About Trauma, Therapy and
Tantric Trauma Therapy
Hi William. I went back to your first message to get a better understanding where you're coming from as you mention "psychological problems". You wrote,
"1) are you seeing a therapist? Do it if you are not. 2) This may be related to early life issues, so they may overlap. You have to feel them, but do feel them in the wisest way. It will take time-- feel your body and breath. 3) This is your work as a human, it sucks that it doesn't immediately go away, but this is what you have to work with."
So you are talking about trauma, right? You also say,
"Natural State is apart from us, we are it and it makes up the essence of the issues we have. But in of itself--it will not cure all our psychological problems".
I see where you're coming from and in most cases I agree with you that recognition of the natural state may not heal emotional trauma, just like it won't effect a full release of karmic tendencies (full enlightenment) but the methods vary greatly.
The natural state can be viewed in the context of trauma therapy. I know from my own teaching and practice experience. Traumas vary, some have big some small traumas, but for example when talking about human related trauma, the tantric meditational practice of applying the pure view to 1) oneself and 2) to those people who caused the trauma, maybe parents for example, is a very effective trauma healing.
Here you can find a simplified and secularised form of this exercise presented by Daniel Brown, mahamudra teacher: https://youtu.be/z2au4jtL0O4
As a dzogchen practitioner, you can probably see that he is applying pure view to one's parents.
On the same breath I would like to present this quote from Gary Van Warmerdam,from https://pathwaytohappiness.com/blog/podcast/66-trauma-symptoms-and-treatments/
"You may have been trying to change your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors through certain modalities of talk therapy or self help programs or meditation/mindfulness, and those are going to be ineffective if you have a trauma history. And surprisingly a lot of people have a lot more trauma history than just a small percentage. And so If you’ve been struggling with making changing in your thought process and negative thinking and emotional state and depression/anxiety, there may be other causes to that that need to be addressed in different ways. Because, if you have trauma in your history, talk therapy is not going to work; the general approaches of therapy don’t work; some do; but there are specific treatments for trauma that are effective. So if you have that as a source of these emotional, negative thinking and behavior patterns, to get the right tool to get to the source of the problem is what I’m hoping to convey. Someone that is working through a trauma history needs to do practices that address the nervous system more directly. Effects from trauma can lead to symptoms that look like ADHD, anger issues, anxiety/panic attacks, depression, OCD, strong self judgment, bipolar, anything that’s labeled with a disorder after it is often the result of trauma. People try to solve these issues or talk about theses issues, but they are not getting to the source of what is happening in the brain and nervous system so they end of going around in circles, not really solving it. You need a different tool set to solve this...[for example,] with sexual abuse, when triggered, your thinking is not going to solve it, your mindfulness meditation exercises aren't going to solve it, because what you do with your conscious awareness attention does not get deep enough into the layers to address these primal protective functions. You can't think your way out of overriding the limbic system. That's why there's very specific treatments for trauma.” - Gary Van Warmerdam
There are lots of pscyhologists and psychotherapists saying that talking therapies in many cases are ineffective and can cause retraumatisation.
So, when saying that the natural state doesn't heal one's emotional traumas, based on my experience, I disagree, but it is all about the application and context.
In case if you're interested in this I suggest you find a FB group called Pemako Buddhism.com. There will be some guided videos published about the Tantric Trauma Therapy that I mention, free of charge.
Kim
