Breaking The Conspiracy Of Silence Of Trauma (remove duplications in other trauma chapters)

 

Many of the members of Christian Churches continue to steal candy from the Baby.

Be mindful, oh Mankind, of all of the painful secrets that we must keep,

For, by our suffering silence, we will not awaken, but just die alone, powerless, and asleep.

—–Elisha Scott

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Like most of us, I have had many traumatic personal  events in my life, therefore I have first hand knowledge of trauma’s potential impact upon all of us. Trauma results in the 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.  Sometimes, the damage does not become evident for decades after the original trauma.

I can never forget the dark feelings of abandonment, the pain of a whipping by a belt, the shame and disgrace of being bullied,  the shame and disgrace of being humiliated by my father during a baseball game, watching my first dog get run over by a car, the falling from the top of a seventy foot tree, the witnessing of my great grandfather’s lifeless body, and the endless nights of nightmares, and bed wetting, because of my fear of getting out of bed due to monsters under my bed and in my closet.  Like all others within our society, I have also been traumatized by our culture and religion in both profound and in more subtle ways, especially in matters of self esteem and value..

Trauma seems to be a natural outcome of our collisions with life shattering events, and even lesser perceived destabilizing experiences.  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.  Trauma must be understood and dealt with, or we will be limited by our instinctual responses to its experience. Though I do not have the impramatur from the latest experts on the effects and impacts of trauma my own life experience remains a good evidential starting point for any discussion..

I am sure that there are not many blessed people who had the perfect birth, infancy, and childhood, thus most of our young lives were probably a mixed bag of family love, and various combinations of social, religious, and traumatic influences.. There are a few who were born physically handicapped, leaving us to wonder why the creative energy of Being manifested itself in such a unique way. These handicaps are visible to all who look their way. Those who transcend their physical handicaps are honored for their courage, and for their achievements in life. Yet, what about the rest of us, who may have another type of handicap, an invisible handicap of the human spirit caused by a combination of personal trauma with our dysfunctional cultural consciousness?

We have major issues bubbling up under the surface of our American society, much like the magma within an angry volcano preparing for a cataclysmic blast  Our adjustments to the troubled marriage of our Capitalist economic system with the Christian religion has created the perfect conditions for our population to

• traumatize each other and our entire planet and
• destroy its plants and animals,and
• ignore or minimize the needs of babies and young children,and
• practice violence against others through war, oppression, racism, misogyny, and
• MAD-or mutual assured destruction with unregulated firearms, and
• the practice of violence against the self through repression and addictive cycles, and suicide.

The mainly patriarchal Christian religion is supposed to offer some sort of healing option for the disease that it helped to create, and support, through its continuing allegiance to corrupted misogynistic males and the institution’s own superstitious reasoning, fear of science, historical ignorance and spiritual degradation.  Awakening people, mainly those tired of being burned by the collective ignorance and indifference of our institutions, are finally starting to pay attention.

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, mental illness and alcoholism/drug addiction.. It is no mystery to me as to why those who still suffer choose death through suicide or continued dysfunction over an uncertain healing path.  Why would any sane, or insane, individual seek for help from institutions that continue to promote the propagation of the very diseases that they are suffering from, anyway?  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..

Men establish the rules in our world (no, it was not God through the Ten Commandments), therefore I will be directly addressing our world culture’s dominant male energy, its propensity for creating toxic and traumatic engagement with its world, and the resultant oppressive systems of religious and economic understanding that maintains its status quo.  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 other through intentional, and unintentional, traumatic assaults.  Men are the primary vehicles for the delivery of such toxicity, and are impacted by the poisoning within their own spiritual ecosystem that carrying such energy predisposes us to.  Yet, both males and females can both benefit from understanding the effects of trauma in their own lives, and we can both take enormous strides to bring healing to ourselves.

There has been an epidemic of younger, white, middle class men who have been dying at earlier ages than would be statistically forecast, for the past 30 years. There is a dearth of information on this subject, though there have been several published studies of this phenomenon.  There are many references to the opioid epidemic, painkiller addiction, and the progression to heroin addiction by those participants, and so-called “white man’s despair”. This is only a part of the real story, and I am going to point to the disease of the human spirit that has targeted and used masculinity to victimize everybody since time immemorial.  I have seen, and I believe at the deepest level of my own being, that disease in the mind of mankind is directly related to disease within the body of mankind.

Poor self-esteem inculcated into boys from birth by our wayward fathers, religions, and cultures, ignoring our own feelings, not communicating honestly with others, excess competitiveness with others while engaging with greed and the “keeping up with the Jones’ “, proving self-worth in environments where self, and others’, worth is disrespected, trying to fit in where we really don’t belong, people pleasing, stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, not speaking up for ourselves or for others that are oppressed for fear of being marginalized, over immersion in entertainment, excessive eating, not exercising, excessive drinking of alcohol, use of recreational drugs to the point of habituation (including marijuana), smoking, chewing tobacco, using sex as a way to manipulate others, workaholism, or a number of other phenomenon represent the choices that most men make in our efforts to cope with an often times distressing and threatening life experience.  Thus, we must defend ourselves against the threats and  assaults from others, seek relief from our own suffering, and work very hard to meet the needs for economic security, establish our place in society, and support family fulfillment, including our own sexual gratification.

Does anybody think that the suicide victim, lone wolf arsonist, abusive alcoholic, mentally ill man 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?

I have been asked why I often focus my attention on the damaged American male psyche, and why I don’t instead focus on more pleasant, loving thoughts and activities. The question itself reveals the flaws inherent in living an unexamined life, and the fragmentation already present in our collective understanding of how to bring healing to our self, and to our world. A most difficult concept for the unilluminated mind is that we are all part of the collective experience of mankind, while remaining an individual, and having a personal experience of that collective energy.  Just because we are not now consciously aware of, and viscerally experiencing the damaging effects of, the unhealed American male psyche, does not mean that we remain unaffected by its self-destructive, and other-destructive, energies. Ignorance never leads to bliss, but instead to more suffering by self and others. Before we can proceed into a new world order of better health, increased happiness, peace, and preservation of our sacred planet and our relationships with the totality of life upon it, we must first completely see where we came from, or our self-destructive history will repeat itself.

“The unexamined life is not worth living”—Socrates

“The unexamined life” refers to a life lived by rote under the rules of others without the subject ever examining whether or not he truly wants to live with those routines or rules. According to Socrates, this type of life was not worth living. Rather than living an unexamined life, Socrates chose death, and these words are attributed to the philosopher during one of his last speeches before his suicide.  Yet, the curse of the unexamined life impacts everyone, and even if one does not know the source of their disease and discomfort, they still make self-destructive and other-destructive choices inspired by these unconscious sources. Socrates died from suicide as a conscious protest of and reaction to his diseased society, yet many of us die through suicide, either intentional or accidental, while remaining unconscious of our own motivations, even unto the grave.

Some men eventually lose their careers, and may not recover from that. Some men had no meaning in their lives, and may not recover from that. Some men become addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, and may not recover from that. Some men become addicted to the idea that their only function is to provide for their wives or family, and, having achieved success or failure, they become disillusioned, and may not recover from that. Some men are just waiting for a better day, and when it never appears, they cmay not recover from that. Some men are lonely and depressed, and they may not recover from that. Some men have profound mental illness, and they may not recover from that.

• What is the real back story to these men (and the women and children impacted by their disease) and their lives that may not have been told to their families, to their religions, to their culture, to their employer and co-workers, and to their Gods?
• Were any of our male victims of society able to listen to themselves, and identify their traumatic wounding and their own unique pain and suffering?
• Why weren’t they able to bring their suffering to the light of Love and Reason, to search for, and eventually find a newer path to healing and meaning?
• Did they just blindly follow down the well-worn path of premature deterioration and death that unconscious humanity is doomed to trudge upon?

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 the feminine, and the Divine, is built right into the very fabric of our cultural existence. The former President Trump is the perfect representation for all of the ills of our culture, and to the extent that the men within our culture practice his unholy principles of engagement with the world, and the women, and men, within it, the men also share in this culturally derived disease of mind, body, and spirit.

What happens to a man defeated by dark energy?

We don’t need to look too far to see the insanity around us, the mass murders, early deaths, suicides, drug addiction, alcoholism, rape and abuse of woman and children, extinction of species, destruction of our ecology, and see the relationships that now continue to a very bleak future, unless the men in this world awaken, and rebel against the prevailing dark attitudes and its traumatic influences upon our dying culture.

Over the course of my development as a growing person, I was trained well as to how to use my culturally and family influenced mind. Society, in combination with our native neuro-linguistic capacity, 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 many of these subroutines are now fundamentally defective, being habits of thoughts, or idols, that are not only erroneous, but extraordinarily resistant to change.  They tend to keep us trapped within a limited radius around the whipping post of our own personal ignorance, or unwillingness to change.

There are no affirmations to say or to practice that will make a defective system repair itself. There is no healing teacher just waiting to lead us into our own unique “promised land”.  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 honored, 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.

Our culture has a propensity for creating traumatic situations with all of the subsequent self-destructive and other-destructive mental programming adopted by its victims.  Our collective cultural mindset, or ethos, was created through societal, historical and genetic predispositions.  Individual and collective ignorance, and the human male’s propensity for traumatizing vitriolic, bullying, war-mongering behaviors are the unfortunate outcomes for spiritually disfigured minds and hearts.

“It is no measure of good health to be well adapted to a sick society.”-—Jiddhu Krishnamurti

The human race remains a breeding ground for violence of all types, with its traumatic impacts upon all of us.  And we are culturally inclined to ignore the distressing objects of our perception, by often denying our unconscious participation in the very reality that we are witnessing.  Speaking not of the evil that we see or hear results in no healing potential, FOR ANYBODY.

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

“I have heard that 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 some of life’s interpersonal complexities, and the threats or attacks against us that we have faced over the course of our life.  We may engage in continuous struggle and confrontation with our problems, run away from them, become paralyzed by them, deny their very existence, or develop insight into them, and thus find a healing peace.. 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..  We can fight our foe, flee from it if we are not yet up to the challenge, become a passive witness to it while waiting for a better day to address it, deny what we are seeing and make believe all is well, or, in a courageous show of spiritual strength,  face it 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..

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.  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.  I knew (and, I think, deep down we all know) that the world is 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 this fucked up world keeps 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, where we are doomed to live a life of unaware ignorance to other possibilties.  We have either lost the ability to think for ourselves, or we have never had the capacity.  Our thinking nature gets commandeered by the needs of our family, our society, and our religion.  And we wonder why our thoughts race on and on in an endless loop, reaching nowhere.

“Oh mental marathoner, only on a treadmill do you stand, your secondhand words and thoughts keep you one of life’s also-rans.  You forever chase, in vain, love’s all-knowing voice, So step off of that dead machine, and run towards a healing in which all may rejoice!”—-Elisha Scott

“The most courageous act is to still think for yourself.  ALOUD!”—–Coco Channel

We remain imprisoned by our own ignorance of and resistance to the truth.  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.

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.  The questionnaire is derived from information gained through an important study in the 1990’s.  The study investigated the relationship between weight gains after the discontinuation of successful diets by people, and their history of abuse, trauma, and poor  self esteem.

Here is the questionnaire.  Prior to your 18th birthday:

1. 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 __
2. 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 __
3. 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 __
4. 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 __
5. 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 __
6. Were your parents ever separated or divorced?
   No___If Yes, enter 1 __
7. 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 __
8. Did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic, or who used street drugs?
   No___If Yes, enter 1 __
9. Was a household member depressed or mentally ill, or did a household member attempt suicide?                        No___If Yes, enter 1 __
10. 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 troubling life experience. 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.

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.

Yet, our culture’s inclination 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.  The dysfunctional Patriarchy historically established within the Christian church has traumatized and terrorized innocent victims, nearly since its inception.  And it has the nerve to scapegoat others, and to blame its own wayward attitudes and evil actions on the concept of original sin, rather than manning up, and accepting personal responsibility for all of their errors in judgement.

Franklin Graham, and other self–serving pseudo Christian white evangelical religious zealots showed their true colors with the support of the divisive and toxic Trump administration.  Some of these leaders sexually exploit the members of their congregations. Some of these leaders monetarily exploit the members of their congregations. Some of these leaders debase and demean all female members of their congregation, relegating them to secondary or tertiary leadership roles.  Some of these leaders behave just like any other unhealed toxic person, don’t they?.  Religion is the elevator music playing in the background, while they engage in their moral turpitude.

The psychological term transference and the seemingly religiously inspired stigmata syndrome are philosophically related. The church promotes a variation of psychological transference or 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. We pin our sins onto Jesus, let his suffering represent our own, and he then carries the load for us as some sort of sacrifice to “God” or the “Father”. Otherwise, we all share in the same shame and guilt that the rest of humanity wallows in while living a “non-Christian” life.  In this understanding, we are required to accept the world’s sins as our own, while also accepting the Christian church’s assumptions, thus traumatizing our self by this act of misanthropic violence against our true nature.

In a therapy context, transference refers to redirection of a patient’s feelings for a significant person to the therapist. . People who have stigmata exhibit wounds that duplicate or represent those that Jesus is said to have endured during his crucifixion. So, the poor stigmatic neurotic transfers his “love” for the story of Jesus, and his wounding, onto himself, thinking that somehow he is also carrying humanity’s sin, and punishment, with Jesus.  The wounds typically appear on the 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 a totally acceptable suggestion to me, as I have witnessed nearly the entirety of the human race mirroring/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 of their culture.

A truth also indicated in the New Testament narrative is that society tends to support the setting free of a Barrabas type criminal (a trauma spreader by nature, being a murderer and an insurrectionist) to wreak havoc upon the world, rather than let a saintly figure have his freedom. Our cultural “mob mind” does not exist to support each individual to aspire to the highest possibility for their self, but instead promotes sharing a low level of consciousness, the least common denominators of our human experience where pain, suffering, and trauma reigns supreme.  In effect, we all become victims of the Stockholm syndrome, a self-protecting psychological response to extreme trauma. It occurs when hostages or abuse victims bond with their captors or abusers, and begin to mirror their attitudes and behavior. This psychological connection develops over the course of the days, weeks, months, or even years of captivity or abuse, and is intended to convince the abusers that the victim has been “rehabilitated”, and is now a willingpart of theircorrupted family.. 

“There is no greater potential for damage to a child than to be forced to live the unfulfilled life of the parents”—-Carl Jung

My first 31 years of life reflected the internalized horror of a life suppressed by the conspiracy of silence, a silence created by our culture, and my own 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 most of my friends died young, from suicide, alcoholism, and medical issues.
• 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 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, and trauma may result in victims from that mistake. Suffering may arise through incurable diseases of the body, or of the mind, and others may be traumatized by the effects of our distress. 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 healing, 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.

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 that experience of insight for my greater good, which also impacts the whole of life in a more positive manner.

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, or 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, from 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, a process I first learned in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

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.

Becoming passive/aggressive in expression, which is the fight and flight response all mixed into one special accommodation to trauma, was my primary operative response to the challenges of my own life.  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.  Higher consciousness adjustments to our understanding, such as learning from the mirror of relationships, are a more recent development within the human species, and will, hopefully, become another instinctual response to all traumas and sufferings in humanity’s future.

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?).

Where might we find the path back to the original Garden Of Eden?  Are we up to the challenge of facing our own personal minotaur(s) deep in the labyrinth of our minds?  Are we willing to travel back to the dark forges of Mordor, to forever release our self from its dark ring of power?

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.

It is extremely difficult in finding a way to reach those who have unconditionally accepted a diseased culture and/or one’s own unique fragmented individual life, while remaining in rigorous denial of those facts. Those who have made a decision to slowly and painfully commit suicide, individually and collectively through their addictive and self-destructive cycles of behavior are becoming part of the new normal in American life. Each mentally ill human being, including all alcoholics and drug addicts must find their own unique “bottom”, where the pain of the disease causes a change, or turning point, in their lives. Insanity, poor physical health, loss of job, loss of family, jail, DUI, threat of death, or near death experiences, and deaths of close friends or family members also suffering from cultural disease and addiction have been known to bring the desire for healing. Personally, it took all the previously mentioned negative addictive cycle outcomes to convince me to deal with my trauma and my suffering, and change my self-image, self-esteem, attitudes and behavior.

I had major resistance to writing this chapter.  The suffering from my past provided the foundational material for this exploration into human suffering and trauma. And, as fundamental aspects of my consciousness are shared by most others within our species, my hops is that together we may eventually co-create a new, healing narrative for our damaged culture.  If our culture is to survive and prosper, a spiritual syncretism derived from our collective healing response must eventually establish a legitimate, healthy religious understanding for our lives and time.  Until that day, we all must address these most challenging issues of being a human being, and find our own unique path for our healing..We might find we need support to face the events of the past, so turning to a trained professional who can offer tools for healing can be a valid choice, and we should feel no shame in seeking such support.

Many days, I am not a proud member of the human race. Sometimes, I am appalled and disgusted by my male peers, and most times I want nothing to do with oversexed and over aggressive men. Men are the serial killers, they are the rapists, they are the ones wielding assault rifles, they are the ones terrorizing innocent people. There was a time when I would have lifted my fists against the aggressors, but a broken hand and broken collarbone proved to me that my structure could not support the war on Patriarchy and its ugly spawn, the damaged male ego and its addiction to its “penis power”. I continue to write about the vile, damaged parts of consciousness of the American male, much to the distress and consternation of some of my male readers. I also know that there is a tender, loving, compassionate component to the male consciousness, and that is the part the I celebrate with all people seeking healing from our sometimes evil world, the world created by dark men and their twisted fantasies of domination and control.

I will no longer remain silent. I confront darkness wherever it lies, even if it is within my own soul. For men, the big problem is not that we get erections, it is that, while young, we unskillfully manage ourselves in self-destructive and other destructive manners. Too many men live in a dark world dominated by their poor self esteem, low opinions of others, excess fascination with their own genitals, fantasies of domination and control entertained in the privacy of their dark minds, and their own unskilled relationship with their own sexuality.

I will not idly stand by while my peers traumatize and abuse their family members, their female friends or acquaintances, or their world, because my heart will not allow it. NOR SHOULD YOU!  Abuse in any form is unacceptable behavior, and the issues behind it must continue to be addressed by our awakening culture. I have left the Christian church because of their complicity with unhealed male domination and the Earth’s destruction, and I have left several male friendships because of spousal abuse or significant other abuse.  Abandoning the church and these friendships were some of the most excruciating, difficult actions that I have undertaken in my life.

The next chapter will cover my own childhood traumatic wounding, a wounding which encased me within a nearly impenetrable block of marble.

Anybody know where Michelangelo is?