“I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I’ve bought a big bat. I’m all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!”—–Dr. Seuss
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”—General Douglas MacArthur
“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you. They’re supposed to help you discover who you are.”—-Bernice Johnson Reagon
“The underbelly of the human psyche, what is often referred to as our dark side, is the origin of every act of self-sabotage. Birthed out of shame, fear, and denial, it misdirects our good intentions and drives us to unthinkable acts of self-destruction and not-so-unbelievable acts of self-sabotage.-“—-Debbie Ford
“Oh shadow boxer of evil, when will you ever tire? It is the champion of a lonely dream world to which you aspire! Stop resuscitating those dead illusions with your mental pugilist blows. Your healing life will then reveal to you the One that Peace eternally knows!”—-Elisha Scott
Through these five quotes, we can see several options available to us for addressing all of the traumas, threats or attacks against us that we have faced over the course of our life.
We may:
- fight our foes, and engage in continuous struggle and confrontation with our problems,
- run away from them if we are not yet up to the challenge,
- become paralyzed by them, and a passive witness while waiting for a better day to address them
- deny their very existence, or make believe all is well, even while experiencing cognitive dissonance.
- develop insight into them, and thus find a healing peace.. Face them directly with honesty, by seeing our self through the mirror of our relationships with the people who have been perceived as the source of threats to us..
These five options are not mutually exclusive, and through healing intention they may be embraced singly, in several different combinations, or all may become united in a powerful healing synergy.
The primary question derived through our reaction to quote #1 may become:
- Do I have the physical and emotional capacity to defend myself against the assaults levelled against me by others?
The primary question derived through our reaction to quote #2 may become:
- Can I accept that sometimes falling back and reevaluating where I am can make me stronger in the long run?
The primary question inspired by our reaction to quote #3 may become:
- Rather than remaining a passive, indifferent, or even paralyzed witness to life, can I find why I have closed down to other proactive possibilities and choices for experiencing life?
The primary question inspired by our reaction to quote #4 may become:
- How do I stop myself from burning my spiritual house down again?
The primary question inspired by our reaction to quote #5 may become:
- What is my responsibility for the creation, and the continuation, of whatever problems that I am currently facing?
Trauma and its wounding results in extreme contraction of our spirit. We fail to develop the capacity to move freely through our lives, instead remaining tethered to the pillories of our painful pasts, until we become willing to face ourselves, and our grief, traumas, and suffering..
The Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Questionnaire is a 10-item self-report measure developed for the ACE study to identify childhood experiences of abuse and neglect. The study posits that childhood trauma and stress early in life, apart from potentially impairing social, emotional, and cognitive development, indicates a higher risk of developing health problems in adulthood.
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, the continuing of traumatizing of self and others, suffering within the self and, in general 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.
Trauma and suffering are not synonymous, though suffering may arise from failure to directly address traumatic wounding, and 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.
It is the resistance to change and evolution that becomes the bellows for the fires of suffering and the proliferation of trauma. Never forget that racism, misogyny, xenophobia, genocide, and war are culturally generated and individually accepted activities that victimize and traumatize innocent populations. To this day these malevolent attitudes are still being promoted by powerful cultural and religious figures, and we all suffer under its oppressive weight.
Spiritual freedom has never been about guns, money, or religion, It is about our willingness to face our pasts, and become willing to change, to evolve into better iterations of our truest self.
Yet, our culture’s propensity for promoting its self-serving lies while supporting powerful proponents of the status quo means that we will encounter resistance as we attempt to move beyond the institutionalized and culturally conforming wounded versions of ourselves. It is important to keep in mind that the Christian religion has immortalized and institutionalized mankind’s “fallen nature”, while many sects still promote the sad, mistaken idea that we are all byproducts of original sin.
My first 31 years of life reflected the internalized horror of a life suppressed 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 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 still 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 “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 and/or emotional, and having a name, or a conscious experience of its original collision with us.
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.
Most of us did not embark upon the spiritual path because our life was a resounding success. Even if we had attained material wealth and comfort, we only delay the inevitable distress and chaos of a life lived without spiritual relevance and meaning.. Those not satisfied with their present version of the “status quo” may have already buckled under the oppressive weight of a lifetime of accumulated pain and suffering, have heard their long ignored interior voice crying out for change, or heard others’ voices promising release from troubles through traveling new paths of consciousness.
We know all too well where we are now, and to those that do not like the present state of awareness, we do have options. We know that there must be another way to live life, but we do not yet have a clue as to how to live into a new, suffering free future. We realize that the path that we are presently on only leads to failure, yet we do not know how to enter onto new paths.
We may ask ourselves, or of others:.
- What is holding us back?
- What is our life’s work?
- What gets us all fired up, and will our own internal fire ever burn brightly for us?
- Are we too tired to face the truth about our own life, and the life that we share with the rest of humanity?
- Will the facts that we have accumulated, and our personal and family interpretations of those facts, provide accurate enough clews/clues for escaping our pain and suffering?
- Has someone been able to find freedom from my experience of this HELL before?
- Did this someone leave a clue for us as to how to proceed?
- Is this path the only one that I can travel to succeed in attaining my own release from this HELL?
If our pilot light is on, but our energy output is tethered to the lowest setting, we are not going to warm up to our highest expression of human kinetic energy. By turning our internal dials to a higher setting, we can accomplish more in our lives. If the dials are frozen in place due to past traumas and emotional wounding, we cannot adjust with fluidity and grace to an ever changing life situation. And, our fires burn brightest when we can burn with others in a collaborative and healing fashion. If too many in our community are also traumatized, and have “frozen dials”, then community resistance to any change will be high, and our capacity for collective growth and evolution will remain compromised.
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.
Fight, flight, and/or shock and paralysis are all instinctual ways the human animal has learned to respond to attack, and to fearful or misunderstood phenomenon. It is a behavior that is common to most of the other mammalian species, and we need not judge ourselves for having a natural predisposition towards the use of these tools for dealing with difficult objects of actual and/or perceptual reality. passive/aggressive (fight and flight, all mixed into one) Fight, flight (geographic change?), paralyzed with fear, meet with love and compassion(rare)
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 God, or a Truth, or a Love that can bring transformation to us, and release us from the suffering and sorrow of being a human being. 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 ?(original sin?).
Virtually all of the interesting characters in history have struggled with, been entombed by, and have overcome, at least to some degree, this dark force, and it is their journey that becomes the stuff of great stories and legends.
And, you and I have the potential to be chiseled out of the same marble that once entombed these heroic souls.
The next chapter will cover my own childhood traumatic wounding, a wounding which encased me within an impenetrable block of marble.
Anybody know where Michelangelo is?
Some wounds can be so deep, primal, and/or traumatic that they cannot readily be identified by the sufferers, which was the case for much of my life. My life prior to 1987 was an often times anxiety ridden journey, and had it not been for some deep need to understand my dysfunctional process, I would have passed away long ago due to poor health choices and outcomes, or suicide. My personal story reveals the level of my resistance to life, an extreme resistance that may have begun in my mothers’ womb, or, maybe, it extends all the way back to the beginning of human consciousness. The start date is unimportant.
What is important is my intention to seek healing, Can i join a path where my instincts, emotions, and intellect may combine into a unique healing synthesis?.
The latest experts on human psychology and neurobiology impress all of us with the multitudes of names and descriptions for our unconscious journey through darkness, and our potential for release from it.
Religious reasoning, oxymorons, and well meaning morons
The church promotes a variation of the Stigmata syndrome, by emphasizing that we are all byproducts of original sin, that we are sinners, and that our only salvation lies in believing that Jesus Christ died for our sins. Somehow our dirty slate is cleaned, if we only believe in Jesus and the mythology attributed to him strongly enough. Otherwise, we all share in the same shame and guilt that the rest of humanity wallows in while living a Jesus free life. In this understanding, we are required to accept the religious world’s understanding of sins as our own, while also accepting the Christian church’s assumptions, thus traumatizing our self by this act of spiritual misunderstanding and violence against our self. A truth here is that the world would set a Barnabas type criminal free to wreak havoc and trauma upon the world, rather than let a saintly figure have free reign. It makes all of us innocent , virtuous people want to sign right up for our deliverance from our own evil, doesn’t it?
Transference and the Stigmata syndrome. The Stockholm syndrome. Positive trauma, like my Mona Lisa Vision (renegotiating with the trauma by creating a healing narrative), and compassion.
People who have stigmata exhibit wounds that duplicate or represent those that Jesus is said to have endured during his crucifixion. The wounds typically appear on the stigmatic’s hands and feet (as from crucifixion spikes) and also sometimes on the side (as from a spear) and hairline (as from a crown of thorns). The medical and scientific community is inclined to believe that these stigmata’s are the result of psychopathic mirroring into self-mutilation. That is totally acceptable suggestion to me, as I have witnessed nearly the entirety of the human race replicating dysfunctional behavior of those that they love, and their lives reflect, not only their own personal wounds, but the historical wounds of their family and their culture.
Stockholm syndrome is a psychological response. It occurs when hostages or abuse victims bond with their captors or abusers. This psychological connection develops over the course of the days, weeks, months, or even years of captivity or abuse
Some times, we internalize a trauma into a body part, sometimes within a section of the body that was most active when a traumatic event occurs In some instances this can result in repetitive injury to the same area of the body. Sometimes, the whole body stores the trauma, with its dark essence enveloping the entire matrix of bodily consciousness and awareness. This may result in a predisposition to disease, accidents, a poor body image, defensive/offensive posturing, and low self-esteem. My friend Paul Zilka, during a meditation experience in the early 1990’s, literally saw a small semi-human form 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..
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 each Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at our athletic club. Typically, I wanted to get there a little early, so that we could warm up on an exercise bicycle, with a little aerobic activity that I still enjoyed participating in, since I no longer ran, having retired late last year after a lifetime of enjoyment, and pain.
It was 9:15, and I was fully prepared to leave, while Sharon remained on the telephone, talking with a friend. As it turned 9:19, I spoke to her, in my most innocent of voice, “can we go now?”
Sharon had a series of responses that I won’t repeat here, but three things that she said coincided with me entering a “spell”. I felt the presence of something so basic, so fundamental, so raw, so real, so hurt, that I raged for a couple of minutes, declaring several times:
“There is something fundamental here!”
The trapped energy of a lifetime was released. 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 70 pages about my early childhood, maturation process, addictive and self-destructive cycles, and 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 61 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.
I finally had experienced the most basic nameless suffering of an ignored child, or baby, and I have now given it verbal description:
MY VOICE IS WORTHLESS, I HAVE NO VALUE. I MUST BE ALONE IN THIS WORLD.
Sharon paid the price for a couple of hours, while I re-birthed 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. 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.
When our personalities have been formed by the layering of our egos upon the “unnamed, unrecognized dark energy”, we end up with an energy exchange dynamic where we “project” our dysfunction onto others, and make them wrong for it, not recognizing that we were the source of our misplaced judgement.
We just can’t quiet our minds long enough to listen with our hearts to what is being said, and respond accordingly with our heart. We are much too eager to respond with ego programmed responses, which, typically, are based on incomplete perceptions or someone else’s ‘knowledge’, and it remains our attempt to control another’s experience through linking our own unhealed energy with their own.
In our attempt to be “heard”, we instead try to program people, unconsciously, to behave and react more in accordance with our expectations. When they don’t (they rarely do, unless they are our impressionable young children), we are very disappointed, and feel rejected, and, in the absolute, we feel betrayed by the sum total of exchanges between the parties.
Why do I submit such intensely personal information? I do not want a life that has been lived in vain. I also see a world where the majority of us still suffer from the same, basic issues that I have tried to describe here. Even amongst some people closest to me, denial reigns supreme, and I have only a small measure of hope that the “personal truth” that I am trying to convey here will actually be heard, and applied by others that I care about (which now includes the entirety of our planet Earth).
“There is something fundamental here.”
As a baby, my parents placed a blanket around my baby body, and deposited me in a car in their garage so that my father could get at least 5 hours of sleep a night. My father was “chasing the American Dream”, and worked two jobs at the time.
I don’t need to remind any of my loved ones of the profoundly damaging effects of denying love and interactive time to a developing human being. What I might need to remind myself at times is that others, no matter what their age, or how much that I think that I know them, deserve my undivided attention, as they attempt to reveal who they are in this moment.
It is funny, sometimes when I share some of my creative work (which, incidentally, just started happening in early March), I get the very strong impression that some “important” people in my life just don’t have the time to listen.
Another clue about our own, or another’s listening intention, is when we try to share a profound life event, and are immediately run over by another with more knowledge of the subject. Sometimes we, or the other, either have too much book knowledge, we have the certificate, we already have read about it on the internet, we have memorized something from a class that we already took, or we have a friend who has already “been there, done that!”
Trust me on this one. If I do not want to grow anymore, I will stop listening to what others are really trying to say. If i don’t want to be of service to my fellow-man/woman, I can stop listening to what they are trying to express, and just “layer my own ignorance” and judgement, over somebody else, and not let them reveal to me who they Really Are in this special moment.
Our former President Trump, and many of our politicians, are masters at this. Please don’t inflict this same treatment on the ones you love. It is like putting a blanket around our heart and soul, and putting us into the car, so that those with a dehumanizing or monetizing philosophy can continue to oppress others, while keeping themselves spiritually asleep.
We all deserve to be listened to. I don’t need to remind any of my loved ones of the potential of the damaging impacts to our relationships with others, by merely not taking the time to listen with our hearts, to the other’s deepest meaning. Most of my closest connections already practice this, and do not intentionally ignore the needs of others.
We are all developing human beings, no matter what our age. And, we are all God’s children, and God speaks through us, whether we can hear the “truth”, or not. Sometimes the “truth” is so difficult to hear, that we shut down emotionally, and we either ignore what is said, or substitute our own story for what the “other” is trying to communicate.
Please, listen to others. Please listen to yourself,
Please listen
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 marionettes controlled by the past, and we are lost within the unconscious response patterns of a mind trapped in the labyrinth created by that activity..
I am sure that there are many blessed people, yet I never have met the lucky one who had the perfect birth, infancy, and childhood. Like me, childhood was probably a mixed bag for the majority of people on this planet. And, there are a few of us who were born physically handicapped, and it leaves us to wonder why the creative energy of that being manifested itself in such a unique way. These physical handicaps are visible to all who look their way. Those who transcend their physical handicaps are honored for their courage, and their achievements in life. Yet, what about the rest of us, who may have been born with another type of handicap, a handicap of the human spirit, caused by a dysfunctional culturally inculcated consciousness?
Over the course of my development as a growing person, I was trained well as to how to use my culturally and familial influenced mind. Society has provided, ostensibly for our benefit, certain mental software routines, or apps, that enable us to process and act upon information in efficient and culturally acceptable manners. The problem is that these subroutines are habits of thoughts, or idols, and are extraordinarily resistant to change..
Just what specifically is this defective software that I am referring to?
I am referring to our culture’s propensity for creating traumatic situations with subsequent self-destructive mental programming.
Our collective cultural mindset, or ethos, was created through societal, historical and genetic predispositions. The resultant individual and collective ignorance, and subsequent vitriolic, bullying, war-mongering behaviors are the unfortunately outcome for a garbage in- garbage out phenomenon.
The “piece” consisted of poor self esteem, and a sense of being ignored, undervalued, and lonely. 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 be mature enough to understand and find where I fit in this challenging place. All that I know is that the world sure appeared to be a fucked up place. And those who have successfully adapted to this fucked up place sure don’t like to be told the truth that they are also living in a fucked up place, and that their adjustments with and accommodations to the fucked up world keep the world, as well as their own puny little life, all fucked up. As a culture, we are predisposed to a spiritual version of the psycho-neurological disease of anosognosia.
My parents and my culture told me to become the best person that I could be. Yet, they insisted that I make do with their standards of understanding and behavior, adapt to it somehow, and to live my life with it.
My father grew up in an abusive home, and had a troubled relationship with his parents. When he returned from WWII duty in the navy, my father attended the University of Portland for five years, attempting to learn about and understand the human condition, with its all too typical hateful and chaotic states of mind that punishes innocent citizens, and children, just for trying to be themselves. He studied logic, metaphysics, religion, child development and psychology. In his efforts to understand. while attending college, he befriended the locally famous Father Delaney at the U of P, and had many, many discussions about God, man. And our troubled relationships with truth and live.
with my father’s need to provide for himself and his family (he married my mother in 1950), he discontinued his studies after five years of endeavor, and proceeded to work two jobs for the next ten years. When it came time to pass the baton onto me, though I wanted to know why I was so anxious, and suffered so, I also needed to eat and shelter, so I bypassed some of my father’s interests in college, seeking a degree that would provide money, and perhaps a pathway to employment at NASA, as an astronaut and/ or as an engineer.. I sought two engineering degrees, while not being too intent on addressing the human condition, I did thoroughly enjoy the elective credits I gained in classes in philosophy, psychology, and religion as optional subjects, however.
than advancement of my understanding of the social and spiritual lines of awareness.
I could also try to “fix it”, if I had the time, inclination, and courage to learn more about it, interact with it on a different level, and be a witness to its healing evolution.
There are no affirmations to say or to practice that will make a defective system repair itself. When affirming a truth, or practicing 3, 5, 7, or 12 steps to achieve a goal, or change a behavior, these practices occur within a corrupted environment, and we are only changing the furniture around in our unique prison cells. We can affirm the truth all we want, but if the conditions for its birth and nurturing have not been altered, then we are only treating symptoms, and not causes. Thus, the cycle of fix and failure becomes built into the very system that we think that we want to repair or improve.
Have you ever painted a house right before it was to be demolished and rebuilt? Have you ever put new tires onto a car whose engine is near failure, and that may need to be junked out? Would you “put lipstick on a pig” ? (Remember, pigs are not inherently ugly, especially if another pig is making the assessment). Have you ever put new wine into old wine skins, to use an ancient expression? People, religions, politicians, and writers, who promise you a “quick fix” are a part of the problem, for they make promises in the world of effect, but we must reach back into the source for our consciousness, where the real cause of our problems exists, if we ever expect to make lasting changes
There is no minister or church, no support group, therapist, mother, father, brother, sister, wife, husband, daughter, son, pet dog, or Jesus Christ figurine that can dig into our own unique version of the human soul for us, and remove the thorns/swords which have been thrust into our side over the years since our first appearance on this planet Earth. We must each dig deep into our hearts and souls, and face the absolute darkest areas of life itself, and from this inward journey, mine our own treasures from our relationship with the dark force, or else our lives just become the continuation of a story of someone else’s second hand/passed down dysfunction, which we cannot ever completely heal.
Our own living, dynamic story must become forefront in our minds, examined fully to its deepest core(s), we must see where the source of our own discomfort lies, and then the power of our awareness can then bring healing into this new, present moment of experience (some actually call this process “mindfulness:, though I just call it taking personal inventory, as I learned in AA.
How do I attempt to bring healing to my broken interior? First, I needed to hone my powers of insight. Then, I needed to develop the emotional and spiritual fortitude to look at the entirety of my life, and then incorporate the experience for my greater good, which also impacts the whole of life in a more positive manner. My spiritual awakening in 1987 was really only the beginning of my process, though I had hoped, immaturely, that it signaled the end of all of my emotional trials, diseases and dysfunctions.
A portion of my journey towards healing from our human condition is represented here. As each individual is unique, please do not use my experience to minimize, or maximize, your own. We must eventually find our own direction for life, AND LEARN NOT ONLY HOW TO THINK AND FEEL FOR OURSELVES, BUT LEARN HOW TO LISTEN TO OTHERS, AND, ULTIMATELY, LEARN HOW TO THINK AND FEEL WITH OTHERS, TOO. We can learn to discern whether the perceptions of others, and ourselves, are based upon the reality of the present moment, or upon the disfiguring archetypes that embedded wounds and traumas have created for us.
My deceased father, his brother Ed, and their sister Susie, were victims of abuse and trauma. They had highly dysfunctional parents, with an abusive and alcoholic father who also almost beat their older brother (Uncle Ed) to death when he was 6 years old. My uncle, fortunately, was placed under the care of his grandparents on a farm in Oregon City, while my father and aunt continued to suffer under the oppressive conditions, ultimately resulting in my father’s threat to kill grandpa when dad turned 16, if my dad ever saw him beat his mother again. Anyway, they all have the emotional scars that abused children commonly get, only theirs was never diagnosed or treated by professionals. The biggest victim in all of this was their sense of self-esteem, and their very limited ability to be emotionally and spiritually supportive of others. Both my father and aunt Susie struggled ferociously with their emotional wounds in adulthood, yet managed to live fairly full, complete lives. Their own children inherited their unresolved parental dysfunction, with added pain and suffering.
I must have been whipped by my father’s belt at least 100 times, from the ages of four years through thirteen years. One beating, and my memory of it, stands as a testimony to the power of the self-created archetypes that unconscious people, like traumatized children, are influenced and controlled by.in their adult years, until we choose to awaken.. In this primal memory, I see my father standing in one corner of the room, with my mother in the other corner, both opposite from me. I was cowering, and crying, while I witnessed dad removing his belt. I cried out to my mother to protect me. She could not, and did not, and she could only cry. Dad then proceeded to beat the hell out of me, and I joined my mother in pain and in tears.
My mother, who I loved dearly all the way to her death in 2009, could not protect me from the wrath of a toxic masculine master of discipline. Mom could not find her voice to challenge a man who was too hungry for disciplinary violence against me, rather than seeking the causes for my disruptive behavior, which were my own vague and immature calls for love. My father’s aggressiveness scared my mother away from her spiritual moorings. This whole experience informed my young, impressionable mind that angry men are more interested in making their point than in being loving and compassionate. It also taught me that the part of myself that I cherished the most, the part of me that trusted and loved my mother’s nature, could not protect me from the rampages of a toxic male aggressor.
My mother, who had not yet recognized that she was being oppressed and had options to break free from it, had not yet unleashed her innate feminine power and her powerful voice. She ultimately found herself, and her voice later in life, as did myself. We both had to overcome our culture’s primary oppressor, and source for most traumatic behavior, the toxic man.
My relationship with my father had created much of the irregularities in the foundation for my own vision of life and of love, especially in my youth. My father showed to me, in a perfect way, what a potential end point looks like from a lifetime lacking in true collaboration and emotional integrity while sharing life force with others. My father achieved many of his goals in life, yet at what cost did they come to him, and to the people who he may have influenced and over which he exerted control? And, what is the cost to a society that blindly plows forward while supporting ideals that traumatize our innocents, threaten the dignity of others, and do not conform to the development of all of its citizen’s highest nature, and truth?
I saw how my own father’s ignorance and needs early in my childhood negatively impacted my own mind’s formation. There was a revelation within me that as a result of my father’s sometimes toxic influence in my life, I had unwittingly and unconsciously created fundamental internal feedback mechanisms that contributed to my personal dysfunction, and my unskilled interactions with our world. My father represented, in a perfect way, how my life experience had become overshadowed by the needs and concerns of our culture, and its own unconscious needs to dominate, control, and oppress, especially those who did not conform to its often conflicted, twisted values. A manifestation of this was that my father had difficulty, in times of great stress, in recognizing the intrinsic value of all life, including my baby self, and my essence as a young boy. I can think of no greater source of trauma, than having one’s innocence attacked and damaged by the parent through their ignorance or planned malevolence,
Most of what I know about myself, and my reactions to the world, was created by my fundamental relationship with my parents. My sense of self in my early years revolved around internalizing many of my parents’ attitudes. I was acutely aware of what my mother and father expected from me, what I could or could not give back to them to attempt to please them, and my defense mechanisms for managing the fallout when I failed to please them. Beginning early in my life, I also developed the desire to protect them and myself from the results of the conflict that arose in our house, either when I made yet another mistake, or when father overreacted to any situation that brought a sense of fear or threat into the home environment. I developed a need to balance whatever energy was being over expressed at any particular moment, and I was very unskilled at those kind of efforts. I learned the power of the lie to deflect negative attention from myself. But the biggest revelation was that I had internalized and normalized two incomplete creations, or tricksters as I now call them, of who I thought my father and mother were, which were to become sources of self-talk and feedback for me as a child, and then as an unconscious adult.
But a most compelling and controlling dark agenda that I had either created or inherited revolved around my self worth. Through the history of my relationship with my parents while very young, in addition to whatever fundamental and universal factors that are innate through being alive and aware in human consciousness, I created two BLACK HOLES in my developing mind.
The suffering from my past provided the foundational material for this exploration into human suffering and trauma. And, the most fundamental aspects of my consciousness, and, thus, of all human consciousness, all share common influential psychic forces.
The intention behind the documentation of parts of my life experience is to provide an example for others, and to be a representative voice for those who either choose to, or who cannot yet speak up for themselves. I will try to give a context, and some names to this distress that I share with the rest of humanity.
I have found that there are two fundamental cores to my personal dysfunction. It is around these powerful cores that the whole of my consciousness swirled around, as if drawn and disfigured by two distinct, though interconnected, black holes of negative influence.
We, as a human race, have a predisposition towards creating “black hole events” where no light (love, compassion, empathy, healing thoughts) escapes from our consciousness. These events occur especially during times of collective distress including mass hypnosis and the resultant mob mind activity that leads to wars, genocide, racism, xenophobia, hysteria and fear. These also occur as a result of traumatic injuries to ourselves, as a result of the incomplete responses to the capricious actions of others and the vicissitudes of life.
We, as individuals, have a real talent for creating black hole events within our personal worlds, as well. Our concepts of time and space certainly get distorted, as present day events occurring in our lives get distorted within our minds by traumatic events of our past, or black holes of past influence through which the light of our ever unfolding “present moment of life” gets sucked into the darkness of a singularity point of a traumatic event from our past. I remained tethered to a past that never should have been through this very process.
Our minds are the generators of consciousness, which simply stated, means our brains generate internal feedback, develop and support our own internal self-concept, create internal imagery associated with our understanding of the “outer world” and support our verbal relationships with and actions towards all others. We attempt to match the “outer reality” by forming internal verbal and emotional linkages within ourselves, and this helps us to stay relevant and abiding within some measure of resonance and continuity with our perceived external universe or community that we presently share with others.
This light that we internally emit, and eventually share with our worlds either through action or verbal expression, is influenced dramatically by our own secret, internal agendas, whether we are conscious of those agendas, or not. While these agendas remain unconscious, they become the equivalent to our own internal black holes. All streams of consciousness that our minds and hearts attempt to express become trapped in the swirling vortices of these powerful forces, and these internal black holes continue to influence virtually every aspect of our lives. And, if not dealt with consciously and carefully, these black holes will eventually draw all of our internal light into them, and we become unwitting agents of our own internal darkness.
To repress or deny these internal forces is to continue to feed them. As we get in touch with our fears, angers, hatreds, or whatever name for manifesting darkness that we might give to them, it is important to realize that these are great forces, and once they are harnessed, NOT REPRESSED OR DENIED, these black holes will continue to keep us connected to the real world, and, as we transmute their energy, the light within us uses these once dark energies for the good of ourselves, and for all mankind.
It was around these cores that the whole of my consciousness swirled around, as if drawn and disfigured by two distinct, though interconnected, loci of negative influence. These dark masses of influence interacted with my internalized representations of my parents, and I now posit that these forces are the precursors to all manners and types of mental illness, including anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, and multiple personality disorder.
My two major black holes within my own internal universe created powerful forces of control, which contributed to my sense of powerlessness, anxiety, depression, loneliness, and isolation. Black hole number one is that my voice will never be heard, and because my voice has not been heard, I have no value. Insight number two was that I must be alone in this universe, with only death awaiting me. Insight finally reveals that these two are actually connected, and are a direct result of failure to be fully integrated as a complete, healthy human being. This formative consciousness is certainly not the foundation for a healthy integration into the world.
These two vortexes drew all of my internal light towards themselves, and by the time that those internal “singularity points” worked their dark magic to their fullness, I actually flirted with the end of my own life. Such is the way these black hole events can influence and control our lives, making peace of mind and positive, loving connections with others virtually impossible.
The black holes may remain, even after making profound spiritual and emotional changes. Their dark influence, however, continues to recede, once there is a committed intention to stay connected with insight and spiritual healing, where all true light comes from. As I strive to stay balanced internally, so shall my walk through the rest of my life remain balanced, as well. Insight keeps these forces balanced internally, so that the spirit of wholeness within us can utilize our energy in more sane and mutually beneficial ways.
And, for more than one of us, these black holes are eventually transformed into “white holes”, where no darkness can escape, and all of our experience becomes enlightened. We can’t short-circuit this process, by just substituting the pleasant-sounding “spiritual froth ” produced by other great spiritual thinkers, and trying to layer those messages over our unexamined inner universe. Well meaning advocates of this process become unwitting contributors to the repression, and oppression, of the Human Spirit. It is only after we do the real inner work, that these teachers can assume their rightful position in our consciousness, as fellow travelers on the path to Truth, which has no final destination. Our most profound words and thoughts only present the illusion of a “final resting place”, when, in fact, truth is eternally unfolding into each moment as a brand new, unique manifestation.
I have my moments with the “white holes”, and I continue to strive for experiencing this phenomenon with both increased frequency and intensity. A path of insight and meditation is quite helpful, and association with others who share in this new reality has been shown to produce almost miraculous results. If this experience is to become our real new reality, then there is work to do! Please, let us not rest on another person’s “spiritual laurels”, for by this culturally and religiously ingrained process we will be delayed in finding our True Passion.
After the death of my father in 2017, I had the privilege and challenge of reading and sorting through a lifetime worth of writings and papers from my parents, and from myself. After reading some of my mother’s personal writings, I was struck by the pain and suffering that she experienced remaining married to my father. He was not a person with the soft touch, when it came to communicating with those that he loved, especially during challenging/difficult periods of life. He was what those in the field of recovery refer to as a “dry drunk”. He was a poor listener, and he could be opinionated, judgemental, angry, obnoxious, overly competitive, and hurtful. He was a member of a huge class of human beings now known as toxic males, and his behavior was to become a major influence for my own choices for how I was to present myself to the world
With the death of my father in 2017, it ended the era of subservience to his needs, and the need to protect my mother from my perception of his aggression towards her. It also ended the era of incomplete grieving for my own mother’s death, as I had to immediately support my mentally deteriorating father when mother died, and I had never completely worked through the grieving process. I was finally an “orphan”, and all of the entanglements that kept me wound around their lives were now physically removed. With my fathers’ spirit no longer overshadowing my own life, I was allowed to develop more fully into whatever, or whoever I am.
For me this was an extraordinary release, because the formation of my sense of self was influenced by parental bonding issues just after birth, and through my first 4-5 years. Being placed on “formula” right after birth, and being placed in a chilly car in the garage at night so that my father could sleep better (I was just another “damned crying baby”) left me as a young being feeling abandoned, and lonely, from the beginning. Though I loved my parents, I certainly did not want to grow up and be like them, and inflict this pain on innocent children. Yet, I was not able to offer to my developing self a viable alternative to being like my father, being extremely limited creatively, and my resultant dull, though at times insightful, personality reflected that darkness. Coping mechanisms such as passive/aggressive behavior became my normal response to the daily challenges of life. Toxic masculinity, or, more precisely, an unskilled capacity to relate to people in a peaceful and mutually accepting manner, was to become a defining characteristic of my life.
I came to perceive the collective impact of male unconsciousness upon my individual existence, with some insight into my own father’s sometimes toxic involvement in my own mind’s formation. I saw that the two tricksters roaming through the inner recesses of my heart and soul gave me limited guidance and kept me from being lonely as a young being, yet kept me from developing into my greater good as an independent, free human being.
In our world, there are countless examples of “self organizing systems”, and all creatures, and the minds of those creatures, are examples of that miracle in action. Our bodies appear to be primarily organized through the pattern created by the history of the human species, and it’s interactions with its earthly environment. Our DNA appears to carry that pattern within our very cells.
Our minds also have a self-organizing principle, as it organizes itself into our unique personal sense of being. The activity of self-organization in consciousness is the greatest mystery of life. The greatest story that I have read around this mysterious process is that which was recounted about the life of Helen Keller. As a young person, she had lost her sight and hearing, and she could not develop the capacity to communicate. As a mute, she appeared to be living a basic life characteristic of many intelligent animals. but not having the ability to communicate with her world. When her teacher was finally able to show her that the letters W A T E R, represented both the substance that she drank, and that which she was bathed in, she had an insight, or a revelation. And, according to Helen, the perception of the word water, as associated with the physical experience of water, initiated her own self awareness. Literally, Helen was birthed as an ego as a direct result of understanding this one word WATER in her mind. Of course Helen went on to become a beloved author, political activist, and lecturer.
Parents are always quite pleased when their children speak their first words, and they then know that they have a viable, healthy child. Usually, the first word is “Mom”, but it can be others. The initial words become the initial organizing energy around which the developing being initiates the launch sequence into consciousness itself. In biblical terms, the word becomes flesh, and dwells among us. It is a mystery of why and how this process actually works, and neuroscientists continue to study the brain, and the human mind, as they attempt the impossible, to locate the physical source of our sense of self.
Sociologists and psychologists have found that healthy integration of self revolves around how well the organism feels accepted by, and connected to the environment that the young person travels through. Thus, happier senses of self arise, and are supported, by myriads of “successful” interactions with its social and physical environment and, giving positive, life affirming names to those experiences. First and foremost is the beings’ acceptance and integration into the primary family cell, or group. If we do not get the requisite positive feedback early on, we face tremendous odds against forming a happy, well-adjusted self organizing principle, or ego.
My experience with Donelle through twenty four years of a tragic relationship contains enough information to be a book in and of itself. Her life does not neatly fit into a linear time frame, and her story, just like her life was painfully disjointed, a quality that characterized both of our lives through at least 1987. Mental illness ultimately left her in a permanently broken state, regardless of the multitudes and diversity of medications administered by ‘professionals’, the follow-up care received, OR LACK OF IT, or the rest of the outer circumstances of her life.
Donelle’s life experience as an adult is a direct result of her relationship to traumatic abuse as a child at the hands of a pervert and a beast of a man, as well as the all-pervading aspects of our damaged male dominated culture. Other factors such as poor professional mental health care and few, if any, alternative therapy options, as well as unknown genetic predispositions may be factors that kept her spiritually, emotionally, and physically imprisoned in a life lacking in freedom and good health. Her early years with mental illness had no relationship with recreational and illicit drug use, as she did not use them at all in high school.
Donelle was never able to speak out against the abuse that she
experienced throughout her life. Being born into a socially diseased
family, where her mother’s narcissism and selfishness, and neglect of
her young children were the defining characteristics of their relationship. Her mother’s poor relationship choices with men resulted from her own brokenness, leading to the conditions that promoted sexual abuse and assault against Donelle when she was but 6 years old.
Her mother, Marlene, was a young bride, who married Donald Flick, in 1954. Don owned 2 sections of land in North Dakota, which he managed and leased out, as well as being a full time worker at the Camas Washington Crown Zellerbach paper mill. Don would work so much at the mill, that time at home was quite limited. Marlene would have parties at their home while he was away, and she would invite single men. There was always alcohol being served, and Marlene tended to promiscuity during that time period. While she would be taking leave to the back bedroom with her latest “friend”, she would leave her young children vulnerable to whoever was left without a partner. Donelle, being about 6 years old during this difficult period of time, was selected and abused by Bud Barr, who was a child predator, heavy drinker, and all around bad attitude man. Bud would repeatedly abuse Donelle, and it was also later learned that he abused his other daughter from his previous marriage.
Marlene and Don’s marriage collapsed in 1962, and they were divorced. But Marlene married the abuser Bud, and they moved in together near Five Corners in Vancouver, Washington. Donelle lived with her mother the majority of the time, due to the conditions of the divorce decree.
Donelle had to face the threat of sexual attack from this criminal for
the next ten years of her life, though her brothers told me that Bud was
not allowed to be alone with Donelle, after Marlene and Bud moved in
with each other. Yet, the damage was already done, and Donelle came to know trauma intimately, and she continuously felt the threat of his presence for all of her childhood years.
I was to meet and talk with Bud twice, and found him to be an angry, dark, judgmental man, and I learned to hate that man. I could see that he was an extremely oppressive presence, and he practiced intimidation in all of his spare time, apparently. Upon hearing the story of sexual and physical abuses meted out by Bud from Terry-Lynn Barr, Donelle’s step sister, I was to experience the desire to murder human beings for the first and only time in my life. Bud sexually abused both Terry-Lynn’s other sister from another mother, and her step-sister Donelle when they were both young. Don’t ask me what should be done with those people. Life has a way of punishing them, but it is always too late to save the victim. Many of these victims are so traumatized that they never recover, so prevention is our primary hope here, at least for now, though utilizing the following steps has been found to be helpful for those seeking healing.
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- 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 eras or time when the wounding first occurred. It will open up emotional vistas, using the wholeness of the self
- Write extensively about the time in question.
- Work in conjunction with a 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 unconsciously wounding events .
