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Trauma 2005
Recently I have had a lot of contact with the trauma work of Peter Levine. I like this work very much and I am now in the third year of a three year training to work with people who suffer from trauma. This work is extremely useful and it addresses an issue that no other work that I know of touches in quite the same way. I will talk about the various aspects of the Trauma Healing Work or SE® later in this letter. Here I want to address more how I see this work in the context of my overall work. My work, which has been shaped through the decades by various teachers and disciplines, deals with reconnecting us to who and what we really are. What we loose contact with is out true nature and how much we loose contact with that depends on our childhood and the proclivities with which we come into this world. In order to explore our true nature, to find out how much we still are connected to it and to what degree we have lost this contact, we need to be in touch with our experience. Unresolved trauma and its effect on our nervous system partially inhibits and compromises a direct contact with our essence. If trauma is resolved it will be much easier to delve into our depth, exploring and inquiring into what is there. Those who have worked with me over the years know that before one can get really into this exploration one needs to work on the inner critic. One needs to identify this very debilitating structure and deal with it before ones inner expansion, so often generated by spiritual work, can be more permanent. If one cannot deal with ones judging mechanism on an ongoing basis any inner exploratory work will always be severely limited by the unconscious obeisance to the inner critic agenda, which is to keep you bounded. Another aspect which is very useful before inner work can truly flower is family constellation work. Once we have experienced our own family dynamics in this work it will be much easier to focus on our own unfolding instead of unconsciously acting out some other family members fate. I have to remark though that it is very important to have a very good family constellation facilitator administer this work. Many who are claiming to teach that work are not very good at it and then it can be detrimental to ones process. Then, as I mentioned above personal trauma work is absolutely crucial in order to open to all aspects of our true nature. Unresolved trauma in our process will overshadow our awareness of our spiritual nature and it will be very difficult to go as deep into ones process as one otherwise could if unresolved trauma is present.
Here now a few facts about trauma as taught by Dr. Peter Levine author of the book ÔWaking the TigerÕ
Trauma is considered to be a breach of the nervous system beyond the individuals ability to process the charge and energy created by the traumatic event. A Traumatic event has an impact and the way that impact is effecting a person different from person to person. What for one person is an event with traumatic implications might not be a trauma for another person. We all have different nervous systems that have various strengths depending on our personal constitution and our personal history. People who have experienced trauma frequently usually have a lower tolerance for subsequent traumatic inducing events than people who have had less traumatic events in their lives.
ÔPeter LevineÕ compares trauma to an internal straight jacket created when a devastating moment is frozen in time. It stifles the unfolding of Being, strangling the attempts to move forward with our life. It disconnects us from our Selves, others, nature and spirit. When people are overwhelmed with threat, they are frozen in fear. We are then highly charged without anywhere to go with that energy. Tremendous energy then is mobilized and gets stuck in our body and nervous system. Trauma is created when we perceive that we are in a life threatening situation which we can neither fight nor escape. When we canÕt fight nor flee we freeze, becoming immobile. At the same we are highly charged fearing for our very lives. The freeze is a hard wired protective mechanism of our organism, similar to a circuit braked that shuts off the current to a specific part of the system when it detects overload. In our case though the charge is still there affecting our body, but we have dissociated from it. If this intense energy is not discharged, the way wild animals discharge it naturally, it will create over time all kinds of symptoms in our experience that inhibit and easy and fluid experience of living. Below are some of the symptoms that can arise when the effects of traumatic event are not released.
1 anxiety, panic attacks, hyper vigilance, mania, rage, inability to relax, hyperactivity, headaches and migraines
2 difficulty sleeping
3 pain and constriction any where in the body
4 depression, exhaustion, lethargy, apathy, no energy
5 Feelings of helplessness, overwhelming fear, powerlessness, terror, inadequacy, need to be in control, hyper vigilance; hyper sensitivity to noise, light andmovement, frequent emotional overwhelm and/or a strongly diminished capacity for any kind of excitement.
6 Next to these emotional and physiological symptoms, undigested trauma also creates a spiritual difficulty, namely the loss of trust into a benevolent universe, leaving one feeling isolated and alone in the face of the world and its demands
Sustained and deep contact with our true nature, with who and what we really are, can only be achieved if we are deeply relaxed. The ego/personality is on a physiological level really a set of habitual tensions. Trauma intensifies these tensions and a person who has been traumatized can not really deeply relax. Therefore deep inner spiritual work will be much more difficult to sustain for a traumatized person. Therefore it is very, very beneficial for traumatize people to release their trauma
When trauma has been dealt with it through a technique called Somatic Experiencing or SE®, it will relax the nervous system and restore it to its natural state. Inner spiritual work is then much easier to practice, experience and enjoy.
In the upcoming new Training (see below) part of the work will be work with trauma, next to the continuing exploration of our inner and outer reality. If you feel inspired to come and join it you are welcome.
Sincerely Gawain
2003/4
Dear friends,
What can I tell you about my work and my life which flowers in my work? How can I describe the ecstasy of Being that flows through me from time to time that is so strong that I want to shout it from all roof tops. How can I really share that space in an effective way so that people can meet that experience themselves. It is so deeply fulfilling, so touching and so real that one absolutely wants to share it with the world. Many words that are used in describing group work have become somewhat empty and don't quite connect anymore. So what I want you to know can many be more expressed through a poem that arose within:
Spray
There is a joy growing in my heart,
The joy of feeling the source within,
the flow of spirit in my soul
the ecstasy of living what I really am
I am Flow,
I am River
A fluid stream
Of a deliciously wet,
Shiny,
Sparkly,
Light
Loving
Spray
That right now
Spontaneously
Arises out of a
Deep,
Dark,
Unknown and
Mysterious
Void
If you want to connect with what I share there are two programs that I offer, one in Hawaii and one in Germany.
I also have a new address and E-mail address which you find below. Please make a note of it.
I wish a bright radiance of the heart that will blow your mind in such a way that it never recovers from it.
Gawain
2003
The Soul's Longing!
Dear friends!
There is something in us that is yearning to be alive and wants to express its essence into this world, fully with nothing held back. When we die, the most disappointing truth will be the realization that we havenÕt lived our life fully to the depth of our capacities and abilities, that we have not given all that we can give. This is what we truly want. We donÕt really want to hide our light or save it for a rainy day, we want to give it all, now and now and now and now...until there is nothing left...although this nothing that is left is really so much more than anything we could ever save or hold back or imagine.
What is it that wants to be alive and that withers if it is not supported and seen enough early on in our childhood? What is it in us that never gives up this search even if it seems on the surface we have given up? Do you want to find out what that is? Do you want to find out what canÕt be suppressed in you? Do you want to find out what is always awake and awaits patiently the moment of your conscious participation in your beginning awakening? Do you want to find out? Do you want to live the life you were meant to live?
Why not jump into this adventure, this mystery called our life? Why not give ourselves totally to all that is and lives, why not die into living?This work is an attempt and an approach to let yourself live, let yourself be, let yourself breathe and love and eat and drink this incredible mystery of what it is to be alive. To consciously participate in this great experiment of what it is to be a human being.I myself am on this journey, like all of you who are reading this, like everyone on the planet really (although most don't know this consciously). I love this journey even in its painful moments (or a little after I have moved through those moments). And I invite you to travel with me a little ways on the path so that we may share the treasures, the love, the pain, the hope, the desperation, the bliss and the ecstasy together.
In the program section you will find the current program. Much hasn't been scheduled yet but will be within the next months. Some of the new things to come are the "Ecstatic Dance Events" and a new ongoing group called "Journeys into Being." I will be teaching a session during the Wesak-Festival between the 17th and 18th of May 2003 in Southern Germany. Check out their web site at www.wesak.de
So please check in from time to time to find out what going on.
With love, Gawain
2002
Rumors of a True Life!
Dear friends!
What lives in us? What actually is this: aliveness? What fills us with wild abandon, incredible joy, deep passion, with intense inner strength and black peace? What is this secret that children often unconsciously manifest? What happens to this wonderful aliveness as we grow up? Most of us loose this energy, this enlivening, intoxicating, expanding and blissful energy. What has happened to it? What happens to almost everybody as they grow older. Why do people seem often more unhappy and sad as they age? Why is there often more suffering in adults than in young children?
The cynics might say: This is how life is. The world is bad and unjust. There is just no love in the world. It is a jungle out there.Get what you can. People just use each other. Other peopleÕs solution to the disappearance of their fulness and innate joy and love is to withdraw and hide from life. They want to protect themselves from harm that seems to come from the world. Thereby they limit their aliveness and energy and live a reduced life that lacks vitality and energy and is dominated by fear. Others again might hide in naiveté and pretend everything is OK with the world and themselves. They donÕt want to see their own pain as well as the pain of others and in this way exhibit a false sense of OK-ness which makes them shallow and superficial. Others again want to defeat the world and try to become a grandiose hero/warrior, pretend to be invulnerable to the world and fight it with the slogan: If anyone is going to be a winner and end up on top it is going to be me. In this way the true strength of Being is being copied by the brittle strength of the ego which will begin to fail when the body starts to age and once energy starts to weaken (There are many more strategies in how the ego/personality copes with the loss of contact of the Real which can be studied with the help of the Enneagram).
In any case in this way most of us save themselves from the realization of the loss of our True Nature and its qualities of love, joy, openness, strength, will, compassion, truth, intelligence, clarity and passion, to just name a few of the qualities of Being, into some sort of blindness and numbness. And since this happens mostly unconsciously, we are cut off from our true nature and mostly donÕt even know it. WhatÕs left is a vague ache in our souls.
This vague ache, this faint rumor of a true life, arises stronger in some of us than in others. But almost everyone has heard of the rumor in some way or another. This rumor of a True Life. Most people try to get into contact with what is Real by trying to amass great wealth, a good relationship, safety and security in various ways, a good job etc., etc. But that does connect us to what is Real only in a marginal way, if at all. But the rumor stays in our heart, in our subconscious and from time to time its murmuring gets louder. If once this rumor breaks through into our experience as an act of grace, for example through a deep experience of love, or of pleasure or through a deep stillness that silences our busy mind, our curiosity might awaken and so might our longing. If that happens intensely enough we might start the search, the search for what was lost, the search for the lost paradise, the search for the land of milk and honey, to use a biblical analogy. That can be the beginning of the conscious journey back Home, to God, to Essence, to Existence or however we might want to call this mystery. Millions upon millions of human being throughout the ages have gone on this journey before us and they left traces, tracks that can remind and encourage us, sometimes softly sometimes strongly and vehemently, to go on this journey and continue it. When we start to be really committed to this journey, to the path, then these rumors of a Real Life will start to become more and more a palpable direct experience, a direct contact with our True Nature. Then we start to feel the Real within us as our inner strength, or joy, or love or ecstasy only to to loose contact with it after a while again.
This coming and going of the True Contact is a common experience of people on the path. But we can then use the memory of the contact to redouble our efforts to re-find it, to feel and sense it again. These first conscious contacts with the Real in our soul then can start to open us to stronger and wilder rumors and keep us on the path. When we continue on the path, sooner or later I have heard it say, we will start to take up our residence in what the Sufis call Ôthe Land of TruthÕ. Then all the rumors are at an end and we know who what we really are beyond any doubt. This knowledge brings with it a deep peace and relaxation that dissolves all of our suffering, all of our striving, fighting and searching, all our longing and hoping into the deep black Mystery of Being.
I know that this story might sound to many of us like a fairy tale. In the beginning it is a fairy tale, an ancient rumor. But it is a rumor that can change our lives when we allow it to touch us deeply enough I have been on this path for more then 20 years and although I still live a fair amount of time in the land of the personality and ego, I have been touched enough, been infected enough by this rumor of the True Life to have made it the most important part of my life. This inner call is what moves my life now more than anything else and I invite you also to listen to this inner call of your soul, to follow your own inner rumor, this rumor into Life so that we together can walk the path towards the fulfillment of our Being.
Personally I want to tell you that since of August of last year I live on Maui, Hawaii. This is a great place for me and my unfoldment. It is beautiful to be surrounded by thousands of miles of ocean, feel the deep stillness, see the dark, clear sky and sparkling stars at night, feel the volcanic energies of the Fire Goddess Pele, the intense forces of the ocean with its mega waves, the strong wind that blows here many hours a day, the waterfalls and ponds and so on. This is very helpful for my development. It opens me up to the essential emptiness of Being and a deeper contact with what is essential. My love for this place inspired me to lead a group here next February. For more in this see the current group schedule.
I also want to clarify something that might be unclear to some of you. For many years now I am a student of the Diamond Heart Approach, the Ridhwan School, and I am being trained to teach this work. That doesnÕt mean that I am already teaching it. I am not and although my work is strongly affected by the Work there is a big difference. I love this work more than anything, can highly recommend it and those who want to connect with it should contact in Germany: Gary Kaufhold at 0049/441/8859237. He can tell you more about how to connect with the work. In the U.S. you can call the Ridhwan School office at 1 (510) 841-1283.
I wish you the best and hope to see you on the path and send you my love.
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