Trauma Recovery & Healing

(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org,
please feel free to visit the school website)

Introduction
Review Of Literature
How Can We Define Trauma?
What Does Recovery Entail? Or: The Healing Process
Trauma As Initiation: The Dark Night Of The Soul
Spiritual Survival And The Warrior Path
Change Your Attitude, Change Your Life
"How Do You Define Reality?" Or: Language As A Mind-Control Device
Pitfalls On The Path To Recovery
Dissociative Disorders, Satanic Cults, And Other Myths
Pitfalls: Boundaries Between Healers & Clients
Ways Of Healing Trauma: Therapists As Healers
Healing Therapies: Divine Intervention & Magical Rejuvenation
Healing Therapies: Meditation & Visualization
Discussion: A Living Philosophy Of Love
Bibliography

Introduction

Written by Balthazar Seferiades

The words trauma and recovery have become laden with complex and often contradictory layers of meaning. In order to minimize confusion, I have attempted to define all terms used in this course in detail and to clarify which meanings are intended for the words employed. I have often found it necessary in these pages to use the term traumatic experience in place of "trauma," since the latter technically refers to serious injury such as a physical wound in particular. Likewise, the term healing has been used in place of "recovery" to distinguish the metaphysical ideas explored here from the psychiatric or medical definition of "recovery," a loaded word that implies the existence of purely mythical "diseases" that affect the mind or brain, or which refers to the overcoming of so-called "addiction" to substances. Heal the mind, and the body will follow. This principle of mind over matter underlies the entire field of metaphysics, and must be the foundation for any mystical study of healing recovery. Materialistic philosophy and its outgrowths in medical science and popular thought must be deconstructed in our minds before we can find our way to the true recovery that arises out of love and harmony with the universe and spiritual awakening.

Trauma & Recovery - Healing Through Traumatic Experience: Index >>

Review Of Literature

Toxic Psychiatry: Why Therapy, Empathy, And Love Must Replace The Drugs, Electroshock And Biochemical Theories Of The "New Psychiatry" (1991) is an interesting approach to the subject of trauma and recoveryby Peter Breggin.The back coverof this very important book states that "Peter Breggin is the leading voice in this country exposing psychiatry's betrayal of the most fundamental essence of what it means to be human." In other words, psychiatry attempts to break the spirit of human beings who cannot or will not conform to an inhuman way of life. Since this inhumanity has become a compulsory feature of life in modern industrial society, any member of this society who insists on being fully human must be classed by psychiatry as insane.

Dancing The Dream: The Seven Sacred Paths Of Human Transformation (1999)by Jamie Sams who is,"Widely recognized as one of the foremost teachers of Native American wisdom. Jamie Sams reveals the seven sacred paths of human spiritual development and explains how exploring each path leads to shifts in our personal relationships with the earth, our loved ones, friends and communities, and most important, our own spiritual selves. As part of a profound awakening process, these paths help us heal the past, shed fear of the future, and focus on being aware and fully present in our daily lives. Ultimately, we discover that we are indeed dancing the dream." This book shows how traumatic experiences can be viewed as initiatory challenges that lead us down the path to greater spiritual awareness.

Tarot Shadow Work: Using The Dark Symbols To Heal (2000) by Christine Jette, "provides a type of 'mystical therapy,' a careful blending of practical advice and mysticism."

The Myth Of Mental Illness (1974) by Thomas S. Szasz explores the history of mental "illness" as a medical concept, and the contradictions inherent in this concept. Other titles by the same author include Law, Liberty, And Psychiatry; Psychiatric Justice; The Ethics of Psychoanalysis; Ideology And Insanity; and The Manufacture Of Madness.

Thoughts Without A Thinker (1995) explores the common ground between Buddhist philosophy and Western psychology.

Seeing With The Mind's Eye (1990)by Mike and Nancy Samuels provides the student with a wealth of visualization techniques that can be used to free the mind from the limitations imposed on thought by verbal structures.

Other books situated at the entryway to related avenues of study have been quoted at various lengths in this course. The titles and authors of such works can be found in the bibliography. Any detail or critical concept missing from this course can be found within the pages of the books we have listed. The healing process may involve a great deal of reading and research on the part of the student, healer, or seeker after recovery.

Trauma & Recovery - Healing Through Traumatic Experience: Index >>

How Can We Define Trauma?

Trauma can be divided into four basic categories. These are: physical trauma, or bodily injury; emotional trauma, or psychic injury; psychological trauma, or mental injury; and spiritual trauma, or injury to the spirit. However, since this course has been written from a metaphysical and not a medical point of view, we will mostly be dealing with the psychological aspects of any given traumatic experience and its aftermath. Once we understand trauma from a mental point of view, we'll be better able to find the hidden lessons and higher meanings that lie within all types of experiences that might be considered "traumatic." Keep in mind that, in accord with the idea of personal sovereignty, we have some control over our own experience. Though we cannot always decide whether or not we will experience some kind of injury, we can choose how to think about what has happened to us. Our minds, through their inherent power to create meaning and purpose, can provide the alchemical means by which any injury can be transformed into a tool for obtaining complete awareness and higher consciousness.

Everyone in our world experiences some form of psychological trauma, even if only of a secondary nature. For example, seeing a dead body filmed on television can be psychologically traumatic and have detrimental effects on the mind of the viewer. Children are especially vulnerable to the effects of psychological trauma. This is why most mental injuries take place early in life, before the mind of an individual has become hardened by repeated exposure to psychologically harmful events and stimuli. MarthaStout in The Myth Of Sanity (2001) explains, "All of us are exposed to some amount of psychological trauma at some point in our lives, and yet most of us are unaware of the misty spaces in our brains left there by traumatic experience, since for the most part we experience them only indirectly." In other words, most of the traumatic experiences to which we are exposed actually happen to other people. We read about these tragedies in the newspaper or see them on television.

Civilization with its modern conveniences shelters us from the harsh conditions of life that prevail in the majority of earthly human situations even today. Privileged members of the industrialized middle class would probably feel psychologically traumatized by the simple conditions of everyday life that less "fortunate" people (i.e., the majority of humans on this planet) must accept. Martha Stout continues in this vein in The Myth Of Sanity (2001): "Seldom do we ponder the traumatic events in our own lives, let alone the frightening hardships and life-or-death struggles that were the daily lot of people as close to us, in terms of time, as our great-grandmothers, or even our grandmothers." The harsh conditions that prevailed in the lives of our own ancestors in previous generations still prevail in most parts of the world for most people. She also tells us, "If we travel a little way from the developed world, we find that more than one fifth of the global population still lives in extreme poverty, and life expectancy in some of the least developed countries is forty three years. At least one billion people now living on our planet suffer from chronic hunger, and a human child dies from malnutrition every four seconds. The World Health Organization reports that half of humanity still lacks regular access to the treatment of common diseases, and to the most basic medicines." The physical hardships that we face in our own daily lives seem insignificant when meditated upon in the light of the much harsher conditions to which others are subjected.

When we realize that everyone has hardships and troubles to face in life that equal or exceed those that we must endure, our own bad experiences might seem less terrible to us. Traumatic experiences, especially psychological ones, can be mitigated by the use of mental perspective. For this reason, two people can experience the same potentially traumatizing event and only one of them might actually be mentally harmed as a result of the experience. As Martha Stout tells us in The Myth Of Sanity (2001), "The severity of a trauma is measured by how damaging it was, of course, but also...by the subjective meaning the victim attaches to it." In other words, our ability to create meaning gives us some degree of control over our internal experience. We can choose to attach meanings to events that will allow us to grow and adjust to the nature of the world, and this will give us more mental strength and stability. Conversely, we can choose to believe that our bad experiences mean that we ourselves are bad people, for example. This thought will make us mentally weak, and unwilling to face the challenges of life. She explains further by saying, "By definition, a traumatic event, whether it be objectively tragic or not, opens in the mind a corridor to the apprehension of our essential helplessness and the possibility of death. A traumatic stressor is overwhelming not because it is colossal—for it may not be so for observers—but because it has a certain meaning for the individual."

By deciding what our experiences mean to us, we can take control of our own lives at the most basic level. However, the conscious creation of meaning requires a great deal of will power, awareness, and effort. Children, and other sheltered or dependent individuals, often lack the mental strength necessary to create an independent self-image and world view. For this reason, psychology holds that formative experiences take place primarily in childhood. The meanings that we attach to things become fixed at a certain point in our development. To change such "association locks," to use a term coined by science fiction writer William Burroughs, we must first identify them. We must get to know ourselves as human beings who share a common state of existence, and we must recognize the actual nature of the human condition.

As we mentioned before, children are more vulnerable to psychological trauma. This is because their inexperienced minds often cannot make sense of traumatic events in a positive way. Martha Stout tells us in The Myth Of Sanity (2001), "Because of their lack of experience in our world, children are traumatized far more frequently than we are. Circumstances that provoke mild anxiety in adults may easily generate life-or-death terror in children, because the very young have not yet created for themselves a framework for interacting with the world at large. This temporary deficit is one of the most poignant and dangerous connotations of the expression 'childhood innocence.'"

As adults we learn how terrible the world can be, either through our own experience or by becoming aware of worldly events. To protect our minds from the potentially lethal psychological damage that the intimate awareness of ubiquitous tragedy could inflict, we learn as adults how to create a world-view that allows us to carry on and maintain some degree of hope for ourselves and the world. In The Myth Of Sanity (2001) Martha Stout says: "We are a thoroughly shell-shocked species. Though we have not all suffered abuse as children, we have all endured experiences that we perceived as terrifying, and that utterly exhausted our tender attempts to comprehend and cope. From a troubled world that often seems to menace, many of us have absorbed repeated, toxic doses of secondary trauma as well: from people we care about, and even from an impersonal media." Keep in mind that those who control the media may portray events or choose facts so as to make things seem more terrible and hopeless than they would otherwise appear. Such terror tactics may have a calculated effect on human consciousness: they tend to produce the condition of listless apathy that often results from battlefield experience. Hence the metaphorical term, "shell-shock."

Shell-shocked as we are, we learn early on to cope with the horrors of day to day events in the media and elsewhere by a mechanism known to psychology as dissociation. When we dissociate, we distance ourselves from traumatic stimuli by cutting off our awareness, by going away. This loss of awareness helps us stave off secondary trauma so well that it becomes habitual. Understanding this process goes a long way toward making sense of the apathetic nature of collective thinking on chronically tragic subjects like corruption in politics or the deterioration of the environment. Those who have been directly traumatized learn to dissociate in an even more radical manner, as we shall see later. Note once again, however, that not everyone who goes through or hears about a stressful event sustains psychological damage.

Also, we must take into account the limits of the current psychiatric paradigm, and the largely mythical nature of psychological "conditions" such as "PTSD," "ADD," and other facile but inherently misleading acronyms. As we will see later, "mental illness" as such doesn't really exist. In an insane world, no one is entirely sane. Martha Stout in The Myth Of Sanity (2001) supports this hypothesis by noting that "...as a result of our histories, and of our inborn disposition to become dissociative when our minds need protection, moderately dissociated awareness is the normal mental status of all adult human beings." Though not everyone ends up as a mental patient, let's face the truth of the cliché: "We are all a little crazy." If we weren't, we couldn't possibly cope with the human condition and continue to live our lives in the way that this mad world requires us to. As 20th century novelist Henry Miller once put it (as quoted from Madness, Heresy, And The Rumor Of Angels (1993)), "If we were truly awake we would be stunned by the horror of our everyday life. No one in his right senses could possibly do the crazy things which are now demanded of us every moment of the day." As a corollary to this postulate, we might say that we have to lose our minds before we can come to our senses. The mind plays tricks on the eye, as anyone who has witnessed a magic show can testify.

We can get to know ourselves more deeply by examining the nature of this dissociative reflex that all of us share as mentally vulnerable humans in a world gone mad. We can also have more understanding for others who can't immediately "get over it" when their experiences don't seem so awful to us. In fact we might realize that we are not really aware of the extent of our own dissociation from ourselves and the world we inhabit. After all, dissociation occurs without conscious intervention, automatically.

Only an act of will can make us fully conscious in the present moment, and short-circuit the automatic dissociation reflex. Martha Stout in The Myth Of Sanity (2001) brings up an important question on this point: "How do childhood and Adolescent terrors that should have been over years ago manage to live on and make us crazy and alienated from ourselves in the present? The answer, paradoxically, lies in a perfectly normal function of the mind known as dissociation, which is the universal human reaction to extreme fear or pain..." We can deal more easily with pain, this passage implies, by ceasing to be aware of it. The passage continues by telling us the purpose of this block in our awareness, and the trouble that such blocks eventually cause: "Dissociation during trauma is extremely adaptive; it is a survival function. The problem comes later, for long after the ordeal is over, the tendency to be disconnected from ourselves may remain. Our old terrors train us to be dissociative, to feel safe by taking little psychological vacations from reality when it is too frightening or painful. But later, these mental vacations may come upon us even when we do not need them, or want them, or recognize them."

This lack of recognition can often be remedied by feedback from others, as when a friend tells us that we haven't been listening. It can also be self-regulated, for example, by taking note of the times when our eyes scan the words on a page without our mind being aware of what those words mean. Though we might not like to admit it to ourselves or others, all of us must constantly battle against the tendency to let go the thread of consciousness and slip into the relative bliss of an "automatic pilot" state of being where life goes on without engaging our higher faculties in any meaningful way. No one wants to suffer, and mentally "checking out" offers an escape into an internal sanctuary where nothing that happens in the big bad outside world can touch us.

If we never experience the world for the flawed place that it is, however, we will never know the joy of being fully present in the moment. This pure appreciation of existence and life as it must be lived can be likened to the Buddhist idea of enlightenment. The realization of our sorrowful state of suffering on earth must be fully felt and acknowledged before we can become free of that suffering in our own minds. Buddhist thinker Mark Epstein, in his book Thoughts Without A Thinker (1995), writes, "While 'suffering' is the conventional translation for the Buddha's word dukkha, it does not really do the word justice. A more specific translation would be something on the order of 'pervasive unsatisfactoriness.' Not to obtain what one desires causes dissatisfaction, and being separated from what one cherishes causes dissatisfaction. As many a psychotherapist can testify, and as the Buddha so clearly recognized, our own selves can feel somehow unsatisfactory to us. We are all touched by a gnawing sense of imperfection, insubstantiality, or unrest, and we all long for a magical resolution of that dis-ease."

This course seeks to offer pointers for just such a "magical" cure for the so-called mental "diseases" that often seem to result from "traumatic" experiences. The cure has a simple, yet nevertheless magically potent, name: healing. Each of us must use our own magic to cure ourselves. No doctor can truly cure us. We can only recover by willing our own recoveries and going through the healing process. We must charm our own minds into believing that we can recover by healing ourselves, no matter how terrible the past has been for us.

Trauma & Recovery - Healing Through Traumatic Experience: Index >>

What Does Recovery Entail? Or: The Healing Process

Let's review what we've learned so far. We know now that "trauma" refers to any kind of severe injury: whether mental, physical, emotional, or spiritual. We also know that we have the most control over the mental or psychological component of any given trauma, and that we must therefore use the mind to overcome or mitigate the damage done to our beings as a whole. As we discovered above, the mind responds to trauma by playing a trick on itself called dissociation. Rather than suffer, the mind shuts down and withdraws from harm. This state of withdrawal then becomes habitual, an automatic defense mechanism that may be triggered even in the absence of harmful circumstances. This unconscious habit of dissociation keeps us from being fully present in the moment, since we cannot give our full attention to anything when part of the mind has retreated from the front lines of experience. Jamie Sams says in Dancing The Dream (1999), "Fear is the enemy of being present." Dissociation can thus be linked with fear. Just as an animal will run from a predator, so the human mind seeks to escape from negative experiences in life.

Only a trained animal such as a dog will stand up to a larger creature like a bear or wolf. By the same token, the mind must also be trained to face the things that it fears. Only through such training can we learn to be fully present in the moment, no matter how scary things get, or have been in the past. Jamie Sams, in Dancing The Dream (1999), also tells us that, "if our thoughts and feelings from the past are haunting us, we cannot be fully present...if we fear the unknown of the future, we are also out of balance because we have invested our energy in what could happen rather than what we are experiencing at present. We cannot receive the immediate blessings of happiness and contentment when we invest our energy in regret, fear, or expectation of doom."

Recovery, then, must begin with the process of overcoming and releasing our fears. This process could be metaphorically called "mental healing." Note, however, that the mind exists apart from the physical world of which the body is a part. The mind, as a metaphysical object and not a physical one, cannot actually sustain an injury. By the same token, fear is not a disease of which the mind can be cured, since the mind cannot become literally "sick" the way that our bodies can.

According to Christine Jette in Tarot Shadow Work (2000), "The Latin root of recovery is recapture, meaning 'to receive or take.' To receive something is passive—you allow it to happen. To take is a deliberate choice requiring action." Thus, we can see the release of fear as a passive process, like falling into a pool of water. Overcoming our fear then takes the opposite position as an active choice, like choosing to swim instead of sink.

Without fear, we might never be motivated to get out of bed, walk out the door, and struggle in the world for the things that we need. Fear is a survival mechanism. Fear only becomes a negative force when it changes from a survival reflex into an obsession. As Christine Jette tells us in Tarot Shadow Work (2000), "The survival purpose of fear soon begins to permeate all aspects of our lives. We learn there is no endless source of anything. We are taught to live by the fear of loss. We align ourselves with fear: we fear someone will die, we fear we won't have enough money, we fear our significant relationships will dissolve, or happiness won't last, we fear being alone. This is where our fear of, and resistance to, change originates, and where our shadow starts to grow."

In order to reclaim that shadowy part of ourselves that fear has taken away from us, we must choose to have courage. Though fear threatens to blot out our consciousness, we must learn to remain present in spite of our fears. No one can do this for us, and no one can really teach us how. The trick lies in how we look at things. Though we don't always know it, our perception is something that we can control. A change in our thinking can transform the nature of the entire world. The world inside of us doesn't have to be a frightening place for us, and neither does the world outside. Overcoming our fear that past traumas will recur also allows us to face the present without the anxiety that causes dissociation.

This same detachment also helps us to overcome fears that arise from present circumstances. No matter how frightening and terrible the past has been for us, we can decide to carry on and face the future without fear. To do otherwise would be an act of cowardice. Such lack of courage must also be seen as a decision on the part of the coward who displays it, though few would wish to take credit for this kind of moral weakness. Jamie Sams, in Dancing The Dream (1999), tells us, "In millions of ways, havoc can be wreaked in our lives; depending upon our attitude, either we choose to pick up the pieces and begin again, or we choose to give up." This giving up amounts to a conscious, willful act of cowardice. Jamie Sams continues by saying, "It is the coward who abandons himself or herself first, and from that place of cowardice, all other betrayals come easily."

Beginning again takes courage. No one said courage would be as easy as self-betrayal, but surrender is not an alternative for those on the spiritual path.

Trauma & Recovery - Healing Through Traumatic Experience: Index >>

Trauma As Initiation: The Dark Night Of The Soul

Just as fear serves a physical purpose in our lives by providing the motivation for survival, so trauma serves a spiritual purpose by teaching us to have courage. Living through severe injury and tragedy requires strength and resilience. When we have seen the worst that life has to offer and know that we have survived in spite of it, a potential threat no longer causes us to lose our nerve. At the crucial moment we survivors find ourselves equal to whatever challenge we must face, and though fear may still rise up inside us, it cannot overwhelm us. This is the meaning of courage. Jamie Sams says in Dancing The Dream (1999), "All Dark Nights of the Soul ultimately teach us how to let go of cowardice."

Now that we understand how traumatic experiences relate to spiritual development, let's examine the types of trauma and how they correspond to different steps on the path of spiritual initiation. Such traumatic experiences can be divided into four basic types: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Each type of trauma has a "Dark Night of the Soul" or spiritual initiation associated with it. Jamie Sams continues in Dancing The Dream (1999) saying that, "In human life, we experience these four passages into darkness on the spiritual, emotional, psychological, and physical levels. At these times, we feel that the light in the window representing the safety of home has vanished, we think that there is no way out, or we feel that we have lost our connection to the great mystery, God, the creator." A loss of spiritual connectedness can also be compounded by a loss of social connectedness. Jamie Sams tells us, "We may feel abandoned or alone; we may think that no one understands our passage in life and that there are unseen forces working against us." Healing from trauma must therefore include a reforging of the connection between self and Divine, as well as the creation of supportive human relationships between ourselves and others.

With regard to physical trauma, Jamie Sams, in Dancing The Dream (1999), explains that Physical Dark Nights can teach us how to show support for one another. We also learn the unequaled lessons of endurance by confronting our fears of loss or pain. We learn how to deal with personal sacrifice and how to care for others. We learn a multitude of lessons that can shape our characters in a positive way, or we can allow our experiences to become another excuse for being too weak to endure. Physical hardship can build character if we consciously use our physical weakness and pain for positive ends. Again, this might be difficult, especially when we must endure a great deal of pain or struggle with physical limitations that cause problems in other aspects of life. In the long haul we may actually become more capable on other levels as a result of injury. However, weakness can place us in a position of dependence on others, at least temporarily. When other people treat us badly because we are injured, trauma can be compounded and intensified. We must seek the company of sympathetic spirits who understand what it's like to be injured. Survivors of physical trauma can gain new powers to heal themselves and others through understanding, empathy, and love.

Injury teaches us to recognize the fragility of physical well-being. We must not take physical health for granted! By experiencing our own mortality firsthand, we learn that others are also mortal. This knowledge makes us less inclined to blame the victim, and teaches us how to be kind to the unfortunate. The kindness shown to us by others when we are hurt can renew our faith in other human beings, and thereby give us a reason to continue living in spite of how difficult it may be to endure the pain caused by injury. When we see that someone cares, and feel how much of difference that caring makes, we realize that we can also make a difference in the lives of others who have been severely harmed. At this point we can take the first step towards recovering the emotional well-being that is often shattered by traumatic injury. Knowing that we are loved gives us the courage to let go of the negative emotions that can result from prolonged physical pain. No hard line can be drawn between the different types of trauma or between the Dark Nights of the Soul that follow in the wake of traumatic experience. Physical illness and injury naturally result in emotional troubles that must be dealt with on the emotional plane, so to speak and friends and family can assist in this part of the healing.

The will to live cannot exist in the absence of faith. We must believe that we can make ourselves better in order to find the strength to continue when outer circumstances let us down. We must also make sense of our misfortune, and realize that the world has gifted us with our measure of hardship in order that we might continue to develop as spiritual beings. Rites of passage must be endured by those who wish to follow the initiatory path that leads to knowledge of and conversation with the Divine. As Jamie Sams tells us in Dancing The Dream (1999), "I personally have never seen a human being who has grown into his or her potential without confronting some Dark Night of the Soul. Those who seem to have lived ideal lives probably stayed in denial. It has been my experience that we find balance and authentic growth by counting both joy and sorrow as blessings." We cannot expect to be "happy" all the time. We must feel the depths of our own sorrow in order to know ourselves fully, and only this complete self-knowledge will bring us to higher levels of spiritual awareness.

This idea of the mysterious interdependence of joy and sorrow brings us to the subject of spiritual trauma, and of the mystical Dark Night of the Soul that comes when we lose contact with the Divine. In Dancing The Dream (1999) Jamie Sams says: "Great losses, like the death of loved ones, can destroy our happiness and begin a spiritual Dark Night of the Soul. Because we cannot figure out how a loving Creator could 'let this happen,' we find ourselves raging against God. We often blame God for our losses in life, forcing the destruction of any former foundations of faith and trust. It takes an enormous amount of courage to accept that our experiences are something that we cannot figure out at the time they happen and that there is a divine plan that may or may not reveal itself. Time changes our views and we go on, but whether we continue to have faith and trust depends upon our ability to heal the need to blame God, life, others, or the self. Again, the choice is ours."

Truly, each person must decide whether or not to have faith in the benevolent nature of the Universe and in the guiding Intelligence behind it all. But how can we continue to trust that the Divine exists for us when inexplicably tragic events, like war or natural disaster, have destroyed our faith? In such cases we must realize that we have most likely placed our trust in human beings rather than in God. Humans and their works do not endure as the earth and sky do. No one lives forever, and every city will one day crumble to dust. By extension, no husband, wife, parent or priest can ever be worthy of ultimate faith and trust. In Dancing The Dream (1999) Jamie Sams also tells us, "Spiritual Dark Nights of the Soul can occur when we have put our faith in the wrong person instead of the Creator." Even the kindest, most trustworthy person might not live long enough to keep the promises they have made to us. We must lean upon one another gently, and reserve our complete faith for powers that will always remain a mystery to us. Sams continues with the thought that, "Expecting any human being to be godlike or perfect at all times is a crooked trail. When we trust our own direct connections to the Creator, great mystery, God, we gain access to our authentic source of life force and spiritual well-being."

How do we make such a direct link with higher intelligence, cosmic forces, or what have you? The answer, as usual lies in our own minds. Human intelligence must be used in order to make contact with the Divine Mind.

Once again we find ourselves thrown back upon the rock of the mind. We are all alone inside our heads, or so it would seem. No words can ever describe fully the intricacy of our thoughts. How we think affects everything in our lives. Our thoughts can even change the world by allowing us to see things differently. We might not have control over our minds at the moment, but such control can be learned through the application of willed effort. The first step toward control over our own minds, for most of us, must be recovery from any psychological trauma that may be preventing us from thinking clearly. The example of great men like Jesus, Gian, and others who defied authority by being true to their beliefs shows that the highest spiritual attainments are reserved for those who refuse to surrender to the vicissitudes of corrupt societies, unjust laws, and despotic empires. Meditation on the lives of such holy rebels can give us the strength to carry on in spite of the injustices that may have been inflicted on us in our early years, and to overcome the harm that has been done to us by those who "know not what they do."

It's never too late for us to change direction, and dedicate our lives to the meaningful work that our spirits call us to do. Once again, our spiritual work must begin with the process of recovery, and recovery begins in the mind. Remember, recovery means being fully present in the moment in spite of our fears. Responding to the moment with passion, intelligence, and faith turns life into a dance that can heal us if we let it.

Trauma & Recovery - Healing Through Traumatic Experience: Index >>

Spiritual Survival And The Warrior Path

If you are one of those brave souls who has experienced something like one of the Dark Nights of the Soul described above, congratulate yourself: you are a survivor. Jamie Sams tells us in Dancing The Dream (1999), "Any person who has successfully gone through a Dark Night of the Soul has developed the ability to endure, to find inner strength, to learn from mistakes and be accountable for them, to pick up the pieces, and to carry on as a better person." Continuing to live and struggle in spite of trauma takes a great deal of courage. And just as cowardice is death, so courage is life. "It is an act of courage to live in this world at this time, so we must honor ourselves and the valor required to embrace the human condition without abandoning our integrity and purpose for being." Integrity arises out of courage, and sets us on the path to spiritual development. When we are true to ourselves, we will be true to others and to the Divine within us all.

For those who still look around and find themselves in the midst of Darkness, despair not. Realize instead that the world is offering you an opportunity to grow and change. Jamie Sams in Dancing The Dream (1999) tells us, "Opportunity is the last thing that we normally think of when we are in a crisis, but that is one gift that is always being given. We are given the opportunity to grow, to learn how strong we really are, to see the value of loving support, to become more sensitive to the pain of others, to share our burdens with others instead of thinking we are always alone, and to ultimately trust that we will be better people on the other side of our present, darkened passage through life." If we wish to move through these dark times, we must accept the challenge offered to us by the adversity life gives us. Acceptance of life's challenges changes us into spiritual warriors. We may not win every "battle," but the satisfaction that comes from doing what our hearts call us to do in the moment in spite of all opposition cannot be taken away, not even by defeat. A warrior who maintains integrity in the teeth of failure may be beaten, but never broken. Even when we must die for what we believe, the spirit of our courageous action lives on to inspire countless others, and eventually the thing that we fought for will indeed come to pass. "Accepting these difficult rites of passage allows us to be brave, to take courage, and to acknowledge the warrior nature of our spiritual essences. The awakened human spirit walks the path of human transformation with exacting grace and has been waiting for us to discover the power of the spiritual warrior existing inside us. If we act from our warrior nature, facing the issues at hand rather than shutting down during harrowing times, we will not have to repeat the difficult lessons that life uses to force us to confront unpleasant issues."

The alternative to the warrior path, craven as it is, will not appeal to the courageous. However, if you find yourself stuck in some sort of interminable dark time, it probably follows that you have refused to accept some crucial challenge that life has been offering you. Denial of the challenges that lie before us can cause the Dark Night Of The Soul to last for longer than it would have otherwise, dragging on for years instead of only a few months. Nevertheless, even those of us lost in some corner of Limbo must rejoice in the opportunity to become spiritual warriors in spite of all the time we've lost. It may not be easy cheering up when the whole world looks black, but the solution remains the same: release the past with its failures and tragedies, and embrace the challenge of being present in the moment.

This imperative may sound simple, but becoming fully conscious may be the most difficult thing you will ever do. Most of us are not even aware of our continuous internal monologue, except when we take the time to consciously "think." A little meditation will open our eyes to the fact that we are always "thinking" on some unconscious or subconscious level. More meditation might make us wonder if "we" are actually the ones thinking, or if that little voice in our heads has a mind of its own. Our thoughts, when we observe them, seem to continue thinking themselves without any effort on our part. This automatic thinking makes up a large part of our inner experience, and what goes on inside us affects what we experience in the outside world. It follows that a change in our thoughts would also produce some change in the world around us, at least in terms of our own perceived experience.

Christine Jette tells us in Tarot Shadow Work (2000), "The mind is powerful. What you think about affects how you feel and creates experiences which correspond to those feelings. When you believe something to be true, your experiences validate your beliefs. Your attitudes and opinions attract things to you like a magnet. If you feel you are not worthy of love, you will find yourself in unloving situations. If you are loving toward yourself, love will come your way."

This concept may be difficult to swallow at first. After all, the world has a reality of its own, separate from our thoughts concerning it. If you believe that you can walk on the freeway at rush hour without getting hit by a car, and act on that belief, your thoughts alone probably won't save your life. The erroneous notion that "you create your own reality" cannot be debunked too many times in the aftermath of New Age dogma's influence and the simple minded ignorance of its most militant advocates. Of course the world exists just as it always has, and wishing won't make it different. You can run up against the brick wall of reality's limitations all you like, and all you'll get is a sore head. However, your mind and its thoughts have no such limitations. You can think anything you want.

Unfortunately, most people don't even take the time to examine the contents of their own minds. They spend their time trying to change the world outside, when the world inside can be changed so much more easily. In fact, many of us probably aren't even aware of the thoughts that make up our view of the world. We may be limited by all kinds of thoughts that do not actually correspond to the world as it really exists. However, those thoughts will continue to limit our experience until we consciously change them. Reality selection, as author Robert Anton Wilson calls it, can be practiced by those who become aware of their own thoughts and of how those thoughts affect what happens in life.

Trauma & Recovery - Healing Through Traumatic Experience: Index >>

Change Your Attitude, Change Your Life

Perhaps the most powerful kind of thoughts, in terms of their effect on experience, are those that collectively make up what we call "attitude," which is more deeply ingrained in us than a thought. Christine Jette describes in Tarot Shadow Work (2000), "Our emotional and physical well-being is closely related to our attitudes about ourselves and life. When we feel good about ourselves we allow good things to happen in our lives. When we don't love ourselves, we allow an opening for negative experiences to come our way. An optimist will see the light at the end of the tunnel. A pessimist will view the light as another train coming to mow her down; same light, different attitude."

The pessimists reading this course might ask, "But what if the light really is a train?" A student of quantum physics might point out that the light is neither the end of the tunnel nor the train until an act of perception makes it one or the other. The incurable optimist is the one who still won't get out of the way, even when the blinding light and the train whistle ought to have dispelled all doubt as to the nature of what is approaching. The incurable pessimist is the one who still clings to the tunnel wall, long after the sun has gone down and the light at the end of the tunnel has vanished. From these speculations we can infer that the proper attitude corresponds to the actual nature of the situation we face.

This doesn't mean that the perfect attitude will make it so we don't have to experience pain and suffering in our lives. The ideal attitude won't stop the war, or fix the economy, or house the homeless. As long as war continues, as long as poverty exists, people will continue to experience pain and suffering. These unfortunate conditions of life cannot be avoided. The shadow in ourselves and in the world must be faced in order for it to be overcome. In other words, the proper attitude allows us to adjust to the world as it is, and to accept the state of things as they are, whether we would like to change them or not.

Once we acknowledge the true nature of the world, and accept our own place within that world, we can begin to do the work that we feel called to do. Such work will bring us peace of mind, for we will know that we are doing all we can to make the world a better place for everyone to live. Even pain has a purpose, and must be experienced. Christine Jette tells us in Tarot Shadow Work (2000), "Suffering in one's life doesn't mean that you are working through bad karma or divine retribution, as some would explain it. Instead, such hardship is a natural part of life, allowing us to flex our spiritual muscles: 'No pain, no gain,' the old saying goes." With this perspective in mind we can develop an attitude that allows us to view suffering and pain as metaphysical weights that we have been given for the purpose of gaining spiritual strength.

Trauma & Recovery - Healing Through Traumatic Experience: Index >>

"How Do You Define Reality?" Or: Language As A Mind-Control Device

In order to accept the world as it is, we must first discover the true nature of the world. It won't do us any good to cheerfully accept a set of conditions that do not actually apply to us. This would be like running away from a toothless dog, or wasting our money on something we don't need. A positive attitude won't help us discover the errors in our thinking. In fact it might make us more susceptible to the lies of those who only wish to take advantage of our good nature.

The appropriate attitude, as we stated before, must correspond to the actual situation we face at the present time. Situations change constantly, and our attitudes must also change in response to these fluctuations in circumstance. Words can help us make sense of our own minds, but they cannot accurately reflect the world in all its intricate complexity. No set of thoughts inscribed on paper can ever describe the world of experience in its entirety. The world will always remain a mystery to us. In fact, we may not be able to make one correct statement about the nature of the world that we perceive.

Nevertheless, we do perceive the world and we do experience something in our daily lives. This direct experience must become our guide through the maze of concepts that try to explain, but can only succeed in limiting, our perceptions. When we trust words more than our own experience, we fall into the trap of being controlled by language. According to author Robert Anton Wilson and others, language has long been used as a device for controlling the minds of the masses. In Wilson's book Everything Is Under Control (1998) we read, "Language as a mind-control device has been discussed by such philosophers as Vico (18th century), Stirner and Nietzsche (19th century), and Wittgenstein (20th century). The most radical scientific critics of language in our time include Count Alfred Korzybski and Dr. Richard Bandler." A complete discussion of the linguistic theories expounded upon by these authors would be beyond the scope of the present work. However, the most contemporary of these authors, Korzybski and Bandler, deserve a closer examination for the purpose of this course.

On the subject of Korzybski in Everything Is Under Control (1998) Robert Anton Wilson says, "Korzybski, who grew up in a house where four languages were spoken (Polish, Russian, French, German) and learned English much later, observed that the words we use influence our perceptions and conceptions of the world—e.g., even in the same language, a book may be called 'realistic' by one reader and 'pornographic' by another, and each will tend to perceive/conceive the book that way more and more automatically if they use their label ('realistic' or 'pornographic') over and over. This underlies the mechanism of hypnosis, as Dr. Bandler discovered later. It also explains why you won't make much progress preaching radical equality to someone who continually uses the word 'nigger,' or defending the first amendment to somebody who keeps saying 'smut' (or 'sexism')."

Politicians and their speech writers have long since discovered Dr. Bandler's method of hypnosis, and use it to influence our perception of the world for their own ends. This is why words like "terrorists," "WMD," "national security," and others tend to be repeated on television ad nauseam. Mind control through hypnosis results from the interminable repetition of these loaded words and phrases. A loaded word is one, like the previously mentioned "sexism," that provokes a strong emotional reaction in a certain set of listeners. Repeat this word often enough in association with a certain person or book, and pretty soon those listening with a sympathetic ear will begin to feel hostile towards the "sexist" who has been denounced. The words "witch" and "communist" once had a similar power to inspire the masses with homicidal rage.

As we shall see in the next section, terms such as "mentally ill" and the pseudoscientific acronyms associated with mental "illness" have now attained the hypnotic status that the word "witch" enjoyed in the Dark Ages. Even words only loosely associated with mental problems, such as "counseling" and "therapy," have become terms of abuse implying that those who go in for such things must be "nuts." Just as any accused witch could be condemned to torture and execution in past centuries, so the simple act of labeling someone "crazy" in today's world gives any psychiatrist sufficient justification to lock a person away in a cell and force them to take drugs. This kind of institutionalized insanity is just one example of the extent to which linguistic mind control still predominates in the modern society which we would like to think of as being more enlightened and just than that of past ages.

Luckily, the antidote for mind control has been developed, and anyone can use it. This means that we don't have to remain hypnotized and deceived by the loaded words and phrases that the power mongers of our age use to control us. Instead, we can deprogram ourselves and learn to see things without the distortion of preconceived judgments imposed on us by others. The concept of reality creation through the use of words suddenly becomes more clear. We live in a world created by verbal structures. This verbal illusion that we call the world actually exists inside our heads. Like submarine drivers looking out through periscopes at the surface above, we can only see what is reflected in the "mirrors" of our minds. This explains why a change of attitude, or a different way of thinking, can change the nature of the world we experience. Our perceptions limit and define our experience. Words and concepts can modify and change our perceptions. Therefore words can affect and even create, at least to a certain extent, our experiences.

Our thinking can help us to recover from any trauma we may have experienced in life by changing the way we view the world. By programming our own minds with more positive, life-affirming verbal structures, we might even be able to discover new and more exciting realities, the existence of which we never dared to suspect. (The subject of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and reality selection should be studied further by anyone wishing to heal from trauma. Interested students ought to read the authors mentioned in the bibliography and pursue their own lines of research.)

Note that words cannot actually contain the external world next to which our own perceptions are only a poorly reproduced image. The "reality" that we perceive actually exists inside, not outside of our minds. External reality cannot be directly perceived. The outside world can only affect us through the medium of our senses. Our minds must then organize our sense impressions into an orderly pattern that can be understood and used for our benefit. This process of organizing sense data goes on without our being aware of it. Often, our minds will simply reduce an image of something we perceive into a word-concept. By naming a thing, we can put it away in our minds where we think it belongs and go on to the next item of perception. All too often, however, the name we assign to the "thing" that we see doesn't exactly fit. By reducing things to words, we fool ourselves into believing that our verbal structures are the "real thing," In the process, we forget that the world outside our heads doesn't fit into the mental file cabinet we use to organize our impressions.

Since everyone's mind works differently, no one "sees" the same reality that another person "sees." We don't really "look." Mike & Nancy Samuels in Seeing With The Mind's Eye (1990) tell us, "What people 'see' when they look at an external object is dependent upon who they are and what they are interested in at that moment. For example, a butcher might look at a bull and see beef steaks, a county judge might see the bull's good or bad lines, and a city dweller might see the bull as an object of sheer terror."

People who have been traumatized will often see certain things as objects of terror, and this automatic fear reaction keeps them from experiencing the potentially positive aspects of the thing they fear. For example, a person raised by abusive "alcoholic" parents may be unable to enjoy a drink with friends. In this case, the alcohol has become an object of terror. Alcohol cannot harm anyone all by itself. In order for alcohol to become harmful, a person must choose to "abuse" it by drinking too much. Therefore the person who drinks too much ought to be feared, not the alcohol itself.

This applies to many potentially dangerous objects associated with traumatic experiences, including fast cars, weapons, drugs, poor neighborhoods, "pornographic" literature, and so on. None of the things to which these words refer are inherently terrifying. Nevertheless, the traumatized person feels a twinge of fear when such "things" are mentioned aloud. This shows how words can be used to inspire a fear of things or people that are not necessarily harmful in and of themselves. By the same token, our own verbal structures can make us fear and avoid experiences which would actually be good for us, judge and condemn people who are actually innocent, or believe that we cannot be healed when more exercise, better food, and loving companions are all we need in order to recover full health and happiness.

Now that we've started exploring this concept of "inner" and "outer" reality, just how far can we go? The way becomes a bit more tangled when we begin to question the idea of "reality" itself. Just what is "real," anyway? Are our thoughts real? Is there any such thing as the "outside world," or are we making it all up as we go along? These questions cannot be conclusively answered. Modern science, with its development of quantum theory, has discovered that the observer and the thing observed cannot be strictly separated, even under controlled conditions. The observer always participates in the creation of the thing observed. Mike & Nancy Samuels in Seeing With The Mind's Eye (1990) say that, "For the physicist, the difference between external reality and the inner reality of his own images has become difficult to distinguish. Whereas the layman 'sees' a metal cube as a solid object, a physicist has an image in his mind of a cube as something like the nighttime sky—being made up mostly of space between atoms. And whereas the layman 'sees' the cube as stationary, the physicist 'sees' the cube as so many rapidly moving electrons whose position in space can only be fixed as a matter of mathematical probability." Which cube is the "real" one? Or perhaps we should ask, what is the actual nature of the thing that both physicist and layman agree to call a "cube?"

Once again, such questions can only be answered by pointing out that the true nature of things will always remain a mystery to us. As we discover from Mike & Nancy Samuels in Seeing With The Minds Eye (1990), scientists do not even know how to define the nature of light: "...for the physicist, the whole question of the structure of matter is studded with paradoxes. Light, the very substance that allows people to perceive external objects, is believed to behave both as a wave and as a particle—as both energy and matter. Also, the physicist now believes that time is relative to the speed at which an observer is moving. He no longer recognizes one fixed external reality; he believes that a perceived reality is inseparable from the mind of the observer." In light of the state of ignorance in which we exist, we can only observe the workings of our own minds, and decide for ourselves what to believe. This is why thoughts and attitudes have so much power.

According to psychologist Carl Jung, thoughts are just as real as so-called physical objects. Quoted by Mike & Nancy Samuels in Seeing With The Mind's Eye (1990), Jung tells us that "If a fire burns me, I do not question the reality of the fire, whereas if I am beset by the fear that a ghost will appear, I take refuge behind the thought that it is only an illusion. But just as the fire is the psychic image of a physical process whose nature is unknown, so my fear of the ghost is a psychic image from a mental source; it is just as real as the fire, for my fear is as real as the pain caused by the fire." The mind really does create a world for itself out of the perceptions that enter it. Where these perceptions come from does not matter. Nor does it matter if such perceptions are objectively real, since thoughts cannot be separated from perceived reality. All that matters, if we accept Jung's thesis, is that the world-view we create helps us to find more satisfying experiences in life. Recovery entails the creation of an inner world that assists us in fulfilling our desires and dreams.

Perhaps the most radical viewpoint concerning the power of words to create reality has been developed by science fiction novelist William S. Burroughs. In Everything Is Under Control (1998) Robert Anton Wilson says, "Novelist William S. Burroughs, who studied general semantics with Korzybski, has developed these notions into the surrealist theme of language as an invading virus, found in most of his novels. This virus, according to Burroughs, creates our thoughts, feelings, and sense impressions." If Burroughs is right, what we think of as the world might be nothing more than a product of our diseased imaginations. Such a viewpoint opens up the kind of possibilities explored in movies like The Matrix series, where the world we live in is actually an illusory construct implanted in our brains by an Artificial Intelligence computer system. Complete recovery in such a world would entail a disconnection from this illusion. Once we see the real world behind the illusion, we gain the power to enter the illusory world again and bend or break the rules of this illusory world by an act of will.

A more conservative viewpoint might hold that some sort of reality does exist, and that our thoughts both help us and hinder us from perceiving it accurately. This viewpoint is expressed by Jamie Sams in Dancing The Dream (1999): "Our understanding is limited by the tiny range of human perception offered through the use of human eyes, ears, noses, mouths, thoughts, and feelings. The veils are composed of the data we gather from our perceptions while we experience life and the assumptions, decisions, and determinations we make about how life works. These preconceptions distort our view of reality even as they allow us to make sense of it all, and even cause us to omit details that don't match our assumptions."

In accord with this philosophy, a mind free of assumptions and preconceptions will be better able to create an accurate picture of reality. This means that we must let go of our own opinions and beliefs to a certain extent, and cultivate an attitude of neutrality, if we wish to be free of misconceptions and illusions. Jamie Sams further states in Dancing The Dream (1999), "Our personal viewpoints tend to anchor us in one level of experience, keeping us attached to ideas and feelings that disallow expansion. There are millions of valid truths in our world. We will eventually gain the skill needed to recognize and assimilate the validity in all human viewpoints while maintaining our uniqueness as well as detached neutrality." Recovery entails being fully present in the moment, and full presence can only be achieved in the absence of thoughts that limit our perceptions. Such limiting thoughts can be discovered and eliminated through meditation, as we will see later. But first, we must explore the nature of the preconceptions that already limit and distort our collective perception of the process of recovery.

Trauma & Recovery - Healing Through Traumatic Experience: Index >>

Pitfalls On The Path To Recovery

So far in this course we have been exploring trauma and recovery from a metaphysical perspective. Our goal has been to offer a way to deal with the horrors and hardships of life through a blend of ideas drawn from psychology and mysticism. Medical and other materialistic points of view have been left out of these findings so far, but we must address these more conventional ideas now in order to give the student of metaphysics enough knowledge to subvert the paradigm that prevails in the current fields of psychiatry, law, "public opinion" (meaning the media and those it influences), and so-called mental health. This paradigm, the basic philosophy of which could be summed up in the phrase "matter over mind," has taken over in the official and legal realms where metaphysical thinking has no influence.

As a result of materialist philosophy's stranglehold on accepted thinking, drugs, incarceration, and electroshock have become the "cure" for mental "diseases" that only exist on paper. If a person admits that they have emotional or mental problems to a government official, concerned parent, doctor, or other conventionally minded citizen, the person with the problem may be subjected to involuntary psychiatric treatment. Such treatment will probably not help the troubled person to recover. In fact, drugs and electroshock "therapy" can cause permanent, irreversible mental damage. In Toxic Psychiatry (1991) Peter Breggin tells us that, "Psychiatrists are fully qualified physicians (medical doctors) who specialize in treating people defined as having psychiatric problems. As physicians, psychiatrists have the right to prescribe drugs or electroshock, to hospitalize patients, and to treat people against their will. They are the only mental health professionals who routinely exercise these powers. Psychiatry sets the tone and direction for the field of mental health and has been rapidly pushing it toward a more biological or medical viewpoint." Love, compassion, and understanding have no place in the medical concept of recovery.

Contrary to one very common misconception, modern psychiatry has nothing to do with psychology. Too often psychiatry gets confused with the very distinct field of psychoanalysis, and woe to the troubled soul who mistakenly asks for psychiatric "help" in place of psychotherapy. PeterBreggin in Toxic Psychiatry (1991) also informs us that, "Psychoanalysis is the form of psychotherapy founded and developed by Sigmund Freud and taught in his independently franchised psychoanalytic institutes. In the public's mind, psychoanalysis is correctly associated with the couch, the notepad, and the silent listener. But psychoanalysis is often incorrectly equated with psychiatry. Contrary to popular belief, Freud was not the father of psychiatry. Psychiatry existed long before Freud, and has been largely hostile to his teachings. Freud did not become a psychiatrist, and he warned his colleagues to beware of the medical profession. Nonetheless, psychiatry took over and overwhelmed psychoanalysis in the United States. Very few psychiatrists have become psychoanalysts, and psychoanalysis has very little influence in modern psychiatry."

While we're on the subject, we might as well continue to define these difficult terms in order to dispel the mental confusion that surrounds us on all sides. According to Peter Breggin in Toxic Psychiatry (1991), "Psychotherapists are a very broad group which includes anyone helping people with problems by talking with them. Not all psychiatrists are psychotherapists or 'talking doctors.' As this book will discuss, many psychiatrists have little or no training in how to communicate with people about their problems. Instead they are trained in making 'medical' diagnoses and giving drugs and electroshock."

What about psychologists? Lest we become lost in the maze of mental health professions, we'd better define this term as well. Peter Breggin in Toxic Psychiatry (1991) says that, "Psychologists are educated in graduate schools of psychology rather than in medical schools, and they receive a Ph.D. rather than an M.D. Clinical psychologists are given training that overlaps with psychiatrists and they often receive much more intensive training in psychotherapy than do psychiatrists. Sometimes they work side-by-side with psychiatrists in mental health facilities, but they usually exercise much less authority."

Unfortunately, those seeking help for mental problems will most likely be directed to a psychiatrist rather than to a psychoanalyst. This is because the U.S. government will pay for psychiatric treatment when citizens who request it are too poor to pay for it themselves. Psychoanalysis, on the other hand, costs a great deal of money and does not enjoy the same official recognition as psychiatry.

In light of psychiatry's broad acceptance in today's society, especially in the legal realm, more support for our shocking claims that "mental illness" does not exist and that psychiatry doesn't help people recover from mental problems will probably be needed before the reader will be convinced of these truths. Let us therefore quote another passage from Peter Breggin in the highly recommended work, Toxic Psychiatry (1991): "Many people continue to think of the psychiatrist as the wise, warm, and caring person who will help them tackle their problems. But the modern psychiatrist may have no interest in 'talking therapy.' His or her entire training and commitment is more likely devoted to 'medical diagnosis' and 'physical treatment.' He or she may look at you with all the empathy and understanding of a pathologist staring through a microscope at germs, and then offer you a drug."

Relatives and friends of the mentally troubled should be warned that they may unwittingly doom their loved ones by seeking psychiatric "help." Psychiatric drugs have now become the universal prescription for all kinds of mental problems, and other forms of therapy have gone by the wayside. Peter Breggin states in Toxic Psychiatry (1991), "People suffering from what used to be thought of as 'neuroses' and 'personal problems' are being treated with drugs and shock. Children with problems that once were handled by remedial education or improved parenting are instead being subjected to medical diagnoses, drugs, and hospitals. Old people who used to be cared for by their families are being drugged in nursing homes that find it more cost effective to provide a pill than a caring, stimulating environment. Increasing numbers of elderly people are being given electroshock." Beware, therefore, of admitting to anyone other than your most trusted friends that you, your child, or your relative might suffer from some sort of "personal problem," such as a lingering trauma that must be healed. You or they may end up as the next lobotomy case on the local psychiatric ward.

One of the most disturbing of recent developments in the mental health field has been the arbitrary classification of poor and homeless people as "mentally ill." Like witches in the Dark Ages, "crazies" who live on the streets and can't find a job may find themselves drugged and locked up against their will. This problem has gotten bad enough to make front page headlines quite recently, but the poor have been made the victims of psychiatry for a long time. As author Peter Breggin relates in Toxic Psychiatry (1991), "I had learned as a college student that love and care, and supporting the patient's self-determination, were the most effective elements in helping people, even in rehabilitating 'lost souls' on the back wards of state mental hospitals. I also was learning that many of these inmates were simply homeless—disheartened poor people with no place to go. But after I entered my medical and psychiatric training, I would never hear another word about the importance of love in helping people through their helplessness and despair. Even supporting the patient's sense of self-determination and personal responsibility would rarely be mentioned. And problems of poverty and homelessness would be wholly ignored. Instead I was taught that the patients had 'diseases,' like schizophrenia, major depression, and manic-depression or bipolar affective disorder. They needed pills instead of people; shock instead of social reform."

Such inhuman treatment of traumatized individuals stems from the so-called "new psychiatry" based on biological theories of mental health that became accepted again around 1966. However, this kind of psychiatry really represents a throwback to earlier times when the poor were lobotomized for failing to meet the requirements of life in industrial civilization.

In Toxic Psychiatry (1991) Peter Breggin also says that, "Ironically, the 'new psychiatry' was not at all new to me, because it resembled nothing so much as the old state mental hospital psychiatry, where patients were considered biologically and genetically defective and subjected to degrading, damaging treatments. Tragically, what was once the psychiatry for the poor—biopsychiatry—was now becoming the psychiatry for everyone." As early in the days of the "new psychiatry" as the 1970's, Thomas S. Szasz attempted to discredit biopsychiatry in his book entitled The Myth Of Mental Illness (1974), as we see in the following passage: "Psychiatry is conventionally defined as a medical specialty concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of mental diseases. I submit that this definition, which is still widely accepted, places psychiatry in the company of alchemy and astrology and commits it to the category of pseudo science. The reason for this is that there is no such thing as 'mental illness.'" The same contention can be found by Peter Breggin in the more recent work Toxic Psychiatry (1991): "Psychiatry and psychiatrists must not be allowed to make false claims about the genetic and biological origins of so-called mental illness. Such claims are unethical, if not fraudulent, and serve only to perpetuate the influence of the profession and individual practitioners. But if it rejected its biopsychiatric claims, the profession would admit to being something very difficult to justify or defend—a medical specialty that does not treat medical illnesses."

The idea of mental illness did not become popular among physicians until the mid to late 1800's. Psychiatrists can now diagnose a mental illness based on a patient's behavior alone. Behavior that indicates disease has come to be called "dysfunctional" behavior because so-called mental illnesses are considered to be "functional" rather than "structural" in origin. In this way mental illnesses were invented—each one being identified by certain complaints or functional-behavioral changes of the persons affected by them.

Since only psychiatrists are considered competent to analyze behavior and decide whether or not "illness" is indicated, the rest of us must take their pronouncements purely on faith. A psychiatrist can decide that any kind of behavior that clashes with social norms must be an indicator of mental "disease." This is why children can be labeled with psychiatric acronyms and drugged for the simple act of misbehaving in school, and why homeless people can be incarcerated for the "dysfunctional behavior" that keeps them from finding jobs and places to live. After all, psychiatrists have now decided that even the lazy are mentally ill. The word "disease" has thus ceased to have any real meaning. "Mental illness," as we stated before, is nothing but a hypnotically loaded term that psychiatrists and others repeat for the purpose of controlling our minds. Psychiatry has no place in the process of recovery.

It seems unlikely that psychiatrists will ever admit that they prescribe drugs and other medical treatments for problems that could be better addressed by friendly conversation, social reform or addressing traumatic experiences. The deceptive practices of psychiatrists have a quite obvious and compelling motive to keep them in place: money. Peter Breggin describes in Toxic Psychiatry (1991), "Psychiatry is the political center of a multi-billion-dollar psycho-pharmaceutical complex that pushes biological and genetic theories, as well as drugs, on the society. It is a political institution licensed by the state, financed by government, and empowered by the courts. Its 'diagnoses' carry enormous legal weight and have vast political implications. Psychiatric labels allow parents to lock up their children in psychiatric hospitals and allow the state to do the same to homeless people."

Therapists and healers of the future will have their work cut out for them undoing the damage done to the innocent victims of mercenary psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical companies they endorse. In order to prevent further traumatic experiences such as those amply described in this section of our course, a summary of the reasons why psychiatry should not be considered as an alternative when deciding between forms of therapy must be included here. The summary of the findings of Thomas Szasz discussed in The Myth Of Mental Illness (1974) therefore follows:

Strictly speaking, disease or illness can affect only the body; hence, there can be no mental illness.
'Mental illness' is a metaphor. Minds can be 'sick' only in the sense that jokes are 'sick' or economies are 'sick.'
Psychiatric diagnoses are stigmatizing labels, phrased to resemble medical diagnoses and applied to persons whose behavior annoys or offends others.
Those who suffer from and complain of their own behavior are usually classified as 'neurotic;' those whose behavior makes others suffer, and about whom others complain, are usually classified as 'psychotic.'
Mental illness is not something a person has, but is something he does or is.
If there is no mental illness there can be no hospitalization, treatment, or cure for it. Of course, people may change their behavior or personality, with or without psychiatric intervention. Such intervention is nowadays called 'treatment,' and the change, if it proceeds in a direction approved by society, 'recovery' or 'cure.'
The introduction of psychiatric considerations into the administration of the criminal law—for example, the insanity plea and verdict, diagnoses of mental incompetence to stand trial, and so forth—corrupt the law and victimize the subject on whose behalf they are ostensibly employed.
Personal conduct is always rule-following, strategic, and meaningful. Patterns of interpersonal and social relations may be regarded and analyzed as if they were games, the behavior of the players being governed by explicit or tacit game rules.
In most types of voluntary psychotherapy, the therapist tries to elucidate the inexplicit game rules by which the client conducts himself; and to help the client scrutinize the goals and values of the life games he plays.
There is no medical, moral, or legal justification for involuntary psychiatric interventions. They are crimes against humanity."

Note most especially in section "6" above, the use of the word "recovery." Needless to say, the psychiatric definition of recovery does not apply within the confines of this course. The kind of recovery this course intends to convey to you has more in common with the metaphysical idea of healing than with any concept based on biological medicine. Healing of the kind explored here only represents one alternative to the state-sanctioned drug induced "recovery" offered by psychiatrists. Peter Breggin in Toxic Psychiatry (1991) says that, "All of life is an alternative to drugs, electroshock, lobotomy, involuntary treatment, and materialistic theories based on biochemistry and genetics. Almost anything and everything, including the whole spectrum of secular and religious philosophy, is better than biopsychiatry." As healers we must accept and believe that the mind, the heart, and the spirit all exist apart from and yet within the body. The healing process must include all aspects of a person's being, not just the physical body. We should seek medical attention for ailments that afflict the body. Problems of the mind, heart, and spirit, by contrast, would be better cared for if brought to the attention of friends, loved ones, and spiritual advisors. Ultimately, though, we as individuals must heal ourselves.

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Dissociative Disorders, Satanic Cults, And Other Myths

Just as no one can accurately be classified as "mentally ill," so it would be equally erroneous to believe that anyone can be entirely sane in the context of the world in which we find ourselves. "Madness" might in fact be the ordinary condition of the average person in today's society, at least from the point of view of those who have freed themselves from the collective insanity of our times. Such free thinkers, if they attempt to share their point of view with others, naturally attract the retribution of those who benefit from the perpetuation of society's crazy contradictions. Seth Farber says in Madness, Heresy, And The Rumor Of Angels (1993), "An individual who awakes to the horror, who wants to change the world, would inevitably feel a sense of mission, a calling, as it were, to lead his fellow human beings forward. This is inevitably interpreted by the mental health experts today as a sign that he or she is 'grandiose.' His or her leadership claim is invalidated by the guardians of the status quo, by the 'mind police'." Most, if not all, people would not want to attract the attention of these "mind police" and their men in white. It should come as no surprise that so few people feel strong enough to denounce our society and way of life as insane. Such an act of courage could have grave consequences.

Living a lie, however, can be traumatic for a thinking, feeling individual. Those who awaken to the horrors of modern life will naturally learn to dissociate themselves from unpleasant aspects of their existence. As we mentioned before, the dissociation reflex creates gaps in our awareness. However, dissociation also has the affect of creating something in the mind that could be called a separate, unconscious personality. This unconscious person "sees" everything that our conscious minds omit from the record that we keep of everyday experience. Like Dr. Jekyll, we may steadfastly deny the existence of this Hyde who must endure all of the horrors which our conscious mind refuses to acknowledge. Nevertheless, we all have unconscious as well as conscious habits, thoughts, and reflexes. Why not unconscious personalities or even "characters" as well? On the pervasive nature of the split personality Martha Stout in The Myth Of Sanity (2001) tells us that, "In our world, our usual everyday world, a significant portion of the general population is composed of switchers, people whose personal histories include severe trauma, underestimated abuse or some other grim situation that has taken them beyond simple dissociative absences, into the realm of dissociative identity disorder. That we do not commonly understand this fact is due mostly to a natural, safety—seeking wish not to see, along with a mistaken cultural belief that all people with dissociative identity disorder openly call themselves by dozens of different names, and tend to be housed in locked wards." As we learned in the previous section, terms like, "dissociative identity disorder" (DID) are loaded metaphors because they attempt to confer disease status onto states of mind. A better term would be "split personality," since everyone can sometimes act out of character. Some are just better at hiding their "Hydes" than others.

Martha Stout explains in The Myth Of Sanity (2001) how the split personality phenomenon is a survival mechanism that the mind uses to deal with extreme forms of trauma: "People with DID, acknowledged or not, have usually survived the unsurvivable—whether they remember it or not. They did not fail to thrive and so perish in childhood, as one might reasonably have expected, nor did they commit suicide in adolescence, another bitterly common result. No, they divided themselves, and they survived; and the fact that they survived, and in many cases survived well, probably means that as a group they tend to be, by their original nature, people who have exceptional gifts." By virtue of having survived the horrors of life in the 20th century, we all must possess such gifts. Lest our readers doubt that they themselves might not be the only person living inside their own minds, let us quote the definition of DID as provided by Martha Stout in The Myth Of Sanity (2001): "In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV, 'dissociative identity disorder' (diagnosis number 300.14) is defined as the presence of two or more distinct identities or ego states, 'each with its own relatively enduring pattern of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment and self,' in an individual for who at least two of these ego states recurrently take control of behavior." Note the chilling detail that a memory lapse also occurs when a person switches from one ego state to another. Thus, our conscious minds may not be aware of the time periods in which the "other," primarily unconscious, personality takes over.

Individuals diagnosed with DID exhibit obvious signs of switching ego states. The rest of us may be capable of hiding the existence of our alter egos from ourselves as well as from others. The split personality phenomenon may even explain the origin of the phrase, "The Devil made me do it." Anyone who has ever momentarily "lost control" or acted without thinking, as a reflex, knows the meaning of this phrase on some level. The "Devil" in the saying really represents our own unconscious selves, the part of ourselves that our conscious egos repress and deny but which comes out anyway, often with irresistible force. The implications of this idea lead us to the next pitfall on our list: "Satanic Cult" stories.

On the subject of demonic possession, Martha Stout says in The Myth Of Sanity (2001) that, "When religious exorcisms are performed upon those believed to have been possessed by Satan, these rites almost certainly involve individuals with DID, perhaps primarily so." Here the link between accusations of "witchcraft" and diagnoses of "insanity" becomes quite a bit more substantial. Medical historian Gregory Zilboorg unwittingly reveals "mental illness" to be a hobgoblin of the same order as "witchcraft" when he writes (as quoted in The Myth Of Mental Illness (1974)): "Not all accused of being witches and sorcerers were mentally sick, but almost all mentally sick were considered witches, or sorcerers, or bewitched." In other words, the idea of mental sickness has now taken the place of witchcraft hysteria. Psychiatrists have replaced priests of the Holy Inquisition, and drugs have replaced exorcisms (at least in most cases), but the basic principle remains the same. Whether we call them witches or nut cases, the labels are little more than an excuse to persecute those who exhibit unacceptable behavior in the society they inhabit.

The term "Satanist," in the mouths of frightened parents and vindictive agents of the legal system, falls into the "witch" category as well. After all, weren't witches in the Middle Ages supposed to have made pacts with Satan? Just as there may have indeed been people who really did practice witchcraft in past centuries, so there exist people today who claim the title of "Satanist" for themselves, or who engage in "Satanic" practices (with or without advertising the fact.) However, most self-styled Satanists simply adhere to an unpopular philosophy of life or spiritual path. Belief in such a philosophy does not make one a criminal. Conversely, a person doesn't need to be a Satanist in order to commit crimes. Nevertheless, those accused of certain crimes tend to be slandered as devil worshippers, perhaps as a way of making false accusations stick.

Child molestation may be most common crime attributed to Satanists, or even more hysterically, to "Satanic Cults." Is the idea of baby killing, blood drinking cults really necessary to explain the crime of molestation? We read in Jeffrey S. Victor's book Satanic Panic (1993), "There is abundant research information about the sexual molestation of children by adults. Police officers and child protection workers need to be guided by that body of research, rather than by the rumors and fabrications presented at police conferences on Satanic cult crime." As the relatively recent scandals concerning Catholic priests who molested children in their charge ought to demonstrate, religion and morality do not necessarily coincide.

Today's popular belief in covens of rabid devil worshippers who victimize the innocent and unwilling may have originated, at least partly, in the delusional stories told by individuals undergoing psychiatric drug treatment and therapy. Jeffrey S. Victor explains in Satanic Panic (1993), "The stories of Satanic cult torture told by people suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder appear to be manifestations of their deep psychological problems. The fact that many psychotherapists believe the stories, including some who are eminent psychiatrists, is another example of therapists being seduced and deceived by the fantasies of their disturbed patients." The "cult survivor" fantasies make for sensational headline news, garner attention for mental patients as well as therapists, and provide justification for the ever expanding powers of law enforcement officers. But doesn't it seem ironic that so many allegedly sane, upstanding members of society believe the stories told by people who have been judged to be mentally incompetent and are most likely being treated with psychiatric drugs?

This does not mean that ritual and cult abuse does not take place, for it does. Children exposed to this sort of abuse naturally end up psychologically damaged. The trouble is that once they are adults and have retrieved these memories, they are disjointed and vague, so there is no real weight that can be attached to these claims, especially because the person claiming them is psychologically disadvantaged because of them. Therefore ritualistic abuse remains a vague and shadowy category that most people simply cannot fathom or take seriously.

If you find yourself working with someone who claims a history of ritual abuse, realize that sometimes these may be past life memories that are "bleeding through" into the present lifetime. Many times this is the case. Ritual abuse was far more prominent in the eras of the past than it is now, and for some these wounds have carried over to this life for healing and processing. In fact, many terrors of past lives carry over into this one and require the attention of the client and the spiritual counselor, so if you find yourself working with these sorts traumas, try past life regression sessions and work with them from that angle.

Here I must insert a small anecdote from David Sakheim in Out Of Darkness (1992) that draws a striking parallel between the ethics of 20th century Satanism and the solipsistic errors of New Age dogma that we mentioned previously: "It is easy to trace an intellectual connection between La Vey, who popularized Satanism as a sort of gestalt spiritual assertiveness training, and some of the ideas of the human potential movement. The idea, popularized by Esalen founder Will Shatz and later by Werner Erhard, that there were no victims, that all people place themselves in whatever position they find themselves, and therefore are ultimately responsible for whatever happens to them, including victimization by others, was an outgrowth of the Human Potential Movement. As Social Darwinism provided the intellectual support for the robber barons of the 1900's, so this notion provided the intellectual support for the yuppies of the late 1970's and early 1980's." Vestiges of this social "survival of the fittest" ideology can undermine a healer's ability to empathize with those who have been harmed by negative experiences. As healers, we must curb the tendency to blame the victim that our predatory, profit driven society has practically hard-wired into the majority of its "successful" and "well-adjusted" members.

Acceptance of a sick way of life and identification with the authority figures who maintain the insanity of the status quo can make us crazy, or worse yet, into someone who, like a corrupt psychiatrist, inflicts harm on others under the protection of society's laws. Though they would probably not be accused of the crime of being "mentally ill," oppressors derive a perverse pleasure from "morally justifiable" cruelty. Author Robert Lynd writes (as quoted in Satanic Panic (1993)): "There is nothing that makes us feel so good as the idea that someone else is an evildoer." And as psychiatrist R.D. Laing once wrote (as quoted in Madness, Heresy And The Rumor Of Angels (1993)): "Social adaptation to a dysfunctional society may be very dangerous." When in doubt, don't do it. The success of your healing process and the effectiveness of your efforts to heal others may depend on your ability to resist social corruption.

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Pitfalls: Boundaries Between Healers & Clients

It ought to be evident from the preceding sections that a healer (or metaphysical therapist) must exhaust all other reasonable options before seeking intervention of any kind on behalf of a client. Such intervention, when invoked, ought to be as minimal as possible. Peers, the client's family members, and other "volunteers" can often be of sufficient assistance to the therapist who must deal with a difficult client. Legal proceedings should be avoided if possible, and criminal accusations on the part of clients must not be allowed to sway the judgment of the therapist without corroborative evidence and testimony provided by independent parties. David Sakheimcautions us in Out Of Darkness (1992) that, "The level of proof for taking action on allegations of criminal acts must be more than simply that someone alleged it and it is possible." On the other hand, the healer must not appear to disbelieve the stories told by a client. Remember, those who have been traumatized need a sympathetic person to talk to, or they wouldn't seek healing therapy in the first place. Professional detachment must be tempered by empathy. David Sakheim also has some valuable insights on this point, in spite of the author's naive use of loaded psychiatric metaphors like "PTSD:" "Once it has been ascertained that a patient has been traumatized, there is less need for a therapist to focus on the specific details than to understand that this is a person in severe pain with extreme PTSD who can only begin to heal by remembering as best they can the traumatic events that led to the creation of their symptoms. To hold a patient to rules of evidence will only inhibit the process of recovery. This is especially true since so much of the treatment is geared toward helping the patient deal with his or her own skepticism and denial." In more metaphysical terms, the healer ought to encourage the client to talk about any and all traumatic experiences, without being too concerned about whether or not the stories told about these events are objectively true.

Some healers will inevitably be faced with the difficult choice of whether or not to allow sexual or other physical relations to develop between themselves and their clients. David Sakheim in Out Of Darkness (1992) offers some common sense advice on this delicate subject: "Physical contact between a therapist and patient is traditionally considered taboo. Although this taboo has served a useful function in protecting some patients and therapists from acting out sexually, it too is not a universal rule. Most therapists who work with severely abused patients know that some patients can benefit from physical contact, but that just as it can be nurturing, grounding, or supportive, it can also feel frightening and hurtful. As with all such boundary issues, analyzing the costs and benefits of the specific situation is needed." In analyzing specific situations, the same book tells us that "One must be guided by the patient's lead, the point in treatment, and the feelings and needs involved." Keep in mind that, though the client may truly benefit from physical contact of some kind with the healer like a simple hug or holding the clients hand, "acting out" in the form of sexual intercourse will not affect a "cure" for the client's problems, even if those problems stem from sexual repression.

As we read in psychologist Wilhelm Reich's book Genitality (1980), most acting out cannot completely eliminate repression since "the ego defense also relies on powerful psychic controls which may be encompassed by the term 'morals' in its popular sense." Reich explains how repression can be seen as a trained dissociative reflex that society imposes on its members, thereby turning them into "neurotics:" "It is characteristic of neurotic personalities that the moral ego has neither the courage to tolerate drive satisfaction nor the strength to condemn or subdue the drive demands in some appropriate manner. This is due to a lack of consciousness of the drive impulses. The ego is startled by the slightest indication of an 'immoral' impulse and purges it through 'repression.' This process can assume various forms, from a simple refusal to acknowledge the impulse, or a disregarding of it through emphasizing the opposite of the tabooed drive, to utter exclusion of the idea from consciousness (hysterical amnesia) and the interdiction of any motor release of the corresponding degree of effect." Put more simply, repressed people cannot make themselves fully aware of their unconscious desires, and so they cannot completely fulfill those desires.

Awareness of unconscious drives can be cultivated by meditation, and repressed "personalities" associated with these drives can be integrated into conscious awareness with the proper methods. Such methods can be studied in Reich's larger body of work, which includes the controversial and mind-blowing book entitled Children Of The Future. Interested students may also wish to explore the Reichian inspired field of neuro-psychology as introduced by Robert Anton Wilson in the book entitled Prometheus Rising. Failure to integrate the energies and release the tension produced by repression of desires can lead to "split personality" episodes or losses of control that the repressed individual may not even remember. Reich tells us that in spite of the ego's apparent success in repressing unconscious urges, "The impact of the repressed drive demand...is by no means weakened. On the contrary, it is intensified by the 'stasis' of unreleased drive energy. The danger now lies in the impulse being no longer under the control of conscious thought." (i.e., "The Devil made me do it.") The ego can be equated with the right hand and the unconscious drives with the left hand in order to apply the old adage that "the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing" to the Jekyll and Hyde effect that results from repression.

Since our definition of recovery or healing includes the idea of being fully present with all aspects of our being in the moment, healing therapy must include the conscious integration of hidden desires and impulses, whether or not these desires are "acted out." With these thoughts in mind, let us conclude our "Pitfalls" section with a last bit of advice on boundaries from David Sakheim in Out Of Darkness (1992): "The art of therapy is being able to balance all of the factors involved in a way that ultimately proves helpful to the patient. A therapist's staying in touch with his or her own feelings, getting supervision or peer consultation, while trying to stay open to the patient's feelings is essential." Jamie Sams in Dancing The Dream (1999) strikes the same kind of chord by noting that, "Patient observation of the authentic behavior of others, before we rush into situations that we do not fully see, is a precise skill." When exercising your healing powers on another person, get some advice from friends, do some critical thinking by yourself, and let your heart be your guide.

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Ways Of Healing Trauma: Therapists As Healers

If traumatic experiences can be seen as initiatory rites of passage on the path to greater spiritual awareness, then the therapist can be likened to an initiatrix who provides a link between the spiritual aspirant (i.e., the client or patient) and the initiatory Mysteries. In relation to this idea of initiation as a necessary experience that ought to be undergone at an early age we read by Seth Farber in Madness, Heresy, And The Rumor Of Angels (1993) that, "In a society that lacks rites of passage, the role of the therapist becomes critical. He or she can help the person tolerate the process of change and transformation. He or she can help the young person to confront the unknown, to accept the challenge of leaving home, both in the literal sense of achieving independence from his family of origin...and in the spiritual sense, as Laing has urged, or rejecting the moribund traditions of a materialist society and affirming the integrity of one's own vision." This idea of personal vision may be the key to healing and recovery; it will be covered in the following section. First, though, we need to explore the role of the healing therapist somewhat further.

Some of you may have doubts about your ability to heal others or to act as therapists for those who cannot easily emerge from some Dark Night of the Soul. Confidence and belief in your own abilities can be gained from the study of psychology and related subjects. As we read from Peter Breggin in Toxic Psychiatry (1991), "If you are educated in the humanities or have read a few good self-help psychology books, and if you like to think about yourself and others, you may have more insight into personal growth than your psychiatrist does; and if you've taken a few college courses or read a little in academic psychology or psychoanalysis, you might know more theory as well. If you've also shared feelings and personal problems with some of your friends, then you may well have more experience and practice in 'talking therapy' than your psychiatrist." As healing therapists, we must provide an alternative to the unethical practices of our psychiatric "opposite numbers" by being open to talking to people about their problems. In Coping With Trauma (1995) by John Allen we find, "The universal prescription for trauma: talk about it. To whom? To any trusted person who will listen—the sooner the better." However, we must also beware of thinking that the methods with which we are familiar are the only ones that work.

Talking about traumatic experiences may not be easy for healing therapists, much less for their clients. In Coping With Trauma (1995) John Allen states, "It's not always easy for others to listen, even when they are caring and eager to help. Trauma can be abhorrent. Listening to another person's horrific stories of trauma can itself be traumatizing. It can threaten the listener's sense of safety and security. Friends may urge you to 'just get your mind off it' so that they do not have to think about it. You may need to impress on them the importance of your need for someone to listen."

Healing therapy can be likened to a kind of spiritual ministry, a higher calling that prompts us to help others who need to recover and heal. As we discover from Peter Breggin in reading Toxic Psychiatry (1991), the origin of the word "psychotherapy" harkens back to ancient Greece, where healers used divine wisdom to cure the souls of their patients: "The word therapy comes from the Greek therapeutikos, meaning 'attendant' or one who takes care of another. It is psychiatry that has medicalized and corrupted the word to mean 'the treatment of mental illness.' Because therapy involves healing the spirit or the soul—the whole essence of the person—it must draw on all of the wisdom and human potential of the therapist." This wisdom gives healers the power to take care of others by understanding rather than criticizing them. On this point Peter Breggin also tell us, "Psychological change almost always occurs in a supportive, warm, rewarding environment. People usually 'open up' and talk about things—and try new approaches to life—when they trust, admire, or want to please the therapist. Criticism seldom changes thoughts or behaviors, and it often kills all chance of improvement."

Supportive understanding can be cultivated through love of others. When we love someone, we want to understand what they are going through. Suspension of judgment thus can be considered one of the prerequisites for becoming a healing therapist. Love can dissolve negative judgments by dissolving the barriers between self and others, by allowing us to identify with other and feel the effects of their experiences. Peter Breggin in Toxic Psychiatry (1991) notes, "Love transcends the distinction between self and others. Love is the most ethically consistent experience, because selfishness and altruism no longer seem opposed or in conflict. When we take such joy in the existence of the other, his or her interests begin to approximate our own. When we promote the happiness of a loved one, we promote our own as well." Love has more power to heal than any drug—in fact, love may be the only "substance" capable of healing the soul and spirit of a human being.

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Healing Therapies: Divine Intervention & Magical Rejuvenation

Like the ancient Greeks who coined the original word for psychotherapy, other cultures of Classical Times also had special healers or "priests" who would help patients overcome spiritual ailments. In striking contrast to modern medical theories, ancient healers believed that physical diseases had a supernatural or "demonic" origin. Mike & Nancy Samuels in Seeing With The Mind's Eye (1990) inform us, "In Babylonia and Assyria people believed illness was caused by evil spirits. Treatment constituted an appeal to the deities to exorcise a demon from the patient. Special priests acted as diagnosticians and interpreted signs and omens from the sun and storm gods." Modern healing therapists would do well to follow the example of these ancient priests by calling on the advice and assistance of the divine forces and/or deities with which they are most familiar.

Such practices were also well known to the ancient Egyptians, as we learn from Mike & Nancy Samuels in Seeing With The Mind's Eye (1990): "Like the Babylonians, the ancient Egyptians believed that supernatural beings and demons caused disease. Healing consisted of magical and religious rites. The Egyptians had a well-developed system of magic, which it was said could control the weather, bring people back to life, and divine the future. In a healing ceremony, the magician-priest would perform incantations and prayers, and also use herbs and devices invested with magic. In extreme cases, dream divination was used. The priests' incantations were both prayers and visualizations."

Healing chants, magical items, appeals to higher powers, and visualizations can be used in modern times just as the ancients used these methods to heal the people of their own time. Tarot cards, crystal wands, and invocations can also be used as tools of the trade practiced by modern healing therapists. Though we may have forgotten how to resurrect people in the intervening centuries between Classical Times and today, the recent resurgence of interest in ancient magical practices makes the present time ideal for us to rediscover this kind of time-tested healing technique.

The Greeks of antiquity, like their Egyptian counterparts, believed in supernatural healing as well. As we read from Mike & Nancy Samuels in Seeing With The Mind's Eye (1990), "The Greeks also ascribed disease to superhuman agents. And they likewise invoked the power of the gods for healing. The Greeks healed both by direct means—through the laying on of hands or the application of herbs to the patient—and, more commonly, by indirect means—that is, through dreams and visions. A dream might be responsible for effecting an immediate healing, or the dream might contain regimens or remedies for the patient to use in effecting a cure." Lucid dreaming as understood by today's metaphysicians might prove to be a very effective healing method for the troubled souls of our time.

A special place for such healing dreams to take place might be found or constructed in order to recreate the environment in which these magical dreams manifested in ancient times. A description of the healing temples used by the ancient Greeks can be found in Seeing With The Mind's Eye (1990) by Mike & Nancy Samuels: "The Greeks were famous for their healing temples, which contained shrines for the healing gods, dormitories where patients stayed, gymnasiums, libraries, stadiums, theaters, and beautiful surrounding grounds. Patients came to a temple, often from great distances. Their first step in seeking a cure was to take a purifying bath. Then they were put on a special diet or a fast. Later they were taken to visit one of the shrines, where they made an offering of food and touched the affected part of their bodies to the image of a healing god. In the evening they were dressed in white and went to a special room to sleep. During the night, priests dressed in the costumes of gods entered the room, touched patients diseased parts and sometimes talked to the patients. Patients, being asleep or in a hypnagogic state, experienced divine dreams. The next morning, patients were either healed or began to carry out the instructions given them in their dreams." If the psychiatric hospitals of today were designed on the model of these ancient Greek temples, we might have saner, healthier people living in our society, and fewer social problems as well. People with mental, emotional, and spiritual problems would receive the love that they need in order to heal and recover. Since we must be realistic and practical, perhaps a better idea would be for religious organizations to obtain grant money for the building and establishment of modern "healing temples" like those described above.

No healing temple would be complete without healers, however, so we must make ourselves worthy vessels for the divine forces and supernatural powers that can effect the miraculous cures that the ancients achieved. The key to making ourselves into divine links lies in the power of visualization, as we infer from the following passage found in Seeing With The Mind's Eye (1990) by Mike & Nancy Samuels: "In the healing process we've mentioned thus far, disease, visualized in the image of a demon, was exorcized by a figure of authority, a physician-priest. And that figure derived his authority from his ability to visualize an infinitely higher authority, a spirit or god. Therefore the god was believed to heal through the priests."

Though it hasn't been mentioned until this point in our course, healers must begin by healing themselves, of course. Such healing recovery can be effected, once again, through the power of vision or visualization. In order to heal ourselves and face the task of healing others, we must seek and find our "spiritual center" by dedicating our time and love to the cultivation of our inner vision and our own healing.

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Healing Therapies: Meditation & Visualization

The modern techniques of Cognitive Therapy as developed by Aaron Beck in the 1960's can help us to overcome the automatic, unconscious visualizations that can cause ailments and sabotage our efforts to envision health, happiness, and vitality for ourselves and others. According to Jon G. Allen's book, Coping With Trauma (1995), "The basic principle of cognitive therapy is simple: What you think can affect how you feel. Depression and other problematic emotions are fueled by negative thoughts. These negative thoughts are likely to be so habitual as to be automatic and virtually unconscious reactions to situations." Once more we find ourselves stumbling over the old block of dissociative defense mechanisms, only in this case we must try to eliminate thoughts of which we are not consciously aware. Meditation techniques such as thought observation can be used to identify and change negative thinking patterns. Concerning this thought modification process, Jon G. Allen tells us that, "Cognitive therapy enlists the help of the rational brain in controlling the emotional brain. The first step is to start paying attention to your negative automatic thoughts so they become more conscious. You may even practice jotting them down to heighten your awareness. Then you start training yourself to substitute alternatives—more objective or positive thoughts."

If traumatic experiences have caused us to block out large portions of our mind's contents from conscious awareness, we may find it very difficult to become aware of our negative thoughts without first integrating the horrors of our past. Dissociative or unconscious thinking habits must be rooted out at the source. However, we can rejoice in the knowledge that without traumatic experience we probably would never have been motivated to become conscious of and change the way that we think. Concerning this idea we read from Martha Stout in The Myth Of Sanity (2001), "Only the addictions, major depressions, suicide attempts, and general ruination that attend the most severe trauma disorders can sometimes supply motivation sufficiently fierce to run the gauntlet thrown down by insight and permanent change. On account of our neurological wiring, confronting past traumas requires one to reproduce all of their terrors mentally, in their original intensity, to feel as if the worst nightmare had come true and the horrors had returned. All the brain's authoritative warnings against staying present for the memories and the painful emotions, all the faulty fuses, have to be deliberately ignored, and in cases of extreme chronic past trauma, this process is nothing short of heroic."

The meditative techniques practiced by Zen Buddhists can help us to meditate on and envision the horrors of our pasts without losing our mental equilibrium in everyday life. In Thoughts Without A Thinker (1995) by Mark Epstein we find that, "One of the great lessons of the Fourth Noble Truth, and of the Buddha's teachings in general, is that it is possible to learn a new way to be with one's feelings. The Buddha taught a method of holding thoughts, feelings, and sensations in the balance of meditative equipoise so that they can be seen in a clear light. Stripping away the identifications and reactions that usually adhere to the emotions like moss to a stone, the Buddha's method allows the understanding of emptiness to emerge. This is an understanding that has vast implications for the field of psychotherapy because it promises great relief from even ordinary suffering. As the third Zen patriarch, writing in the early seventh century AD., articulated with great clarity: 'When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way, nothing in the world can offend, and when a thing can no longer offend, it ceases to exist in the old way... If you wish to move in the One Way, do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas. Indeed, to accept them fully is identical with true Enlightenment.'"

According to Buddhist thought, meditation can be like a raft that floats over the river of "samsara" or worldly illusion. Our feelings, memories, and thoughts about the world still exist during meditation, but through a heightened level of awareness we gain the crucial perspective necessary to let go of the fear and anxiety associated with these mental and emotional "illusions." Meditation can therefore be seen as a process of mental development in which we gain superior powers of observation and judgment, or wisdom. As Mark Epstein in Thoughts Without A Thinker (1995) informs us, "Meditation is ruthless in the way it reveals the stark reality of our day-to-day mind. We are constantly murmuring, muttering, scheming, or wondering to ourselves under our breath: comforting ourselves, in a perverse fashion, with our own silent voices.... Much of our inner dialogue, rather than the 'rational' secondary process that is usually associated with the thinking mind, is this constant reaction to experience by a selfish, childish protagonist. None of us has moved very far from the seven-year-old who vigilantly watches to see who got more." Indeed, even our attachment to past trauma may be a symptom of the attention getting mind-game played at our expense by a scheming, manipulative "inner child" whose power comes from the tensions produced by our repressions and fears. Meditation allows us to dis-identify with all of the competing voices inside our heads, and sift out the rational thoughts from the irrational ones.

Contrary to popular misconception, the practice of meditation does not require you to live on a mountaintop in India where nothing and no one will disturb you. In fact, meditation can be practiced as part of ordinary, everyday life. We can choose to observe our thoughts in any situation. The trick lies in remaining detached from all thoughts that enter the mind while maintaining full awareness of all sense impressions and the mental reactions that accompany them. Mark Epstein tell us in Thoughts Without A Thinker (1995) that, "Far from being a mystical retreat from the complexities of mental and emotional experience... Its object is to question the true nature of the self and to end the production of self-created mental suffering... Buddhism has something essential to teach contemporary psychotherapists: it long ago perfected a technique of confronting and uprooting human narcissism, a goal that Western psychotherapy has only recently begun even to contemplate."

The narcissist, like the neurotic, has become hypnotized by his or her own reflection in the waters of the mind. This reflection might be called the false self, since it is composed of the fond imaginings that we would like to believe about ourselves. Narcissism, or the obsession with the false self, can be cured by emptying the mind of false thoughts and images about the self. Eventually, if we persist in this meditative process, we find ourselves directly experiencing what physicists call the principle of quantum inseparability, when that which we observe becomes identical with the contents of our own minds. Some might call this experience a mystical state of oneness with the universe. There is no "true self," so to speak, because the "self" does not exist at all. What we fondly imagine to be our "selves" eventually disappears like a shadow in the light shed by constant meditation. Instead of remaining trapped in our identities, we can become spontaneous agents of cosmic consciousness by virtue of the Enlightenment offered by Buddhist meditation. This state of Enlightenment, since it implies full consciousness and presence in the moment, can be equated with the goal of healing therapy, as well as with the concept of complete recovery.

When thoughts disentangle themselves from emotions inside of us, we begin to realize that our idea of selfhood, of who we are, derives entirely from the imagination. We cannot conclusively prove our own existence to ourselves, much less to anyone else. Not to mention the fact that we can enter another realm of conscious existence by achieving a lucid dream state while asleep. Alternate states of consciousness, also known as "realities," can be induced by means of drugs as well as by hypnosis. In light of these facts, how can we be sure that any part of the world exists apart from our own imaginations?

Fear of death seems to be the chief barrier that exists between opposing states of mind and world views. In Thoughts Without A Thinker (1995) Mark Epstein tells us, "The psychiatrist R.D. Laing, at one of the first conferences on Buddhism and psychotherapy that I attended, declared that we are all afraid of three things: other people, our own minds, and death." We fear society for its collective power to deprive the individual of life and liberty. We fear our own minds due to the "unthinkable" possibility that we are just making ourselves and the world up as we go along. We fear death in consequence of our belief that the end of the physical body spells the end of consciousness, or in association with the anticipated loss of worldly ways and things, though neither of these contingencies can be declared certain.

The real terror, we might argue, derives ultimately from the complete and general lack of certainty concerning past, current, and future earthly conditions. We don't know anything! When we realize the extent of our delusion, we wake up to our senses and become conscious of the illusory nature of individual separateness. The world becomes the mind, and the mind becomes the world. The priestess or sorcerer who achieves this feat of identification can move mountains, both literally and figuratively. After all, what can a "mountain" be except for an image in the mind conveniently represented by an arbitrary arrangement of eight English letters, printed in ink on paper?

Trauma & Recovery - Healing Through Traumatic Experience: Index >>

Discussion: A Living Philosophy Of Love

We know what words look like, but words are far simpler than the things that they represent. In order to build a more complete and definite image of the world in our minds, we must consciously use our senses to observe that world, then recreate our impressions in "the mind's eye" by the use of visualization or imagination. Our mental view of the world will then correspond more closely to our actual sense impressions, rather than to the illusory images conjured up in our minds by words. Once we "come to our senses" mentally, we will begin to wake up from the trance of pain caused by past injuries and traumas. Though injuries and tragedies may still trouble us, we will not be hypnotized by the thoughts we have about our negative experiences. Instead, we will continue to respond to the events of life as they occur in the moment, and our vision will not be clouded by the preconceptions created by the word structures that limit and bind verbal thought. Without such limited thinking we become free to perceive the limitless love that fills the world with light, air, sound, growing things, and beautiful people who can find it in their hearts to give us their love in return for ours.

The love that we receive, if we allow ourselves to love and be loved, will eventually heal us. Though we may have injuries and wounds that will refuse to heal physically, those bodily ills need not permanently affect our minds, our hearts, and our spirits. Love can teach us how to think good thoughts. Love can show us how to keep the fires of courage, passion, and compassion burning in our own hearts. Finally, love can restore our faith in the ultimate benevolence of the universe.

This benevolence can be directly perceived if we contemplate the intelligent design that permeates earthly existence. No human word structure could have conceived the world of living things in all of its complexity. Verbalized thoughts can only approximately represent a small part of the earthly existence with which we have been gifted in this life. The world, and not the brain, contains the ultimate source of consciousness. When the spirit leaves the body, the brain becomes a mere inanimate object.

Where does consciousness go when the body dies? Medical science cannot answer this question. Scientists in the medical profession would like us to believe that "we" originate in the flesh contained in our skulls. In fact, our consciousness originates outside of the physical body and exists apart from the brain. The world itself contains this pattern of awareness that we call intelligence, and which we falsely attribute to our gray matter. Word structures, like the brain, only serve as structures or vehicles through which the universal intellect can act. This explains why words can contain the holy force of the Divine, and why we as humans can realize our own Godhood.

To illustrate this point, let us quote from the strange yet fascinating book by Douglas R. Hofstadter entitled Godel, Escher, Bach (1999): "As I see it, the only way of overcoming this magical view of what 'I' and consciousness are is to keep on reminding oneself, unpleasant though it may seem, that the "teetering bulbs of dread and dream' that nestles safely inside one's own cranium is a purely physical object made up of completely sterile and inanimate components, all of which obey exactly the same laws as those that govern all the rest of the universe, such as pieces of text, or CD-ROM's, or computers. Only if one keeps on bashing up against this disturbing fact can one slowly begin to develop a feel for the way out of the mystery of consciousness: that the key is not the stuff out of which brains are made, but the patterns that can come to exist inside the stuff of a brain. This is a liberating shift, because it allows one to move to a different level of considering what brains are: as media that support complex patterns that mirror, albeit far from perfectly, the world, of which, needless to say, those brains themselves are denizens—and it is in the inevitable self-mirroring that arises, however impartial or imperfect it may be, that the strange loops of consciousness start to swirl." We can thus come to see our minds as reflections, perfect or imperfect, of the world we inhabit.

Forget your pain, cast your problems aside, wake up to the way things really are in the world and you will have found Nirvana, the eternal bliss that lies inside, between, and behind the illusory Samsara, the sorrowful state of existence that words impose on the mind. In the perfect silence of higher states of consciousness induced by prolonged meditation (yoga, prayer, invocation, etc.), the mind reflects the beauty of the universe like a calm lake reflects the colors of the sky at dawn. As the wind makes ripples on the surface of this lake and the ripples distort the reflection of the sky, so our thoughts distort the reflection that our senses make of the world. The windiest of all thoughts concern ourselves. We deceive ourselves as to the nature of our own minds and of the world out of a desire to be important, to be different from others and separate from our environment.

"We" are figments of our own imagination, illusions cast upon the screen of our own minds by the hidden projector of unconscious thought. When this false self collapses in on itself under the weight of your inner gaze, you will have attained the state of mystical oneness with the universe of which the sages speak. Such an experience, though it may not last, has so much significance for the one who experiences it that "ordinary" states of consciousness, filled as they are with pain and suffering, no longer seem able to contain the ultimate reality of light and love. Like an old snakeskin the false consciousness of selfhood must be shed and discarded, along with the ego games and bad habits that make up the sum total of the average person's activities in life.

Meaningful work driven by inspired artistic expression begins to replace the meaningless drudgery to which most people find themselves chained. Loving relationships appear as though by magick and take the place of unhealthy relations with people who haven't yet found their way to the cosmic consciousness of love.

Once we decide to love others and the world rather than remain obsessed with our own self-generated problems, we begin to see that who we are does not matter as much as what we do. Our name, if we earn one, will be thought of and remembered for our deeds. If our deeds be dishonorable, our names will live in the house of infamy. If we act virtuously and honorably, we will be rewarded with love and respect both during and after our lives. If we never do anything other than what we are told, our names will simply be forgotten.

We can choose the creed or code of conduct by which we choose to live. Since what goes around also comes around, our own actions will return to us along with the energy contained in our acts. If we have been humble enough to learn to see the world clearly, we will recognize our own karma when it comes back to haunt or bless us. Karma can be represented by a simple mandala with three animals in the center. On the significance of the karma mandala let us read from Thoughts Without A Thinker (1995) by Mark Epstein: "The Wheel of Life is used in Buddhist countries to teach about the concept of karma (merit), the notion that a person's actions in this life will affect the kind of rebirth he or she will take in the next. Harming others contributes to rebirth in Hell Realms; indulging the passions, to rebirth in Animal Realms; giving to others (and especially to monks or monasteries), to more comfortable human births or rebirths in God Realms, and so on. The actual psychological teachings about karma are much more sophisticated than this, of course, but the mandala is the kind of image that children or beginners can grasp easily. The essential point is that as long as beings are driven by greed, hatred, and delusion—forces represented by a pig, a snake, and a rooster attempting to devour one another—they will remain ignorant of their own Buddha-nature; ignorant of the transitory, insubstantial, unsatisfactory nature of the world; and bound to the Wheel of Life."

Note that rebirths can occur several times in the same lifetime, and each of the Realms exist on earth. Thus, acts that harm others can cause one to be "reborn" into the "Hell" of imprisonment or injury. Acts of kindness and generosity can earn us a different kind of "rebirth" into a "Heaven" filled with joy and love. The nature of our actions determines, to a great extent, where we will end up in the world and in life. Since the world contains all kinds of places, we can choose "where" we would like to "go" in a mystical karmic sense by following the code of conduct that seems best to us. No one can choose this code of conduct for us. We must discover the philosophy of life that works for us, or invent one that we can live with and expand on by gaining wisdom. Either way, living by such a philosophic code will be difficult and rewarding at the same time.

Our code of conduct will give us a solid sense of identity as well, since we will be the ones in control of our own actions. Neither the corruptions of the outside world, nor the urges and demands of the personal unconscious, can overcome the human will that has firmly dedicated itself to a coherent, guiding philosophy. The code of conduct might be metaphorically called an "alignment" since the nature of our actions determine our "vector" or direction in life, and this direction determines where we end up in karmic terms: "Hell," "Nirvana," or elsewhere.

The way of life that develops out of the consciously willed following of a mystical path reveals to us and allows us to fulfill our purpose in life, practice our calling, embrace our Fate, and make our date with Destiny. To conclude let us quote from the mystic Aleister Crowley's seminal work of epigrams entitled Liber Aleph (1991), a passage on the concept of True Will: "Do what thou wilt! —Be this our Slogan in Battle in every Act; for every Act is Conflict. There Victory leapeth shining before us; for who may thwart True Will, which is the Order of Nature Herself? Thou hast no Right but to do thy Will; do that, and no other shall say nay. For if that Will be true, its Fulfillment is of a Surety as daylight following Sunrise. It is as certain as the Operation of any other Law of Nature; it is Destiny. Then, if that Will be obscured, if thou turn from it to Wills diseased or perverse, how canst thou hope? Fool! even thy Turns and Twists are in the Path to thine appointed End." The discovery of your personal Path, your alignment or True Will, will bring you to the final recovery. Heal thyself!

Trauma & Recovery - Healing Through Traumatic Experience: Index >>

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Trauma & Recovery - Healing Through Traumatic Experience: Index >>

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What Is Satsang?

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Featured Affirmation

What are Affirmations?

Trauma Recovery & Healing

Introduction

Written by Balthazar Seferiades

Review Of Literature

How Can We Define Trauma?

What Does Recovery Entail? Or: The Healing Process

Trauma As Initiation: The Dark Night Of The Soul

Spiritual Survival And The Warrior Path

Change Your Attitude, Change Your Life

"How Do You Define Reality?" Or: Language As A Mind-Control Device

Pitfalls On The Path To Recovery

Dissociative Disorders, Satanic Cults, And Other Myths

Pitfalls: Boundaries Between Healers & Clients

Ways Of Healing Trauma: Therapists As Healers

Healing Therapies: Divine Intervention & Magical Rejuvenation

Healing Therapies: Meditation & Visualization

Discussion: A Living Philosophy Of Love

Bibliography