Sunday, February 6, 2022

Sunday, February 6, 2022

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   I had one hell of a night. I was in a panic state for most of it. I knew that the intensity was caused by childhood trauma. I had a new insight. Zola spoke about her son, Tommy, suffering from debilitating panic attacks. I knew I suffered from PTDS. My mom suffered from it. She was just described as nervous and difficult. No one understood the causes for extreme behavior at that time. Now it's the go-to theory for all mental problems with no apparent physical reason. I wonder how our current theories will be viewed in ten or twenty years. 

    Whatever the theories might be, I was gripped by fear in the early morning hours. I tried everything to calm myself. Nothing worked. I had already tried using my homunculus image to have my conscious mind tell my unconscious mind that I had survived my childhood and wasn't in danger. It didn't work. My conscious mind was not on board with that. It suddenly occurred to me to separate physical survival from psychological or ego survival. 

     While my mother attacked me close to constantly, it was all verbal. I was never in physical danger. She hit me once when I was five and once when I was nineteen. (Yeah, that last one is a story.)  Other than that, she was devoted to my physical well-being. That was something she could do, and she did it well. This was something my conscious mind could agree with 100%. I used the homunculus image to have my conscious mind tell my unconscious that I had physically survived and had never been in physical danger, despite feeling that way. When a parent comes at a child in unrestrained verbal rage, a child can't distinguish between a physical versus a psychological threat. Those moments of trauma were embedded in my nervous system.  

   As I worked the image, most of the release was on the left side of my head, not the right. It didn't feel like there was no trauma embedded there. It just wasn't ready to budge. The moment I started the visualization, I felt relaxed. While there was a substantial release, I could feel places in my brain where trauma, very old trauma, was stuck. I kept searching for stuck places and releasing. I fell into a peaceful sleep.  

  Krista Tippet had someone on New Dimensions this morning who argued for the reality of the spiritual experience. Krista brought up the objections of scientists who say spiritual experiences have no external reality; they all happen in our brains. To both sides, I say bah humbug. We have no evidence either way. I see no harm in either point of view unless it leads to harm to others. Both sides have had their day, killing the other side for one reason or another. It's an unknown. It's a mystery. It may be one we never solve, or maybe one day we will. In the meantime, there is no evidence; it is a moot point.

     To the scientist who argues that it's all in our heads: You use evidence of brain scans while people have spiritual experiences to prove that there is no reality to the spiritual experience. That’s like saying that if we can see something is going on in the brain, there is no external reality. That would mean that every time you see brain activity in an imaging machine, it proves there is no external reality. Right?  

    I read about neuroscience, particularly in education. Scientists are prepared to say what they see activity going on in the brain in response to stimulus, i.e., the words on a page as the subject reads. From what I just read recently in Brainscapes, the brain uses the same areas when it imagines a word as it does when it reads one. Scientists not seeing an external stimulus assume the brain activity is internally caused. Whatever these spiritual experiences are, they are certainly not caused by sensory stimulation in the objective sense of the word. However, as one who has received information I couldn't possibly have, I wonder if there aren't other channels for obtaining information science hasn't adequately explored yet.

   Clearly, scientists see no external stimuli to trigger the brain's activity in spiritual matters. But what makes them so sure there isn't another form of perception. Denying its existence doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's just an unknown. 

     I say the same to those on the spiritual side of the argument. While spiritual thoughts can be very beneficial for healing, they are not objectively true. It's the absolute belief that drives me nuts from either side.

    My stepson, Damon, called. He had good news about his son, August. First, he was assigned a single room for his second semester at Oxy. He had been sharing a room. It was hard on his nerves. He uses his room as a refuge. His roommate was always there. August could never completely unwind. 

     The second piece of news was a joy because Damon guided August to champion his own cause as Mike had taught Damon. Mike would have been so proud of Damon. August got a C in his major. Other than that, he had straight As. One problem was the professor had overlooked something he had handed in. In the second case, August had completed an assignment before the due date, written the professor asking how to hand it in, and then forgot to. The professor corrected his error but told August he could do nothing about the paper he hadn't handed in. August resigned himself to his B. His mom also said, "Oh, well. You won't do that again." Damon said, "Speak to your advisor." He did. The advisor told him to go to the chair of the department. He did. He submitted his assignment and now has straight As. Yay! August!!

   Damon will be in NYC for the next week for work. His mom will be in Philly for back surgery and then at home. She says she doesn't want Damon to visit while in agonizing pain. Hopefully, it won't be as bad as she's currently experiencing, the reason for the surgery. 

   I had a session with the M & W sisters. M signed on early. That's a good sign. She does so well with the approach we're using. She loves decoding. She says she doesn't do it at school. I encouraged her to.

   Then I had her sister, fifth-grade W. She finished dictating the end of the story we worked on. This child has a phenomenal imagination. This story was about a circus elephant who mysteriously disappeared. The circus performers did their best to entertain the crowd, knowing the elephant was their favorite act. The magician was preparing to go on. He had a problem. He couldn't pull a rabbit out of this hat. He had to perform anyway. He reached in and pulled. He had an elephant's tail in his hand. He pulled and pulled, and out came the missing elephant. What an imagination!

   W was pretty worn out before the end of the session. Today we just chatted at the end. She loved that. She's interested in conversing with anyone. Great quality.

   I watched All I Wish last night. It was a piece of fluff, but Sharon Stone was fantastic. She plays a woman in her late forties through her early 50s. She looks like a shopworn woman in her late thirties. Stone was about 58 when she was in that movie. By the way, her acting was pretty good, too.