Note: Chapter 5 will be added to considerably as work progresses by Melinda
Chapter 4 : Approaching Trauma More Consciously
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
― C.G. Jung
Like most of us, I have had many traumatic events in my life. I can never forget the dark feelings of abandonment, the helplessness, and disgrace, or the mental or physical pain of my early years. Trauma results in damage to, or loss of, connection to ourselves, to our bodies, to our families, to others, and to the world around us. This disconnection is often hard to recognize because it doesn’t always happen all at once but rather over time. We make early accommodations to our traumas, with the wounds, and our need to feel safer and more secure, creating spinoffs of our real self that were designed to manage our suffering, and to reduce further attacks upon our self. These spinoffs become aspects of our defense mechanisms, and actually dominate our awareness to the point of making us believe that this is all that we are, in spirit and in truth. Often, the damage wrought by the original wounding does not become evident for decades after the original trauma.
One of the several subroutines, or spinoffs of self, that my consciousness ran resulted from an accommodation to early trauma that I experienced. This part of me was of the nature of the “savior” archetype, which was a part of myself that believed that for anybody to ever love me, I would have to save them or do something heroic. This is where my need to overachieve arose from, and my excessive loyalty to other damaged human beings who would not have been in my spiritual orbit otherwise. I experienced overpowering grief and incredible guilt and shame every time I witnessed failing health or death in friends and family members, including pets. I also could not tolerate abuse in any form, especially when I witnessed male friends exhibiting controlling or misogynistic behavior towards their female partners. Sadly, my needs ended more than one long-term friendship.
Like all others within our society, I have also been traumatized by our culture and religion in both profound and subtle ways. Trauma seems to be a natural outcome of our collisions with life shattering events, and less intense though destabilizing experiences that we were not able to adequately process and heal from at the time of their origin. It is now known that trauma can arise through actual acts, or through the careless or unconscious omission of necessary love at strategic life junctures. Yet, some even claim that there is no greater trauma than our passage through the birth canal, and that the rest of our lives are defined by our response to that expulsion from the safe womb of mother. No matter how it happens, trauma must be understood and dealt with, or we will be limited by our instinctual responses to its experience.
Our fight or flight mechanism is how we respond to trauma and threats within the environment. It operates at a nearly instinctual level, but it can be malleable, depending also upon the situation, our individual value system, and cultural conditioning. We tend to think before we react, and our thinking draws from hints from our biological hardware, our historical patterns of behavior, our genetics, and our training. Society, in combination with humanity’s neural-linguistic capacity, has provided mental software subroutines that enable us to process and act upon information to not only keep us safe, but also to act in efficient and, mostly, culturally acceptable manners. The problem is that many of these subroutines act below the conscious level and are fundamentally defective, having become habits of thoughts, with many perceptions being created from a dead past. Added to this are self-generated subroutines created through traumatic wounding, and it may be seen how the concept of free will may only be a concept until the self is made wholly conscious, healed and whole.
All of these subroutines become sacred cows that are not only erroneous representations of truth, but also keep us trapped within a limited radius around the whipping post of our own personal and collective ignorance. The human race remains a breeding ground for violence of all types, with its traumatic impacts upon all of us. We are culturally inculcated into ignoring the distressing objects of our perceptions, by the scapegoating of others and denying our unconscious support in the very reality that we are witnessing, and, perhaps, violently reacting against. Pretending not to see, or not speaking of the evil that we see or hear results in no healing potential for anyone.
In our beginning strides on the spiritual path, we usually start with a motivating assumption, an assumption offered by others, yet probably also informed by our intuition and our long lost innocence: Though we are not experiencing it now, there must be a better, or even a perfect state of being available to us. There must be a cause or reason that we are not experiencing this blissful state. Is it because of an error in our thought, behavior, upbringing, acculturation, or even a fundamental flaw in our being? Or is it a result of trauma? I have looked at my traumatic wounding at the deepest level, experienced a total disillusionment with the total lie of a life that just accommodating and normalizing trauma may become, and then reawakened to infinite new possibilities for living. As a general rule of healing, if we can see the problem completely, without self deception, then the very power of that insight generates new pathways for the healing traveler to walk upon.
It is time for all of humanity to also become experts in our own unique life experience, and understand the impacts of malicious and unskilled behavior upon all of us. It is time for humanity to just say no to being agents for the proliferation of traumatic wounding. We can start by understanding the causes of all this trauma.
Toxic Masculinity and Our Sacred Cows
Historically, since at least the Greco-Roman times, men have established the rules of mutual engagement. Our world culture’s dominant male energy has a propensity for creating toxic and traumatic engagement that result in patriarchal systems of political, religious, and economic understanding that maintain the status quo through a multitude of forms of oppression. Yet the status quo remains quite imbalanced, and it continues to bring harm, even to the proponents of these systems and the perpetrators of toxic behavior. To this day, men continue to struggle with trauma-inspired feelings of poor self-esteem, while keeping this disfiguring system of engagement with the world solidly in place.
Women can also be the perpetrators of trauma and suffering, but the statistics are obvious as to which sex is the major perpetrator of crimes against self and others through intentional and unintentional traumatic assaults. Men outpace women by an almost 20 to 1 ratio, so it is not even close. Men are the primary vehicles for the delivery of darkness, and are impacted by the poisoning within their own spiritual ecosystem that carrying such energy would predispose them to. Yet, both passive and aggressive males and females can both benefit from understanding the effects of trauma in their own lives, and we can all take enormous strides to bring healing to ourselves.
There are a number of choices that most men make in our efforts to cope with an often times distressing and threatening life experience. We may fear being seen negatively or receiving a negative evaluation by those people familiar to us. We may fear being placed in an unfamiliar situation over which we have no control. We have developed a trauma-inspired brain that seeks to avoid any experience that reminds us of a time when we were helpless and unable to escape threats or discomforts. We spend extraordinary amounts of time perfecting the passive/aggressive role, where we don’t reveal ourselves directly to others, but instead make our presence known through secretive behavior and hiding activities.
Men typically inflict their own wounding on everybody else, in subtle, or not so subtle ways. Usually, this manifests in dominating, or being dominated, by others. Philosophies of oppression, and of the monetization of reality, arise out of this wounding. Women are usually victimized, or those with sensitive natures. We may participate in trauma-inspired anxiety reactions or accommodations to our wounding, such as:
- Don’t answer or initiate phone calls. (After all, the phone is the heaviest object in the universe!)
- Be silent, or shut down after brief sharing, whenever in group settings, such as family events or community gatherings. (Well, they didn’t want to hear what I had to say anyway!)
- Hide from difficult feelings through overeating or excess drinking of alcohol. (Hey, these are two prized self-treatment options, what gives here?)
- Hyperactivity and vigilance around keeping a safe position, in restaurants, religious events, or social encounters. (Keep that exit in sight, you never know when you might need to run for it!)
- Being apologetic for almost anything negative that occurs around us, even if we are not at fault. (Well, it sometimes is a race to get to the victim’s role!)
- Poor self-esteem, don’t care for self, instead focus on others. Ignore the self, often to the point of masochistic emotional abuse.
- Ignoring our own feelings (especially anger) and any warning signals from our bodies, and not communicating honestly with others, through avoiding difficult feelings and perceptions, and maintaining people pleasing behavior.
- Excess competitiveness with others while engaging with greed and the need to keep up with the Jones.
- Proving self-worth in environments where self, and others’, worth is disrespected, and try to fit in where we don’t belong.
- Stockpiling weapons.
- Not speaking up for ourselves or for others that are oppressed for fear of being marginalized.
- Over immersion in entertainment.
- Not exercising, not respecting the body’s needs.
- Use of recreational drugs to the point of habituation (including marijuana).
- Smoking, vaping, or chewing tobacco.
- Using sex as a way to manipulate others, to artificially build self-esteem, or as a disguise for loneliness.
- Workaholism, perfectionism.
- Addiction to risky behaviors and activities in general.
These attitudes and behaviors are guaranteed to bring poor emotional and physical health to the damaged ones, and only encourages the further repression and traumatizing of our self. Life certainly can be quite the complicated challenge, and our responses to it determine whether we can maintain reasonable health and a sense of joy and well-being, or collapse into a deteriorating life situation.
Several recent news articles and studies have indicated that there has been an epidemic of younger, white, middle class men who have been dying at earlier ages than would be statistically forecast, for at least the past thirty years. There are many references to environmental causes, gun violence, to the opioid/fentanyl epidemic, painkiller addiction, heroin addiction, alcohol abuse, or poor diets as leading causal agents. There is also the so-called “white man’s despair,” an expression recently coined that encompasses a wide range of unhappy and unhealed American white male attitudes and behaviors. I have seen, and I believe at the deepest level of my own being, that this disease in the mind of mankind is directly related to many of the diseases within the body of mankind.
There is a disease of the human spirit that has targeted and used masculinity for thousands of years to victimize everybody, all in the name of religion, progress, security, and economic growth. Does anybody still think that the suicide victim, lone wolf arsonist, abusive alcoholic, mentally ill person shot by a policeman, drug overdose victim, morbidly obese person, corrupted national politician and/or reality TV star, or mass murderer, is a unique being, with no relationship to the rest of the very humanity that spawned him?
The history of humanity indicates that, collectively, it is acceptable to pass unfair judgements against our self and each other, approve of the distribution of weapons of war to countries and to individuals, promote inequitable distribution of resources and wealth with a now monetized Mother Earth’s resources, cultivate excesses and greed as aspects of positive capitalism, incite division, violence, murder, and war, continue injustice and inequity, defend racism and white supremacy, promote religious and philosophical persecution, and create and continue the conditions for addiction, and suicide. This self-destructive behavior continues, seemingly unabated. And there are large groups of humanity who would rather watch their world burn than collaborate with it to bring a measure of healing to all.
In the 1980s, during America’s campaign to reduce the proliferation of drug addiction, Nancy Reagan made the famous statement: “JUST SAY NO!” The understanding at the time was that addiction was a personal choice, and by reversing the “yes” that was being said to drug use to a “no,” the problem would just disappear. In the absolute, that is quite true. Our real problem as a human race is that we have had our desire to just say no to perceived negative situations or behavior gets overrun by a lack of alternatives to choose from, peer pressure, family and religious training, and our own failure to develop or maintain the ability to set healthy boundaries for our self. Why doesn’t our civilization say no to the proliferation of traumatic events, and the wounding of the innocent? Because it doesn’t work.
We are all susceptible to the damages incurred by spiritual asphyxiation, should we neglect to listen to the stories being told by our most vulnerable family members. The sensitive and the oppressed of our culture define the leading edge of the journey of our own shared human experience and are indicators of our collective spiritual condition. As a culture, we need to remember that the traumatized of our culture, the mentally ill, the diseased and damaged population, which includes the addicts and the alcoholics, are society’s “canaries in the gold mine.” Their diminished lives are direct evidence of a cultural disease, and they become part of the narrative of cultural and spiritual dysfunction.
The possibility of bringing balance and a sense of wholeness into life must be embraced, and conscious movements towards healing will greatly reduce trauma’s burden upon us. When healing from the impacts of trauma is not pursued in earnest, many negative outcomes become possible: Some become addicted to the idea that their only function is to provide for their family, and, having achieved success or failure, they become disillusioned. Some may eventually lose their sense of meaning and direction in life with the loss of a career, marriage, or community. They may become lonely and depressed, and may develop profound mental illness and/or become addicted to drugs and alcohol if not treated. Those who somehow hang in there, waiting for a better day may never see it.
One only needs to look around, and view the effects of toxic masculinity, and its ugly spawn, toxic religion, toxic politics, and toxic capitalism, to see that repression of our feminine nature, and the Divine, is built right into the very fabric of our cultural existence. The Golden Rule, which states, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” and, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” does not bring great hope or direction to huge segments of the human population, religious or otherwise, because they are ignorant of love’s need for the release of emotional controls over others, self-care, peace of mind, and adherence to collaborative and compassionate principle. As the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “We are made for goodness. We are greatness in the making.” How can we achieve that goodness again?
Trauma and its wounding results in extreme contraction of our spirit. By being willing to face ourselves, and our grief, traumas, and suffering, we can develop the capacity to move freely through our lives instead of remaining tethered to the pillories of our painful pasts.
Facing Your Trauma and Returning to Goodness
Each human child depends upon the quality of love, safety, and prosperity of the family household, and these are primary factors that greatly influence a growing child’s evolutionary path through consciousness. The parents are by intention also designers, builders, and co-creators of the early life and consciousness of the new child, even if the DNA determines a greater portion of the heritage. My father spent five years at a local university learning about psychology, child development, logic, philosophy, and religion, and yet his successful mastering of these subjects in school did not translate into insight as to how to best parent his children. My mother studied Dr. Spock and others, yet did not develop the insight necessary to know that placing a blanket wrapped crying baby in a car in the garage at night so Dad could sleep missed the bulls eye for perfect child care by the widest of margins. All creators strive for perfection, and most parents are no exceptions, yet that desire for excellence is difficult to identify in dysfunctional families, especially by children who were negatively impacted by chronic parental mismanagement. Victims of wounding carry the pain well into adulthood, and even unto death, in situations where the trauma is never made conscious or gets addressed in a loving, healing manner.
For those who may need help refreshing their memories, or understanding if healing from trauma should be a serious consideration, taking the following test may be of help. The Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Questionnaire is ten questions to help people identify their childhood experiences of abuse and neglect. Here is the questionnaire.
Prior to your 18th birthday:
- Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often… Swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you? or Act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
- Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often… Push, grab, slap, or throw something at you? or Ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
- Did an adult or person at least 5 years older than you ever… Touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way? or Attempt or actually have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
- Did you often or very often feel that … No one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special? or Your family didn’t look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
- Did you often or very often feel that … You didn’t have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, and had no one to protect you? or Your parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if you needed it? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
- Were your parents ever separated or divorced? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
- Was your mother or stepmother: Often or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her? or Sometimes, often, or very often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard? or Ever repeatedly hit over at least a few minutes or threatened with a gun or knife? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
- Did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic, or who used street drugs? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
- Was a household member depressed or mentally ill, or did a household member attempt suicide? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
- Did a household member go to prison? No___If Yes, enter 1 __
If you answered more than two questions in the affirmative, you are potentially predisposed to a cluster of poor health choices, continued traumatizing of self and others, suffering within the self, and creating a generally troubled life experience. The embodied stress of trauma causes cortisol to be injected into the bloodstream for, potentially, decades of time, causing stress and inflammation related illness and disease.
A Canadian study reported in the scientific journal Psychoneuroendocrinology found that individuals exposed to adverse childhood experiences tend to be biologically older than their counterparts. The authors considered whether accelerated biological aging could help explain the relationship between adverse childhood experiences and poor health outcomes later in life. Their findings suggest that harm, such as abuse or violence, in early life takes many forms and can lead to health consequences many years down the road. The researchers found that the link between adverse childhood experiences and biological age was stronger for more sever forms of adversity, such as physical and sexual abuse.
I scored high on the ACE test. As a child, I had several health issues, and I was restless, discontented, and suffered from a feeling of not being heard or fully accepted as a child. My parents and my culture made their compelling arguments for trying to convince me that their paths and understandings were righteous, and I just needed to pick myself up by my bootstraps and be mature enough to understand and find where I fit in this challenging place.
The greatest trauma to the human soul is the early damage to our sense of self that causes poor self-esteem, and all of the compensating behavior that occurs downstream from the wounding. Without even knowing it, we traumatize others with variations of our own original trauma. If our trauma created a sense of self that is insecure and feeling unloved or unlovable, our relationships will be held back by just that much, and will not dynamically evolve into the fullest of their innate potential. We remain pilloried to the past, and lost within the unconscious response patterns of a mind trapped in the labyrinth created by that activity.
Trauma and suffering are not synonymous, though suffering may arise from failure to directly address traumatic wounding, which only leads to more suffering and the unconscious predisposition towards creating new traumatic life events. Many causes of suffering are preventable, however, and they have their origins within broken, unhealed minds unwilling to embrace the possibility of personal change. And, most of these assaults against our Spirit originate within the family, though environmental influences from a corrupted societal norms and religious malfeasance also play major roles in the origin and proliferation of traumatic wounding.
My first thirty-one years of life reflected the internalized horror of a life suppressed and traumatized by the conspiracy of silence, a silence created by my misguided need to preserve and protect a limited, damaged image of self, and of all others. My own true nature had been masked over, or silenced, through that process. A lifetime of oppression of myself and the unconscious repression of several aspects of my feeling, loving nature had brought to me a series of near fatal illnesses, physiological as well as spiritual. I saw how a dark force, common to all of humanity continued to live, move, and have its being enshrined within my own heart and soul. I saw how the medical, economic, religious, cultural, political, and spiritual traditions remain burdened by their own limitations of understanding and intelligence. I saw that my own suffering was shared by most of the other people that I knew. I saw that those who suffer have little energy to provide emotional support for others who still suffer, as well.
Tragically, many of us have experienced great difficulties, traumatic impacts, and suffering through our relationship with our family, our family’s religion, and our culture. Some of the traumas most resistant to healing happened in our early years, or even before we became verbal as young children. And most victims go through life, never knowing the source of their chronic pain, be it physical or emotional or both.
Traumatic experiences, grief, and suffering may arise through an action of intentional hostility, or it may arise spontaneously as a reaction to the vicissitudes of life. Suffering may arise from an inability to do what is right. Suffering may arise through incurable diseases of the body or of the mind. Suffering may arise through the trauma of witnessing horrific acts of violence. Suffering may arise from the inability to reconcile the belief in God with one’s own grief and loss. Suffering may arise from becoming addicted to substances that were designed to take our pain away. Suffering may arise from the perceived inability to speak one’s truth and to have one’s voice heard in the face of the oppressive powers of the day. Suffering may also arise from contemplating the continuation of our daily pains into a distant, unknown future.
We know all too well where we are now, and for those that do not like their present state of awareness, we do have options.
Dealing with Your Trauma
Meditation is a way to access the trauma stored in the body. My friend Paul Zilka, during a meditation experience in the early 1990s, literally saw a small semi-human form, vaguely resembling his young self, erupt from a historical wound in his back, crawl up to his shoulder, and fly away. Thirty years of back pain disappeared through that amazing exercise, facilitated by Jerry Jones, the famous meditation teacher.
In 1987, during a profound meditation, I was also shown two complete identity matrices attached to my own bodily energy field. I did not recognize them as creations from damaged parts of myself. I was ignorant of trauma and its potential impact at the time, and all I could do was to note that they were not there for my greater good. I intuitively knew them to be tricksters. They stayed with me for years afterwards, for I did not know what to do with the information. I did not know it at the time, but I performed a spiritual bypass where I was able to postpone dealing directly with them, until I had the requisite insight and knowledge as to deal with them effectively.
If it weren’t for the incredible spiritual strength, and wisdom, of my life partner, Sharon White, I would not have been able to have, what some people call, the following cathartic event. It was on a Thursday morning in February 2018, and I was preparing to go to the Pilates class that Sharon and I attended, and I wanted to get there early so that we could warm up on an exercise bicycle, with a little aerobic activity.
But while I was ready to go, Sharon was on the telephone, talking with a friend. I, trying to be innocent, said, “Can we go now?” And she got mad. Her anger released in me the trapped energy of a lifetime. While raging at her, I became aware of a pain so deep, and so all-encompassing, resulting in an anger from a source that I had never touched before, at least as a verbally conscious human being. Sharon and I went our separate ways for a few hours, while we both tried to understand what the heck had just transpired. Leading up to this experience, I had been intensely exploring the entirety of my life experience, having written seventy pages about my early childhood and trauma, my maturation process, addictive and self-destructive cycles, while providing glimpses into higher possibilities for living. All of this writing had placed me, without me realizing it, into the psychic world of all of my past pain and suffering.
After a meditation, I had a realization. My wounded essence, and the issues stored in my bodily tissues had actually cried out for the first time and I actually listened to it, without my ego repressing it as it had for sixty-one years. And I also saw, for the first time, the wounding process that I shared with my father. I felt an incredible compassion, love, and acceptance for my father, who had also suffered immensely under the spiritually destructive parenting of his own diseased parents.
Sharon paid the price for a couple of hours, while I acknowledged the wounded baby within me. But, I had an insight that still informs me daily. I saw how we, as humans, keep layering ourselves and our ideas upon what somebody else is saying, rather than meeting the being where they are, and responding according to the dictates of our heart center, which in most people, especially men, has been scabbed over by our own early spiritual wounding.
My life has transformed from a trauma induced static state of distress and emotional stagnation to a dynamic, ever changing experience of life’s infinite possibilities for healing, new perceptions and enhanced spiritual experiences. I say yes to the present state of evolving enlightenment, and no to the diseased mind stuck in the past.
Here are some other options for healing:
- Create a visual timeline. Write onto a piece of paper, a long piece of paper, the years of your life. Start with the birth year, and carry it forward to the present moment.
- Listen to music from the time when the wounding occurred. It will open up emotional vistas, using the wholeness of the self.
- Write extensively about the time in question.
- Work in conjunction with therapist trained in traumatic wounding.
- Perform ceremony that indicates finding the wounds and freeing them from our tissues.
- Listen to the stories from family members, friends of family, and, especially, friends of the parents who may have witnessed aspects of your upbringing.
- Have an incredibly supportive partner, or a therapist, to watch with you the emotions that arise during the turbulent periods of the introspection.
- Make a decision to make amends to the world for our own unconscious wounding of all others, which was our unintentional response to our own wounding.
Freedom from Trauma Now and in the Future
Trauma must be recognized for what it is, which is psychological wounding as a result of a single experience, the repetition of similar experiences many times, or a combination of different experiences which have attacked one’s safety and security over an extended period of time. It is an assault against our innocence, an oppressive act, or series of actions, against our essence, and the unskilled way we have dealt with it becomes the source of much of our repressive tendencies and sufferings.
To not express ourselves honestly and openly results in our own early demise, spiritually as well as physically. Many people within our society have lost all freedom of choice. I have much compassion for those who still struggle with the sometimes lifelong effects of trauma with its resultant suffering, and its deadly spawn of fear, indifference to others, disassociation from one’s own self, mental illness and alcoholism/drug addiction. Fortunately, we have other places to travel to find our healing, and there already are awakening people to observe and learn from, to gain hints on how to find our way back home to our own innate goodness.
We each must penetrate the conspiracy of silence, and bring the light of a loving heart and healing words to the hidden darkness. Can we bring our sense of self, with all of our historical wounding and suffering, and look at it honestly and openly with our self, and others? If so, then we can then bring hope to all of the other canaries in our society who are now struggling for air.
Chapter : Insight And Mindfulness
“The unexamined life will be painfully lived”
—-Jack Boland
When I was a kid, I had a strange and profound dream. A priest, having received his directive from on high, then returned to his village along the lake in the high mountain region. He gathered all of the villagers together, and informed them that they were to take every golden figurine, every sacred symbol that they owned, and they were to throw them all into the lake, and never to think about them again. Then, he told each villager that they must each go into their own home, and face the evil one without any protection or care from any of their gods or their symbols of the sacred.
The priest then returned to his own home and tossed all of his own idols and treasures into the deep blue lake. He stripped himself bare of all clothing, and then began to summon the forces of the dark. He became surrounded by a fog, and as he lifted his hands, sparks started flying out of his fingertips at the unknown force of darkness that lay just beyond his visual field, still hidden beyond the boundaries of the fog. The priest refocused his energy into his arms, and hands, and the sparks grew into a steady energy field, extending from his body, his heart, and his spirit, towards his unknown adversary. He was determined to overcome this force, this dark energy, and he redoubled his efforts.
The priest’s heart began to race out of control, he began to sweat profusely, and a growing sense of fear and dread began to take hold of his entire being, as he finally understood that his energy could not last forever. Yes, for him to continue this battle, he must sacrifice all of his life force. Yet, he felt that he had no choice but to keep engaging the enemy, to finally see the face of the force that had terrorized his village since time began. He desperately strained and stretched to see the object of his fear and disdain, even as the ebbing energy field flowing from his fingertips continued to cut through the fog.
Suddenly, a face began materializing before his faltering gaze. As he collapsed to the floor, almost drained of all life, he could no longer fight an undeniable truth: the face of the evil one might be his own!
Projection is a name given by psychologists to this experience, where we finally realized that the conscious world that we feared, the conscious world in which we created idols and gods and psychological mechanisms to protect ourselves from the perceived or potential evil, was actually a world that we created through our own ignorance, both collectively and individually. This manifests in all of the horrors that we witness on the world stage daily, and in all of the family and cultural dysfunction under which we were raised. We are all wounded by this process, and rather than find a way to heal from it, we ignorantly arm ourselves against further assaults from others, even though we are part of the attack against our own self in the first place.
What if a real miracle was trying to happen in our lives, and too few people cared or were not even aware enough to attempt to look for it? This indifference or ignorance is the foundation for chaos in our world and within our own minds. Those who refuse to look at the toxic masculinity inspired darkness within our culture become its unconscious and, unwittingly, its most ardent supporters. Indifference and hatred continues to threaten to destroy everyone and everything. Tragically, in this age, collective outpourings of love and support for victims follow domestic terrorist acts, rather than healing and preparing the culture enough to actually prevent the heinous behavior in the first place. But through Insight and mindfulness, minds and hearts are transformed, making all of us much less likely to become the source of suffering for others, and we become the living examples of loving non-violence in action. Insight plants the seed of the miracle into our minds, and mindfulness is the great gardener of that miracle, resulting in a more abundant, healthy crop of happier, peaceful, loving, and ordered thoughts.
Profound Insights of the Self
One of the greatest insights that I have made is a direct result of a science class that I attended in fourth grade. Mr Hill, our principal and co-teacher of the fourth grade class, was going to perform an experiment, and he wanted to teach the students about the power of observation. Each member of the class was to record everything they observed.
The teacher heated a portable electric stove. He then grabbed with some insulated tongs a thin sheet of metal and set it onto the burner. The metal immediately began to distort in size and disfigure. When he was done, the metal no longer looked like it did before.
I watched, yet I had no words to describe what it was that I had just witnessed. I had never seen anything like that before, and I was struck dumb by it. I saw two kids writing feverishly on either side of me, and in my need to fit in and not look stupid, I copied off their papers and used their words to help me create my own descriptions. Even as a kid, I depended on other people to give a description about events that I did not have the words for. As a result, I have seen how the mystery of life can sometimes get overrun by society’s need to establish and maintain a continuity of reality and a shared understanding of events between all of its members.
Someone else had the description of what I could not yet describe, so I used second-hand words to fill in the gap. Extrapolate this need to fit in and to belong to all collective gatherings of human life, including religion, politics, and society, and the potential foundation for illusion exists within all such bodies of experience. The description is never the actual event, yet those who did not have the experience, copy and worship the description, and overlook the event that may be still happening right under their noses. They have never developed the capacity and the willingness, to give their own unique description of an event, they are in fear of offering a different or contrary version of the event, or they have never witnessed the event itself.
In my junior year in high school, I was required to keep a daily journal, and record my insights into myself for a writing class. The problem was that I had no insight, at least as far as being able to put into words what the interior nature of my mind and life looked like. I did not spend a lot of time giving descriptions to events happening around me, and, instead, listened to others as they described their own experiences, which I either accepted and supported or rejected and judged against. But for me to give a description of the interior dimensions of my own being seemed an impossible task. I had to submit something, and in my desperation to get a decent grade I went to a bookstore, to find a book to help me to look at myself. Hugh Prather had written a book called Notes To Myself, and I stumbled upon it, and bought it. I was so empty of complete statements about myself and my life that I copied statements from Hugh’s book, and tried to personalize them so that it would not be obvious that I had copied his work. I got my passing grade, felt very relieved, and continued on my awkward, highly dysfunctional path through high school.
I was near the top of my class near graduation time, yet I was completely out of touch with the majority of my classmates, as well as with myself. I had hoped that to finally graduate from high school might change, if not end, much of my social anxiety and sense of disconnect. Of course this could not be further from the truth. When I entered my freshman year at the University of Portland in 1973, I was lost again, and I had no internal maps to guide me through the complexities of college life. The use of pot, alcohol, and relationships with emotionally diseased people continued in earnest, obscuring any clear vision of my goals, and I constructed many self-destructive road blocks that impeded all progress.
Looking back, this verbal and emotional disconnect would have been great stuff to write about in the high school class, but I was living a lie, without having the words to even describe it, and the telling of the truth to others, let alone to myself, might force me into changes that I could not embrace or consider as possibilities. The absence of personal honesty and insight, and to be verbal around it, and the inability to communicate my distress with others doomed me to a deteriorating life experience. This limited my choices so much that many days, and years, I felt trapped in a prison, with interior windows sometimes only opening to Hell. I did not even have an adequate description to communicate my hell to others, so this is the secret behind the motivation for many mysterious suicides.
A most diseased way that human beings acting out of their own wounded natures is by continuing the attacks against those that they have already hurt. It is just heartbreaking to be a witness to, or to be on the receiving end of, attacks against our souls and being by those who have already hurt us, and who cannot or will not acknowledge their own culpability. The victim is made wrong for having feelings, and for expressing their anger, fear, distress, or heartbreak. Because the perpetrator does not want to face his own bad attitudes and behavior, he lashes out, and makes wrong, those who attempt to speak up for their own life and rights. If we cannot accept responsibility for our own wayward thoughts and actions, healing and forgiveness, whatever that word may point to, remains an impossibility.
Those who remain silent about their own responsibility for and participation in their own projections of hatred, ignorance, pain, suffering, intolerance onto others, remain a fixture of our culture’s conspiracy of silence. It happens on the cultural level, and on the personal level. We are all victims of racism, sexism, misogyny, xenophobia, and all other malicious, malevolent attitudes and behaviors, trickling down from our politicians, corporate boards, employers, family members, co-workers, acquaintances, fellow drivers on the road, or the person in the cashier’s line with us at the grocery store. The answer to these problems is mindfulness.
Cultivating Mindfulness
A man got into his car, and put Jimmy Cliff’s song “I Can See Clearly Now” onto his car audio player. He started the car and began driving down the road during a rainstorm. Not more than one block down the road, he slammed head-on into another car, critically injuring himself and the other driver. The policeman who showed up on the scene investigated the accident and noted that the driver had failed to turn his windshield wipers on. He visited him in the hospital to interview him, so that he could finish his report. When the driver awoke from his coma, the officer asked him why he didn’t turn on his windshield wipers.
“Officer, I did everything right. I was playing the right music in the background, and I trusted that I was seeing all that I needed to see. I just did not think that I needed my windshield wipers.”
The officer immediately cited him for reckless endangerment and reckless driving. Because even though the man was unaware that he was doing something wrong didn’t make it any less wrong or destructive. Our unconscious behavior causes damage every moment of every day. Mindfulness means turning on those windshield wipers and leaving them on! As human beings, it is always raining somewhere inside of our minds or even in our heart.
The examined life demands that we take inventory on our self, and make every effort to understand the motivations behind all of our thoughts and actions in this world. The deeper we dig, the more that we learn that we are connected at a much deeper, more profound level with the rest of humanity than we previously understood. It is then that the healing we undertake as an individual can have a ripple effect upon the rest of humanity, because we all influence the collective, as well as individual, consciousness that we experience as human beings.
Mindfulness is meditation, with our eyes wide open. Insight and mindfulness work together to bring the parts of ourselves back into alignment with each other and reduce the profound impacts of brokenness and chaos in our lives. It is a lifelong process, and personal awareness is as necessary as brushing our teeth and eating healthy foods for our overall well-being. With mindfulness cultivating the seeds planted by insight, a new world order can grow, and bring our world back into alignment with the higher orders of peace, health, and collective well-being.
Each one of us has a self-organizing principle, or we would not remain integrated and true to our sense of self, and we would dissolve into chaos, fragmentation, and insanity. For me, God is a historical name for the self-organizing principle of consciousness within each one of us, plain and simple. The story of Genesis is a myth or parable about how the organizing principle of consciousness itself, God, unfolds in space and time, our responsibility for using the naming process to create an accurate representation for the outer world, and how it makes a more peaceful, happy experience for self and other. The world was the picture of disorganization and uncertainty; everything was formless and void. But God changed everything. His action began as His Spirit was moving. The Spirit of God was brooding, studying, examining, lingering. And only after this hovering did God take action and start bringing order. God illumined everything about the world, day after day bringing order out of chaos. When he was satisfied, he could rest. Because God is the very organizing principle of our consciousness, then ultimately it is our personal responsibility to direct the internal construction project.
God’s actions in creation help us understand how we actually approach our lives, and the ways this awareness can help us today. For God still brings clarity to confusion. God replaces disorganization with organization. Uncertainty is replaced by certainty. Chaos is replaced by order. Those who are aimless are given new plans. Emptiness is replaced by meaning and purpose. And any sense of darkness is replaced by a new light, or understanding. This is a process that is now known as mindfulness, but it has been known to godly people for all of time.
God does not judge us, we judge ourselves, and, thus, we can become more godlike in nature and manner, once our blocks to loves awakening and awareness are acknowledged within. There is no white bearded man in the sky, ruling from the golden throne, with angels circling his head. But, there is wisdom within us, when it is cultivated, and our insight and true knowledge become angels to us, as they lift our spirits, and our understanding and connection with each other, the world, and all of the life upon it.
We are responsible for incorporating love, rationality, and understanding into our world views, and this successful action literally creates the lord within us that informs and guides all of our actions. We must bring order out of the chaos that we created through ignorance in our minds, and in the minds of those people who are part of our community. We must separate the light from the dark, and we can only rest when we have become one with the goodness at the center of our being, and at the center of everyone else’s being. We must become mindful, or, in the words of Alcoholics Anonymous, continue to take personal inventory, and when we miss the mark, promptly admit it and change course, rather than waste time defending our illusions.
While watching our minds both while in meditation and being mindful, we will watch many trains of thought just passing through. While physically and emotionally engaged with the outside world, we will find many trains of thought passing by, as well. The first thought response to any situation is usually a conditioned response, which means, to be mindful, we must take a pause before acting on each thought. There is always another train of thought ready to take the place of the last thought, and this next train might be the better response. This is almost the equivalent of taking a deep breath before taking action. That next train has a much higher likelihood of being filled with more spiritually inspired passengers, especially when it arises from the pause moment. We can have a happier, more peaceful and loving train of thought ride just by pausing before acting and not jumping on the first train that passes through.
A fixed truth about life is that if we can’t honestly look at where we are in life, we will never find the true motivation or foundation for change. The non-examined life always results in a damaged, dysfunctional life, and that characterizes both individuals, and the collective society that they participate in. Our misunderstanding of life, no matter how Christian we claim to be, creates infinite opportunities for chaos and disharmony with each other, and we feel betrayed by, and suffer endlessly from, all of the wounds incurred through fragmented belief systems.
We are typically healed though the power of awareness in the present moment of experience. I am to be forever walking into the unknowable present moment. Living into the truth of what that is now is the new story of my life. There is but one mind, but its truth cannot be experienced except by resting in the unknown of the present moment. No teacher will affect our salvation, we must work it out for ourselves. The God of our misunderstanding only needs our humility, patience, and sincerity to approach it successfully. The medium for healing is our own consciousness and the consciousness of our spiritually aware helpers, and this is always happening now.
Living a Mindful Life
Insight and mindfulness, meditation, walking away from self-destructive dependencies, maintaining dialogue with others, speaking my truth, fighting against oppression of others, and repression within my own heart and soul, following new paths of consciousness, working out my own salvation, while helping others on their own paths as well are ways to develop collective awareness and healing and bringing peace of mind to my own interior universe. I cannot love others, or my own life, completely, until I make peace within my own heart and soul.
The Word (peace, love, healing, wholeness, unity of life) must become flesh, and dwell within me, and within all of us. To not have that experience is to invite all of the darkness, turbulence, and disease that the world has to offer into our individual and collective lives. Through insight and mindfulness, the difficult emotions that arise within the human experience are experienced in the most sacred, honored way of the Spirit within us. We become more free, and honest, human beings. And, a few of us get to experience the real miracle, where we see from that aspect of our real nature that can watch our thoughts arise, without being the self who remains unconsciously controlled by them.
