by FrozenFlames
Triggering, in my personal definition, is: tying a psionic action to a physical action so that the psionic action may be performed with little or no psionic concentration. That may be slightly confusing and perhaps a little off, but that is basically it. Let my try to explain: has anyone ever called your name and you suddenly jumped and looked around for however called it, without even thinking about it? This is similar to triggering. Your subconscious is programmed so that whenever it hears your name, it tells you to look around for whoever called you. Some of you may be able to already perform some minor triggering without even knowing it if you’ve been making psiballs for a while. Let me give you a real example of triggering:
Lets say Johny has a position that he always puts his hands in when he makes a psiball, right? Lets say it’s the cupping hands position. Johny has been making psiballs for about two months now. So Johny, for whatever reason, decides to put his hands in this cupping hands position (but he doesn’t try to make a psiball). All of a sudden in a few seconds he starts to feel a psiball in his hands!
Why did this psiball form, you ask me? Because after making a psiball, whenever Johny puts his hands in that position. When he put his hands in that position; without even thinking about making a psiball, his subconscious assumed he wanted a psiball made. What does the lovely subconscious do? It begins creating a psiball. That is a rudimentary example of basic triggering
This might seem a little redundant at first, but when you think about it, it can come in handy. Maybe whenever you make a telepathic link you could put your hands in a certain position or do some sort of motion when facing the screen name or person you want to link with. Then maybe if you’re having trouble concentrating, if you do this motion while facing the person (or person’s name, etc.) while you try to link, it will help you link to the person a little easier. This sort of thing can be useful when you get into more advanced programming as well.
You can use triggering for anything (taking down shields, linking, drawing energy, etc.). Just make sure that your hand or body motions/positions are different from each other. You don’t want your shield disabling position to be one hand cupped. Then if you decide to make a psiball with one hand, you’ll find yourself defenseless ;-). Just try to use common sense with this method.
Also, make sure that your motions make sense to you. If somebody recommends putting your hands out in a defensive position every time you shield (to trigger shielding), but to you instead of meaning “defense” it means “scaredy-cat”, then don’t do it! Use stuff that makes sense to you. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a hand position. It can be a body position too, it can be any position.
This isn’t really a required skill. I know most psions don’t really use triggering at all, but it can come in handy. It all depends on whether you want to or not, that’s all.
Remember, you’re training your subconscious to automatically do a task. Teach it wisely.