Hope

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 208 of 216 · 20 per page

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  Sometimes the privileged classes yield certain advantages because they hope to retard the growth of labor parties or to frustrate more radical demands by labor groups. Bismarck’s social legislation, which remained for some time a model of its kind in Europe, was clearly prompted by the hope of taking the wind out of the sails of the growing German Socialist party. On the other hand such actions as that of Herbert Asquith, when he defied conservative opinion and permitted the first labor government to assume office with liberal support, is a rather clear example of a purer moral motive in politics. Asquith believed that the principles of democracy gave labor the right, as the largest party, to assume responsibility for the government. The opposition to his action on the part of many politicians, who had long paid lip service to democratic principles, but who nevertheless regarded Mr. Asquith’s policy as “treason” to his class, and, of course, to England, clearly revealed the limits of pure principle in politics, and the inevitable influence of class interests upon even the noblest political ideals. It is impossible for this reason ever to rely altogether on reason or conscience in politics. Pressure must be used. If it is gradually applied and the new standard of justice is gradually approximated, there is always a possibility that those who lose privileges in the process will accept the loss voluntarily. If they should fail to be convinced by its justice, and if only the threat of political power should secure their acquiescence, their children may regard it as an established standard of society. So society may move toward the goal of equal justice by gradual and evolutionary processes, in which coercive and educational factors operate in varying proportions. Yet there are difficulties and hazards in the programme of evolutionary and parliamentary socialism, which are not recognised as clearly as they ought to be by those who place unqualified confidence in the parliamentary method. It is not at all certain that political society can fully transform industrial society by an increased pressure in the direction of equality. The chief instrument which it uses for this purpose, taxation, seems subject to a law of diminishing returns. Excessive tax burdens destroy the effectiveness of the weakest units in the capitalistic system and arouse the strongest units to resistance. Steeply graduated inheritance taxes finally force the state to take over productive enterprises or lose the tax. If enterprises are thus taken over piecemeal, it is difficult to develop a systematic and coherent scheme of social ownership and there is a possibility that society will be plunged into a chaos in which the vices of both systems of ownership, private and social, are compounded. Furthermore there is as yet no evidence that a privileged class, which yields advantage after advantage peacefully, will finally yield the very basis of its special position in society without conflict.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  They are specialised and yet typical efforts of a growing human intelligence, to come into possession of all facts relevant to human conduct. If the psychological scientist aids men in analysing their true motives, and in separating their inevitable pretensions from the actual desires, which they are intended to hide, he may increase the purity of social morality. If the social scientist is able to point out that traditional and customary social policies do not have the results, intended or pretended by those who champion them, honest social intentions will find more adequate instruments for the attainment of their ends, and dishonest pretensions will be unmasked. Thus, for instance, a laissez faire economic theory is maintained in an industrial era through the ignorant belief that the general welfare is best served by placing the least possible political restraints upon economic activity. The history of the past hundred years is a refutation of the theory; but it is still maintained, or is dying a too lingering death, particularly in nations as politically incompetent as our own. Its survival is due to the ignorance of those who suffer injustice from the application of this theory to modern industrial life but fail to attribute their difficulties to the social anarchy and political irresponsibility which the theory sanctions. Their ignorance permits the beneficiaries of the present anarchic industrial system to make dishonest use of the waning prestige of laissez faire economics. The men of power in modern industry would not, of course, capitulate simply because the social philosophy by which they justify their policies had been discredited. When power is robbed of the shining armor of political, moral and philosophical theories, by which it defends itself, it will fight on without armor; but it will be more vulnerable, and the strength of its enemies is increased. When economic power desires to be left alone it uses the philosophy of laissez faire to discourage political restraint upon economic freedom. When it wants to make use of the police power of the state to subdue rebellions and discontent in the ranks of its helots, it justifies the use of political coercion and the resulting suppression of liberties by insisting that peace is more precious than freedom and that its only desire is social peace. A rational analysis of social facts easily punctures this pretension also. It proves that the police power of the state is usually used prematurely; before an effort has been made to eliminate the causes of discontent, and that it therefore tends to perpetuate injustice and the consequent social disaffections. Social intelligence may, in short, eliminate many abortive means to socially approved ends, whether they have been proposed honestly or dishonestly, and may therefore contribute to a higher measure of social morality.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  They identify God and nature, the real and the ideal, not because the more dualistic conceptions of classical religion are too irrational for them (though they are irrational); but because they do not suffer as much as the disinherited from the brutalities of contemporary society, and therefore do not take as catastrophic a view of contemporary history. The more privileged proletarians turn catastrophic Marxism into evolutionary socialism for the same reason. Religion is always a citadel of hope, which is built on the edge of despair. Men are inclined to view both individual and social moral facts with complacency, until they view them from some absolute perspective. But the same absolutism which drives them to despair, rejuvenates their hope. In the imagination of the truly religious man the God, who condemns history, will yet redeem history. The undoubted moral resources of religion seem to justify the religious moralists in their hope for the redemption of society through the increase of religio-moral resources. In their most unqualified form, these hopes are vain. There are constitutional limitations in the genius of religion which will always make it more fruitful in purifying individual life, and adding wholesomeness to the more intimate social relations, such as the family, than in the problems of the more complex and political relations of modern society. The disrepute in which modern religion is held by large numbers of ethically sensitive individuals, springs much more from its difficulties in dealing with these complex problems than from its tardiness in adjusting itself to the spirit of modern culture. A society which is harassed with the urgent political and economic problems, which confront our contemporary world, is inclined to be scornful of any life-expression, which is not immediately relevant to its most urgent tasks. In that attitude it may be no more justified than are the religious sentimentalists, who insist that they have a panacea for every ill to which the human flesh is heir. The religious sense of the absolute qualifies the will-to-live and the will-to-power by bringing them under subjection to an absolute will, and by imparting transcendent value to other human beings, whose life and needs thus achieve a higher claim upon the self. That is a moral gain. But religion results also in the absolutising of the self. It is a sublimation of the will-to-live. Though God is majestic and transcendent he is nevertheless related to man by both his qualities and his interest in man. His qualities are human virtues, raised to the n th degree. His interest in man remains even when, as in modern Barthian theology, he is described as the “wholly other.” In religion man interprets the universe in terms relevant to his life and aspirations. Religion is at one and the same time, humility before the absolute and self-assertion in terms of the absolute. Naturalists, who accuse religion of either too much pride or of too abject self-depreciation, fail to understand this paradox of the religious life.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  It may never be completely attainable, but it is the symbol for the ideal of a just peace, from the perspective of which every contemporary peace means only an armistice within the existing disproportions of power. It stands for the elimination of the inequalities of power and privilege which are frozen into every contemporary peaceful situation. If social conflict in the past has been futile that has not been due altogether to the methods of violence which were used in it. Violence may tend to perpetuate injustice, even when its aim is justice; but it is important to note that the violence of international wars has usually not aimed at the elimination of an unjust economic system. It has dealt with the real or fancied grievances of nations which were uniformly involved in social injustice. A social conflict which aims at the elimination of these injustices is in a different category from one which is carried on without reference to the problem of justice. In this respect Marxian philosophy is more true than pacifism. If it may seem to pacifists that the proletarian is perverse in condemning international conflict and asserting the class struggle, the latter has good reason to insist that the elimination of coercion is a futile ideal but that the rational use of coercion is a possible achievement which may save society. It is of course dangerous to accept the principle, that the end justifies the means which are used in its attainment. The danger arises from the ease with which any social group, engaged in social conflict, may justify itself by professing to be fighting for freedom and equality. Society has no absolutely impartial tribunal which could judge such claims. Nevertheless it is the business of reason, though always involved in prejudice and subject to partial perspectives, to aspire to the impartiality by which such claims and pretensions could be analysed and assessed. Though it will fail in instances where disputes are involved and complex, it is not impossible to discover at least the most obvious cases of social disinheritance. Wherever a social group is obviously defrauded of its rights, it is natural to give the assertion of its rights a special measure of moral approbation. Indeed this is what is invariably and instinctively done by any portion of the human community which has achieved a degree of impartiality. Oppressed nationalities, Armenians fighting against Turkey, Indians against England, Filipinos against America, Cubans against Spain, and Koreans against Japan have always elicited a special measure of sympathy and moral approbation from the neutral communities. Unfortunately the working classes in every nation are denied the same measure of sympathy, because there is no neutral community which is as impartial with reference to their claims as with reference to the claims of oppressed nationalities. In the case of the latter there is always some group in nations, not immediately involved in the struggle, which can achieve and afford the luxury of impartiality.

• From Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988)

  To many twentieth-century readers, Jovinian’s argument may sound like mere common sense against Jerome’s fanaticism. Yet such Christian leaders and future saints as Siricius, bishop of Rome, Ambrose, bishop of Milan, Jerome himself, and Augustine condemned Jovinian and placed his name on their growing list of heretics. Most Christians—all but the most radical, who rejected marriage altogether—acknowledged that Christians who honorably fulfilled their marital vows thereby pleased God; even Paul urged those who could not refrain from marriage to marry “in the Lord.” But to claim that marriage is as meritorious as repudiating marriage “for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” implied Christian sanction for traditional pagan values, as if honoring family and social obligations—the ancient pagan ethical ideal in Christian dress—were morally equivalent to renunciation. Those Christians who proclaimed freedom from social and political entanglements defied those who valued human life according to its social contribution, and in the process, as we have seen, envisioned a new society based on free and voluntary choice. The majority of Christians married but continued nonetheless to assert the primacy of renunciation. In their resistance to conventional definitions of human worth based upon social contribution, I suggest, we can see the source of the later western idea of the absolute value of the individual—the value of every human being, including the destitute, the sick, and the newborn—quite apart from any contribution, real or potential, to the “common good.”60 Those who actually chose renunciation often found, no doubt, the freedom they sought: we have seen how women who “renounced the world”—whether wealthy and aristocratic, like Melania, or women without means, like Thecla—thereby claimed the opportunity to travel, to devote themselves to intellectual and spiritual pursuits, to found institutions, and to direct them. Yet the men who wrote most of the literature in praise of virginity undoubtedly also found, in chastity and renunciation, the rewards of liberty they sought—freedom from the oppressive weight of imperial rule, of custom, tradition, “destiny,” or fate, and from the internal tyranny of the passions. The appeal of that ascetic life is by no means confined to the past: the twentieth-century writer Thomas Merton, who, following his conversion, entered a Cistercian monastery, no doubt was speaking of his own resolve as well as that of the early desert fathers when he said: What the fathers sought most of all was their own true self, in Christ. And in order to do this, they had to reject completely the false, formal self, fabricated under social compulsion “in the world.”61

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  Thus Europeans express their sympathy for our disinherited Negroes and Americans have a special degree of interest in the struggle for the emancipation of India. In spite of the partiality and prejudice which beclouds practically every social issue, it is probably true that there is a general tendency of increasing social intelligence to withdraw its support from the claims of social privilege and to give it to the disinherited. In this sense reason itself tends to establish a more even balance of power. All social power is partially derived from the actual possession of physical instruments of coercion, economic or martial. But it also depends to a large degree upon its ability to secure unreasoned and unreasonable obedience, respect and reverence. Inasfar as reason tends to destroy this source of its power, it makes for the diminution of the strength of the strong and adds to the power of the weak. The expropriators are expropriated in another sense beside the one which Marx analysed. Reason divests them of some of their moral conceit, as well as of some measure of the social and moral approbation of their fellows. They are not so certain of the approval of either their own conscience or that of the impartial community. Divested of either or both, they are like Samson with his locks shorn. A considerable degree of power has gone from them. The forces of reason in society are not strong enough to guarantee that this development will ever result in a complete equality of power; but it works to that end. The very fact that rational men are inclined increasingly to condemn the futility of international wars and yet to justify the struggles of oppressed nationalities and classes, proves how inevitably reason must make a distinction between the ultimate ends of social policies and how it must regard the end of equal social justice as the most rational one. We have previously insisted that if the purpose of a social policy is morally and rationally approved, the choice of means in fulfilling the purpose raises pragmatic issues which are more political than they are ethical. This does not mean that the issues lack moral significance or that moral reason must not guard against the abuse of dangerous political instruments, even when they are used for morally approved ends. Conflict and coercion are manifestly such dangerous instruments. They are so fruitful of the very evils from which society must be saved that an intelligent society will not countenance their indiscriminate use. If reason is to make coercion a tool of the moral ideal it must not only enlist it in the service of the highest causes but it must choose those types of coercion which are most compatible with, and least dangerous to, the rational and moral forces of society. Moral reason must learn how to make coercion its ally without running the risk of a Pyrrhic victory in which the ally exploits and negates the triumph.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The sixteenth century is the age of the renaissance in religion, literature, and art. The air was stirred by the spirit of progress and freedom. The snows of a long winter were fast, melting before the rays of the vernal sun. The world seemed to be renewing its youth; old things were passing away, all things were becoming new. Pessimists and timid conservatives took alarm at the threatened overthrow of cherished notions and institutions, and were complaining, fault-finding and desponding. A very useless business. Intelligent observers of the signs of the times looked hopefully and cheerfully to the future. "O century!" exclaimed Ulrich von Hutten, "the studies flourish, the spirits are awake, it is a luxury to live." And Luther wrote in 1522: "If you read all the annals of the past, you will find no century like this since the birth of Christ. Such building and planting, such good living and dressing, such enterprise in commerce, such a stir in all the arts, has not been since Christ came into the world. And how numerous are the sharp and intelligent people who leave nothing hidden and unturned: even a boy of twenty years knows more nowadays than was known formerly by twenty doctors of divinity." The same may be said with even greater force of the nineteenth century, which is eminently an age of discovery and invention, of enquiry and progress. And both then as now the enthusiasm for light and liberty takes two opposite directions, either towards skepticism and infidelity, or towards a revival of true religion from its primitive sources. But Christianity triumphed then, and will again regenerate the world. The Protestant Reformation assumed the helm of the liberal tendencies and movements of the renaissance, directed them into the channel of Christian life, and saved the world from a disastrous revolution. For the Reformation was neither a revolution nor a restoration, though including elements of both. It was negative and destructive towards error, positive and constructive towards truth; it was conservative as well as progressive; it built up new institutions in the place of those which it pulled down; and for this reason and to this extent it has succeeded. Under the motherly care of the Latin Church, Europe had been Christianized and civilized, and united into a family of nations under the spiritual government of the Pope and the secular government of the Emperor, with one creed, one ritual, one discipline, and one sacred language. The state of heathenism and barbarism at the beginning of the sixth century contrasts with the state of Christian Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century as midnight darkness compared with the dawn of the morning. But the sun of the day had not yet arisen.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  He could see in its morality of meekness and forgiveness the revenge which the weak took upon the strong by imposing moral ideals which sanctified the virtues of the lowly and robbed the traditional virtues of the strong of their moral significance. Marxism is another kind of slave revolt. It exalts not the virtues but the estate of the lowly. These modern helots also engage in the transvaluation of values. It is not the meek but the weak who are given the promise of inheriting the earth. If the Christian poor hoped that spiritual forces would ultimately endow meekness with strength, these modern poor believe that historical, “materialistic” forces will automatically rob the strong of their strength and give it to the weak. The whole tragedy and the whole promise of modern life is in the difference between these hopes. It is a tragic difference inasfar as it represents modern man’s loss of confidence in moral forces. It is a helpful one inasfar as it recognises the brutalities of the conflict of power as basic to the collective history of mankind. If there are excesses and extravagances in its amoralism and unqualified determinism, they may be regarded as the poison which the amoral mechanism of a technological civilisation generates. But they must also be appreciated as the antidote which is needed for the toxin of the hypocrisies by which modern society hides its brutalities. An industrial mechanism, which moves by instinct and defies the canons of reason and conscience, makes determinists of those who suffer most from its cruelties. A culture which tries to hide the cruelties by moral pretensions that do not change the facts makes cynics of those who know the facts. History alone will determine whether the proletarian who is both the spiritual victim and the moral savior of such a civilisation will be more the victim or more the savior. Since all history is a conflict between human character and impersonal fate, and since one may never be certain which of the two is more potent in a given instant, there is something of an overstatement in any philosophy of history which reads the future in terms of the complete triumph of one or the other. In the eschatology of the true Christian, virtue will ultimately triumph by the power of its own strength, or by the strength supplied by God’s grace. In the eschatology of the true Marxian, justice will be established because weakness will be made strong through economic forces operating with inexorable logic in human history. The Marxian imagines that he has a philosophy or even a science of history. What he has is really an apocalyptic vision. A confident prophecy of the future is never more than that. In him political hopes achieve religious proportions by overleaping the bounds of rationally verifiable possibilities, just as, in the soul of the true Christian, moral hopes achieve religious verification.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Trauma need not be a life sentence. Of all the maladies that attack the human organism, trauma may ultimately be one that is recognized as beneficial. I say this because in the healing of trauma, a transformation takes plac e — one that can improve the quality of life. Healing doesn’t necessarily require sophisticated drugs, elaborate procedures, or long hours of therapy. When you understand how trauma occurs and when you learn to identify the mechanisms that prevent it from resolving, you will also begin to recognize the ways in which your organism attempts to heal itself. By using a few simple ideas and techniques, you can support rather than impede this innate capacity for healing. The tools presented here will help you move through the trauma and continue on your way with a fuller, more sure sense of yourself. While trauma can be hell on earth, trauma resolved is a gift of the god s — a heroic journey that belongs to each of us. No matter where we are, the shadow that trots behind us is definitely four-footed. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. from Women Who Run With The Wolves Section I. The Body As Healer ...our mind still has its darkest Africas, its unmapped Borneos and Amazonian basins. Aldous Huxley 1. Shadows From a Forgotten Past Nature’s Plan A herd of impala grazes peacefully in a lush wadi. Suddenly, the wind shifts, carrying with it a new, but familiar scent. The impala sense danger in the air and become instantly tensed to a hair trigger of alertness. They sniff, look, and listen carefully for a few moments, but when no threat appears, the animals return to their grazing, relaxed yet vigilant. Seizing the moment, a stalking cheetah leaps from its cover of dense shrubbery. As if it were one organism, the herd springs quickly toward a protective thicket at the wadi’s edge. One young impala trips for a split second, then recovers. But it is too late. In a blur, the cheetah lunges toward its intended victim, and the chase is on at a blazing sixty to seventy miles an hour. At the moment of contact (or just before), the young impala falls to the ground, surrendering to its impending death. Yet, it may be uninjured. The stone-still animal is not pretending to be dead. It has instinctively entered an altered state of consciousness shared by all mammals when death appears imminent. Many indigenous peoples view this phenomenon as a surrender of the spirit of the prey to the predator, which, in a manner of speaking, it is. Physiologists call this altered state the “immobility” or “freezing” response. It is one of the three primary responses available to reptiles and mammals when faced with an overwhelming threat.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  By staying in touch with the sensations that accompanied these images, Margaret allowed her organism to experience a rhythmic pulsation between these vortices that helped her synthesize a new reality while discharging and healing her traumatic reaction. Through the guiding languages of felt sensation, Margaret was able to renegotiate the terror that had persisted in her neck and abdomen for decades following this horrific event. The healing was orchestrated by the transformative relationship between the healing and trauma vortices. Before learning the ways of the felt sense, most people respond to the emergence of the healing vortex and the positive sensations that come with it by squelching or ignoring the m by avoiding them. Healing images can be disconcerting when we are fixated on terrifying visions. In our zeal to recover more of the “memory” of what happened, we suppress the expansion that the nervous system so desperately seeks and plunge head on into the trauma vortex. The secret to Margaret’s healing was that she did not do this. When the image of the leaves came, she went with the feelings associated with it fully and completely and moved away from the horrible feelings of being tied to the tree and terrorized. The leaves (associated with the healing vortex) allowed her to face the deepest parts of her trauma without being overwhelmed. As a result, she transformed herself into a more integrated, resourceful person. Renegotiation and Re-enactment About five months before arrival at Jupiter, Galileo’s probe is to separate from the mothership. This maneuver must aim the probe precisely since it has no navigation or propulsion systems...As it plummets toward the planet fast enough to go from Los Angeles to Washington in 90 seconds, a wrong entry could send it skipping off the tip of Jupiter’s atmosphere and careening into space or burning to a cinder (if it enters Jupiter’s atmosphere too directly). — Science Section, International Herald Tribune October 12, 1989, by Kathy Sawyer Transforming trauma isn’t a mechanical ritual that traumatized people can perform and then sit back and complacently expect results. There is no magic pill. Transformation requires a willingness to challenge your basic beliefs about who you are. We must have the faith to trust responses and sensations that we can’t fully understand, and a willingness to experience ourselves flowing in harmony with the primitive, natural laws that will take over and balance our seemingly incongruous perceptions. Traumatized people must let go of all kinds of beliefs and preconceptions in order to complete the journey back to health. Remember, letting go never happens all at once. The following diagram (Fig. 5) depicts someone entering into a traumatic event (a roller coaster ride with an inverted loop of track). In re- enactment we go into the loop, and as we start to go upside down, we hold on by bracing and tightening our entire bodies.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  It may avail itself of instruments of restraint and coercion, through which a measure of trust in the moral capacities of an opponent may be expressed and the expansion rather than contraction of those capacities is encouraged. But it cannot hide the moral distrust expressed by the very use of the instruments of coercion. To some degree the conflict between the purest individual morality and an adequate political policy must therefore remain. The needs of an adequate political strategy do not obviate the necessity of cultivating the strictest individual moral discipline and the most uncompromising idealism. Individuals, even when involved in their communities, will always have the opportunity of loyalty to the highest canons of personal morality. Sometimes, when their group is obviously bent upon evil, they may have to express their individual ideals by disassociating themselves from their group. Such a policy may easily lead to political irresponsibility, as in the case of the more extreme sects of non-resisters. But it may also be socially useful. Religiously inspired pacifists who protest against the violence of their state in the name of a sensitive individual conscience may never lame the will-to-power of a state as much as a class-conscious labor group. But if their numbers grew to large proportions, they might affect the policy of the government. It is possible, too, that their example may encourage similar non-conformity among individuals in the enemy nation and thus mitigate the impact of the conflict without weakening the comparative strength of their own community. The ideals of a high individual morality are just as necessary when loyalty to the group is maintained and its general course in relation to other groups is approved. There are possibilities for individual unselfishness, even when the group is asserting its interests and rights against other communities. The interests of the individual are related to those of the group, and he may therefore seek advantages for himself when he seeks them for his group. But this indirect egoism is comparatively insignificant beside the possibilities of expressing or disciplining his egoism in relation to his group. If he is a leader in the group, it is necessary to restrain his ambitions. A leadership, free of self-seeking, improves the morale of the whole group. The leaders of disinherited groups, even when they are avowed economic determinists and scorn the language of personal idealism, are frequently actuated by high moral ideals. If they sought their own personal advantage they could gain it more easily by using their abilities to rise from their group to a more privileged one. The temptation to do this among the abler members of disinherited groups is precisely what has retarded the progress of their class or race. The progress of the Negro race, for instance, is retarded by the inclination of many able and educated Negroes to strive for identification and assimilation with the more privileged white race and to minimise their relation to a subject race as much as possible.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  No matter how highly evolved humans become in terms of our abilities to reason, feel, plan, build, synthesize, analyze, experience, and create, there is no substitute for the subtle, instinctual healing forces we share with our primitive past. The Animals Do It, Too Nature has endowed nearly all living creatures with very similar nervous system responses to the threat of danger. However, of all species, there is only one that routinely develops long-term, traumatic aftereffect s - the human. The only time we see similar effects in other animals is when they are domesticated or consistently subjected to stressful conditions in controlled laboratory environments. In these cases they develop acute and chronic traumatic reactions. This revelation leads to the following questions: • Since the nervous system response to threat appears to be well designed and functions efficiently in practically all creatures, why is it that humans are unable to take full advantage of this system? • Do we not know how to access it? • Are we overriding the system? • Why are humans readily traumatized? • What are the animals doing that we aren’t? • How and what can we learn from animals? In the natural world, the survival responses we’ve been discussing are normal, healthy, and to the animals advantage. When animals experience life- threatening events, they quickly move beyond the initial shock reaction and recover. Their reactions are time-limited and do not become chronic. Observing this behavior can give us an understanding of our own instinctual ability to successfully overcome trauma. We can also learn more about how not to interfere with our instincts. The experience of the felt sense gives us a backdrop for reconnecting with the animal in ourselves. Knowing, feeling, and sensing focuses our attention where healing can begin. Nature has not forgotten us, we have forgotten it. A traumatized person’s nervous system is not damaged; it is frozen in a kind of suspended animation. Rediscovering the felt sense will bring warmth and vitality to our experiences. This sense is also a gentle, non-threatening way of re-initiating the instinctual processing of energy that was interrupted when the trauma occurred. Completing this process prevents post-traumatic reactions from becoming chronic. We have built-in mechanisms for responding to and moving toward a natural resolution of trauma. Some of these we share with other animals; some are uniquely our ow n - particularly our highly developed thought and language processes. Let’s move now to a part of the brain that is of significant importance in the discussion of trauma. Embedded deep within the brain of every animal is the reptilian brain. It is the home of the instincts. The only way to consciously access our healing resources is through sensation and the felt sense.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Nowadays the phrase “trust your gut” is used commonly. The felt sense is the means through which you can learn to hear this instinctual voice. Most of us have little experience to help guide us to this awareness. We are used to living in a very disconnected wa y, a way that hasn’t embraced our felt sense. If you are one of these people, contacting the felt sense is probably going to be unfamiliar. Don’t be discouraged. It’s difficult at first but hang in there; it will come. Western culture does not teach us to experience ourselves in this way. We are taught to read, write, calculate, etc., but rarely do we come across a school that teaches anything about the felt sense. It never gets mentioned at home, on the street, or anywhere else, for that matter. Most people use this sense every day, but very few of us consciously acknowledge it, and even fewer cultivate it. It is important to remember that the felt sense is a wonderful and very natural human capacity. Those of us who are traumatized should be aware that learning to work with the felt sense may be challenging. Part of the dynamic of trauma is that it cuts us off from our internal experience as a way of protecting our organisms from sensations and emotions that could be overwhelming. It may take you a while to trust enough to allow a little internal experience to come through. Be patient and keep reminding yourself that you don’t need to experience everything now. This hero’s journey proceeds one tiny step at a time. Using the Felt Sense to Listen to the Organism We want to begin to tap into our instinctual voices. The first step is learning to use the felt sense to listen to that voice. The most helpful attribute in this journey is gentleness. Contacting the instinctual self is powerful stuff. Never try to force it. Take it easy, take it slow. If you feel overwhelmed at any time, you may have overdone it. The next time you come to that curve, slow down. This is definitely one time that you will get there faster by going slower. Sometimes, the felt sense appears slowly; other times you are hit by a flash of understanding and the whole thing becomes clear to you in an instant. The best approach is to maintain an open and curious attitude.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  In a retrospect of the marked features of the closing centuries of the Middle Ages, we are struck first of all with the process by which the nations of Western Europe became consolidated until they substantially won the limits which they now occupy. The conquest of the weary Byzantine empire seemed to open the way for the Turks into all Europe. The acropolis of Athens was occupied in 1458. Otranto on the Italian coast was seized and Vienna itself threatened. All Europe felt as Luther did when he offered the prayer, "from the murderous cruelty of the Turk, Good Lord deliver us." Much as the loss of the city on the Bosphorus was lamented at this time, it cannot but be felt that there was no force in Eastern Christendom which gave any promise of progress, theological or civil. The papacy, claiming to be invested with plenitude of authority, abated none of its claims, but by its history proved that those very claims are fictitious and have no necessary place in the divine appointment. Seldom has a more impressive spectacle been furnished than was furnished by the Reformatory councils. Following the Avignon period and the age of the papal schism, they struggled to correct the abuses of the papal system and to define its limitations. The first oecumenical council held on German soil, the Council of Constance, made such an authoritative decision. Its weight was derived from its advocates, the most distinguished theologians and canonists of the time, and the combined voice of the universities and the nations of Latin Christendom. But the decision proved to be no stronger than a spider’s web. The contention, which had been made by that long series of pungent tracts which was opened with the tract of Gelnhausen, was easily set aside by the dexterous hand of the papacy itself. Gelnhausen had declared that the way to heal the troubles in the papal household was to convoke a general council.1338 To this mode of statement Pius II. opposed his bull, Execrabilis, and his successors went on untroubled by the outcry of Latin Christendom for some share in the government of the Church. But the appeal for a council was an ominous portent. It had been made by Philip the Fair and the French Parliament,1303. It was made by the Universities of Paris and Oxford and the great churchmen of France. It was made by Wyclif, by Huss and Savonarola. In vain, to be sure, but the body of the Church was thinking and the arena of free discussion was extending.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Physicians and mental health workers today don’t speak of retrieving souls, but they are faced with a similar tas k restoring wholeness to an organism that has been fragmented by trauma. Shamanistic concepts and procedures treat trauma by uniting lost soul and body in the presence of community. This approach is alien to the technological mind. However, these procedures do seem to succeed where conventional Western approaches fail. My conclusion is that significant aspects of shamanic practice are valid. When it comes to trauma, we have much to learn from the ways these traditional people practice their medicine. After the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake, it was those families (often from Third World countries) who camped, ate, and played together that fared better than many middle-class families. Those who remained isolate d obsessively watching replays of the disaster, listening to interviews with geologists claiming “the big one is yet to come ”— were much more susceptible to traumatic effects than those who supported each other in community. Several of my colleagues from Los Angeles reported that ornamental carp (large goldfish) in their garden ponds formed into tight groups some hours before the earthquake. They remained that way for several hours afterwards. I was told a similar story by Nancy Harvey, a consulting ethologist for the San Diego Wildlife Park. I asked Nancy whether the animals exhibited trauma-like symptoms after the fierce southern California fire burned right up to the edge of the antelope habitat. She said that they hadn’t, and described a curious behavior in which the impala and other antelope populations formed groups away from the fences, and remained together until the fire was extinguished. Somatic Experiencin g ® While I recognize the shamanic approach as valid, and am grateful for what I have learned while working and teaching with shamans from several different cultures, the Somatic Experiencing approach presented in this book is not shamanic. One important difference, I believe, is that each of us has a greater capacity to heal ourselves than the shamanic approach would suggest. We can do much to retrieve our own souls. With the support of friends and relatives, we gain a powerful resource for our healing journeys. This section includes exercises designed to help you heal trauma in yourself and others. Obviously, a trained professional is beneficial for guiding the process, particularly if the trauma took place at an early age, or abuse and betrayal occurred. However, even without professional assistance these exercises can be very powerful when practiced alone, in pairs, or in groups. Keep in mind that denial can be a powerful force. A word of warning: doing these exercises can activate traumatic symptoms. If you feel overwhelmed or consistently stuck, please seek professional help.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  I believe that we all need to understand the essential information in this book. This information deepens our experience and understanding of trauma’s healing process and helps us develop a sense reliance on our own organism. Furthermore, I think the information is pertinent on both personal and societal levels. The magnitude of the trauma generated by the events that are affecting our world exact a toll on families, communities, and entire populations. Trauma can be self-perpetuating. Trauma begets trauma and will continue to do so, eventually crossing generations in families, communities and countries until we take steps to contain its propagation. At the moment, the work of transforming trauma within groups of people is still in its infancy. Section Three includes a description of a healing approach used for groups that I am developing with some colleagues in Norway. Because I often recommend that individuals working therapeutically engage the help of trained professionals as allies in this process, it is my hope that the book will also be of use to these professionals. Few psychologists have sufficient background in physiology to recognize the aberrations of experience that can be produced when physiological processes are not allowed to follow a natural course. Ideally, the information in this book will introduce new possibilities for the treatment of trauma. My experience has taught me that many of the currently popular approaches to healing trauma provide only temporary relief at best. Some cathartic methods that encourage intense emotional reliving of trauma may be harmful. I believe that in the long run, cathartic approaches create a dependency on continuing catharsis and encourage the emergence of so-called “false memories.” Because of the nature of trauma, there is a good chance that the cathartic reliving of an experience can be traumatizing rather than healing. Psychotherapy deals with a broad spectrum of issues and problems that go far beyond the single topic: shock trauma, the focus of this book. Shock trauma occurs when we experience potentially life-threatening events that overwhelm our capacities to respond effectively. In contrast, people traumatized by ongoing abuse as children, particularly if the abuse was in the context of their families, may suffer from “developmental trauma.” Developmental trauma refers primarily to the psychologically based issues that are usually a result of inadequate nurturing and guidance through critical developmental periods during childhood. Although the dynamics that produce them are different, cruelty and neglect can result in symptoms that are similar to and often intertwined with those of shock trauma. For this reason, people who have experienced developmental trauma need to enlist the support of a therapist to help them work through the issues that have become intertwined with their traumatic reactions.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  In the natural world, the survival responses we’ve been discussing are normal, healthy, and to the animals advantage. When animals experience life-threatening events, they quickly move beyond the initial shock reaction and recover. Their reactions are time-limited and do not become chronic. Observing this behavior can give us an understanding of our own instinctual ability to successfully overcome trauma. We can also learn more about how not to interfere with our instincts. The experience of the felt sense gives us a backdrop for reconnecting with the animal in ourselves. Knowing, feeling, and sensing focuses our attention where healing can begin. Nature has not forgotten us, we have forgotten it. A traumatized person’s nervous system is not damaged; it is frozen in a kind of suspended animation. Rediscovering the felt sense will bring warmth and vitality to our experiences. This sense is also a gentle, non-threatening way of re-initiating the instinctual processing of energy that was interrupted when the trauma occurred. Completing this process prevents post-traumatic reactions from becoming chronic. We have built-in mechanisms for responding to and moving toward a natural resolution of trauma. Some of these we share with other animals; some are uniquely our ow n- particularly our highly developed thought and language processes. Let’s move now to a part of the brain that is of significant importance in the discussion of trauma. Embedded deep within the brain of every animal is the reptilian brain. It is the home of the instincts. The only way to consciously access our healing resources is through sensation and the felt sense. Sensation is the language of the reptilian brain. Biologically and physiologically, the reptilian brain is essential to all animals, including humans. It is encoded with the instinctual plans for the behaviors that ensure the survival of the species (self-preservation and reproduction). Involuntary changes that regulate the body’s vital functions are controlled from this part of the brain. The reptilian brain is the template from which all higher life has evolved. While its function can be enhanced or seemingly overridden in higher animals, the behaviors that originate in the reptilian core of the brain are the key to unlocking the mystery of trauma. These behaviors are what allow us to experience ourselves as human animals. When the Reptilian Brain Speaks, Listen! Its not his fault, he said. Oh, sure, Lex said, He practically ate us and its not his fault. Hes a carnivore. He was just doing what he does. Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park For the reptile, conscious choice is not an option. Every behavior, every movement is instinctual. Instinct and instinct alone controls the search for food, shelter, and a suitable mate for procreation. All defensive strategies are genetically programmed into a primitive and highly effective brain. These behaviors are a part of rhythmical cycles over which the reptile has no control. Day by day, season by season, year by year, for hundreds of millions of years, these rituals of life have been repeated. Why? Because they work.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The next morning she awoke with the feeling of elation that comes only in moments of perfect faith. But a close examination of her knees in the bath, revealed them to be flawless except for old scars and a crisp, brown scab from a recent tumble—this, of course, was very disappointing. She picked off the scab, and that hurt her a little, but not, she felt sure, like a real housemaid’s knee. However, she decided to continue in prayer, and not to be too easily downhearted. For more than three weeks she sweated and prayed, and pestered poor Collins with endless daily questions: ‘Is your knee better yet?’ ‘Don’t you think my knee’s swollen?’ ‘Have you faith? ’Cause I have—’ ‘Does it hurt you less, Collins?’ But Collins would always reply in the same way: ‘It’s no better, thank you, Miss Stephen.’ At the end of the fourth week Stephen suddenly stopped praying, and she said to Our Lord: ‘You don’t love Collins, Jesus, but I do, and I’m going to get housemaid’s knee. You see if I don’t!’ Then she felt rather frightened, and added more humbly: ‘I mean, I do want to—You don’t mind, do You, Lord Jesus?’ The nursery floor was covered with carpet, which was obviously rather unfortunate for Stephen; had it only been parquet like the drawing-room and study, she felt it would better have served her purpose. All the same it was hard if she knelt long enough—it was so hard, indeed, that she had to grit her teeth if she stayed on her knees for more than twenty minutes. This was much worse than barking one’s shins in the garden; it was much worse even than picking off a scab! Nelson helped her a little. She would think: ‘Now I’m Nelson. I’m in the middle of the Battle of Trafalgar—I’ve got shots in my knees!’ But then she would remember that Nelson had been spared such torment. However, it was really rather fine to be suffering—it certainly seemed to bring Collins much nearer; it seemed to make Stephen feel that she owned her by right of this diligent pain. There were endless spots on the old nursery carpet, and these spots Stephen could pretend to be cleaning; always careful to copy Collins’ movements, rubbing backwards and forwards while groaning a little. When she got up at last, she must hold her left leg and limp, still groaning a little. Enormous new holes appeared in her stockings, through which she could examine her aching knees, and this led to rebuke: ‘Stop your nonsense, Miss Stephen! It’s scandalous the way you’re tearing your stockings!’ But Stephen smiled grimly and went on with the nonsense, spurred by love to an open defiance. On the eighth day, however, it dawned upon Stephen that Collins should be shown the proof of her devotion. Her knees were particularly scarified that morning, so she limped off in search of the unsuspecting housemaid.

• From Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988)

  But the Genesis accounts of creation introduced into Graeco-Roman culture many values other than sexual ones—for example, the intrinsic worth of every human being, made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26). Often these other values would prove immensely influential. Although the early Christians thought of this conviction of human worth in moral—not social or political—terms, Christians living more than fifteen hundred years later would invoke this idea to help transform the laws, ethics, and political institutions of the West. In 1776 the authors of the Declaration of Independence invoked the biblical account of creation to declare that “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal …”—an idea so familiar that we may have difficulty seeing that it is empirically unprovable; Aristotle, among others, would have considered it absurd. As we shall see, the idea of human moral equality flourished among converts to Christianity, many of whom, especially slaves and women, were anything but equal under Roman law. Some Christians today, of course, invoke Genesis against the theory of evolution, criticizing the claims of scientific objectivity and the relative values they associate with “secular humanism”; many insist that the creation story validates their own social and sexual attitudes. Liberal critics accuse such interpreters of literalism; and it is true that such believers often insist that they understand perfectly well what “the Bible says,” without considering that what they assume it means may differ entirely from what others—even their Christian predecessors—have taken it to mean. Yet such evangelical Christians intuitively understand one thing that their critics often miss: that the biblical creation story, like the creation stories of other cultures, communicates social and religious values and presents them as if they were universally valid. Many people who have—intellectually, at least—discarded the creation story as a mere folk tale nevertheless find themselves engaged with its moral implications concerning procreation, animals, work, marriage, and the human striving to “subdue” the earth and “have dominion” over all its creatures (Genesis 1:28). This book explores, among other things, how these Christian interpretations of Genesis emerged in the first four centuries, and how Christians invoked the story of Adam and Eve to justify and establish their beliefs; how they saw their own situations, their sufferings, and their hopes mirrored in the story of the creation and the fall. I have not, by any means, written a history of early Christianity; instead, I am interested in a process of intellectual history—how these ideas of sexuality and moral equality, among others, came about; and I am interested in the hermeneutical process—how Christians read the story of Adam and Eve, and often projected themselves into it, as a way of reflecting upon such matters as sexuality, human freedom, and human nature.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Nations living near each other can break the generational cycle of destruction, violence, and repeated trauma that holds them hostage. By using the human organism’s capacity to register peaceful aliveness, even in the web of traumatic defensiveness, we can all begin to make our communities safe for ourselves and our children. Once we establish safe communities, we can begin the process of healing ourselves and our world. Epilogue or Epitaph? An Armenian villager laments, “It will be a hundred years before I can talk to my neighbor again.” In America’s inner cities, pressures rise to the brink of destructive chaos and then crash into it. In Northern Ireland, people separated only by clotheslines and different religions watch their children waging war on each other rather than playing together. Untraumatized humans prefer to live in harmony if they can. Yet traumatic residue creates a belief that we are unable to surmount our hostility, and that misunderstandings will always keep us apart. The experience of bonding described earlier is only one example of the many concepts and practices that could be used to address this most serious dilemma. As time and money become available, we can develop other ways to bring pregnant women, older children, and fathers into the circle of peaceful co-existence. These approaches are not panaceas, but they are a place to begin. They offer hope where political solutions alone have not worked. The holocaust, conflicts in Iraq and Yugoslavia, the riots in Detroit, Los Angeles, and other citie s all of these encounters have been traumatic for the world community. They portray, too graphically, the price we will pay as a society if we leave the cycle of trauma intact. We must be passionate in our search for effective avenues of resolution. The survival of our species may depend on it. Nature Is No Fool Trauma cannot be ignored. It is an inherent part of the primitive biology that brought us here. The only way we will be able to release ourselves, individually and collectively, from re-enacting our traumatic legacies is by transforming them through renegotiation. Whether we choose to transform these legacies through group experiences, shamanic practices, or individually, it must be done. IV. First Aid 16. Administering (Emotional) First Aid After an Accident This chapter provides a step-by-step procedure for working with an adult. Here is a basic example of what happens at the time of an accident and how you can help prevent long-term trauma from developing. Always use your own best judgment to assess the particular circumstances you may be dealing with. What is given here are simply some guidelines. Phase I: Immediate Action (at the scene of the accident) If life-saving medical procedures are required, of course that must take precedence.  Keep the person warm, lying down, and stil l unless, of course, they face further danger remaining where they are.