Awakening In A Wounded World: Trauma & Consciousness

Extracted from a talk I gave during an Insight Timer Live session, here are some thoughts, perspectives, and insights that came to me after meditating with the Diamond Sutra. The talk centers around the question of what effect trauma has on our awakening potential, and the metaphor of being born as a human in a post-war societal 'bruise'.

So, a bit of a trigger warning about the topic of war, as well as a potentially sobering insight into the effect of trauma on awakening.

Share your thoughts in a review, and let me know what you think and what your experience is.

Please note: This track may include some explicit language.

Transcript

So I wanted to share a bit of an insight, A bit of a perspective that came to me this morning. So as I'm recording this, It's the 14th of June and we're in the middle of a monthly daily sit, A month-long daily sit on Insight Timer. And for this month I've chosen to read some words, In fact every day, One chapter, Round and about, Of the Diamond Sutra. And the way to listen to the Diamond Sutra is more to let it kind of wash over you like a poem rather than kind of analyzing it or, You know, Absorbing it with your brain. And just let it stir something in you. And this morning, It was I believe chapter or paragraph 15, And there was a phrase in there about coming from a good family. And so something did stir in me because I thought well what what does that mean and isn't that kind of judgmental towards people who come from a quote-unquote bad family. What it touches in me is the area of, You know, The context that you're born in as a human being. You know, You're always born into a historical context. And the topic that it leads to or connects to for me ultimately is enlightenment or kind of awakening. And that where you're born definitely does have an impact on your chances for awakening and i'll unpack that a little bit so first of all i believe that anybody anywhere can completely fully finally ultimately absolutely awaken and at the same time i also hold true that there are factors that significantly impact or impede that uh the chances of success of enlightenment. So I take my teaching here from my teacher Michael Taft who said in a retreat that there are two major, There are probably more, But there are two major impediments to enlightenment One very big one is self-doubt or doubt. And the second one he mentioned was trauma. And that makes a lot of sense to me. First I want to tell you the metaphor that came to me during the meditation this morning, Which is the metaphor of the human race or the human population is one body, Is one human body. So sometimes there's this term of the body politic and this is kind of the human body. So we're all cells, If you will, In the human body. Now, If there's a war or any other such incident, But let's take for ease of the metaphor a war. Then, You can see that, If you take the lens of intergenerational trauma, That during the war, But also after the war, Human beings who are born in that place, In that region, Or in that time frame, They are basically being born in a wound. Or even you could say they are born as a wound. And so. . . Why is it difficult when you're born inside a wound to then become enlightened? Because it sounds still perhaps a bit abstract. Well, I can share a personal. . . Path, A personal experience that I'm having. I'll link it a little bit to scientific terminology but also to my own experience. Which is that for me, I have been touched quite profoundly, Yet indirectly by the Second World War. And just to name it, My stepfather was himself severely traumatized by his experience with his father. And his father was a translator for interrogating Nazis after the Second World War. He hurt was extremely devastating and just destroyed him. And in turn he became very abusive, Leading my stepfather to leave his family of origin at a very young age and travelled through Europe and became deeply distrustful of other human beings. A distrust that he carried as trauma that resulted in behavior that deeply impacted my childhood. It was very scary, Very unsafe. So for me it resulted in attachment wounding and chronic PTSD. According to some diagnosis. So there's kind of the profound yet indirect impact of the Second World War on my life, On my psychology, On my nervous system. Because what it means for me is that there has been a lot of anxiety. And that's also what triggered my spiritual path. Seeking peace is a very deep goal I've been having since I was late teens. I was probably there earlier, But I became aware of this wish for peace when I was around 20 maybe. But the reason I was seeking peace was that I was having this chronic PTSD and this just continual anxiety. And when the nervous system is anxious, Just to speak for myself, I was projecting a lot of that anxiety in the form of having a lot of enemy images, Being scared of other human beings, You know, You've probably heard this metaphor that the world is a hall of mirrors. And if I have an anxious nervous system, I'm very easy to interpret, I'm very quick to interpret events and other human beings and intentions as being ill-willed, Because that's my interpretation frame, Because I'm all the time anxious, I'm scared. I'm afraid I'm traumatized. And i will now link that to the two wings of buddhism and why it is indeed i believe more difficult to awaken or enlighten the mind and the heart when you have such trauma so the two wings of buddhism are compassion and wisdom or compassion and insight and one easy way to kind of capture that phrase is how i see it sometimes is that When you're angry at somebody, Or when you have hate towards somebody, You're actually not seeing them clearly. You're not perceiving reality. Ultimately, I believe that there's no separation, There's no boundary between anything. Any boundary is just a conceptual cut, A conceptual trauma, If you will. A separation from what is deeply non-separate. That awareness is fundamental, Which I do, Which is also kind of the non-dual perspective, And I believe at depth the Buddhist perspective, Then all those separations are misperceptions and the trauma and anxiety and the enemy images kind of reinforce the separation. So the trauma kind of strengthens the contraction that is the ego that thinks it's separate. And so this is how trauma can kind of entrench us in this kind of thinking, This separation, And therefore makes it harder for us to awaken and to be enlightened, To realize our, I believe the Buddhist term is codependent origination, Or in other words, The non-separateness, The non-duality, The deep interconnectedness, Or as Thich Nhat Hanh would call it, Interbeing of all experience, Of all beings. And So this is kind of the metaphor that came to me. About trauma, About spirituality, And then about being born in a wound, Maybe as a wound. And then I believe the imperative is the work that lays in front of us is not so much focused on enlightenment or awakening. It can be there, I believe, But what's really more directly in our face is the hard, Dirty, Dark, Unseen, Shadow work of healing. Because part of trauma and part of intergenerational trauma is also seeing our own wounding and also that means seeing our own shitty behavior, Right? Our own ill will. Which is a deep affliction that I also recognize in myself. And so there's the risk of spiritual bypassing, Right? So just to go towards enlightenment instead of working on what is often perceived as the less glamorous part of the work, Which is healing, Which is showing up with all your human darkness. And again, I'm not saying it's not possible to be enlightened from any position. I believe it's always there, It's always available. And I also believe that it's ultimately our true nature is Buddha. Nature is, As Michael Tess would call it, Awake awareness itself. But there's a real risk for that spiritual bypassing. And then there's one other note I want to kind of relate to that, Which is that I think a lot of human beings, They set up their spiritual paths because they want to fix themselves. A lot of the spiritual path is because we suffer and we suffer because we have trauma. So it deeply related to the previous topic. But there's also the subtle rejection of what is when we say, I have to heal myself. You're basically saying, This is not okay. And so then if you go from that perspective to your meditation pillow, Or your yoga mat, Or your chanting, Or your church, If it's because I'm somehow not okay, I have to heal. Of course, You know, Heal yourself, But make your healing path, This is my warm urge God bless you. Make it more about accepting reality as it is than to try to get a reality that's not there yet or yeah but you kind of frame as this is not yet what it needs to be So. . . And I think that is a deeply spiritual practice, To accept reality as it is, As you're finding it. And this is also, I believe, Rather than a path of healing, It is actually the manifestation of healing. So I'm not encouraging you to stop your spiritual practice. I'm not discouraging you from your goal of enlightenment. I'm trying to point towards realism and facing what the work really is. At the moment and sometimes it may be, Hey, You know what, The work right now may be some psychotherapy or the work right now may be some internal family systems coaching or stepping down from some things. So these are some thoughts I find important enough to share. I imagine that they might land on some resonance with you. I'm very curious if you wanna share with me your thoughts and reflections, And I hope this was to your benefit. Thanks for listening.

Reviews

It’s very interesting that Michael thinks that trauma is an impediment to enlightenment. For a lot of people who’ve gone on to impact the lives of many, their wounds were the place where the light found its way in. And I believe that it’s very rare in our world for people to not have gone through some form of trauma. Our whole society is quite trauma-inducing for most people.
I’d also like to share my thought on what you said about using healing as a way of escaping our current circumstance or our current body. I read recently that I can accept the way things are at the moment, but also look forward to the person I want to become. I can honor both, both are important. This line stayed with me since I read it. I believe that it is only full acceptance of the present moment as it is that can bring about lasting change.
Thanks for a thought-provoking talk. 😊