Healing our childhood wounding is not so easy when we are constantly surrounded by messages like…everything is perfect…there is no separation…focusing on our negative emotions too much creates more suffering…you are the Creator…”you” are not real…you are just a story…
In no way am I saying that neither of these are true or aren’t another’s experience; to be honest I have had moments of experiencing the perfection in everything, the sense of there being no separation, going down the rabbit hole of negative emotion, being the Creator, and realising the illusion of a false identity and seeing myself as just a character in a story. I have also had moments where I have not. What I feel is missing from our society today is the inclusion of both.
What someone’s truth might be may not be true for another. While we may be multidimensional beings existing as many different layers, we have the capacity to only experience certain layers of being and not others, but this doesn’t mean they don’t exist. For example: realising ourselves as awareness itself is a crucial step in the awakening journey, but that is only one layer of our being; we also still exist as all the other layers, and some of those layers contain unresolved trauma.
To put it bluntly, the only way to heal trauma is to deal with the trauma itself. No amount of awareness or just adopting the perspective of the Creator is going to make it magically disappear. I know people who can live most of the time feeling good, with no sense of separation, and perhaps this is enough for them, who knows? The kind of people who believe they have no trauma or have completely transcended it are not the kind to openly admit or talk about it when they do.
The only way awareness can have a true, lasting effect on trauma is by focusing on the trauma itself. Pure consciousness is the ultimate healing ingredient for trauma and integration. It is what was missing when the trauma was created in the first place, causing us to “split off” from this aspect of ourselves and remain in separation with it. Fragmentation is nothing more than our consciousness splitting off, leaving us feeling incomplete or not whole.
Trauma occurs in childhood. When something happens that causes us pain and there isn’t anyone around to help us process that pain, we have no choice but to disassociate from it, therefore pushing it away. A false sense of self is then created to cope with this pain and protect ourselves from others and the world. This sense of self keeps the unwanted, vulnerable self safe.
This is not a bad thing, and when we come to recognise that our “ego” is nothing more than a coping mechanism built to keep us safe, we can find some appreciation for it, rather than trying to bring it down, ignore it, treat it as unreal, transcend it, or get rid of it. Doing any of these only strengthens this false sense of self and causes it to fight for its own survival. Trauma healing is not about getting rid of this part, it’s about bringing it closer to the part of us in pain, that wants to come back into wholeness.
Emotional pain is this fragmented self calling out for awareness and acceptance. When people believe that trauma work or emotional healing is too depressing or dark, it is likely because they have resistance to negative emotion. Having resistance to negative emotions is having resistance to the part of us that wants to be acknowledged and belong. We can imagine these fragmented selves (and there are many) as small children. If the trauma that occurred was a parent leaving at the age of 4, then this 4 year old won’t grow up with the rest of us; it’s like only living with part of our consciousness instead of all of it. While consciousness is not limited or can ever run out, we can cut off from it, like rivers or streams cutting off from the ocean. We can only have access to some of it, unless we allow these split off parts of us to come back into our awareness and embodiment.
Many people state that the soul, or consciousness cannot be harmed, and I don’t agree. From the perspective of Source, the only way to know itself is through experience, and the environment can affect and give rise to experience in this way. The only way all of our fragmented parts can come back into harmony and union is by working with these parts, AND the parts of us that play the role of “protector.” Often times it’s this protector, or false sense of self keeping the essence of who we are (the vulnerable parts feeling negative emotion) separate.
This is where polarity stems from. For every part of us that feels brave, confident, blissful and perfect, there is a part of us that does not. It can feel like two opposites at war with each other within ourselves – one wants and needs this…the other wants and needs that. Wants and needs are inherent to our being, we cannot escape either. I believe the way forward is to treat each aspect of ourselves as valid, real and true, and create harmony and agreement between them. Just as we would hold space for our children to come to a mutual agreement that allows them to work together and feel connected, we would do that with any opposing parts in ourselves. We would let them both be seen, heard, felt, and understood, and come together in agreement and connection.
This is why we perceive conflict in our world today and with each other. Conflict resolution is not going to be about one person winning over the other, or finding balance between two opposing sides; it’s going to be about the willingness to meet each other’s needs and come into union. Meeting another person’s needs is no different than meeting other “selves'” needs. Others are just reflections of the parts of us that we have pushed away. These are not only negative parts, they are positive parts too. Attraction to another is attraction to the suppressed parts of us wanting to return to wholeness, that’s why it feels so good. We experience the oneness of these two coming together with another, and later discover we don’t want to acknowledge them or their pain. And so we once again separate from them and see them as the problem.
Taking the time to spend time with our painful parts and feeling them is the only way to eventually close this gap. We not only experience the gap between our physical and non-physical perspectives (lower self and higher self), but also between the fragmented parts within us. This is why people appear to have multiple personalities or many different “masks,” because we do! We can only have a few splits within us, or several. It will depend on how much or the intensity of trauma experienced in childhood. Everything I speak here is from my own direct experience.
There are several ways to begin working with these fragments. Just becoming aware of any splits we may have is a huge step. We can notice this when we feel a pull in us between two parts or things. When a part of us really wants connection, but another part wants to be alone…when a part of us wants to give up our job to paint, but another part of us thinks we need money instead…when a part of us wants to travel the world, but another part of us wants stability and consistency…when a part of us wants to show up, be important, recognised, and loved, and a part of us wants to hide, run away, and be no-one…when a part of us wants to change and be different, and another part wants to be accepted exactly for who they are.
We have the ability to project our consciousness into any part of ourselves. We can choose to become the part of us who is afraid and ask it what it needs and how it feels. We can also do this with the brave part of us too. We can go back and forth, becoming each part until both have expressed themselves fully and understood each other – understanding being key here to resolution. It is important also to recognise that there is also a part of us who is neutral. To be able to step back and contain the awareness of both parts of us, we need to view from a neutral, unidentified standpoint. This “I” is what is holding space for any fragmentation to merge. When two fragmented aspects come into a place of understanding and agreement, they become one again and part of the whole.
Mediation practices are also a good way to merge fragmentation. Trauma is stored in the tissues of the body, and can be felt as physical and emotional pain. By not only being aware of these sensations, but actually becoming them (projecting our consciousness into) them allows them to shift and change. There is a peak in activity and then a feeling of unification and wholeness. This is what I mean when I am referring to “integration” and “embodiment,” the bringing of these aspects back into the body from a disassociated place. They are no longer separated parts of ourselves, they belong with us as us.
I feel it is really important to have someone working with us when we are not familiar with these processes. There are many teachers, healers and guides available and passionate about this kind of trauma healing. To me, the most helpful teachers in our society are not those who help us get to where we want to be by positively focusing and telling us we can, but by helping us work with what is keeping us from it. Once we work with this, moving forward is inevitable (it’s inevitable anyway), but we naturally get on board with the momentum and are taken to where we want to be; there’s no-one stopping the flow.
Maybe there is no separation. Maybe this is all a dream. But in my experience I cannot get to such realisations by skipping over the process of healing fragmentation. Otherwise these are just concepts I am throwing around. This to me is a real hindrance to healing in today’s society. Getting further away from our pain and childhood trauma is not going to help, it will only create it to further split and cause suffering. The message we don’t need to be giving people is that their reality is just an illusion; the message we need to give is that we see, hear, feel, and understand them, right where they are. This is true intimacy.
This present awareness is the healing ingredient and what has been missing our whole lives. This is the mirroring we so desperately craved in childhood. The more we move away from each others’ reality and invalidate it, the more we are keeping these splits in place, both in others and ourselves. We need to include others as a part of ourselves and take their reality as our own. And we need to do this with ourselves. This is how we close the gaps.
With love,
Leisa
Leisa Coleman 