image. A memory, emotion, sounds and feelings that were both terrible and terrifying.

As it faded, I sat there in the dust looking at my bike. Staring at it lying on it’s side, I thought, “I can’t do this.” What I meant was, "‘I won’t do this.’

Then a voice from somewhere nearby saying, “then this moment will define you for the rest of your life. What comes next is it.”

I sat there for what felt like hours. I had dealt with some of the incident but not all of it. However, the bigger issue was all the earlier negative energy I had collected was still stored inside underneath what was left over from the accident. All that negative energy had solidified from a sticky resin when it entered to solid stone. And there it sat.

As I sat there, looking inward, searching by feeling, I discovered something. A habit.

I was illuminated sitting alone on the thick gravel of County Road 900N, that each day I was parking small doses of negative energy which were peeled off of normal everyday issues.

The kind ALL of us deal with today, with a seemingly increased frequency. A rude person. You feel the negatively and collect some of their reside. Someone with a toxic attitude. A driver that is perhaps a tick away from road rage on the highway. A business meeting where the other party misrepresented what they wanted from you. A nasty email. Each of these are packaged with low frequency energy. And, that energy is sticky.

For the week, I didn’t sleep more than 2 hours a night. I felt on the ragged edge. Everything ached anew. I felt totally depleted. Work was a supreme effort, as were evening workouts. Knowing this energy was there and not being able to clear it was exhausting and a bit scary. It felt a little like chocking; first you feel uneasy thinking it will clear itself. When it doesn’t and you can’t breathe, this turns into helplessness and you seek help.

So I scheduled a session with an Eastern Medicine practitioner I see frequently. A mechanical engineer by education, and a powerful healer by training and practice. He is somewhere in between Zen monk, Reiki practitioner, chiropractor, acupressure and trigger therapy expert. He’s a rare find.

Normally I am with him for only about 20 minutes. That day, I was there much longer. Hours. He had seen me a couple of times since the accident, so he knew what was going on inside physically.

About 45 minutes into the session, he stopped and furrowed his brow. He said to me, “Something is wrong. I have found a new energy center I think. Or maybe it has just emerged. I can feel it. It’s not a good one. Dense and heavy. Dark. Strong. There is…a lot. Almost a slow pulsing low frequency energy.” He paused, walking his fingers around, digging into the muscle. “It’s where a lot of the physical trauma in your left shoulder and scar tissue is, but it travels down to your SI joint (lower spine).”

He sighed and said to me, “prepare yourself my friend, this isn’t going to feel good.”

Now, I have a VERY high tolerance for pain and thought I was prepared. Plus, he has told me this before. But what I experienced was #2 on the all time scale. I wasn’t ready for that. Number one was after the adrenaline wore off in the ER after getting hit. The kind of pain that causes perception and time to warp. If you have ever been there, you know exactly what I am talking about.

Then all of a sudden, I felt a CRACK. More like a spark of electricity than anything else. He let go and stepped back, eyes wide. “Do you feel that?!”, he asked me. The pain had stopped. I mean it had instantly vanished. In its place was a strong vibration or a hum that felt exactly like standing too close to a high tension electrical wire.

He put his hands near my chest and said, “you are giving off a MASSIVE amount of energy! I can feel it all the way up my forearms from even here.” I was only half listening, as I was now swimming in a tsunami of emotion. Sobbing and adrift in the waves of energy that were pulsing through and out of me like a dam had broken. This went on for nearly 30 minutes until it petered out.

As it receded, he began to check alignment and reflex responses. “Whoa. Everything inside of you has literally shifted. Everything.”

“What was that?!” I asked returning from the fog. He responded, we drilled for oil and we found it. Your accident loosened a lifetime of trauma and negative energy you’ve been collecting and storing. I’ve never been able to get at it, just pieces and because of that I have never been able to do anything more that deal with some of your symptoms. I think we just found and flushed the root cause dude.

I felt like I had the flu for the next few days but that eventually subsided. During this time, I placed a call to another resource. Someone even more deeply immersed and experienced in this than the practitioner who released this energy.

I explained to him what happened. He was not shocked, surprised, nor did he discount any of it. Instead his responses to my tale were simply, “yes, of course. He spent the next hour explaining some of what he knew to be true.

Here is practice he offered me, which I in turn offer you.

Each day, find time to meditate for 15 minutes, you can. My time is pre-dawn lying in bed. Relax and focus on a mantra that feels natural to you. Mine is: “It is time to pass. Leave and return to nature. Find your next purpose. I am grateful for you but you may not linger, it is time for you to find your way.” As you do this, explore where negative energy is lingering. If you do it with intention and practice, you’ll find it. Mine collects in my solar plexus or third Chakra.

Focus on deep, rhythmic breathing. Each in-breath collecting positive energy, each out breath creating the. opportunity for what you’ve collected to radiate out, like ashes and sparks floating off a campfire into the night.

This is one way to rid yourself of the low grade toxins we all unknowingly collect each day. We do collect energy and store it. When we do it grows stagnant and gets thick and ugly and creates Samskaras. Oh, this negative energy radiates out like a beacon. And, attracts more like itself.

If you do this, your health will improve, physical, mental and emotional. Your relationships will improve. Your work will improve. Your performance will improve. Your life will improve. Toxic people will fade away or will no longer impede or bother you to much extent.

If you are anything like me, you will be surprised or stunned at how much of this we are collecting and the impact it has on us. Want some proof? Just look around you.

So help yourself. Radiate better energy at higher frequencies. You will help others by helping yourself.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” – Leo Tolstoy.