Healing Trauma

I have lived through a very painful experience of emotional abuse and bullying for standing firm and honouring my core beliefs and conscience. I write this because it is very important to own the truth of my experience.

No other analysis of this phenomenon is as clear-headed, and as validating for the victims of insidious and perverse abuses of power than Marie-France Hirigoyen's Stalking the Soul: Emotional Abuse and the Erosion of Identity.  Hirigoyen's insights are so important because she acknowledges the impact that such abuse has on a person's soul.  It is the hardest for others to comprehend, confusing for the victim, and challenging for witnesses to take a clear stand because of its subtle, yet brutally corrosive impact.  It is also challenging because the abuser engages in highly skilled manipulations and is able to create doubt and deflect the ethical responsibility for their actions.  In fact, they can be quite brilliant at turning the entire situation around and forcing their target to carry the shame for their own actions through character assassination and projected role reversal.

How can the lessons and wisdom gleaned from such an emotionally and psychologically violent encounter be woven into a blanket of healing?

I've arrived at some answers for myself, but being on the receiving end of someone else's unacknowledged grief, pain and rage remains an enigmatic dance of unconscious dynamics. One thing that I am certain about is that only the faith in your own soul (your core spiritual essence) and its connection to the soul of the world is strong enough to pull you through such an ordeal without breaking you.  The love and support of people who care for and love you, the assistance of skilled professionals, and attention to your physical health are all key. Yet the ability to be in the world, trust again, rebuild your life and work, and renew your commitment to what you believe in, can only occur when you surrender to a force within yourself that is infinitely loving, compassionate and just.

There are so many deep traumas in our world which ache for healing.  I know that my own vulnerability has connected me more deeply to the vulnerability of others, and to the wounds present in life.  I don't feel connected in a weak and sentimental way, because I am acutely aware that healing trauma requires true grit, strength and courage.  However, I feel a deeper kinship with others through my experience.  The act of deepening compassion continues through my encounter of walking through the fire and being tested to the core.

Trauma is experienced when human beings confront something so overwhelming (either emotionally, psychologically, or physically), that it forces a re-circuiting of their being in order to circumvent the unendurable. Only a force, a belief, an experience, or a value greater than us has the ability to give us a fighting chance against the overwhelm that could break us into less than who we are. I surrender to that which opens me more fully into life and love, not to that which asks for, or demands, less. 

From this deeply surrendered place, we may find ourselves graced with the wisdom that our painful shattering can be an initiation into a remembrance and renewal of who we were meant to be.  

Sacred Vulnerability

I recently bore witness to a loved one's passing.  The indelible imprint from this time is the deep realization of the power and vulnerability of breath.  At a certain point in the dying process, one becomes aware at such a visceral level that one, single breath separates the mysterious chasm between life and death.

The power that human beings often masquerade behind obscures our shared fragility.  As I read David Abram's beautiful new book, Becoming Animal, I am made ever more conscious of the humble yet exquisite mammals we are.  Sinking into our glorious corporeality, we cannot be anything but grounded.  Grounded and aware of our limitations - and inspired and awed by our deeper underlying interconnectedness.

In grieving the death of another in our shared field, we open ourselves to the raw vulnerability of loss.  Our grief, often expressed in tears and cries, lets our breath follow the final exhale of our loved one - reverberating in our own soulful song with all that is.

Leading Out Unconditional Love

Wholeness can only be led out through unconditional love.  It is the unity of all experience which has the power to heal when it is woven into a new pattern.  Unconditional love - the love that holds true in the face of all experience -  is not a sentimental enterprise. It is gut-wrenching, soul-searing work.  It demands that you see what actually is - not what you want to see, not how you would like things to be, not how you imagine things to be in your fantasy.  Instead, it forces you to deal with what is true, what is real, what has happened.

Sorting this through and holding faith that the painful pieces can, in fact, be transformed into something beautiful is an act of radical courage.  Is this not the kind of courage we are being asked to embody both in relation to our own lives, and to the state of the planet as a whole?

We have made a mess of this planet.  We have made a mess in our systems. We have made a mess of relationships.   Denying this mess is not helpful.  Yes, there are myriad reasons to hope.  Yet hope without action is useless in cleaning up the mess. 

Where do you find the strength to face the mess and begin?  Only in unconditional love, I think. I am not sure anything is powerful enough to really turn things around other than this.  Radical compassion - the compassion born of our shared human experience encompassing all the joy, the pain, the mistakes - lets us move from self-recrimination into expression, and from judgement into healing.  Perfectionism leads towards a denial of our humanity, while acceptance weaves us closer together. 

Together, we can clean up this mess much easier than if we tried to go it alone.  Our leadership is not only born of our strength, but more potently from our humility.  Leading with love is the only path that seems viable enough to help us navigate the tricky terrain our world is facing.

It feels more nourishing to be feasting at a communal table than basking in individual glory.  Today's heroes and heroines may well be those who know how to honour all who sit in the circle.

Communal Gifts

In many Indigenous traditions, one's engagement with one's story and its connection to a larger story is an imperative - a rite of passage that one must undergo in order to move beyond what can often be a petty personal perspective into one's deeper and truer purpose on this planet.  This process brings the individual into contact with his or her essence and deeper gifts as a human being. This rite of passage is often lost  or ignored in broader society, and narcissim is on the rise.  In fact, this narcissm has become so pronounced that it often veers into pathology.

The loss of rites of passage makes it difficult to make the transition from one stage of life to another.  How does one "find a place" for challenging experiences and feel an inner permission to let go, move forward, and integrate the teachings from one phase into the next with clarity?  Without these powerful rites of passage, we are left holding too much in a cracked vessel, and what we are holding is bound to spill out into our immediate realms - often unconsciously.

Living one's gifts is the best way to find peace within oneself. It is in community that one can come to know one's gifts, but when our communities and even our families are so fragmented, our gifts can lie dormant.  In a power-driven and celebrity-driven culture, scarcity infuses the notion of the gifted human being.  In indigenous teachings, each person is gifted.  The community is responsible for helping the other come to know their gifts by mirroring them and leading them out.  The underlying competition that is at the core of our psychic and social lives in modern culture does not consciously engage in the process of leading out communal gifts - it often forces people to invest in the notion of "the best" at the expense of all else.  In addition, our culture is so grounded in analysis and critique at the expense of a more heart-centred and soul-centred perspective that one can be constantly assessing rather than affirming others. Tremendous wealth and connection is lost through this imbalance.

Protesting that "when all are gifted, none are gifted" may seem like a reasonable stance.  Yet the recognition that all human gifts are unique and essential to the community as a whole makes that argument less compelling.  Instead, it might be more worthwhile to consider how one can better embody the classical African concept of ubuntu - I am because you are.  This succint yet profound kernal of wisdom is a generational undertaking in a world as pathologically competitive as ours.

Spirituality & Cultural Courage

I was trained very well on my academic journey.  Critical theory, intellectual debate, and rational arguments have been part of the warp and woof of my own personal development.  These are all things which I still value.

And yet...my heart has yearned for other ways of knowing, other truths that offer a more integrated and, in my view, expansive relationship to the other, to life, and to the cosmos.  Intense childhood experiences which made me feel a deep, abiding sense of the interconnectedness of all life, as well as the presence of some mysterious, unknown Other, have also marked my personal development.  Yet these are often unmentionables in a culture such as ours - a culture that seems primarily divided between religious fundamentalism and secular atheism.

The truth which rationality paved a path towards involved the understanding that no one religion could possibly be 'the one.'  The irrationality of religious wars and the important documentation and critiques of the horrors perpetuated in the name of a "God" expose that something is terribly amiss in how we approach our relationship to one another and to the world. Yet the road leading to a condemnation of a spiritual dimension has not been a path I have traveled - not because I have not been willing to consider all the 'arguments', but because life experiences have revealed that it is neither "good, useful, or beautiful" to do so. These were the criteria my ancient ancestors, the Greek philosophers, implored us to use as a measure of what is right or true.

Among the more powerful cosmologies which have supported my personal understandings of spirituality have been those of diverse Indigenous peoples .  A profound First Nations traditional teacher has mirrored the criteria my ancestors established when she speaks of the "Beautiful Path" or "Following the Sweetgrass Trail."  The acknowledgment of a spiritual dimension to life does not necessarily make life easier or suffering disappear, but the meaning it provides is "good, useful and beautiful."  The acknowledgment of our deep interconnectedness and humility in the face of life's mystery opens doorways of understanding, builds bridges between difference, and offers insight, comfort, and inspiration in the midst of despair, uncertainty, and alienation.

In a culture where spirituality is often subject to blistering critique or is exploited as a 'cure all', the deeper essence and stories involved in engaging with a spiritual dimension of life are drowned out in the fury and the snickers.  It takes cultural courage to stand in one's deeply felt spiritual beliefs in the din of such ever-present noise.

In honouring a greater silence, we may remember to hear - one another, the symphony of creation, and the essence of what is.

Life's Fundamentals

Few things bring life's fundamentals into perspective the way a serious illness can.  Suddenly, life and death come roaring into consciousness from their relegated corner amidst the routines and tasks of daily living.  Such an event not only impacts the person with the illness, but the entire family and community of friends. 

Mortality's presence sounds its bell, and the tone we hear can have a profound impact on how we choose to respond.  Do we hear a death knell, or the infinite chimes of what is possible?  Choosing possibility in the face of such an event does not equate to being a Pollyanna.  The reality of what one faces is sobering.

Yet the perspective we choose, and the intentions we employ, can assist us in navigating such treachourous terrain.  Holding the tension of the opposites of life and death allows us to connect to the core reality that is often obscured in our everyday distractions - the reality of love.  It is through love that you can activate the will to heal in another person. When we want someone to stay with us in life, this has a profound healing effect on the soul as well as the body.

Quantitative research has demonstrated the power of prayer in response to illness or trauma.  Those who have utilized prayer personally, or who have had others pray or meditate for them, have healed in ways that others have not.  When love forms concrete actions in the world, those beads of positive response can create a healing field that surrounds all dealing with a profound health challenge.

When life's events bring us to our knees, it may be an instinctive sign to stay there, in humility, and allow something beyond ourselves to move us into new life.

Sacred Witness

I can barely look at the wrenching images of the birds affected by the oil spill off the Gulf, but I don't feel it is acceptable to not bear witness to their suffering.  In the pictures, the birds seem to be meeting our gaze - looking us directly in the eye and beseeching us to see what we've done. When I spoke with indigenous elder Diane Longboat about the Gulf tragedy, she helped me to see that their suffering must be redeemed by acknowledging and understanding that they are messengers of a new way we must live on this planet.  To not recognize, and honour, their sacrifice, we deny their integrity in the web of life and continue to threaten our survival on this planet.

The images of the birds are stark reminders of our abuse and our unconsciousness of our interconnectedness.  As a species, we have hurt our relations by not honouring the sacredness of their lives.  It is only when images such as the photographs of these noble creatures comes to consciousness that we are forced to truly see the impact of what we have done.  Our witnessing then becomes the catalyst for deep change, allowing us to forgive ourselves and ask forgiveness for, our reckless pursuit of more.

From this sobered and humbled place, we open ourselves to co-creating a different world.