For those struggling in the dark of trauma

I wrote this post a few weeks ago after the lunar eclipse..

I felt a lot of darkness and rage come up around the time of the Lunar Eclipse an hour ago, a lot of it was directed at my father who blocked me and then died.. this eclipse aspected key connections between both our charts and squared my natal Pluto in the first house.. Those with Pluto in the first go through a lot of tense experiences that threaten survival on some level, maybe my Dad too was fighting to build a new life out of seeds of loss or uprooting having had to leave behind the land of his birth shortly before Nazi occupation. He had strong Venus Chiron Pluto energies which shows his sense of value and security was also under threat.

Putting some of that intense pain aside which I feel has passed on, after the Full Moon gave me a good look at it I wanted to write something for those who struggle with intense pain and anger left from severe abuse.. A valued follower who went through horrendous abuse just left a comment saying he really struggles to understand how God can allow such hurtful things to happen. My view is creation has a dark side and if humans were created we also have the choice to fall away from love, and maybe for some this falling into a state of vengeful darkness may not even a completely conscious choice, rather what happens to the tender part of them when it gets obliterated or destroyed or filled with a rage and hatred they only wish to displace onto others. Or perhaps this sense is carried along the ancestral line or from past soul experiences.. Maybe in this life we are being challenged as to what choice we will make.

It may also be a soul lesson for us in terms of finding the love and deeper acceptance within which gives us the resilience to move on. That said many of us who are traumatised do not turn into abusers, no matter how traumatised we are but such violent trauma may leave a lot of anger as a stored up charge that can be displaced or re-triggered

I sometimes also wonder, is there something inside an individual spirit that makes them more prone to violence or to abuse others?. I do not know just that it is something James Hillman explores in the chapter of his book The Soul’s Code to do with the bad seed. My purpose in writing this, though is not to address that concept but to ask how we can work not to be as overshadowed by the dark, by the hurt, by the pain, by the frustration and other intense feelings generated in the face of powerlessness by the overpowering embedded legacy left by difficult trauma which means it can posses our body in such a way (and believe me, such a violent way, that it causes symptoms way beyond any kind of conscious or mental control,)

Thoughts do drive the way we react though and how much of our trauma story we can keep replaying at a conscious level. We also have the choice in the middle of a flashback to notice it and to stop some of the dialogue that goes on with it and to practice self calming or self soothing..it is not easy to do but last night awake at 5 am I managed to do it by reminding my traumatised self I was safe and not under threat My earlier outburst with my sister was necessary but it obviously triggered a lot I had repressed. it came from a lot of pent up feelings I had been holding in for a long time.. in trying to be there for others on the back of my own trauma made worse by their own unwillingness to validate my own.

Sadly for some of us, coming to peace is so huge and seemingly impossible too, but it can be done. It may take us some time to get there.. We need to find a way to honor the pain and yet not allow the darkness to eclipse us so totally that we get stuck in that dark place with the pain of trauma endlessly replaying on an ongoing resonate feedback loop or via repetition compulsion. When we have the pain triggered again as Eckhart Tolle points out that is the time to best bring an attitude of loving presence to it.. We can in the words of Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh learn to hold the feelings tenderly like a small baby in need of our help and we can choose which seeds to water and what wolf to feed. On any day we really do have a choice.