Dr. Gabor Mate’s early-childhood-trauma team are multiplying the material available on the subject. I’d like to comment on their ground-breaking work.
They ask us to support “the expanding movement to create a more trauma-informed world.” I’m happy to do so.
In Part 2, I post his announcement of his Talks on Trauma Series, Part 2. (1)
“Early childhood trauma” is a good way of saying what I call “vasanas.” (2) The two literatures are linked but have some differences.
I use the term “vasana” to link up western discussions with eastern spirituality. In this case Vedanta, but in other cases it could be Buddhism (Vipassana is an approach to cleansing oneself of the vasanas).
The number of specialists studying the subject, as Gabor demonstrates, is growing rapidly. That promises some very useful interventions later on when so much trauma will be triggered and reawakened by anticipated accountability events.
John Durham, election fraud, toxic vaccines, the fall of religious leaders, the takedown of the global cabal – this and other events will be a lot for people to take in without getting reactivated. And most people who do get reactivated probably won’t understand what just happened.
I applaud and encourage his work and that of his colleagues. I feel relief to see that the subject is being well covered. And “early childhood trauma” is a succinct way of putting it that I think people will easily understand.
I see Vidya Frazier’s latest column is also on the subject from a spiritual side. (3)
As the Humpty Dumpty Man can tell you, it’s a struggle to break free of this. The lack of confidence, divided mind, self-criticism, anger, self-righteousness – this is not a life. This is what Gabor’s team is assisting us to emerge from.
Is it the Mother’s plan to have an army of professionals ready to help when all our incomplete early childhood trauma is reawakened? I’m sure it is.
***
Let me switch now and use this occasion to review what you may do when a vasana does get triggered. Our early childhood trauma could be reactivated when the emergency announcements go off, for example, or when we hear that our favorite Hollywood celebrity is an adrenochrome user. I call this procedure “processing the upset”:
(1) Don’t engage with your upset or pull it on like a sweater. Instead adopt the posture of an observer, who sees but is not involved in the action.
(2) Then watch and creatively re-experience what arises in you from watching. Allow yourself to experience the feelings that go off without resisting and without assigning blame or judging. “Feel to heal,” Kathleen says.
These are feelings we usually run from (and that’s the problem), avoid, tamp down, displace, or project onto others. What we resist persists, as Werner Erhard pointed out. These feelings hang around forever and we develop ways and means of avoiding having to feel them. So a part of us is not available, all tied up in defencive behavior.
Vasanas are also blockages on a physical and spiritual level. They’re the cause of bands of muscular tension, skewed belief systems, (4) psychosomatic illnesses, etc.
We need to clear the blockage by allowing these feelings to play upon us without our resisting them until they depart on their own. They will go. “This too shall pass” is a spiritual truth.
Their unopposed departure will result in an increase in awareness (rather than in a decrease), a sense of relief, an increased ease of breathing, a happier outlook.
If at any point you have an insight into their origin or cause, the truth will set you free faster than “processing” the early childhood trauma.
Upon release, do not go back into the upset; serious ruts await you there, which you want to escape. It’ll take time and patience not to fall back into a rut. and accompanying scripted, mechanical behavior. (5) It takes moment-to-moment awareness. (6)
That’s it in a nutshell. Now we just have to do it.
I’m so happy to see the fruition of Gabor’s work, which I know he’s been patiently creating and building for quite a while.
Footnotes
(1) “What is Trauma? – Part 2/2,” Sept. 26, 2021, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2021/09/26/new-talks-from-early-childhood-trauma-team-part-1-2/
(2) I want to connect our western discussions of the subject up with eastern spiritual sources like the ascended-while-alive (jivan-mukta) master, Ramana Maharshi, who calls them vasanas.
Vasanas, in my view, are the major impediment to enlightenment and I want to keep sight of the broader picture into which vasanas fit . That’s the reason for hitching it up to Eastern non-dualism.
With our vasanas gone, we’re restored to our original innocence.
Spiritual dimensions open up with the healing of our vasanas. You’ve watched me go through desirelessness, stillpoint, love, bliss, ecstacy. I wager that the spiritual experiences will be found to vary in number and depth inversely proportional to the dissipation of the vasanas.
As vasanas go down, spiritual experiences go up.
The state we’re left in after a thorough cleansing of our trauma is a springboard for spiritual unfoldment. The next step is being a receptive opening – rather than an embittered adult child as I was – to that new spiritual unfoldment that now beckons.
I think of it as making up for lost time.
In my own case, I’m finding that, as my vasanas decrease in intensity and number, my access to divine qualities like love and bliss goes up.
(3) Vidya Frazier, “Dismantling the Inner Critic,”
(4) Think of two men who had violent fathers – Stalin and Hitler – and the skewed belief systems they both violently nurtured.
(5) Which you probably copied from Mom or Dad.
(6) On helping others deal with their early childhood trauma via your listening, see A Manual for Listeners at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/A-Manual-for-Listeners-R3.pdf
[Hitting the URL will automatically download the book.]