Surviving Trauma School Earth

A Practical Guide to Emotional
Survival on the Earth Plane

By: Brent M. Baum, STB, SSL, CADC, LISAC, CCH

Published by Healing Dimensions ACC

Printed by West Press

Tucson, Arizona

Surviving Trauma School Earth

A Practical Guide to Emotional Survival
on the Earth Plane

First published in 2013 by Healing Dimensions ACC.

Copyright © 2013 by Brent M. Baum. All Rights Reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief reviews may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the written permission from Healing Dimensions ACC. Reviewers may quote brief passages. This text is not intended as a substitute for appropriate medical or psychiatric care.

All essential features, including names have been altered to respect and protect the confidentiality of clients.

Edited by: Antoinette Kleinpeter
Cover Production and Layout by: Louisa Albrecht

Manufacture by: West Press

Printed in the United States of America

Baum, Brent M.
Surviving trauma school earth
By Brent M. Baum, 1^st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN: 978-0-9661990-7-9

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Services – Permanence of paper for Printed Library Materials Z38.48-1992 (R1997).

This book is dedicated to all
who hold the vision of what is possible,
the emergent generation of practitioners
whose commitment to this new paradigm
of consciousness raises the potential for the
personal and collective healing of trauma.

Among those visionaries was Dorothea
Hover-Kramer, a gifted healer and pioneer in
Energy Psychology, who helped to name, promoted,
and contributed significantly to the delivery of HMR,
and who now advocates for us on the Other Side.

Another “angel in our midst” was
Sister Judian Breitenbach, who founded the
Namaste Center in LaPorte, Indiana, and who
facilitated the introduction of Integrative Wellness
to her community and all who met her.

Sister Rita Coco, who founded the
Grief Recovery Center in Baton Rouge, LA,
and whose presence and wisdom on our annual
retreat was always more than a blessing.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

It sounds like a cliché to say, “This book will revolutionize your life.” The truth is, though, that reading this book could easily have that effect... if you let it.

To expand on that a little, we could say that if you were to read this book carefully and fully assimilate the staggering, mind-bending implications of what Brent Baum is telling you, you could not fail to become a different person; a healthier, calmer, and more integrated YOU within a short time.

Of course, we seldom assimilate the real implications of new, ground-breaking information right away. Information like this is usually such a challenge to our worldview that we can only take in bits at a time.

For instance, I had the privilege of encountering a truly authentic expression of the Asian martial arts for the first time when I was very young. However, when I returned home and began to search for people to teach me, I ran into a wall: very few teachers understood the spiritual, energetic, and subtle dynamics of these arts and no one would or even could teach them. I might as well have settled for boxing lessons! In other words, lots of Westerners had “learned” these arts, but with few exceptions, they had only learned the externals, because they didn’t have anywhere on their mental map of reality to put the more subtle (and more powerful) aspects of these ancient systems.

Cultures move very slowly. Yet our own culture, indeed the “global” culture, now stands on the brink of perhaps the greatest revolution in worldview that has ever taken place on our planet, as science itself is about to bring the long-reigning Newtonian worldview crashing down. In fact, science disproved the main tenets of this worldview nearly a century ago, yet we all act on a daily basis as if nothing has changed – so strong is the collective cultural trance we live in.

Brent touches on one key aspect of this looming revolution in worldview when he notes that, “...never has the collapse of the ‘moral failure’ model been more evident than now in our history.” And the two of us, as priests – Brent in the Roman Catholic Church and myself in the Eastern Orthodox Church – had very similar experiences of watching the abject failure of the “moral failure” model to bring about any deep or lasting transformation in the lives of those who came to us for help.

In a similar way, both of us have had our preconceived views of how the universe works challenged by a veritable mountain of evidence arising from this “new” world of energy healing, an approach that is now coming into its own, as even mainstream medical research institutions come to recognize this as the medicine of the future.

What I most appreciate about Brent’s work is his scientific thoroughness (if you’re looking for a pleasant, new-age timewaster with no substance behind it, believe me, you’re in the wrong place) and his truly holistic approach.

As a modern buzz word, “holistic” is overused, to be sure. But amidst all the brain-centric, body-denying advice so typical of our culture, Brent stands out as someone with a very different message: your body-mind is a single organism, memory and trauma can be lodged anywhere in your body-mind and, in order to heal, you need to work through your physical and energetic bodies.

Is Brent’s information really “new”? Probably not. What is new, however, is his bold restatement, his crystal clear synthesis for the modern age of how the human being is constructed, and our place in this vast and marvellous universe.

For example, when Brent says, “Our goal is simply to restore the flow of consciousness from this distorted, static, conditional state to the unconditional flow of Light and Love that is our true nature and birthright,” it sounds much like the ancient Taoist teaching about how important it is to remove the layers of historical conditioning we all have, so that we can then return to the “natural, pure, innocent mind.”

Or when Brent writes, “I am referring to the capacity to separate the memory of a profoundly stored experience from its emotional impact upon you,” he is restating – probably unawares – a teaching of the great Eastern Christian mystic, St. Maximus the Confessor (d. 662 AD). Of course, Maximus would have written it this way: “I am referring to the capacity to separate the conceptual image of a profoundly stored experience from its passionate impact upon you,” but the essential meaning is the same.

Our age desperately needs this kind of new synthesis of age-old truths; otherwise we remain in the dark, unable to transform our own lives or our culture as a whole.

Surviving Trauma School Earth gives you the “big picture” view of the human experience as well as the practical tools to bring about change in your own life: there is a profound healing meditation, several exercises and examples showing you how to use Holographic Memory Resolution® (HMR) in your own life, diagrams showing the relationship between your physical body and emotions, and much more.

And no matter what form our own trauma history takes, Brent reminds us all that what we have experienced contains within it the seeds of an even greater progress on every level of our being. This itself is a liberating message – your past, no matter how “messy”, was not a series of mistakes you “should have” avoided. Instead, it was a consciously chosen set of life circumstances that will open the door to true healing and boundless possibilities for you, starting at this moment and heading into your bright, eternal future of light and love.

So, apart from learning new-to-you, cutting-edge information that you can use immediately to make a difference in your life, reading this book will make you feel better about your life, no matter where your path has taken you. And that in itself is a great gift.

In short, this book is definitely a “must-read” for anyone who is seriously interested in the healing of the self or helping others to recover their own physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

Dr. Symeon Rodger

CEO Global Resilience Solutions

www.GlobalResilienceSolutions.com

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I offer my heartfelt gratitude to those courageous souls who by their willingness to face their shadows, revealed the wisdom of the healer within. To the remarkable visionaries who created those special “spaces” for healing, I express my appreciation – especially Bernadette Doran at Equilibrium in Chicago, Jeanie Bein in Colorado Springs, Carmen Paulino in New York, Pat Stogner and Beverly Matthews at the Shiloah Healing Center in Atlanta, Nancy Marder at the Infinity Foundation in Chicago, and Ellen Katz and Yvonne Hedeker at Inner Balance in Chicago.

Many of you championed my emergent work to your clients and communities, and for this I am indebted, especially Gail Furlan, Gail Konz, Essie Hull, Mary Ellen and Jim Nicholls, Dawn Whiting, Wailua Brandman, Glenda Anderson, Carol Warner, Judy LeFevour, Karen Lewis, Ron Sass, Myriam Bourdin, Beverly Sincavage, Mary Gaddy, Steve Hymel, and Maya Sharp.

Other significant proponents and friends of HMR include Domenic Aversa, Ronnie and Betty Falgout, Nancy Ben-Hamo, Bob Schwartz and the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology, Sharon Cass-Toole and the Canadian Association for Integrative and Energy Therapies, the Institute of Noetic Sciences, Tim Frank and Pam Lancaster, Tina Powers, the management and coordinators at Miraval: Philippe Bourguignon, Michael Tompkins, Sue Adkins, Rachel Mesich, and many others.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to Beverly Meland, my international coordinator, who has rescued me from countless scheduling conflagrations and introduced my work to numerous communities. I thank you and Terry for your continuous encouragement, support, and guidance.

I offer my thanks to Madelon Mitchum who was so instrumental in inspiring my first retreat in Louisiana and coordinated the thirty since. I also wish to offer my deepest appreciation to Jeanette Savage who facilitated the evolution, dissemination, delivery, website, and software of HMR.

Among special friends who supported and contributed in unique ways to the delivery of HMR, I thank Wyatt Webb for his instrumental role in bringing me to Miraval, Jared Bonnette at Trendsic for his ability to translate my thoughts into software with the “Memory Mapping” program, and Symeon Rodger with his inspirational example and support, as seen in the preface of this work, and his vision, akin to my own, as exemplified in his commitment to “Personal Resilience and Self-leadership.”

To my family and loved ones, both living and transitioned, who continue to support, even when the content exceeds their expertise and embraces the non-traditional, I am most appreciative. Without your background support and faith in my evolution, I doubt that the energy needed to continue moving forward would have appeared.

To Antoinette Kleinpeter, my indefatigable comrade who took on the editing of this text and transcended that role in countless ways, I cannot express sufficient gratitude. Your meticulous attention to detail has once again saved us, and your profound understanding of my psyche – no small feat I assure you, has enabled this work to take form. Without your insights and our subsequent discussions, I doubt that many of my concepts and inspirations would have even reached paper. Eternal gratitude to you on so many levels!

To the Spirit that seemed to fill my mind and thoughts, offering words and concepts that transcended my own limited history and perception, I thank you!

INTRODUCTION

The title of this work alludes to the necessary lessons arising during our sojourn on earth. The word “trauma” may be misleading in the title, for I am actually referring to the ability to pause, freeze, store, and survive any experience, large or small, that overwhelms us in our daily existence. Depending on our boundary formation and the given day, such an event may be a minor trigger for some and an event of unimaginable impact for others. Such overwhelm forms the invitation for us to unearth the gifts latent in the bodymind and bring order to chaos.

What we are going to examine in this work is how we can employ our profound creative resources for survival. Our goal, of course, as a species is even greater: to move from survive to thrive. The dominant role of trauma in our personal and collective histories, however, dictates a certain path. Earth is the school of the via negativa: the path of shadow and trauma. As we will discover, unless it is fully resolved, trauma dominates and governs the psyche, altering our good intentions to insure survival. Once resolved, however, new pathways open to possibilities that we have not seen in our 1.9 million years (minimum) of trauma imprinting on this planet. Unfortunately, upon hearing the term “trauma,” many individuals jump to the conclusion that we are here to speak about the catastrophic and 911 content of our life experience. While we will eventually reach such levels of discussion, the content is far more imminent and relevant than most realize. Our greatest challenge to love, intimacy, health, communication, and the fulfillment of our dreams and goals involves the pausing of consciousness that occurs from stress, “small t” trauma, and “big T” Trauma. The principal source of our spiritual alienation from the Divine, from each other, from nature – from access to higher states of consciousness, is the moment when we step out of the flow of the Eternal Present (Presence) and are rebound to space and time: yanked out of our state of union with All That Is and captured in finitude. To the sensitive and vulnerable child mind that we once were, the smallest of our states of emotional overwhelm triggers a protective reaction that freezes our perception, our body sensations, our emotional and brainwave states.

Although the actual definition of “Consciousness” eludes us, we have discovered that we clearly possess the innate capacity to pause the infinitely complex flow of data that creates experience and to contain such awareness indefinitely. In other words, this book is not about traditional trauma; it is about the single most powerful experience that routinely disrupts our ability to complete a sentence, to bond emotionally, and to stay relaxed. We move out of the main flow of consciousness and “trance” under the influence of varying degrees of stress. What we routinely call “stress” is frequently a physiological reaction to overwhelm. Loud noise, harsh touch, sudden pain, a voice raised in anger, sudden isolation or aloneness, or excessive pressure can all lead to the simple pausing of consciousness. Such freezing is exactly proportionate to our age and level of sensitivity. The more fragile our boundaries are in their formation, the easier is the compromise to our safety. Additionally, in this day and time, where sound and imagery are digitally amplified, enhanced, and accessible almost everywhere, our likelihood of stepping out of the present moment is greatly increased. It also changes the world of “Reality TV” and the media obsession with live, adrenaline-stimulating traumatic events into a potential consciousness nightmare. In an age where advertising has pushed the envelope of multi-sensory perception into the realms of seduction, shock, illusion, paradox, absurdity, and the vulgar to elicit our attention, our adrenal overload or burnout should come as no surprise.

While I suspect that there are not so many individuals who look out for your subconscious mind’s best interests, our unresolved trauma histories leave us quite vulnerable to the triggering of that which is already imprinted as stress and overwhelm. This work is about marshaling the resources used in the successful emotional reframing of over one hundred thousand memories. When I speak of the “emotional reframing” of memory, I am referring to the capacity to separate the memory of a profoundly stored experience from its emotional impact upon you. Actually, when you think about it, it is precisely the emotional charge of a memory that makes the bodymind believe that the “event” is still impacting you – is still intact! When you think about an event, if that event still holds a strong emotional charge, you are, in all likelihood, still in that scene in your subconscious (ninety-five percent) mind. Given the sheer quantity of stored memories that we have imprinted adversely under stress and trauma by our early teens, it is not surprising that our essential channels of pure communication are compromised early on. The degree to which this occurs in our development opens up the possibility of internalizing very powerful voices ranging from the “critic” or “perfectionist” within, all the way to the extremes of trauma like “multiple personalities” – now called “Dissociative Identity Disorder” (DID). Very severe trauma and abuse before the age of five can result in the creation of very distinct containers or “Parts” of the psyche that protect and hold both positive and negative memory patterns intact until healing can occur. For many, the healing required has never fully arrived. At the least, trauma frequently leaves us with parts or sub-personalities that are the constructs of repeated patterns of memories that coalesce to leave us with powerful “aspects” of self who run our lives as the worrier, critic, controller, perfectionist, workaholic, addict, overeater, etc. These powerful parts often subvert our good intentions and redirect our power to serve their own survival ends.

Unresolved moments of paused consciousness hold immense power. In the past, therapy was largely focused on the rational, conscious mind. We now understand from studies in consciousness, that the “conscious” mind is about five percent, while the “subconscious” mind is ninety-five percent (I combine the unconscious and subconscious in this current categorization). Without speaking properly to the subconscious mind – to those moments where we “freeze,” we cannot fully stop the disruptions in the flow of consciousness. If we do not target and address the fragment, part, or “ego-state” that was created at the moment of trauma, we fail to resolve the trigger that is created by the storage of holographic memory patterns. This is the underlying property of the hologram – every fragment of a holographic scene can resurrect the entirety: physiology, brainwave states, and all! It is so easy for us, therefore, to access an unresolved memory and have such a trigger seize control of the flow of consciousness, whereupon we find ourselves, once again, trapped in a static event of overwhelm. And as our adrenaline rises, our Thymus-cell (“T-cell”) production diminishes, and we are more likely to become ill. The easiest way to boost your immune system today and foster both short- and long-term health is to be and live in the present moment. There is only one small problem: we are in trauma school.

CHAPTER 1

WELCOME TO TRAUMA SCHOOL

Only a philosophy of eternity, in the world today, could justify non-violence.

Albert Camus

The pathways to enlightenment are diverse and infinite. Only a Consciousness with full grasp of our creative power and potential to love would justify such an immersion. A confident parent offering the gifted child an inestimable opportunity to “shine” sets the stage. In this remarkably diverse environment, the expansion of the heart is a “given,” and our course mapped out for us from our earliest conception. We are never without guidance, nor are we ever fully alone. When we can reach the point of gratitude and witness the immensity of our identity as a love that dissolves barriers, fosters healing, and enables mastery of space-time perception – only then do we fully appreciate the glorious undertaking that is a human being. Earth is privileged among the paths that reveal the depths of Consciousness to us.

I affectionately call Earth: “Trauma School.” This is simply based on the fact that, upon conception, we step into the density and weight of close to two million years of accumulated trauma. In the chapters that follow, we will examine the origins of this burden, underlying meaning and purpose, the unique invitation it holds, and specific methods for coping with and surviving the impact of trauma on body, mind, and spirit.

The invitation, as implied by Camus, is to survive trauma by appealing to a higher order: to bring heaven to earth by learning to live in the power of the eternal present. Only in the knowledge, truth, and appeal to our underlying immortality do the painful lessons of Earth become manageable and fully comprehensible. Eternity is the backdrop of the earth school, and only in the expanded consciousness of the “Big Picture” can we survive the immensity of heartbreak and pain that are the hallmark of the earth experience.

I was recently moved by work with a client who was born with limited kidney functioning: one fully functioning kidney remaining. Shortly after her daughter’s birth, her child’s kidneys began to fail; her husband donated one of his kidneys to her, and all now live with one fully functioning kidney. As she indicated, having a “fever” can trigger a level of fear and anxiety – a need to promptly act upon the earliest sign of kidney failure, which necessitates constant vigilance, respect, and clear-minded focus. Such ongoing “presence” can be exhausting without assistance and heightened self-care. I recall, before my mother died of cancer in 1983, sitting at her bedside and watching her labored breathing, worrying whether each long pause between breaths would be her last, and wanting to be totally present with her during the last step of her sojourn on Earth.

Trauma offers a gift by heightening our appreciation for how precious and fragile life really is. It intensifies our focus and realigns our priorities, forcing us to examine our intentions on the deepest level – determining what is really important to us and helping us to decide where to commit our energies. Such continuous presence is demanding and takes a toll on the psyche over time. I discovered that I had almost “hypnotized myself” into her symptoms by focusing so intensely on her breath and pain. This is not surprising, considering that all of our perception occurs as a three-dimensional movie or reconstruction produced within the bodymind.

All images and experiences within our histories are “inner perceptions” that the bodymind creates and records as we move through life. Everything from the traumas of those around us, TV, movies, music, etc. are all creative constructs that we admit into our own physiology by simply “observing.” In the internal recording of such experiences, it becomes easy to understand how the pain of others and our concern for them creates such an intense focus that we imprint the experience deeply within our minds and hearts. Similarly, when our internal projector shows us images that overwhelm us, we have the innate capacity to stop the pain by pausing it within until we can handle it.

Trauma is a self-hypnotic state that the body enters into automatically upon overwhelm. It captures and internalizes the “observed” experience as our own until we can learn to address and resolve it. This internalized pain is, therefore, one of the ways in which the bodymind informs us that we have stored something that does not belong. We internalize shame and begin this negative storage of affect even from the womb. Prolonged exposure to such experiences demand a level of presence, vigilance, and self-care that I will share with you in this work.

This book is about the resources available to us to draw the deepest meaning, value, and opportunity from our daily “lessons.” The key to the optimal future is by living fully in the present, cherishing and embracing each moment in order to draw the deepest meaning and greatest love through each breath. As we learn to birth ourselves from light, we learn to tap the unconditional source of love that knows wholeness, perfection, and peace. Conditionality and trauma are not our natures, but our lessons. Our underlying nature is uninterrupted, eternal presence that serves to anchor our true home and identity, serving us through the storms and vicissitudes of life. In the eternal present, all is love, whole, fulfilled, satiated, and peaceful.

Our greatest challenge is to abide in this presence when we, in fact, routinely leave the present moment or “trance” fifteen to fifty times an hour. Try it if you do not believe me; hold a counter and click it each time within an hour that you “drift” from your intended train of thought. This trancing phenomenon is Earth School in its current state of evolution. Unless we rise and embrace our quantum potential to master our space-time perception, to emotionally “reframe” our stressful and traumatic experiences, we will move in and out of trauma, impacting our adrenals, weakening our immune systems, and shortening our life spans on earth.

As we have learned from “SPECT” (Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography) scans of the brain, the brain does not recognize the difference between an original traumatic event and the memory of such. If the event is unresolved and has not been emotionally “reframed,” the scans are virtually identical – which means that we are moving in and out of these “alternative physiologies” many times an hour as we trigger our unresolved memories. We “shape shift” into the original physiology and mindset whenever the unresolved state of consciousness is triggered! We may readily conclude, therefore, that the single greatest contributor to the aging process, to stress and anxiety in our daily lives, to the increase in autoimmune disorders, allergies, and cancers is our hourly trancing – our apparent disconnect from Source!

Trauma is a static, paused state of consciousness created to give us time to reframe such experiences and to restore the flow of light that is frozen at such moments of overwhelm. We have come a long way in understanding this amazing, protective mechanism, but we cannot continue triggering this mechanism hourly without relief. Such pathology continuously triggered will demand resolution and “force our hand,” so to speak. This is the challenge and invitation of Earth School.

CHAPTER 2

BOUNDARY VIOLATIONS AND DEFENSE

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Rumi

When most people think about trauma, they think of the extremes: sexual abuse, murder, death, violence, terrorism, and other forms of abuse. This is probably the greatest deception, for, given the magnificence of the psyche and our heightened sensibilities, we know that stress and trauma imprint in the bodymind as quickly as we can hold our breath. An ill placed question, comment, or touch can cause the vulnerable psyche to react protectively.

We pause consciousness and freeze our physiological reactions under a broad range of stressors. Our own reactions are deepened and shaped by personal vulnerability and the strength of our boundaries – only a small number of which were fully formed before trauma impacted them in our early personal development. Additionally, the more sensitive we become in our evolution, the more quickly and deeply we react to offense, violation, or threat – or at least until we become desensitized to it. Initially we become hypervigilant with the accumulating and increasing boundary violations and breaches of our integrity. Our defensive responses are buried so deeply within our psyche that we are not even aware how much energy has been diverted to defense. A tremendous amount of effort goes into the reinforcement of personal and collective boundaries, and it impacts many aspects of our lives. Let us examine the historical origins of this phenomenon.

In history, consistent, defensive walls around villages and cities emerged with the Early Bronze age, about 3500 – 1950 BCE. This has been referred to as urbanism and the establishment of the first cities. In southern Israel, where I excavated for over thirteen years (1979-1992), the tallest of the walls surrounding the villages and towns prior to this were barely over a meter. And we called the resulting evolutionary stages with the focus on defense: civilization!

With the Early Bronze age tremendous energies began to be expended to fortify the cities and build walls and towers many meters high. At our own small site in the Middle East, a huge “glacis” or sloping stone rampart was built around our small seven-acre “Tel” or town (Arabic for “ruin”), “Tel Halif” – predating similar defenses in the region by hundreds of years and requiring tremendous manpower. But the site itself, like Israel herself, lies at the intersection of several different geomorphological zones: the Coastal Plain, the Shephelah (foothills), and the Negev Desert. Our Tel was situated along a major trade route from Africa to the Middle East. With such obvious vulnerability at the “crossroads,” there was a genuine concern for safety, and the debris and destruction layers at the site verified the later conquests and encounters.

In Field One of the excavation, under the supervision of Dr. Paul Jacobs, I vividly recall sifting through “destruction layers” containing smashed pottery jars of carbonized seeds, “ballistas” (sling-stones) covered in ash and blackened from fire and the accompanying battle. Professor Oded Borowski of Emory University focused in Phase III of our excavation on the Iron Age town (possibly Biblical “Rimmon”) that was destroyed by the Assyrian king Sennacherib during his 701 BCE campaign into southern Palestine. These remains have taught archaeologists much regarding Assyrian military tactics and revealed much about life in Judea during the eighth century.

Our site also showed early evidence of Egyptian influence and visitation – with straw included in the early pottery, a classic indicator of Egyptian craft and influence in the Middle East. Lying upon a major trade route, these cultural traces came as no surprise, since the Pharaohs of the early dynasties had to import over eighty percent of the products used in the ritual mummification process – an example of trade dependency. The Egyptians may have even maintained or supplied this “post” at some points in history. It is no wonder that those living along the primary trade routes found themselves “visited” when Israel itself served as such a vital interconnecting land bridge between such powerful dynasties. As a result, much energy and effort was directed to establish perimeters that would fortify the collective boundary and enable survival in the face of marauding hordes and invading armies. They were well aware of the importance of strong boundaries, for without such, they would cease to exist and be assimilated by the powers greater than themselves, or they would perish. I still get chills when, in the movies depicting J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, I saw the “signal fires” lit to signal the invasion of Gondor. Such fires were, indeed, used to warn the cities of Judah of impending invasion, as was tested at one point by the excavators at Lachish, a biblically well-documented city in Judah.

It is no surprise whatsoever that many of the greatest spiritual figures of our religious traditions tried to redirect our attention and introduce an order of peace by addressing us at the crossroads of evolving civilization. If we look deeply enough, we find that their lives and messages speak to the greatest spiritual breach to the psyche: the fragmentation that we have all known, to some degree, through trauma – the splitting of consciousness which reflects the fragmentation of the Divine Mind.

“World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is, I think, the manifestation of human compassion.”

Dalai Lama XIV

“An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind.”

Mahatma Gandhi

“Put your sword into its place, for all those that take the sword shall perish by the sword.”

Jesus of Nazareth

“We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.”

Dr. Martin Luther King

Trauma is, by definition, an invasion of our boundaries – a violation. And from our earliest development, even in our preverbal state of evolution, we have been protected from such invasion. (See Chapter 7 in my earlier work: Living As Light