Seek resolution in self-regulation. For if each part of the whole takes responsibility for its own small part, the whole too will resolve its issues. Excess damages in the long run. Large waves pounding constantly upon the shore wear it away. Strong winds leave damage behind. Incessant thoughts in the human mind wreak havoc in worry and fear. In excess the human body suffers. Even depravity, denial, and control can be excessive, leading to imbalance. Not enough water leads to drought and dehydration. Not enough food leads to starvation. Self-regulation will lead to balance and balance will lead to stability, calmness, and peace of heart. Do your part so that the world too may find stability, calmness, and peace. Self-regulate in mind, body, and spirit. As within, so without. And do so in a kindly manner, for that too should be part of a new balance, loving kindness all around!
Trauma is a rupture to the security of the known. The sublime effect of trauma is to involuntarily usher one into the transpersonal dimension of the High SOUL. PTSD is the condition of being caught between the everyday world of the known and this deeper transpersonal dimension of being.
Recapitulation is an ego-Soul retrieval practice that reconstitutes the fullness of the self that was fragmented by trauma, curing the condition of PTSD. For many, recapitulation also refines one’s psychic ability to travel in and communicate with the transpersonal realm. Many psychic channels trace their awakened abilities to the blunt force of a traumatic incident.
Thus, trauma can be seen as the ego-Soul’s involuntary initiation into the fuller dimension and abilities of its High SOUL. As with all initiations the experience is shattering and dangerous, and not everyone returns safely. Modern clinical methods like EMDR and SE (Sensory Experience) can also facilitate the ego-Soul’s resolution of its forced traumatic shamanic journey.
The world is currently experiencing blunt force trauma on many fronts. The impacts of global warming upon the body of Gaia are evident almost daily. The fires in California, the floods in the midwest, the Typhoon last week in Mozambique are but a handful of the most recent physical traumas on Earth. The great human migratory movements throughout the world now largely reflect these environmental impacts.
Human beings are the cortex of the living planetary being of Gaia, and as a whole are expressing the polarized symptoms of instability so familiar to an individual in the grip of PTSD. Thus, we see a compromised collective human ego-Soul grappling with survival, as its known world continues to shatter.
The latent impact of the Earth crises of now is a collective shamanic journey for the human ego-Soul. Though the side effects of bipolar and psychotic extremes are evident, many are adjusting to the evolutionary shifts on the near horizon. The almost complete lack of privacy, the transparency of now, though invasive and almost out of control, are actually signs of a coming higher level of consciousness; that is, humans communicating telepathically, with total transparency, in a world with nothing to hide.
Humans have no choice but to reach this level of truthfulness to be able to function sanely as the cortex of Gaia. Seen from this perspective, the trauma of now is actually a planetary birth trauma, where both the Earth and human consciousness are being reformatted for evolutionary salvation.
It was the conclusion of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico, in the person of the Nagual Don Juan Matus, that this energetic evolution was the only direction for humankind and for the survival of the Earth dream.
As individuals, we are all empowered to be midwives to a smooth evolutionary transition by facing the truths of our individual lives. Firstly, practice self-regulation, in some form of meditation or body practice, to achieve volitional control over the emotional terrors of the limbic system that react to the shocks of now. Stay calm, limit exposure to extremist rhetoric.
Keep thoughts positive and loving. Love is the most powerful and all-inclusive energy. It’s free. Bombard the world with loving kindness!
Hold onto the perspective that all the destruction of now is part of a major birth and an evolutionary initiation into a more loving, transparent, well-balanced world. Hold tightly to this knowing, protecting it like a candle in the innermost sanctum of the heart, amidst the violent storms of negativity blowing across the world. Know that it is simply another contraction in this amazing birth we are all participants in.
Turn inward and learn self-reliance, dependence upon the strong inner adult self who knows how to take care of you, who knows your deepest issues and your deepest truths, who knows you better than you do. Turn inward and get to know who you really are at the deepest and the highest levels. Inwardly and outwardly seek balance, stability, and the self-reliant attitudes of loving kindness and compassion, for it is only in getting to know the self and establishing a new right attitude toward the self that real progress will be made. Right attitude takes a positive self-reliant approach that allows for all possibilities to come into play, that establishes new rules and guidelines in accordance with the Soul’s plan, and the right attitude that positive outcomes are the only expectations. For indeed, right attitude says: Of course everything is possible!
Many people believe that the basic security they lack, due to parental neglect early in life, must be subsequently supplied by someone, somewhere, for healing and confidence to be established in their innermost being. When I began my professional career as a therapist at The Linden Hill School, a psychiatric hospital for nonviolent, deeply disturbed adolescents, I was told tales of former therapists who had attempted to compensate for the early neglect of caretakers by literally feeding their adolescent patients on their laps with warmed bottles of milk.
I myself once had a cat who’d been separated from his mother prematurely; we called him Ricky. Every time Ricky was held and petted he immediately attempted to nurse on anything his mouth could reach. No matter how much Ricky nursed through the years, this behavior never changed.
There appear to be critical periods for meeting certain needs through age specific behaviors. In the field of ethology, the study of animal behavior, Konrad Lorenz discovered that there are critical periods for imprinting and attachment. For instance, a mother goose will not bond with a separated chick beyond sixteen hours after hatching. In other words, that chick has just 16 hours to get the mother goose’s attention! If that fails, it’s on its own.
In humans, nursing behavior enacted beyond infancy will not supply the archetypal love as it does for an infant being loved through this form of nurturance. Fixation upon the now outdated archetype might persist, but acting it out merely provides a temporary fix, with powerful dependency on others continuing to be necessary to provide basic security. An internalized sense of being loved, with its resultant feeling of confidence, remains lacking.
How then does one fulfill a missed first chakra need of secure footing in this world? Regardless of the state of integrity of our personality foundation as separate beings, our bodies continue to grow. We are forced to adapt to new situations in life even if we are lacking in confidence. Fortunately, some inner parent, what I call one’s High SOUL, invokes a variety of strategic maneuvers which prioritize continuing to be able to grow, cognitively and emotionally, in spite of the lack of completion of a secure personality foundation.
One such strategy of the High SOUL is to prompt a child to make believe everything is OK. An adult name for this strategy is to act-as-if. When we act-as-if, or fake it till we make it, we willfully explore a behavior that stretches us beyond the comfort zone of our habitual repertoire. Though acting-as-if may be experienced as a false self, or may not serve deeper personality transformation, it is useful for adaptation in the moment. It may allow one to stay in the moment and actually continue to grow in vital ways.
Another powerful intervention by the High SOUL is the use of amnesia. Frequently, in the trauma of primal neglect, the memory of the traumatic experience is completely lost to consciousness, stored alternatively in the unconscious mind or somewhere in the physical body. Through this dissociation an individual is enabled to stay somewhat present to the experiences and lessons of the current moment.
Interestingly, as I have witnessed in my personal clinical experience, the High SOUL decides when, at some future point in time, the forgotten experience will surface, often decades after the event. This parental wisdom, exercised by the High SOUL, is to wait until a stage of life when adaptive needs are lessened and focus can shift to the integration of lost wholeness. Indeed, I am suggesting here that our true parent is our own High SOUL, always present behind the scenes, supporting our ability to undertake and fulfill our mission in this life.
Addressing traumatic memory or the fulfillment of basic needs requires a strong adult presence. When one opens to need or trauma, the emotional state of the inner child is evoked through the little soul of the subconscious’s connection to the body and its release of powerful hormones and neurotransmitters to activate emotions specific to the state of the trauma or need. The ego-Soul is then asked to stay present to the activated emotional, cognitive, and body states associated with the memory or need of the inner child.
In effect, High SOUL has determined that ego-Soul is now ready to become the parent to its own child self. This is not a matter of going back to some earlier time and fulfilling a need in the form that was missed out on. What is required is for the adult ego Soul to stay fully present and open up to the experience of its formally dissociated inner child. This means feeling it in emotion and body, and knowing it cognitively as the child believes it to be. High SOUL, who raised ego-Soul, now asks it to become the adult parent to its personality in the time and space of this world.
But how to do this? How does one develop such affect tolerance? One approach is deep relaxation. The little soul of the subconscious does what it is told to do. If, in the midst of a highly clenched physical state, ego-Soul can volitionally place its awareness on the points of tension in the physical body and instruct the body, through suggestion to the little soul of the subconscious mind, to relax the body, the body will respond and lessen its grip. Repeated instruction will deepen relaxation and allow ego-Soul to help its child self to regulate its own emotional intensity in the face of the experience it is in the midst of.
This loving act, of staying present to and helping to transform the inner child’s emotional reaction, opens the door to a deeper cognitive perspective where the child state sees the fuller context of the truth of its early experience, which can clear up false negative beliefs it may have held about itself for much of life.
This adult ego-Soul relationship with its younger self becomes the true supplier of the primal nurturance long sought in life. With this foundation, genuine transformations occur that provide for enriched fulfillment in life, within and without.
Whenever stressed, practice relaxation. Pause, take a breath, shift focus to the subconscious with the instruction to release the body tension. Stay present, see what happens! This is love in action, the right mechanism for archetypal completion, now.
Stresses are simply uncontrolled influences. Ego fights them for control, but spirit has a better idea. Turn to spirit to gain control of your inner influences and what tries to control you by taking command in a new way, by deciding how you want to feel, what you want to indulge in, and what is no longer important. You have the power to walk away from that which is not good for you. You have the power to moderate your inner world by getting innerly calm, by regulating your central nervous system with the breath of spirit, by bringing into your life the positive energy of loving kindness. You have the power to be what you yearn for. Be what you seek by acting with loving kindness, by deciding to let go of old belief systems that no longer work for you and constructing a new flowing lifestyle based on spirit, that which more fully works for you and suits who you really are. You have the power to reject the old and bring in the new.
Don’t be afraid. You are not doing anything wrong. It’s just time for a new approach. Ask spirit for help. Guides are waiting. Loving kindness is waiting. Ask for help. Question spirit. Test spirit. Ask it to prove itself to you. It won’t mind. It loves you and only seeks to help you. Ask for spirit’s help. You won’t be disappointed.
