“You must understand the whole of life,
not just one little part of it.
That is why you must read,
that is why you must look at the skies,
that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems,
and suffer, and understand,
for all that is life.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
1. The collection of pain, fear and trauma in our system
From early childhood onwards (and continuing during the course of our lifetime) we are all facing and are confronted with situations and circumstances that we later on remember as frustrating and painful, perhaps even traumatic. A trauma can be seen as a major event, such as abandonment or rejection during early childhood, severe accidents or diseases, loss of beloved ones, but also any other kind of (from an objective perspective) less serious events, such as the first separation from our main caregiver when entering kindergarten or disappointments in our first relationships with friends and/or romantic partners during childhood and adolescence.
Traumatic memories and experiences often remain painfully in our minds, showing themselves in the form of nagging and repetitive thinking patterns and the exaggerated reflection over the painful situation, but – from a perspective of trauma healing even more significant –, they also grow deep roots into our subconscious. From the level of our subconscious they shape most, if not all of our behavior in daily life and our interactions with our fellow human beings, most of the time completely hidden from our awareness.
In addition to affecting our thinking and behavior, traumatic experiences are also reflected in our (gross) physical body, often constituting triggers for physical as well as psychological illnesses and diseases. Yet, they are also being reflected in our energetic body, especially as blockages in the chakra system (in Sanskrit Yogic terminology often referred to as Vrittis) and as irritations and limitations in other energetic bodies (such as the Aura, the Pranic body and the Light body).
According to the concept of incarnation, we do not only collect, carry and process wounds and traumas from our current live time but also those of earlier live times (in Sanskrit Yogic terminology often in a form of which is referred to as Samskaras), plus on top (if this wasn´t already enough) human beings are also showing, storing and processing imprints and impressions of pain and fear from the collective (un)consciousness.
2. The inevitable Recognition and Healing of pain, fear and trauma
On the path of healing our wounds, whether from our current life, from past lives or even the collective, it is inevitable to recognize and honor the fact that we are all carrying pain, fear and trauma within us. This recognition is most essential and already the first step towards healing and ultimately, towards full Self-realization. It´s this recognition and acceptance that carrying and dissolving trauma is part of our human experience that ultimately will provide a solid and profound basis for the healing process itself. In times, where (spiritual) bypassing is a common phenomenon, we are strongly invited to actively face our wounds and bring them up to the light, instead of trying to hide and overcome them by ignorance and denial.
It´s the act of denial that will anyways increase all the pains and suffering over time, as it applies as a general rule that everything that is being denied will find its way to be seen in increasing (and therefore even more painful) momenta.
“Time heals all wounds” says a (translated) German proverb, yet, from a holistic point of view, this proverb is highly questionable. It might be true for some people that by the passing of time painful memories seem to fade and become less present in our daily thinking, yet, the fact that they appear less in our conscious activities (such as reflective thinking) does not necessarily mean that they have disappeared. It usually merely means that they have sunk deeper into the subconscious, playing their tricks and games of avoidance from an even deeper level. To give a feasible example: childhood traumas (such as abandonment, rejection or loss of trust) usually become apparent in later (romantic) relationships, which means years or even decades after traumatic events. It´s also a widespread phenomenon in older people that with older age the elderly tend to lapse back into their childhood memories and within them often the unprocessed negative ones.
We can compare our traumatic wounds with a physical wound, for example a deep cut in our arm. If we try to hide the cut under a deep layer of a bandage without any air supply, proper treatment and without changing the bandage from time to time, the wound ultimately will become inflamed and increasingly painful and it will require more and more of our time and effort to protect it from outer influences such as touch and other stimuli. If then another person is "touching" the wound (which can be by a simple word or small act) we will – even while being completely unaware of it – have the tendency to react in pain (and even anger), most likely with responding "Ouch, you hurt me!", while the other person probably won´t even know what just happened. There is a saying "If you don't heal what hurt you, you will bleed on people who never cut you."
With this all being said, how do we then accurately face our wounds and trauma?
Or lets start even a step ahead: why is there even pain at all while undergoing this experience as a human being?
3. Pain and Trauma (and a Man`s Search for Meaning) from the perspective of philosophy
Why do we encounter so many difficulties and challenges in our lives anyway? What is the meaning behind them? Or asking from a higher perspective: what is the meaning of this human experience in the first place? And the meaning of my life within life's totality?
(Wo)man is – as far as we know from today´s perspective – the only being on earth that can contemplate and sit with this question. Only (wo)man has this possibility of actual self-reflection through his/her consciousness. Only (wo)man can reflect beyond the level of instinct about his/her life, but also about the finiteness of the same.
Even knowing that the following will be highly dissatisfying for the questioning mind I´ll start this inquiry with destroying the illusion that there can be an ultimate answer to these questions in the first place: There is no (and cannot be) a universal answer to the question of the (ultimate) meaning of life in its totality. Even further, this question can neither be answered on the level of the individual, nor on the level of the totality of human existence, even if it´s common for us – mainly from the angles of self-empowerment movements, Positive Psychology and so forth – to hear: “Give your life a meaning”, “Make your life meaningful”, or even “You have to find the purpose of your life”.
However, there are different approaches that at least try to approach a “potential” answer to the question of the ultimate purpose of life.
The approach to this answer that I personally find most interesting in the given context is the reasoning of Viktor E. Frankl, who – as a psychotherapist as well as a philosopher – has deeply dived into the question of suffering of human beings, especially against the background of treatment of persons with depression after fateful encounters and/or also people dealing with anxiety and compulsive neuroses after traumatic events.
Frankl kept emphasizing that the question of the actual meaning of life, he calls it “Übersinn” (“transcendental meaning”), could never be found; at best, he suggests that we can only try to discover the meaning of the concrete situation in each and every individual situation in our lives. If at all, we might then be able to connect to a higher meaning of all of our life events in their totality when facing our last moments of being on this planet before leaving towards higher realms.
To him, the question of meaning of life as a whole could never be graspable with the human mind, because this would – by nature – exceed the limits of the perception of the human mind. Since the mind itself already is part of this greater whole, it could never grasp itself from an external higher perspective. Or as the philosopher Pascal describes it: "The branch can never grasp the meaning of the whole tree."
According to Frankl it is therefore the very personal decision (if not to say duty) of every human being to ask him-/herself the question: is there a meaning of life in general and if so, how could this meaning be expressed by my actions (also in challenging and painful situations)? According to Frankl, it is that possibility of a human being to raise the question of meaning that makes him a human being in the first place.
Frankl describes the human being as a three-dimensional being, which is expressed on three levels, namely the physical level (the human body), the psychological level (which composes of intellect, social imprints, feelings and emotions) and the noetic level. According to Frankl the question of meaning of life can only be realized on the third level, the noetic dimension. It´s on the level of the noetic dimension where each human being has to decide in every single situation of his/her life how he/she wants to act for the benefit of him/herself as well as for the overall wellbeing of his/her environment in the very specific and unique situation. The yardstick for this shall always be the consciousness of the noetic dimension that dwells in all of us, which goes far beyond personal beliefs, social norms and other influences.
With that being said we could sum it up as follows: The purpose of life (including all of its pains and suffer) can never be grasp in its totality, but we are asked to search for and find meaning and purpose in each single moment of our lives and align all of our actions (and non-actions) accordingly.
4. Pain and Trauma (and emotional and psychological maturation) from the perspective of Psychology
In psychology, there are many different approaches of how to deal with negative emotions, fears, trauma and depression.
First of all, it´s important to recognize that we all have wounds and traumas within us. It´s essential to keep in mind that we are never alone with our pain and fears, as they are almost always part of our human experience. It´s ok to carry pain and trauma and our system is capable of dealing with it if we are doing so in a proper and mature way.
As a second step, it may help to remember that the origin of the wound lies in the past. There is absolutely nothing we can do to change the event that caused our wound or trauma or prevent it´s happening. Yet, even while not being able to change the event itself we still – at any given moment – can change the way we are looking at these events.
There are two sayings that fit well in this context:
- "Isn't the past kind? It's always over."
- "So far you have survived 100% of your worst days. Keep up, you are doing great!"
So how do we deal with our pain and trauma or respectively, how can we change the way we are looking at them?
A part of us is stuck in a trauma because we have not yet understood and recognized it as such. And as long as we have not fully understood it, seen it, recognized and acknowledged it, it will appear almost impossible to let it go fully and whole-heartedly.
If we have done at least some form of inquiry and healing work, we are usually reasonably aware of our issues and limitations and yet we seem to hold on to them quite well. The reason for this is already deep rooted in our society: It is to a large extent subject to and following the principles of blame and victim roles. In many instances we seem to find it incredibly helpful and even practical to be a victim. And the reason for that is quite simple: As long as we are victims, we don't need to become fully grown up and show at least a reasonable level of psychological and emotional maturation. And, as long as there is someone to blame for our frustration and our unresolved issues in general, we believe that we have a legitimate excuse for not taking full responsibility for all of our actions and non-actions.
Yes, it might not be easy to take that responsibility, but – as a matter of fact – it lies in our truest and highest nature as a healthy and mature human being to carry the responsibility for our actions and behavior on all levels of our being and our contribution to our surroundings, may it be in our relationships (with others as well as the relationship with ourselves), within our families and society as well as with life as a whole.
It´s more the question whether we are truthfully bearing and living out this responsibility and this is exactly where we have to make a choice and practice our free will accordingly.
We might not always be the authors of our story, but it is definitely on us HOW we are going to tell it.
5. Pain and Trauma (and full Self-Realization) from the perspective of Spirituality
Besides the fact that we are all collecting various pains and traumas throughout our journey on this planet (and according to the spiritual teachings even bring traumas from past lives), our relationship to life itself – even without any (additional) pains and traumas acquired during our lifetime – is already traumatized. We speak of “the shock of human experience” as such.
From the view point of spirituality, the trauma already rests in the fact that we – as a “unit” of infinite consciousness – suddenly find ourselves in a separated and by nature very limited human body with even more limited possibilities of expression and awareness (remember: we are spiritual beings having a human experience and not human beings having a spiritual experience). Deep inside we all carry at least a slight latent rejection of the human experience itself.
Even the most so-called spiritual being will agree that the human experience is not an easy one. Coming from a place of pure light and infinite love we suddenly become confined in a small capsule called “body”. Not even being able to move on our own at first, we are experiencing new feelings and sensations of being hungry, constantly feeling either too hot or too cold, facing sensations of unpleasant noises, smells and touches, our body being prone to pain and – probably the most significant one – even in the most intimate moments with our mother (as a baby) or later on with other human beings (such as in moments of intimacy) – we can never experience a full and lasting sensation of complete connection and unification.
Much of what we experience in this body as human beings has little to do with universal light and love, at least not apparently. Instead, we experience hardships, aggression, war, a loss of values and a lack of empathy and charity. And yet, even with all these challenges, the spiritual path is all about moving from this sensed state of separateness and duality back into the unity of the greater whole and the realization of our true loving and all encompassing nature.
And yet, most of all so-called spiritual aspirants are trying to overcome the full experience of being a human being by trying to avoid (or at least minimize) the “negative” experiences that come along with being on this earthly planet (often referred to as spiritual by-passing), which actually can become one of the most difficult obstacles that we have to overcome on our spiritual path.
All spiritual teachings about the merging of our infinite consciousness with our more material and simpler worldly existence can never blossom as long as there is (consciously or unconsciously) resistance within us to the human experience itself. As we already know from the Bhagavat Gita: “Yoga is the journey of the Self, through (!) the self to the Self (rather than opposed to above the self)”. Any such resistance indicates that at least parts of our being is in rejection. A rejection that takes us further and further away from an insight that many of us long for: a sense of ultimate connection and meaning of life itself beyond all relative and imagined individual meanings, a meaning that is able to encompass each and any experience and sensation as a human being, not just the pleasant ones. A meaning and awareness that – according to my observations – can only be found in the heart of life itself.
In the end it is the heart alone that can solve and overcome this primordial trauma of a somehow limited human experience, something the thinking part of the mind will always fail to do due to its rather limited nature. Its only by means of a deep love for all phenomena of life itself, which – accompanied by the wisdom of the heart – can allow us to connect to our truest nature and the certainty that everything is soaked in a deeper meaning. That everything follows a greater purpose. Only the experience of this love can finally lead us to fully agree to our incarnation on earth.
It is the human heart that is given the opportunity to master the greatest overcoming it could ever be asked to. To perform the most incredible and unreasonable action that a limited and frightened human being driven by the protective mind could never do. Namely, on both levels the spiritual as well as the more earthly ones, to embrace the friction inherent in life without any restraint.
At the moment of our death (may that be at the moment of physical death or at the moment of full Self-realization while still being alive) we have to be able to say with all of our heart: "Yes I was here. With my whole being and completely in my presence. I've experienced and fully realized all the feelings and emotions that a human being can have in one´s life. I was completely immersed in the human experience. I have lived my life and accepted all experiences, even (or in particular) the less beautiful moments. And precisely because of this I have given life my full YES, as despite having experienced fear, tension, pain, I could also experience freedom, love and expansion.”
Yet, instead of this, people often say, "I want spiritual enlightenment", "I want to go back home", "I want to become one with everything", which is often dangerous, as it bears the of trying to skip parts of the ongoing process of full Self-realization. The motivation engaging in any spiritual practice is often to detach from the human experience to avoid being hurt, rejected or disappointed. In other words: We are often engaging in spirituality so that we don’t have to undergo the human experience fully and with our whole being.
And yet, the universal law of human experience is that we have to go through all of this, with your whole being, emotionally and psychologically matured and our hearts open no matter what; to understand what it means to be a human being; What it means to love even while being in pain, frustration and other challenging circumstances. In the end, one will never be able to reach full Self-realization in a state of denial or (spiritual) bypassing. Deep inside of us we know that we have already chosen our concrete life circumstances prior to our incarnation including all the potential pains and traumas in order to then learn, grow, open our hearts to the fullest and ultimately – through complete Self-realization on all levels of human being – to see and experience our truest and fullest nature of being: A state of pure and clear White Light Consciousness.