On my way back from a conference presentation in Santa Fe I met a therapist in the airport shuttle taking us to the airport. As we launched into a lengthy discussion I learned that she was there doing a workshop training other therapists to work with individuals who had experienced trauma and who were suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. I also learned that she herself had been trained by a well known and internationally renowned psychologist who I knew and had heard the year before speaking at a conference in Energy Psychology in Toronto, Canada. As we talked I learned that she had a very interesting yet dissonant philosophy on the role of trauma in one's life experience. As she put it she considered "trauma to be a gift to be learned from". Well on hearing this I immediately recoiled and let her know that I absolutely did not resonate with her statement of belief. I noted that for me "trauma was trauma" pure and simple and that if there was less of it here humanity would be much better off for it. She clearly was taken aback and didn't know what else to say so the conversation ended abruptly. I have run into such beliefs about the role of trauma before, especially among therapists whose life and work is about healing individuals so they may "learn" and "grow through their traumatic experiences. It is believed by many that without such experiences we might not learn the important moral, ethical or spiritual lessons we were supposedly sent here to learn. As a result this might disrupt what many consider to be our spiritual evolution. My questions to you, if you subscribe to such a philosophy are: 1. Do you like being traumatized? 2. If not, then why not? 3. If you believe trauma is a necessary component of your spiritual growth then why not seek it out, why avoid it? 4. If you believe that trauma is necessary for the spiritual growth of others then why not go out and traumatize them? 5. Imagine going to someone who has just been severely traumatized to tell them that they are "lucky" to have had such a "wonderfully uplifting" experience and that they should be thankful for it. How does that feel? 6. If trauma was your Gods plan for you should it not make you feel joyful, content, happy, uplifted, more loving, and a sense of greater peace knowing that? Is this how the traumatic experience actually makes you feel? I'm sure that some or all of the above made you feel a certain amount of discomfort within. What is the nature of that discomfort? Well if you reflect on it closely I think you will notice that there is an inner voice telling you that there is something wrong with this picture i.e. that trauma is neither necessary nor desirable to you or others. If you see this then I ask you to reflect on why it is that you chose to buy into the idea that trauma is useful to you or to anyone. If you look at this you may start to realize that if you don't have an explanation for why you or others experience trauma at all that you will feel confused, helpless, vulnerable, victimized, alone, defenseless and so on. What's more you may start to seriously doubt your spiritual teachings and therefore your concept of God. For many this may feel too frightening and hence they would rather subscribe to the idea that their God is somehow testing them or providing a learning experience for them to grow through. With that of course is the implicit belief that you are in someway defective and need to grow (or clear you karma as some might say) into a more evolved spiritual being. How does that feel to you? Yes, I know that many of you will continue to defend your beliefs about this and will make a case for more traumas. If that is what you wish so be it. For those of you who have had enough and wish to reclaim your inner sense of peace, full control over your lives and a sense of yourselves as the Divine Beings that you truly are kindly visit the web link below. |
