How Did I Work Through My Deep Trauma - In Depth Explanation

[ardacigin]

Hi Everyone! I wanted to tell you guys about one of the unconscious traumas I've been conscious of while realizing these spiritual insights.

This experience coincides well with Leo's video on 'The Dark side of Meditation'. It is a common experience but the underlying assumption that lead to this trauma is challenged by spiritual insights. So it is more important to realize the insight itsef as there can be infinite different ways the mind can negatively react.

If you become conscious of such subliminal reactions as a meditator, don't allow attention to point fingers at other people or circumstances. Look inwards directly at your assumptions. Even if you think you are correct, don't point fingers.

Just to give a quick background, I'm a fairly laid back guy. In fact, due to Samatha and jhana training I've undergone all these years, I'm experiencing joy and reduced self-clinging on a momentary basis and the ability of any negative emotion to stabilize itself for long periods of time is very limited. 

In this process, as my awareness got more and more metacognitive, certain subliminal traumas start to bubble up to consciousness. Stuff in your unconsciousness.

Make no mistake, these traumatic perceptions and assumptions significantly alter your worldview in a flawed manner. If you believe you have no traumatic stuff to deal with, think again.

These traumas are not possible to work with unless they bubble up to consciousness. But before they bubble up, you can't know about the trauma's existence since it is unconscious. This means there is significant material you are not even aware of in the unconscious mind. Therefore, you can delude yourself into thinking that you've healed all of your trauma.

Coming back to my trauma:

I was in my parent's house while this happened and at the time, they adopted a cute kitten. They live on the 5th floor. And it is pretty hot in this season. I think you know where this is going.

Since it is so hot, all windows are open. The balcony is open. And the kitten wants to explore and go everywhere. Since I've talked with Vets about this, they've told me that cats can easily fall down from balconies and windows so as their owner, it is your responsibility to take care of them. And since we are on the 5th floor, the cat will suffer, if not die, if it falls. No doubt about it.

Since the insight into interconnectedness was getting stronger, I've started to really merge with this cat. (But conveniently I was not merging with my parents ) 

I'm more than willing to sit in a hot room than to risk the cat's health with opening windows and balconies. But my parents didn't really care or listen to the vets who warned them.

Again, I'm a really loving and laid back guy. I smile and laugh often. I've warned my parent's about this but their nonchalant and arrogant attitude started to really bug me after a while.  They kept putting the cat's life in danger so one day, I've started to yell at them and really lash out my anger. 

Now the reason at the time was that since I'm experiencing so much joy, anger can't quite hold onto my consciousness. Anger comes up, express itself and then dissolves to be replaced by joy.

My strategy was to express my discontent and let people know that this is a bad idea. But I've underestimated the links of dependent origination. All intentions follow  a relatively predictable process of unfolding.

The links of dependent origination goes in this sequence:

Contact (thoughts and sensations) --- feeling (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral) --- Craving (desire and aversion) --  Intention (to act or not to act) --- Action (mental or physical) 

-Repeat

As the anger started to arise, it started to reduce mindfulness and joy slowly, Thoughts started to get more and more self-oriented. The tendency to approach sensations with joy and equanimity was down-regulated. My mind was justifying anger in the name of protecting this cat.

My initial intent was to show some discontent to my parents and to stop them from putting the cat's life in danger but I've realized after a deep meditation session that the source of this anger was different.

I've realized that I had an unconscious trauma about my parent's influence on me when I was a child. When you are young, your parents tend to make decisions for you. But at a certain point, the child starts to make their own decisions. When the parents consciously or unconsciously force the child to do certain things in this critical period, it is possible an unconscious resentment can be formed deep into the child's psyche.

 I've been playing basketball professionally since 8-9 years old but while was in 4-5th grade in middle school, I've started to really hate basketball. I wanted to stop and spend more time reading books and developing myself in other ways but I couldn't say no to my parents so I've participated in daily practice sessions until I've dislocated my shoulder in 9th grade while playing basketball. 

Now, I know what you are thinking. How horrible, right? Well, no! This was a blessing in disguise. After this event, my parent's backed off on this whole basketball business and since I've had a break from basketball for 3 months due to this injury, It was really easy to tell my parents I didn't want to play basketball anymore. I've had a lot of free time after school to do whatever I wanted. It was an amazing discovery period in my life. I'm thankful for that injury. 

So that was the first resentment that started to build up. Maybe my parent's decisions were not always the most objective? I was significantly better off after stop playing basketball. Maybe the authority I've given them was misplaced as a child?

The next one was about my initial struggles in building a business. My parents didn't quite support me in this pursuit and didn't frankly believe in me while I was going through the ups and downs but after I've succeeded, they've started to go:

'Oh, we've always known you'd make it. You were working really hard. We're proud of you etc' -

That is all great but my psyche hasn't interpreted this reaction positively at the time. In fact, I've developed more resentment towards my parents since they weren't supportive of me while I was building the business and only after I've had success with it, they approved and reacted more positively to me. This vibe of conditional love bugged me even further on an unconscious level.

These are the 2 key moments where this unconscious trauma started to develop.The true source of my anger towards my parents were triggered in these moments, not out of genuine desire to care for the well being of this cat. Yes, I did care for this cat deeply but that was only a convenient story covering up this trauma.

Now, this is the most important part of this story. The conclusion. The trigger that produced the initial anger stands in contradiction with this insight: Emptiness

Emptiness is the realization that nothing that arises in consciousness has a nature of being self-existent. It is 'empty' of substance. Everything that arises in conscious experience is a mental construct. The way things appear to be stands in stark contradiction to how things actually are.

Your mind imputes a particular nature to people- objects and actively constructs this reality.  All of our minds do this in a different way. That is why each individual can perceive something radically different. The way that your mind perceives reality is unique to your own.

Once this inherent subjectivity is realized, the anger that I've built up towards my parents dissipated. In their constructed reality, they've decided that me playing basketball was a beneficial thing. Not being too supportive of my business project was to reduce a potential disappointment I might have in the case of a failure. 

Once I've had a chat with my parents and delved deeper into this trauma in meditation, my faulty assumptions that my trauma rested upon dissolved into meaningless and my anger dissipated.

Now everything is better than ever with my parents. And the trauma that was affecting the way I perceived life was reconciled with the insights I've been having at the time.

I hope this report was helpful to some of you. Feel free to comment.

Much love,

 

 

 

 

Edited August 17, 2020 by ardacigin

[Nahm]

@ardacigin

Awesome. Congrats and great work. 

[ardacigin]

15 hours ago, Nahm said:

@ardacigin

Awesome. Congrats and great work. 

Thanks. 

[fi1ghtclub]

Hey man! This is great.

Just a question

How long have been you meditating for and since when did you start accessing jhanas

Also, what's your current meditation experience and do you follow a schedule for it?

[Mu_]

@ardacigin  Congrats, but just out of curiosity, did it just take one time to see through this and it passed?  If so congrats.  Then again, I wouldn't call that deep trauma, perhaps very light trauma.  Not trying to diminish anything your saying, but deep trauma is a whole other ball game and will shake you to your core and working though such matters will test you greatly, if not make you question your foundational core and everything you think you know and have learned.  All your insight and meditation skills will be tested and probably fail to some degree and IF your sanity hasn't been tested and perhaps tested over periods of time far greater then you would ever like it to be (perhas days, months, even years), I wouldn't use the words deep trauma.  I'd wish it on no one, but in retrospect having gone through a few myself, I can say it can defiantly strengthen you and put some things into perspective.

[Shmurda]

@Mu_ What's an example of a deep trauma? Are these trauma patterns in personal history, or a sort of existential trauma that is hidden from all of us by egoic consciousness? 

[Mu_]

19 minutes ago, Shmurda said:

@Mu_ What's an example of a deep trauma? Are these trauma patterns in personal history, or a sort of existential trauma that is hidden from all of us by egoic consciousness? 

Its not exactly what is a example of a deep trauma, because the above could be a deep trauma for some, but the degree of difficulty and working through and facing such matters is what in my opinion would define it to be either deep or a little.

Like some deep traumas are so deep that when faced one can lose their will to live while working with it or cause one to not be able to function cognitively like they use to, the world may become very foreign and how you thought things were fundamentally will radically shift to a degree that it will feel like your learning from scratch (and along with this is a tremendous fear, rawness, the feeling in any moment you may lose it, that you may not make it through this, and if it continues for long periods you may begin to wonder if this is the way you will always be and the thought of such is so heavy and real that you may go into depression). 

You may also find yourself to be expressing in ways that are fundamentally different then you were up to the point of working with such trauma.  You may be a raging asshole or feel such rage and hate or disgust that was never there before, but is there for hours, off and on for days, weeks, months and really takes everything in you to work with and through or accept/understand.

Or you may of been the most unmaterialistic person and then suddenly your the opposite and not only dealing with this new you, your also dealing with the radical shift and confusion of how you shifted so quickly and to the opposite everything you've been before.

And yes these are just a few of ones I'm sharing from my own experience.

Some of these that I've briefly shared I think can stem from your immediate relationships of family or go deeper ancestrally/past life or even just characteristics of being male+human, or a combination of the two so to say.

[Mu_]

@Shmurda   Oh another semi common one is sexual or war trauma.  These would fall under Deep Trauma's for many.

[ardacigin]

19 hours ago, fi1ghtclub said:

Hey man! This is great.

Just a question

How long have been you meditating for and since when did you start accessing jhanas

Also, what's your current meditation experience and do you follow a schedule for it?

Glad to answer your questions @fi1ghtclub

I've been meditating for 5 years. I've started accessing jhanas a year ago.

My current meditation experience is one of effortlessly stabilized attention to the sensation of joy with an expanded awareness of the body and mind. 

In a formal sit, I go deeper from this baseline, bask in silence and strengthen attention and awareness to investigate my conscious experience. I meditate at least 2 hours every day.

In daily life, I stabilize attention to equanimity and joy continuously in each moment (while in movement as well) and expand extrospective awareness when my eyes are open. 

Hope this helps

Much love,

[Raptorsin7]

@ardacigin

7 hours ago, ardacigin said:

In daily life, I stabilize attention to equanimity and joy continuously in each moment (while in movement as well) and expand extrospective awareness when my eyes are open. 

How long did it take you to reach this place?

Do you think this level of attention and equanimity can be reached through just long hours of meditation, or do you think what's going on in a person's life like relationships, career, maturity etc could impact their ability to achieve this state?

Achieving stable equanimity and joy throughout the day sounds like a blessing, and if you could do that virtually all day that's incredible, but i wonder if your ability to achieve that is based on the fact that you are at a certain level developmentally, like the fact you managed to start a successful business.

[ardacigin]

53 minutes ago, Raptorsin7 said:

@ardacigin

How long did it take you to reach this place?

Do you think this level of attention and equanimity can be reached through just long hours of meditation, or do you think what's going on in a person's life like relationships, career, maturity etc could impact their ability to achieve this state?

Achieving stable equanimity and joy throughout the day sounds like a blessing, and if you could do that virtually all day that's incredible, but i wonder if your ability to achieve that is based on the fact that you are at a certain level developmentally, like the fact you managed to start a successful business.

Well, this was a result of my practice. I did do a 4-hour straight non-interrupted meditation a year ago (not strong determination sitting) and that night, the joy has appeared out of nowhere.

At the time prior to this, I wasn't depressed per se, but I certainly wasn't happy or content with my life. I often had negative thoughts about myself, life and others. 

But after this change, there were some significantly stressful moments in my life where this joy was still present in full force. 

What is true is that if this internally cultivated equanimity is not utilized in daily life consistently, you can lose some of the effortlessness, mindfulness and equanimity that this practice brings.

But this is not at all because of external pressures, but due to lack of internal cultivation and mindfulness. Now, if the external pressure becomes something like physical torture, permanent awakening would be needed to see through the nature of these sensations consistently. But this is an extreme example. Samatha is still very resilient for almost any 'stressful' label we ascribe to circumstances in life.

Maintaining this state of mind entire day gives you other advantages as well. Mindfulness and stable attention develop to advanced levels if you can do this from the moment you wake up to going to sleep. 

The mindfulness here refers to mindfulness of emotional states, craving, thoughts, intentions and self-clinging that arises in each moment. This skill develops extremely quickly once you do this absorption with joy. 

And it is a requirement to develop this sort of mindfulness. You might think the mind is already craving for joy so focusing on it for hours must be easy, right?

Well, it is easy in a sense in formal sits but in daily life, there are too much variables that intervenes. If you want to stabilize attention to joy even in these circumstances for long hours uninterruptedly, very strong mindfulness is needed. Not only that but your mind also needs to be habituated to joy and pleasant sensations. This is what jhana practice does in a nutshell. It develops these physical pathways in the brain.

By doing this process, this also builds mindfulness to that strong level. So it is positive feedback loop. You can't maintain this state of mind in each moment unless you have very strong mindfulness. (even if it is pleasant sensations). But to have this mindfulness, it is a useful strategy to stabilize attention to joy in each moment.

You can also do the same with breath sensations. But it requires even more skill and mindfulness to do this process to neutral sensations. But anything is possible if the metacognitive awareness and body awareness is strong. You can literally pick any object of attention.

To get to this point, jhana practice where you focus on the breath first, (TMI style) and then to joy (jhana path) is the most effective strategy I've experienced so far.

Or in my case, it can happen just by doing TMI breath meditation. So the key is to do this process for long hours and then let the mind go to places it wants to explore.

Hope this helps. Feel free to ask for clarification. 

Much love,

 

 

 

Edited August 19, 2020 by ardacigin

[cobalto]

For me a deep trauma is that my father, who was the soul of the house, left home when I was 9 and that when I saw him again after a year he insulted me, showed me displeasure and contempt, and did it also with my mother, whenever I saw her or saw me until he died. I imagine it was a kind of defense, like: I had to leave because you are garbage, not that I am garbage for leaving. How could I overcome hatred and rage? (I was burning on hate and rage for some years) first, fighting and making my way, second, discovering that any trauma, any mental pain, is a thing of the ego. it's not real when you stop being an ego. it just doesn't exist. I don't feel hatred or resentment or anything, really my most usual feeling is happiness. I am only surprised by the behavior my father had, but it slipped through my mind. belongs to another dimension. Really it surprised me, but it's real. That trauma was a egoic construction. The pain was real when it happened, but the remembering is a trick of the ego. Really was a trick of the ego even when it happened. In fact, it's the reason because I must stop being an ego, because my father gave me the gift of a disfunctional ego, if not I'm sure I could live with my ego like a stupid until my death. Writing this for first time in my life I think: thanks father, and I think it totally sincerely for first time in my life, he gave me the key of the freedom

Edited August 20, 2020 by cobalto

[ardacigin]

On 18.08.2020 at 4:51 PM, Mu_ said:

@ardacigin  Congrats, but just out of curiosity, did it just take one time to see through this and it passed?  If so congrats.  Then again, I wouldn't call that deep trauma, perhaps very light trauma.  Not trying to diminish anything your saying, but deep trauma is a whole other ball game and will shake you to your core and working though such matters will test you greatly, if not make you question your foundational core and everything you think you know and have learned.  All your insight and meditation skills will be tested and probably fail to some degree and IF your sanity hasn't been tested and perhaps tested over periods of time far greater then you would ever like it to be (perhas days, months, even years), I wouldn't use the words deep trauma.  I'd wish it on no one, but in retrospect having gone through a few myself, I can say it can defiantly strengthen you and put some things into perspective.

Ah Yes. That is correct. I meant deep in the sense that a trauma rising from the unconscious blind spots in your psyche. Not in terms of intensity or extremity of the content of the experience. In that case, this is surely a micro trauma.

Not all of us had extreme traumas but we all have these micro-traumas so they can all subtly add up to equate enormous levels of subliminal suffering. Subtle is significant. 

Much love,

Edited August 20, 2020 by ardacigin

[cobalto]

25 minutes ago, ardacigin said:

Ah Yes. That is correct. I meant deep in the sense that a trauma rising from the unconscious blind spots in your psyche. Not in terms of intensity or extremity of the content of the experience. In that case, this is surely a micro trauma.

Not all of us had extreme traumas but we all have these micro-traumas so they can all subtly add up to equate enormous levels of subliminal suffering. Subtle is significant. 

Much love,

You re right , my trauma was in the surface so wasn't deep trauma, now I see the difference between deep and intense... interesting

[ardacigin]

On 20.08.2020 at 4:16 PM, cobalto said:

You re right , my trauma was in the surface so wasn't deep trauma, now I see the difference between deep and intense... interesting

Yes. Try to be aware of mental reactions in daily life that you intuit originates from these traumas. This often express itself in some form in conscious awareness. 

The first step is to be aware of these mental reactions. 

The second is to continuously maintain mindfulness of mental states so that you can break the cycle before the trauma's side effect kicks in.

In formal sits, as you go deeper, the trauma is seen through as it is with the insights you have.

The process of healing starts to occur.