Ground-work for De-escalating Trauma and Re-Orienting life towards Desire.

Human suffering as I understand it is accompanied by a subjective disorientation.

For simplicity and coherence, this is best viewed from the subject that is I. In suffering, the ‘I’ doesn’t have a clear sense of itself, or

• what is happening or why it is happening;
• if a solution is possible for ‘me’ at all – (it may be possible for others but not for me);
• where to begin to move toward solutions if they are possible for ‘me’;
• feels exhaustion (despair) at the prospect of the difficulty of such a movement.

In human experience, we can often go through a great deal of exertion, strain, pain and hardship but not necessarily experience ourselves as suffering. As I have come to understand it, suffering has the quality of being in some way ‘intolerable’, a feeling of imposed on the subject, the ‘I’ against their will or consent.

There may be many questions arising from this, but first let’s be clear about the kinds of ways forward that in my experience can actually make it easier for us to find and to actually make movements in the ‘right direction’.

Cultivating the soil for lasting transformation – some basic recommendations:

• Meditative practice – A few minutes a day of some form of daily breathing meditation, whatever other treatments are sought, is beneficial for physical and mental wellbeing.
  • Meditation here is understood as resting in stillness, focus on the breath and defocus on language (voice) based thinking. (de-focus on meaning)
  • As language-based thinking rests, this allows inspiration to inform experience in new ways.
• Some Links for Isha Meditative Practices:
  • Isha Kriya is available online. Daily practice 15 minutes.
  • In-person Isha programmes:
    • Inner Engineering
    • Shambavi Mahamudra – twice daily practice 21 minutes plus warm-up stretches. Realignment of mind, body, energy and emotions
    • Bhava Spandana – an experience of life from another perspective.
    • Shoonya Kriya – 15 minutes twice daily practice – cultivating stillness.
    • Shakti Chalana Kriya – energising, self-healing
    • Sathsangs occur regularly in many cities.

Facilitating Perceptual shifts, without content:

• www.Jigzone.com –  online jigsaw puzzles – Free. Helpful for giving structure to thinking, especially before study. For further study resources see Preparation for Study page on http://www.Access-1st.co.uk
• ROMBipuzzle – A wooden block puzzle custom-designed for laying the ground for perceptual shifts through structured handplay, which gives thought access to new pathways beyond fields of trauma. Gives the information processing aspects of the mind the structural tools with which to organise information in more coherent ways according to desire. See blog articles on Rombipuzzle website for more details of how this helps.
  • Penny Georgiou – Author of AxisoftheStorm – is Director of the ROMBi Project

Talking Therapies:

Conversation towards clarifying desire, as informed by experience. Trauma raises vital questions. Clarifying where you stand* in relation to your experience is vital for deciding how to respond to the diversities of life now. *Where you stand will be informed by your desire, as the most intimate and, probably, the most inevitable part of you. Your desire in its purest form is life-affirming: it is that which delights you. Discovering what it has in store for you is a vital part of your life’s journey.

Jacques Lacan, Psychoanalyst and Psychiatrist, (see ‘British Psychiatry and the War’ Lacan, (1947) asked, ‘Have you acted in conformity with your desire?’ Lacan met with Wilfred Bion and John Rickman after WWII, British Psychiatrists working with soldiers presenting with shell shock (PTSD). Note the idea of the leaderless group.

It is along this axis of acting in conformity with one’s desire that a human being can be said to be happy. It is on the basis of desire that a human being can find inspired leadership within him/herself and be in a relationship to others that needs no recourse to domination; either as subject or object. The question then arises as to what are the best means of extending awareness to be informed by desire and the capacity to accordingly.

There are certain to be others, but I am mentioning here ones that I have experience of.

The principles are about the movement of thought beyond (improving on the formulation of) current beliefs and ways of thinking that produce distressing emotions. Why? Because however true our thoughts may be, if we were thinking correctly about an experience, it would produce a sense of relief and movement in desired directions, not deepening distress.