Emptiness, Darkness and PTSD II

[Hakuin Suso]

I wrote in Emptiness, Darkness and PTSD (Sept. 17, 2011) that "each of
us is aware to one extent or another of a something in our unconscious
that is dark and empty," with the meaning that the "something" is
actually our own unrecognized Self buried in the unconscious as the
ego and personality developed. I also suggested that in a traumatic
life and death situation the buried Self is brought closer to ego-
consciousness. This, I contend, would be a gradual process in an
extended illness leading to death but in a traumatic situation would
be accelerated to, in some instances, a matter of minutes.

The late Elisabeth Kübler Ross in her 1969 book, "The Five Stages of
Grief" identified five stages of death faced by those with terminal
illness: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Ross
stated that some stages may not be experienced but some may be gone
through over and over, and that some people may get stuck in a stage.
I likewise contend that individuals undergoing trauma may get stuck in
the unconscious process of “meeting Self” as death potentially nears,
and may experience Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder with the Self having
become unconsciously identified with death.

When Self is identified with or, rather, as death an individual enters
the impossible situation of trying to instinctively avoid his or her
own Self. This is denial, the hallmark of PTSD, in its ultimate sense
and has its parallel on the biological level.

You may recall in the previous post I referred to Peter A. Levine’s
“Waking the Tiger: healing trauma” wherein he postulates that the
brain responds to traumatic situations from which it can neither
retreat nor confront by freezing, or shutting down the body, in an
attempt to “play dead”. Although a person may report after a trauma
that they “decided” to play dead, the processes involved are entirely
autonomic. The autonomic process involves the near complete
suppression of bodily activities and, in effect, is a denial through
suppression of the life forces of an individual.

On both an unconscious level and a biological level we see then that
severe or extended trauma involves a denial of Self and a denial of
one’s life energies. When it results in PTSD the individual
unconsciously believes any action, for or against, will ultimately
lead to a very unpleasant outcome. This is a result of the
neurobiological processes involved in freezing the body’s systems that
act to continually alert the individual that action, being noticed,
standing out, or any such similar activity, is dangerous. And, as
mentioned, this is coupled with the belief that at the core of one’s
being lie the darkness and emptiness of death, which is what the Self
has come to be identified as. When this happens the individual is
impelled to create a new self-image that ultimately is entirely at
odds with his or her real nature.

What’s interesting about PTSD is that part of its healing lies in
taking action that is similar to what we must do when trying to attain
Recognition.

One of the first steps in recovering from PTSD is identifying one’s
own thoughts as untrue and not representative of the real world. As a
meditator we also may start by identifying thoughts as “just thoughts”
and in our studies of metaphysics we learn that our concepts of
Reality are untrue (no matter how functional they make us in the
physical world). But what is not so easy to realize by either the
PTSD sufferer or the meditator is that one’s own self-image, what we
feel to be our self, is also just thoughts and concepts not
representative of who and what we truly are. And it is oddly true
that where the PTSD sufferer has come to believe his or her own Self
is associated with death and so wishes to avoid It. So, too, do we
find that coming to know Self means the death of our self-image. And
if we cling too tightly to that image, we will never attain
Recognition.

[berlake]

Master Hakuin,

Thanks for your thoughts. This is an area in which I am intensely
interested, but don't have a lot of time these days to post... But I
wanted to share something with you which I think may intersect nicely
with your research.

The following links are to two separate papers written by an
Australian (ex-pat Brit) who "died" after eating poisoned candy and
when rescusitated awoke "enlightened." The significance of the deep,
deep relaxation which the drugging may have induced prior to his
"dying" (it was morphine laced with cocaine) is not discussed, but I
sense it may have played a role. Nonetheless, his description of the
state he awoke to is pretty convincing ("Infinite Aliveness" with no
separation or "selfness" inherent in it; "Eternity Consciousness";
"The Dazzling Dark" and so on), and his ideas about "getting there"
are iconoclastic in the most positive sense of the word.

He seems to agree that the survival instinct, due to consciousness-in-
ignorance being invested, as it generally is, in the personal self, is
in a kind of overdrive. This means that we are unaware of the Ground
upon which we all stand: the ground of Unconditioned Consciousness. He
seemed to believe that overriding our (misplaced) fear of annihilation
is the real task at hand, and saw most spiritual paths as leading away
from the Goal.

Anyway, whether or not you ultimately agree, I think you may find his
articles stimulating. I hope so, at least!

http://www.capacitie.org/wren/Dazzling%20Dark.PDF

http://www.capacitie.org/wren/Unblocking%20a%20Malfunction.pdf

You can find more here: http://www.capacitie.org/wren/archive.htm