“Your external world mirrors your internal state.
Heal the parts of you that need your attention
or you will forever live out your pain for all to see.”
― Dana Hall
1. Some preliminary observations
In Part 1 of this series “From Trauma to Enlightenment” we have already discovered that the path of the human being throughout one`s lifetime (or – if one follows the concept of reincarnation – throughout several lifetimes) is often a painful one. Facing all kind of pains and even trauma – may it be on a physical level in the form of severe disease, on the psychological and/or the emotional level (for the latter two mostly going hand in hand) in the form of mental and or emotional blockages, pains and mental illness and even on the spiritual level seems to be an inevitable part of our human experience.
Despite this being said, firstly, it`s important to know that not every painful experience does inevitably leave an imprint in the human system that has to be dealt with on a latter point of time in one`s life time, secondly, as individual and unique as the experienced pains and traumas are, so are the human beings experiencing it and their capacity to overcome any kind of challenges and hardships. It is important to note that each human being has a very unique way of dealing with so-called “negative” experiences and it´s thus impossible to say beforehand which kind of experience is or will be experienced as painful and/or traumatic by a human being. It`s usually only along the further path through life where and when we can see whether a certain event has left a certain imprint that is later on triggered by a similar experience or situation that either makes the “negative” emotion resurface to one´s conscious experience (the so-called “sensation of re-experience”) or the past event leading to a certain kind of (constant) behavioral avoidance of the person to make sure to not having to go through similar negative feelings and emotions that are stored within the system once again (“behavior of avoidance)”.
2. When pain turns into trauma
In general, human beings and their body/mind system can accomplish remarkable things, also when it comes to dealing with pain, frustration and traumatic events. The human body as well as the emotional/psychological realms have incredible ways of healing deep wounds, bearing heavy pains and dealing with all kinds of seemingly overwhelming emotions, thoughts and memories or frustrated wishes and needs. Yet, in some instances the human system is exposed to situations and/or circumstances that are either too intense in their appearance for the individual system to be dealt with at that current moment or the actual process of processing the “negative” impression on the system cannot be fully completed, meaning the process of “digesting” the sensation was stopped or otherwise influenced primarily through outer influences. While in the first example the process cannot be completed because of subjective reasons within the individual going through the difficult situation, the latter process is stopped not because of the incapability but because of outer and therefore more objective reasons. In either case this situation or event (typically a rather sudden, unique and more intense one) can result into a long-lasting trauma.
The second instance of our body building up trauma and effect-wise similar imprints in the physiological, emotional and/or psychological complex is when – usually over a longer period of time – one is exposed to a social field and/or life circumstances in general where the individual cannot develop according to its true God given nature and therefore is constantly lacking the feeling of being safe, truly loved for its being who one truly is (instead of being loved for a certain imposed and trained on behavior) or as constantly being hindered in the expression of their true feelings and emotions. The latter actually is one of the major issues in modern societies as one can observe the tendency of shaping young minors and teenagers from day one of their entry into this world according to the so-called needs of a linear and standardized society instead of recognizing the beauty of individuality and diversity of all kind of different children and teenagers. This behavior – over time – can lead to the complete dispatchment from one`s true nature, the constant feeling of being wrong for simply being of who we are, which is laying the foundation of severe self-disassociation as well as other painful imprints in the body-mind complex and trauma.
Whenever the human system is not capable to fully go through the complete cylce of processing such a co-called negative impression or imprint onto its system, may it on the one hand be due to a sudden, usually single event (such as a car accident) or an event that is repeated over a certain period of time (such as any kind of severe abuse) or on the other hand due to the permanent sensation of not being loved for who we truly are by being exposed to a rather strict corset of parents and/or society that is in denial of our true nature, individuality and needs, in each scenario the caused pain can and has a great likelihood to turn into trauma, leaving a certain imprint in our system and creating a certain kind of behavior in the ongoing course of one´s lifetime.
3. The general nature of trauma
In general, trauma can be defined as a psychological and/or emotional response to an event or a (single or ongoing) experience that is deeply distressing or disturbing and therefore not being processed by the means of the human body and/or mind. (When talking about the mind in this context it is referred to our way of thinking, the emotional response to all kind of sensations, the mental capacity of dealing with unpleasant sensations as well as our overall psychological state of health and emotional stability and maturity.)
When loosely applied, this trauma definition can – as mentioned before – refer to something shooking, such as being involved in an accident, having an illness or injury, the loss of a loved one, or going through a separation from the main care giver during (early) childhood. However, it can also encompass the far extreme and include experiences that are even more severely damaging, such as rape or torture.
Because events are viewed subjectively and different people showing different capabilities in regards to dealing with pain and other stressful events or situation, this broad trauma definition is more of a guideline. Everyone processes events and life happenings differently because we are all facing them through the lens of prior experiences in our lives (or even past lives). What causes a trauma in one person does not necessarily causa a trauma in another human being.
In the given context of this sharing the main focus of interest shall be put on psychological trauma and its effects on our so-called spiritual evolution as a human being.
Psychological trauma is usually defined as a response involving complex debilitation of adaptive abilities – emotional, cognitive, physical, social and spiritual – following an event that was perceived by entire system (and in particular by the nervous system) as life-threatening to oneself or others (especially loves ones).
The effect of certain traumas that later on have to be dealt with on different levels, for as we can see on the further exploration of the complete healing of trauma on all levels of human being may (and most likely will include) the following different types of trauma:
· Cognitive: affecting affects the ability to process thoughts and make reasonable judgments according to the actual (objective) situation
· Emotional: looping with so-called “negative” emotions such as shame, guilt and fear.
· Physical: affecting the nervous and immune system, sleeping patterns, eating habits and so forth.
· Social: affecting relationships with spouses, family, friends, colleagues, and strangers (because it affects so many so deeply, it eventually also affects the structures of societies)
· Spiritual: affecting our general worldview, our understanding and meaning of life in general, our perception of society and the world and ultimately our connection (or separation) with (and/or from) God and life itself.
4. Meeting the trauma with full self-honesty to become free
In the end we can never completely and totally free ourselves from something that we either don´t know or that we are constantly trying to ignore and/or push away. This is true when dealing with any kind of (unresolved) issue in our body-mind complex: e.g. if one responds to (permanent) pain in the body with, "oh, there's no pain, it´s all fine", the pain will most likely not disappear at all or at least won`t do so permanently. As for most instances the pain is there to point at something and – as a general rule – most likely will stay until it has delivered its message.
Even the most genuine attempts of positive thinking, repression and denial won`t make any pain disappear nor any trauma dissolve. All these methods lead to the result that we never fully experience our pain (or our trauma/wound) and therefore we are not facing it with the willingness to truly and fully read, understand and face the message it contains in its core.
To resolve any kind of pain or trauma we have to look deep into the eyes of it, and to go through it to at first fully understand it. Because only when we have fully understood, the pain and/or trauma has served its purpose and can therefore vanish completely and for all eternity. And this is where the difficulty often lies: While we are constantly claiming that we are wishing to get rid of our pains, suffers and traumas and – at least for some people – are working hard on them to release them, in our innermost we never really believe that (negative) things can also come to an end. We have become so accustomed to constantly meet our pains, fears and traumas again and again, we even started to see them as part of our life and even as part of our identity. When we are so attached to our “issues” that we see them as part of our identity so we ultimately won`t be able to fully agree to let them go once and for all – our mouth might tell the opposite, yet, our ego-mind structure will never agree to give up on anything that it sees as part of it`s identity.
The tricky part in this is that we actually have to meet the trauma fully in a safe environment including its whole spectrum of feelings, emotions, patterns of behavior etc. that are connected with it. As this – by nature – comes with the (re-)experience of the pain (by meeting the layer of our pain-body, as E. Tolle calls it), our ego-mind structure will do anything to avoid this confrontation. It will most likely try to not only heavily disturb the process but also to completely boycott any attempt to bring the dormant pains and traumas to the surface – yet, this is exactly what is needed: to bring consciousness and light onto all of our wounds and issues, to make them seen, to face them, to learn from them and then – finally, when they have fully served their purpose (and yes, they all have a purpose even when we are not capable of seeing and/or understanding it) release them.
5. The approach of modern psychotherapy
Frankl and his tools of Logotherapy and Existential Analysis are providing useful guidelines of how to deal with pains, fears and traumas:
As a first step Frankl encourages us to recognize all levels of our being as a human being. The third realm (besides the “Psycho-Physikum” – which in English could be referred to as the body-mind-complex and which is referring to the two “lower” dimensions of human being) provides us with the noetic level of every human being which empowers us to rise above each and every circumstance that we might be facing: Frankl constantly pointed us to the fact that we might have fears and traumas, but we aren’t them and therefor it is up to us to face them, not to identify with them and finally rise above them.
Frankl describes all so-called negative events, such as rejection by parents, illness, physical disabilities, violent influences as fate, the occurrence of which we usually have no influence and – for the most part – have already occurred in the past and are therefore unchangeable. He was continuously pointing out that we can – despite each and any fateful event or life circumstance – fulfill the meaning of life, and even beyond: he said it`s our responsibility and innermost duty that is already founded in our nature as a human being to find and fulfil this purpose in particular in moments when we are not able to fully see (or understand) the so-call “Über-Sinn” (referring to the meaning behind the meaning, which we as a human being are never fully capable of seeing due to our – by nature – limited perspective as a part of the greater universe). Frankl himself was a great example himself of living the possibility of expressing ourselves and our values at every moment of life in our fullest spectrum and capacity, despite pain, fear and even trauma and often not just despite but even because of them.
With the recognition of our noetic dimension we can make a clear statement towards life and the faithful decision and recognition of not being controlled by our past (and even the present) circumstances but rather taking the full responsibility towards all of our actions and reactions. It is also well expressed by the phrase, "I have a wound and I might be afraid because of it" (for example, the fear of loss or rejection), “but I am much more than that fear which enables me to act according to my highest standards, believes and aspirations in according with the greatest good of myself and the people around me”.
So, how do we deal with these negative memories and/or experiences and how to rise above them in our daily life?
a. Separation of the person from the behavior of a person
If we condemn the person as a whole because of what they did (or didn’t do) as for example or mother or father, we deny him or her the possibility of changing his or her behavior or - if this is no longer possible - at least repenting them. On the level of feelings and emotions, it is easier to accept and, if necessary, also condemn the negative event on the level of behavior than to deal with the badness of the person as a whole. If the person as a whole is bad and evil, our system senses the danger of a constant new attack or injury even in any “peaceful” situation. In this instance one is guided by fear and constantly in "danger mode" and/or always looking for potential dangers even in new encounters with other people that trigger underlying memories in our system.
b. The phenomena of hindsight bias
We always have to remember that memory is shaped by our own perception, which – by nature – is never objective, but individually colored. One and the same experience is perceived differently by different people, one might experience it as traumatic, while the other sees it as completely normal.
Once we experience an event as traumatic, this experience is intensified by our mind (which is always oriented towards problems and fears); we might remember the event as even worse than it actually was, in particular when it was experienced at a young age. While growing in age we are naturally developing a greater capability of dealing with challenging situations. A situation that seemed to be life-threating as a minor (for example getting lost at the supermarket as a two- year-old) might completely loose it`s danger once being applied towards a more current and objective point of view. We are therefore heavily invited to constantly mature in our emotional and psychological dimension and regularly re-evaluate our past experiences (or even better for the more “advanced” approach: being fully present in the here and now without clinging to any past life experience, yet to simply acknowledge it as a necessary experience on the path of the evolution of our being).
c. The act of forgiveness
“Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.” ― Anne Lamott
Many people get stuck on the idea of what forgiveness actually means. In its general definition forgiveness is defined as a “conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether you believe they actually deserve your forgiveness”. It`s important to always remember that the act of forgiving is primarily for the forgiver, not the person that is forgiven.
Forgiveness does not mean that one glosses over or denies the seriousness of an harmful act towards another being. It does neither mean forgetting nor excusing what has been done. It does not mean one has to reconcile with the person or release them from legal accountability. It simply means to not cling to the past as part of “our story” (or even identity), to let go of any victim identity and to reclaim our power to move on in our life as confident and free as possible.
Or as Jack Kornfied`s definition of forgiveness:
“Forgiveness is, in particular, the capacity to let go, to release the suffering, the sorrows, the burdens of the pains and betrayals of the past, and instead to choose the mystery of love. Forgiveness shifts us from the small separate sense of ourselves to a capacity to renew, to let go, to live in love.”
6. An integral path from trauma to enlightenment – where psychotherapy and spirituality meet
From an integral perspective from both – modern psychotherapy as well as (tantric) spirituality – any pain and/or trauma previously experienced can be recognize and seen as a part of our by nature (dual) experience of being a human being.
Within this understanding trauma is seen as an act and/or state of contraction in our system, which – by nature – goes against the natural and universal law of expansion. It is then on us along our path through life to recognize that contraction (and its effects on our daily acts and state of being) and to learn the underlying life`s lesson in connection with the imprints, to face them, to heal and integrate them and finally allowing them to fade away once they have fully served their purpose.
Any trauma has to be seen as a reaction of the system going into survival mode at a certain unpleasant point of our life. At that moment the system becomes too overwhelmed with processing the upcoming emotions, it “simply” is busy already with keeping us alive (even if from a more objective perspective the situation might not be seen as a danger to health and/or safety at all). The system driven my the ego-mind does not necessarily have the capacity to evaluate the situation at that current moment toward its actual danger, it simply classifies a situation as dangerous and responds with its instinctual fight-flight-freeze mechanism. The processing of the feelings and emotions cannot be completed and they become stored within the system to be then dealt with at a later point of time.
Along our path of becoming fully human it is on us to discover and face those imprints, to recognize our soul`s path in that current life time with its major life themes and to fully integrate and heal them on all levels of our beings – the physical plane, the emotional/psychological one and the spiritual one.
Once we come to that time in our life where life is suggesting strongly to deal with these “negative” imprints in our body-mind-complex it is the time for the full processing and integration of the experience that couldn’t take place at an earlier point of life due to certain reasons already mentioned earlier in this text.
It is then on us to override the mind which will heavily suggest not to face the traumatic event one more time and to open up to a deeper wisdom and knowing which is the knowing that this stuck energy needs to be felt and being met whole-heartedly to so that it can be processed, integrated and released from the system. Once we bring our focus and attention to this process we can recognize the stepping in of the resistance from the mind - we can observe that happening yet stay with our full presence and observing awareness despite any resistance. We can observe all the thoughts and emotions that come up in that process and can picture them as passing clouds on the otherwise sunny sky, not giving them any specific attention (while also not placing any attempt to get rid of those thoughts or emotions) and trusting our system that it actually has the power and the wisdom to perfectly deal with the stuck energy as soon as it finds itself in a healthy and safe environment to do so. The system then can very gently meet each and any trauma held in the system, allowing us to feel it fully (including all the potential thoughts coming up with them) and to open up to it. At this moment all that is required is to stay with our full presence and awareness without getting caught by the story of our mind that will most likely be created as a by-product from the bubbling feelings and emotions. Once we manage to do so the body has the capacity to responds to the sensations in a very neutral way instead of following the instinctual urge to shrink and contract. The stronger the emotional intensity of any upcoming sensation is the greater presence will be required to meet it.
This is why it is important to practice awareness and to get more and more in touch with our natural God-given presence behind the chattering ego-mind construct and to become deeply anchored in our truest and innermost being. Once all of our being completely merges with this presence and/or awareness outside of any identification with thoughts or even feelings and emotions we naturally develop the ability to face each and every contracted energy within our systems while also making sure that all of our presents and future (negative) sensations, experiences, feelings and emotions (if they even rise at all) can pass through our system without causing any kind of lasting contraction or suppression within our system. This is the moment when we can start to meet any kind of situation that life brings up not only with full awareness but also with an open heart which is actually the most important step to take not only to heal any kind of trauma, but even way beyond that: to become a fully grown and expanded human being that is no longer controlled by and filled with stuck energies, limiting belief systems and behavioral patterns, but to serve as a pure vessel of life itself. A human being which is deeply anchored in its truest nature, moving freely throughout the flow of life, being available and open for acting according to the divine plan and expression of life as well as as a beautiful manifestation of love in its purest form and essence.
(With grateful picture credit to Christian Felgenhauer)
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