As I think about it, the ability to create psychological numbness is an important protector of our sanity. It enables a sort of circuit breaker, after which you stop processing. The down side is that you lose a part of your consciousness, your ability to be emotionally present. The upside, though, is that you can keep going without killing yourself.
Here is the point I wanted to make, though, my ability, now, to access these layers is entirely dependent upon my complete confidence that there is an out, that there is an end, that at some point, if I only keep moving, only keep doing these exercises in a reflective and interactive, focused way, that my pain will end.
And I would generalize this. I would submit as a general principle that the only way we can begin to process trauma is if we can see an end to the process. It helps working with people who have endured something similar, and worked their way out of it. They are models of what is possible. This is why it is so helpful for fellow survivors of your trauma to be with you.
And this is the genius of the Buddha’s Fourfold Path, which states not just that “there is a problem”, but that “I have a solution, and here it is”.
Part of the problem of “Modernity”–which we might usefully define as “the disintegration of effective moral discourse through sloppy thinking and flawed models of reality”–is that it is stated over and over and over that “there is a problem”. The essence of Existentialism is stating that there is a problem, then asserting there is no solution. Angst is authenticity. Not very attractive.
Effectively, this has meant that we have created an emotional crisis, then denied a way out. No exit. This can ONLY lead to, what? Numbness. Moral and psychological numbness. Making our present realities uglier, less rich.
This is the root, psychologically, of Cultural Sadeism. I am certain of it.
But there IS a way out. All of my work points to it. Ontologically, in how we “are”, the solution is in my view Kum Nye, perhaps with occasional Holotropic Breathwork sessions.
Cognitively, the answer is Goodness. I have outlined what I view as a solid philosophical treatment of it, which I believe is internally consistent, useful, and not contradicted by any part of reality of which I am aware.
Scientifically, we have to integrate the empirical fact that reality is much more complex that solid bits of matter interacting with one another. We are connected as spirits in intimate ways with the visible world, and our souls survive the deaths of the transportation vehicles that are our bodies.
Environmentally, we could put every man, woman and child on Earth into a house with a yard, and fit them in Texas. The Neo-Malthusians, the Neo-Hysterians, have lied about the extent of the dangers we face. There is no global warming, or at least no man-made global warming. Resources are not running out. We are not in danger of mass starvation.
The people who created the panic NEED a crisis in order to justify their existences. Again, they are in inward pain which forces them emotionally into numbness, which is manifested by abstractions which have as their outward aim the remediation of some alleged problem, and which function internally, in emotional reality, as vehicles for cruelty, which I have said many times is a sort of outsourcing of pain. If you cannot feel your own, you seek it in others.
All of our problems, individually and collectively, have good solutions. All of them.