Healing the Body of Pain
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD was first diagnosed in the 1970s in US veterans returning from the Vietnam War. Repeated exposure to life-threatening danger was found to have created such psychological stress that the trauma continued to play out long after the events in question had passed - in both body and mind.
Interestingly, in today’s culture of overstimulation and non-stop distraction, many of us are also suffering from what you might call ‘PRE-traumatic Stress Disorder’. We worry and fixate about potentials and ideas - essentially about things that don’t even exist - and thereby live in an almost constant state of stress and anxiety, massively impacting our physical and psychological health.
What these two forms of PTSD have in common is the way the body naturally responds. Put simply, the body’s organising intelligence cannot distinguish between real and imagined danger - so whether we’re in a genuinely life-threatening situation, or just fixating on a potential danger, our body responds in exactly the same way.
As we’ve seen in previous articles, that response is to produce various states of physiological arousal, which, if left unprocessed, become toxic and lead to ill-health and disease within the body.
However, as we’ve also seen in a previous article on the placebo effect, that relationship between psychology and physiology also has hugely positive potential. Positive memories or the constructive receptivity of faith for example, activate our body’s innate self-healing capacity and empower all aspects of our life.
This insight has the potential to radically reframe where happiness and suffering are primarily coming from. And if we understand it deeply, we can turn that relationship between body and mind to our advantage.
Interpreting the world ‘out there’
The current outlook within the realms of neuroscience and quantum physics turn out to lend credence to this new perspective. In both, the whole notion of a world that is separate and external to the observer is reduced to the complex interplay of light and sound waves subjectively interpreted by the individual.
From this standpoint, it is only ever consciousness that makes mental and sense data intelligible and meaningful. And this is why it is often the case that two people can experience the same ‘external’ event in completely different ways.
In this context the notion of interpretation assumes central importance. Because we often make sense of a current experience on the basis of something that happened in the past.
One of the reasons this is problematic is that unpleasant experiences in the past can easily become dominant points of reference against which we measure all new incoming data.
So in any new situation, what we’re actually experiencing is our own distorted interpretations through the lens of thoughts, stories, and projections, rather than simply ‘what is’.
And therefore anything that feels remotely like a threat can easily trigger a physiological response of stress and panic, and a psychological ‘hallucination’ that confirms this apparent reality.
The radical positive potential
When we shift our awareness away from those subjective projections and into the inner space of awareness itself - in short, when we become present - we awaken from the illusion of mind-made limitations and painful experiences.
It’s as though we’ve switched on the lights, and all those projections and elaborations fall away - leaving only the peaceful reality of the present moment, and an abundant sense of possibility.
This inner light of awareness, the inner observer, is ever present. But it’s something we forever look through, without ever looking at. But we can learn to cultivate that sense of presence simply by shifting our attention from the contents of consciousness to the inner space that is aware.
And this is precisely what is described by those who experience ‘peak states’ - powerful moments of clarity and inner peace that transform body, mind, identity and outlook.
This is quite different from mere positive thinking, because a concrete shift of state into Presence has a very real positive charge - a natural radiance of positivity that comes from a deeper experience of Being.
In that state, we do not need to generate ‘mind-made’ positive feelings, because Being itself produces blissful positivity in abundance.
Harnessing the natural abundance of Being
With practice, we can learn to activate that natural positivity by using our imagination to harness the connection between psychology and physiology outlined above.
Recalling, and identifying with, a positive experience, we allow that mentally generated experience to produce a corresponding positive experience in the body.
Although the ‘event’ itself is simply a thought, it gives rise to positive feelings which lessen our engagement with the external world ‘out there.’ And as we inhabit and identify with that inner space of peace and positivity, we naturally facilitate a hard reset of our current conceptual points of reference.
A new identity appears within, and a new world appears without - a new vision of our life with astonishing implications for health, happiness and beyond.
In the next article I’ll explain a simple 3 step Sovereign Hack called the Joy Infusion.