Speaking out
Saying goodbye for now to a yoga retreat center in a paradise-like setting where I was invited to give a talk and teach. When I speak publicly I never know how I will be received; and speaking for a yoga crowd I expected I might be asked to leave, because my story and the harsh truths it reveals are often hard to swallow.
In the talk I also mentioned that I was once touched inappropriately by an Indian guru who is highly revered in the West. But most controversial I believed was my suggestion that we are all carry responsibility for the current chaos and upheaval in the world. In the yoga world there is so much spiritual bypass, I expected that some might take offense at the idea of collective change through individual growth.
The spiritual revolution has not manifested in world peace, because we have not done our own work of balancing our feeling with rationality. We don't understand psychopathy because psychopaths are hyper rational and use their intelligence to justify their insanity. We can't reach true forgiveness if we look at people as monsters, including the powerful psychopaths who murder children. They are emotional infants, and for us to recognize that, requires that we recognize all the ways in which our own thoughts and behaviors remain immature, the ways in which our own actions are not calm, centered and compassionate.
With the help of introspection and analysis, or a therapist or another safe person, we can allow young parts inside ourselves, still frozen in time and space in the moment their life was threatened, when a caregiver might have been neglectful, insensitive or abusive, to move through the range of the feelings that were repressed for the sake of survival. These feelings, once connected to the original psychological source, can then integrate. This is when transformative healing takes place and when we can finally move through the emotional developmental stages at which we may have been stuck. Psychopaths have no access to this inner work; they are as though banned from themselves.
In as far as new age ideology has infiltrated the ancient science of yoga, spiritual concepts are often used to bypass trauma. Traumatized students are invited to leave the earth behind and pretend they are star seeds, special beings with astral gifts, as though there were already enlightened and don’t really need to be incarnated on this earth anymore. This is all the more confusing for survivors of extreme organized abuse such as myself, since part of the mind control is exactly to release psychic gifts through trauma for the nefarious purposes of the psychopaths whose slaves we once were. The special gifts can be real, but when the focus gets placed on those gifts and not primarily on healing the wounded ego, on keeping both feed solidly on the earth, it serves only to inflate that ego, that will blow up and away - a balloon in la-la land.
Childhood trauma cannot be healed with physical and/or spiritual practices alone. When self-esteem is damaged in childhood, it requires conscious revisiting of the life threatening events that created the false beliefs about the self that no affirmations (mantras), breath-synchronized exercise (hatha yoga), breathing/energy exercises (pranayama) or psychic powers (siddhis) can undo. Serious trauma remains lodged in the body, even if it seems to have evaporated after, let’s say, a release of grief during an intense forward bend. The right mantra has tremendous power and can lift your spirits, even for months, but without awareness of a serious underlying trauma the issue will most definitely return. I often felt blissed out after a sweaty hatha yoga practice, which serves as a perfect, natural SSRI inhibitor. Yet, like any anti-depressant, without the underlying negative emotions being linked to the traumatic event at the root, suppressed reactions will seek to manifest in other ways.
The purpose of yoga is to still all the mind stuff - all of it. The mind stuff created through trauma (samskaras) is the stuff of mind control, which forcibly instills negative self-beliefs that will form such deep habitual mind patterns there is nothing to dislodge it other than a return to the trauma itself. A mature, compassionate, understanding perspective can finally alter the child’s perception that was formed during and after the life-changing, though often secret event or events. In this way, the inner child receives the proper guidance it has always needed to break through the shame and isolation that protect the negative self-beliefs, and fully learn and know that the child was innocent, worthy of respect, or whatever truth needs to be restored.
Ultimately, we want our Higher Self to guide our life and put our ego to the side, or at least tame the ego so it works for us, so that we are not enslaved by it. Trauma, especially in childhood, so wounds the ego that it needs tending to. The ego needs to be made healthy again. Psychology precedes spirituality. Only a healthy ego can but put to the side. Unhealthy egos are responsible for all the power abuse and trouble in the world.
Personal trauma work expands consciousness. This work is psychological and spiritual, since it requires for us to turn inward, away from the material, external world. The expansion that occurs during trauma integration helps us to feel more in touch with our true selves, with truth in general, and as we learn to love and accept ourselves it allows us to love others more.
The reception of my talk was as beautiful as a flower opening and revealing its petals. My fears were based on expectations I had with harsh, unfeeling perpetrators, not with goodhearted, well meaning retreatants. Hundreds of participants enthusiastically embraced my message and came for the workshop the following day. Throughout the week I felt silent blessings pouring forth to spread this truth, dark as it may be, that it may be well received. And it was, more than I could have hoped.