Category Archives: love

Healing Personal and Collective Trauma

Posted on by

NASCAR drivers Kyle Busch, left, and Corey LaJoie, right, join other drivers and crews as they push the car of Bubba Wallace to the front of the field prior to the start of the NASCAR Cup Series auto race at the Talladega Superspeedway.John Bazemore/Associated Press

Not sure how many of my readers follow NASCAR. It’s usually not on my radar either, but this photo taken in early June at the beginning of a race at the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama captures an extraordinary moment in American history that brings tears to my eyes every time I fully take in its significance. The car belongs to Bubba Wallace, the only full time Black driver on the stock car circuit. It is being guided to its position at the start of the race by every single driver in the race, and every single member of their support teams, all choosing to make a unified stand about love and inclusion.

A few weeks previous to the race,  Bubba, with the support of all the other White drivers, asked NASCAR to ban the display of the Confederate flag at all races and, amazingly enough, NASCAR officials did just that. This is not going over well with many of the predominantly southern White male fans, and Sunday evening, it appeared that someone had left a noose in the garage of Bubbas racing team. The response, as shown above, was immediate, clear and unified. We (NASCAR) stand for love and inclusion and against hatred and division. (It was later clarified by the F.B.I. that it was a garage door pull fashioned as a noose and had been there for several months.)

The healing of collective trauma cannot truly begin without a deep acknowledgement of its reality. And it is the nature of trauma, at its root, to remain hidden, repressed and unseen. The symptoms and after effects may be recognized cognitively, but until we can begin to feel the visceral reality of the violence. Collectively, trauma healing requires a group acknowlegement, or witnessing the trauma and the a group ritual or action directed specifically toward healing the wound. The Nascar act of love, support and acknowledgement was so powerful for me because it was a real, embodied action of collective healing.

It is now early August. We have a long long way to go in healing. The deeply embedded trauma that White supremacy has inflicted upon the African American people, as well as the Native American people, has been accumulating for over five centuries. It continues in the present as the collective fears of a certain percentage of White people have added Hispanic and Muslim people to the crosshairs of the fear and anger. The fact that we have a president who amplifies these fears, and in an election year is doubling down on his ignorance, is both terrifying and heartbreaking. But is is the nature of unconsciousness to perpetuate patterns of behavior until they are brought to the conscious level for reflection, recognition and the awakening oof sufficient motivation to change.

George Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020. For whatever reason, his death was the one that finally broke through the ignorance and denial of collective White America to the depth and intensity of the traumas Black Americans live with on a day to day basis. Certainly not all of White America is awakening, but a large enough percentage of people in power to begin a shift. Corporations follow the money, so I am suspicious of the underlying motives of some of their statements, but, none the less, we are seeing the beginning of a major, major shift in American society, and one that is ripploing around the planet.

It is my hope that this shift will be driven from the spiritual foundation of “Wholeness”, Inter-being, Love, and fierce Compassion. It is the only hope for long lasting and meaningful change, because there is also a much larger collective trauma that also needs to be acknowledged; the trauma inflicted onto Mother Earth by all humans. We need to expand time, envision 10 generations into the future, and ask ourselves; What are we offering those generations to come? We have been given one of the most prolific, fecund planets in the galaxy and are systematically destroying the very conditions that allow life to flourish. As my mentor Thomas Berry once stated, ‘modern humans have macrophase power and microphase intelligence.”

It is easy to fall into hopelessness and despair when confronting the magnitude of our challenges, unless we have a spiritual practice that can orient and balance us. Each of us has a ‘soul role’ to play. We have incarnated into this moment with a set of skills, a certain level of vitality, lessons to learn, and a place in the center of the living breathing energy field of Mother Earth, the Solar System and the Milky Way. A practice helps us refine our skills, maintain our vitality, study and learn from our lessons, and participate in the dance. We need to cultivate multiple resources to facilitate any type of healing and the beginning of collective healing is our own personal journey of healing.

Unconscious trauma presents a fragmented perspective on reality. Thomas Huebl describes this as though looking through broken glass. Thomas, in his own unique way, goes on to note that our brains then ‘photoshop’ the fragments away. It fills in the blank regions so we may ‘appear’ to have a coherent view and function in society. But the information coming in to us from the world is actually quite fragmented and thus our ability to respond to the world is limited. As Thomas says, our ‘response-ability’, our ability to respond to the moment, is compromised and this is true both individually and collectively.

Our memory and cognitive constellations tend to determine our perceptions and actions. If we are not in true resonance with the world moment to moment, our fall back will be to refer to our beliefs, concepts and memories and call these ‘reality’. These beliefs and concepts, more often that not, have been passed down by our parents, grandparents and teachers, and society as a whole. Because they, and we, were born into a world with pre-existing personal, ancestral and collective traumas, we usually do not see the trauma. It is ‘just the way things are, and always have been. White supremacy is the root of the collective trauma of our time.

It is the nature of modern culture that athletes and entertainers have the largest and loudest platform to speak to the general public. That also gives them a lot of power.           ( Professional and college athletics currently generate upwards of eighty billion dollars of revenue every year!) The murder of George Floyd was the tipping point that woke up a sufficient number of White athletes and coaches so that they can begin to hear the stories their Black teammates are telling. On the collegiate side, money more than morals drives the bus, but none-the-less, the voices the Black Americans are finally being heard and acknowledged by White American and a social momentum of deep seated change has begun.

The burden of systemic racism and White supremacy, inflicted by the European cultures onto the Black and Native populations going back to the time of Columbus, is being recognized as an acute personal and cultural trauma that White people must acknowledge, feel and address through action. Hispanic and Muslim communities also have been recipients of White ignorance and rage. Jews have been recipients of ignorance and rage for centuries. How to navigate the fullness of the damage done to multiple ethnic groups, across multiple generations, remains to be seen. That NASCAR, the most White and most ‘southern’ of our national sports, chose to make a statement, is a sign of hope. However, symbolic gestures can only be the beginning if true healing and transformation of society is to take place. The energy of protests have to become transformed into policy and symbolism has to be transformed into tackling extremely challenging unconsciously entrenched habits of White supremacy. Bandages are of no use when radical cultural surgery is needed. This will not be easy, simple or quick.

The voices of those who have been victimized by the inherent White supremacy embedded in the fabric of American society are being finally heard. As part of my own personal healing I have been reading and re-reading Kevin Powell: (The Education of Kevin Powell) and (My Mother, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and the last stand of The Angry White Man): and Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me), heart opening descriptions of how de-humanizing and traumatizing growing up an African American Male can be; how that burden often is then inflicted onto women and each other; and how painful the path of healing can be.

Also needing to be heard are the voices of those who have on the front lines of racism for decades and who can speak from well earned wisdom. Civil Rights icon John Lewis wrote this a few days before he died. Another wonderful example  is Ruth King’s Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out. Also, Buddhist teacher Larry Ward, as expressed in this blog post on The Lotus Institute web site. Or this Op-ed from Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Boston Globe writers Renee Graham and Jenee Osterheldt are two more voices of Black women who keep me paying attention. Social change is challenging at any level and our current situation has layers and levels of trauma that will require years of diligent and relentless effort. Keep reading, keep listening. The more voices in the choir, the more powerful the music.

The collective cultural healing we desperately need can only happen when all ethnic groups can express and be respected for their unique perspectives, traditions and talents, while at the same time discovering in each other the essential common ground of wholeness and unity. Even in individuals, trauma cannot be healed individually. The healing of trauma requires an ‘other’, to listen to the stories, feel, embody and validate the experience and then link energetically with the speaker in wholeness. I hear your pain, I feel your pain, I take it into the depths of my cells, and join you in the communal healing of the heart.

Working with my pre-natal PTSD is very different from working with the challenges of my new hip joint. Working with the quirkiness of the hip doesn’t trigger any deep and hidden emotional trauma. No shortage of frustration, but that is quite different, very obvious and relatively easy to manage. The trauma of PTSD awakens terror and this needs to be handled with care and love.

The complex emotional charge of stored trauma and its effect on the body’s nervous system requires a much more nuanced approach. This is equally valid in the collective field as well as the individual’s energy field. With trauma, there is embedded in the field a powerful, non-verbal sense of chaos; of having no control of the situation, of being totally disconnected from the present moment. This is the nature of unresolved trauma. Because it has been repressed, and it takes a lot of energy to do so, it is like a pressure cooker slowly moving toward explosion.

The analogy to the looting and rioting is very relevant. As Kareem Abdul Jabbar mentioned above, when an intense collective trauma has been accumulating for generations, eruptions of violence cannot possibly be surprising. What is amazing is that there is not more outbreaks of violence. Much of the inner city and gang related violence stems from this collective generational trauma.

In an embodied approach to trauma therapy such as Somatic Experiencing, the mature adult/therapist helps the client discover their own pressure valve and guides them in learning how to safely and slowly discharge the pent up fear/anger/energy. This may take months or years to do safely. Doing this collectively is part of the new level of healing of our time. Spiritual teacher Thomas Huebl is one of the planet’s leading guides in this realm and I highly recommend listening to him or working with him.

Hearing the stories and opening our hearts to the intense suffering of others may help us dive into our own darker dimensions. There is a not so subtle hint in the ‘Apostles Creed’ the prayer I learned as a child growing up in the Catholic Church. Upon his death and before ‘ascending into heaven’, Jesus ‘descendit ad inferna‘, he descended into hell. To become ‘One with God’, aka Enlightened, aka realize ‘True Nature’, we must descend into the inferno, like Dante in the Divine Comedy, to truly see the depths of our trauma and begin the healing. Dante had guides, the Roman poet Virgil and Beatrice. We need guides. We need our angels. And we need to be very diligent in our practice of coming back to the Stillness where True Nature reveals Itself as our ultimate refuge and ultimate source of healing.

(PS: a personal note)

Apologies for the delay. It has been almost 4 months since my last post. The cancer treatments, Covid-19, Black Lives Matter and my ‘new hip’ have sucked the energy out of me and slowed me way down. Very little energy for anything but listening and healing. I’ve been trying to finish this post for two months now, so it is a bit choppy.But I did not want to wait any longer

But I am slowly re-emerging! I will be done with the cancer meds by mid September. (By all indications the cancer should be gone, but there are no guarantees.) I’m back to swimming every day, rebuilding strength, trying to write, considering some Zoom classes, and my son Sean and I are collaborating on a series of podcasts to discuss the evolutionary dimensions of our present moment. I’ll keep you posted on that.

Also much thanks to all who reached out to me for my surgery and birthday. George Floyd was murdered on May 25 and my surgery was May 26. I spent much of my 70th birthday June 1 oscillating between deep grief and deep joy. Great for my heart opening, but exhausting.

Stay safe, stay awake, keep loving, keep practicing…

More on the Lesser Sac/Omental Bursa

Posted on by

Many more somatic delights to explore!

This more detailed view above is from Frank Netter’s Atlas of Human Anatomy, plate 331, if you have your own copy, showing a cross section through T-12. Netter always does his cross sections as if looking from below, so you have to flip your brain to reverse right and left, but the many internal spaces are well illustrated.

This illustration shows yet another perspective, tracking the lesser sac downward, with a great view of the epiploic foramen just below the gall bladder. The pancreas sits just behind, (where the words lesser sac are). Remember that this is not a large volume space, but rather distinct differentiated layers of fascia that ideally are lubricated with fluid to allow the organs to slide around. Think of the plastic supermarket bags for your veggies, before you get them open. Fat can accumulate here, as well as excess fluid in pathological conditions.

The T-12 section in general is one of the more complex and crucial regions of the body. Mechanically, the T-12 vertebrae has lumbar facets (primarily allowing flexion-extension) at L-1 and thoracic facets (primarily allowing rotation) at T-11 which allows it to act as a universal joint; (or not, if it is stuck like mine!) Structurally, we go from ribs/thoracic vertebrae to no ribs/lumbar vertebrae. The quadratus lumborum, the deepest abdominal muscle,  runs from the 12th ribs to the top of the pelvis. The psoas (major and minor) has its top attachment at T-12 and connects to the diaphragm through the median arcuate ligament, linking breathing and movement of the legs and pelvis.

The Practice

Begin by dropping into stillness/presence as your ground and let it settle in to your field. We keep coming back when we realize we have lost this. This is step one in somatic meditation, starting in presence, returning to presence when we notice we have wandered away. In presence let your attention/imagination move to the lesser sac/omental bursa and then let go into a state of yin attention. In yang attention, we want to act; to do something, to grab onto something. Somatic meditation is practicing non-doing attention, known as ‘Wu Wei‘ in Taoist practice. Let the subtlest layers of your body be the teacher.

Also, because we have so many choices, if any of the the other areas shown in the diagrams speak to you, imagine/find/feel them in your practice in the same way, Wu Wei.  Stay in Awareness/presence even as the subtle energies and insights emerge. It will be easy to become seduced and try to take over the process. Let the yang energy bring and sustain your attention to specific regions in the subtle field, but resist the urge to ‘do’ something.

Remember, in this region of the body we are half way between heart and hara. Here are some other explorations from my current practice. Some are more fruitful then others, but that may be a very personal thing. Find the ones that feed you and stay with them. From presence, you can drop into this any time of the day, not just ‘on the mat’.

Where the epeploic foramen links the lesser sac with the greater sac, directly in front of the inferior vena cava.

Where the falciform ligament of the liver separates the greater sac.

If you look closely at the top diagram, you can find the bottom of the pleural sac and the costo-diaphragmatic recess. Begin your exploration there.

Where the aorta emerges from being behind the diaphragm at the crura or crossing tendons, right in the center of the body.

Any of the stomach – spleen- kidney ligaments.

From the lesser omentum.

The spinal muscles directly posterior to the kidneys, allowing them to soften and melt.

From the psoas – diaphragm linking at the median arcuate ligament.

Please send questions from your practice, if and when they arise, and I can try to answer them in the coming blog posts.  (yogarthur@aol.com)

The Spiritual Instinct

Posted on by

51wVyJLcjfL._AC_US218_Life has existed and thrived on our planet for four billion years because somehow, embedded in the intelligence of the Universe, is the survival instinct. Whatever it takes, keep the evolutionary journey alive and moving towards more and more complexity. The Universe Story, a mind expanding book by two of my mentors, Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme, offers many examples of how threats to the continuation of life on Mother Earth were met with a tremendous burst of cosmic creativity and a leap in evolution. This is survival instinct acting as a collective intelligence, but each individual also has a biological survival instinct that manifests as both “I need to survive” and ‘the species needs to survive’.

This survival instinct has served life well until the arrival of the human. Because evolution has provided humans with a whole new series of brain cells, leading to an emerging capacity for abstract thinking, we now can imagine and feel threats to our survival that are not based on real time physical ones. There are many ways this manifests. Unresolved stored trauma from the past can be triggered. A conceptual ‘me’, a self sense based totally on thought, can feel threatened by ‘them’ who disagree with my beliefs, or dress and talk differently, or whatever threats our imaginations can conger up. Or perhaps ‘they’ have something we think we need for our survival and we will do anything to get it. It gets even crazier when the collective human, expressed in culture, takes on this threat. Wars emerge.

The Universe, in its evolutionary wisdom, has provided an antidote to this pathological twist to the survival instinct by giving the human another instinct, the spiritual instinct. I first came across this, in different terminology and perspective, from B.K.S. Iyengar when he described the two traditional spiritual paths of Indian or Vedic culture. The first, the nivritti marga is the path of the sunnyasin or renunciate who chooses to leave the outer world meditating-shivaand devote their lives to the inner journey of transcendence. We might also call this the path of wisdom which is depicted in India by the image of Shiva sitting alone on a mountain top. In masculine dominant cultures, this is the only spiritual path. In traditional Vedic Culture, householders, after raising a family and participating in the community, often spend the last years of their lives as sunnyasin.

The second, the pravritti marga or path of the householder, who remains engaged in the world of time and space, can be called the path of the heart. It’s Vedic representation is Parvati, Shiva’s wife and the Divine Mother. Iyengar, a married man with six children, was on the pravrtti marga his entire life, and did not always receive respect as a spiritual teacher from the Indian iyengar-familyculture because he was not a sunnyasin. There has always been confusion about the spiritual validity of the householders path, and this is directly addressed in the definitive guide to yogic and Vedic wisdom, the Bhagavad Gita. Arjuna, the warrior, wants to walk away from the responsibilities life events have presented him and become a sunnyasin, as he feel that this is the true path to enlightenment. Krishna, both kindly and sternly points out that karma yoga, the yoga of action in the world, the pravritti marga, can very much be a Divine practice. For Arjuna, because he has karmic responsibilities to maintain dharma, (the spiritual integrity of Vedic culture), this is the only path for him. Iyengar knew this intuitively and poured his lifes’ energy into his practice and teaching.

In esoteric Christianity, the pravritti marga is also the Jesus Story. In the Gospel of John, I-14, it is said ‘ and Spirit became flesh and dwelt among us.” Unfortunately the subtlety that we are all spirit made flesh and Jesus was only trying to point this out was totally missed by egoic consciousness. Exploring the Ultimate Mystery of incarnation is far more important to us than re-incarnation.

Lately, my spiritual mentor, Adyashanti, has been using the term ‘spiritual instinct’ to describe the same two paths, only he is really refining their meaning and application for our times. As Adya describes, our True Nature is the source of our spiritual instinct and it comes in two forms. The first is similar to the nivrtti marga, but instead of being a life style choice, like the sunnyasin, Adya calls this instinct a universal desire of True Nature to know itself, for the Ground of Being to become conscious of itself, through the human’s awakening. Another of my mentors, Thomas Berry, describes this his Twelve Principles of the Universe: “The human is that being in whom Universe attains reflexive consciousness of itself.” It is the human’s calling to journey inwards to the depths of Being.

The second expression of the spiritual instinct is for True Nature to continuously express its divinity and wholeness through action in the world of forms. This is an outward journey, from the depths of Being into creation, the Divine world of forms. We see this in the billions of years of amazing fecundity of the natural world and in the dazzling displays of the heavens, recently expanded to us with modern telescopes and space probes. In the human, it is similar to the pravrtti marga, where, as Krishna teaches Arjuna, action in the world can flow directly from the spiritual instinct of True Nature and thus be a spiritual path. Our lives are an expression of True Nature. However, as we all know, human action in the world usually flows from the survival instinct driven by the greed and ignorance of egoic consciousness. The path of yoga is designed to transform our lives back into harmony with our True Nature.

Because egoic consciousness’s can and will co-opt the spiritual instinct for its own purposes, it can and will use a spiritual practice such as yoga or meditation as a means to either gain something; freedom perhaps, but more often recognition, fame or power. Ego driven spiritual practice also usually wants to or to get rid unpleasant things so it can be comfortable. Arising from the ego’s sense of incompleteness that desperately and impossibly needs filling, these forms of ‘spiritual practice’ can have you spinning your wheels for years and decades.

A more subtle egoic intrusion is the judging of the quality of your meditation. Beginners really struggle with this, but it happens to all. From the ego’s perspective, there are good and bad days of practice. When relaxation and stillness seems to come easily, that is ‘good’ When your whole sitting practice is consumed with distraction or agitation, that is ‘bad’. The spiritual instinct has no judgment. Whatever arises is what arises. It is open to every possibility. Developing discrimination and knowing your underlying motivations is the key. Ask yourself, what are the yearnings that come from the deepest part of my Being? If there is judging, or wanting to acquire or avoid something, the ego is driving the bus.

In meditation we are called to listen deeply to our inner world, way down below the surface flow of thoughts, desires, emotions and images, and wait for our True Nature, through the spiritual instinct, to begin to reveal itself. Although ultimately totally mysterious, unbounded and ungraspable, we can feel its calling. It cannot be reached through will power or thought, but by letting go, moment by moment, until letting go becomes natural. Feel your heart softening and opening in this letting go. Impermanence is the natural state of the world of form. Allow it to be, without grasping or avoiding, and the deeper dimensions of stillness will begin to reveal themselves. Let your meditation be the natural expression of True Nature, not something you have to do.

When you are out in the world, see Divinity everywhere and feel you own moment to moment alive as Divinity expressing itself through you. Allow both aspects of your spiritual instinct flower. Let the survival instinct remain in the background, until life calls it forward. Then let your actions flow from both wisdom and love.

For some further insight, check out the Voices of Awakening Page on this website.