What Do You Recommend for Healing Trauma? with Eckhart Tolle

Hello. My question raises the issue of trauma. People having survived earthquakes, crimes, car accidents. What would you recommend for their practice? I'm a crime survivor and sometimes dealing with heavy pain, body attacks or difficult emotions during meditations. Thank you.

Thank you. Do you want to sit again? Because we never know how long the quest the answer is going to be. It could be a minute, it could be 30 minutes. It may well be that for humans who have suffered trauma, catastrophic events, anything of that kind, deep suffering. It may well be that. Not necessarily, but it may be that during this lifetime they will not become entirely free of the remnants or the energy left behind by the trauma. But the important thing is the realization that there is in you a dimension that is beyond anything that could ever suffer. And you have to get in touch with that in you that has always been and will always be, and always is the transcendent, the formless dimension within you, the formless essence of who you are. And of course, this is our entire reason for being here, is to go deep enough within where you encounter that presence or that spaciousness within that presence or spaciousness. It can still happen that the old pain from time to time arises. Or it could happen that the presence gradually consumes, burns up the accumulated pain from the past, the pain body, either way is fine, even if the presence does not completely burn up the accumulated pain or suffering, and which therefore then occasionally resurfaces. At least you know your essential being to be the spaciousness. So from the difference from not having access to the transcendent dimension within yourself, and having access is when you don't have access to it, you're completely in the grip of the pain. It occupies you completely, you become it. It may also use your mind to renew itself, because then you remember what happened. And then by using those thoughts, you feed the old pain through the memory of what happened. And so you are trapped in it. It has a grip on you. Now, when you have access to the transcendent dimension, you realize that the pain is there, but you are there. So here is the pain and you are the space. And the more you practice, the more you realize you are the space around it. Another useful practice is to, when you feel it, to accept what you feel at any given moment, the present moment. Accept when it arises, but know that it is the old pain. And the acceptance itself creates the space. And so, more and more, who you are is not lodged in, identified with the pain, but who you are. So what I'm saying is the sense of self begins to move out of the pain Although the pain may still be there, the sense of self shifts from being identified with the pain and the suffering me to being the space behind or around it. And it's a very subtle thing you have to practice. The important thing is practice being the space when you are not, at times when you are not in the grip of the pain. Because then you need to see if you can be the space in ordinary circumstances and surroundings. And especially here, of course, a great opportunity for disidentifying from all the mental emotional content that still lives in you. Some fine, some painful, some extremely painful, but to disidentify from it so that it no longer has a sense of self in it, including all thoughts. Thoughts still arise, but without the me in them, emotions still come. Painful emotions come, but they become divested of the sense of self. And that's a big difference between feeling that you are the pain. It has taken possession of you completely and it can easily define your sense of who you are. Especially in the case of deep trauma, the pain can easily define your sense of identity. So I have encountered people, I'm sure it's not the case with you, but I have had sometimes questioners and people who have asked about their deep suffering. And they were so identified with their old pain. When I suggested a way of going beyond it, they got angry because they felt that their sense of self had been threatened. And then in a few cases, when I pointed that out to them, they realized in one or two cases they didn't want to realize. But when I pointed out, can you feel that you are angry now? Because I just made a suggestion that it may be possible to not perhaps to eliminate the pain at once, but to transcend it. And then so the egoic sense of self, because here too, whatever you identify with becomes part of ego. And it can happen that people identify with some pain or something they suffered in the past. In fact, it's almost a normal process. And it needs to be pointed out. You need to realize that is not who you are. And compared to who you are, one could say it's like a bad dream compared to who you really are. You are beyond that and have always been beyond that. You have to access that in you, which cannot be touched by that. And it doesn't mean you cut yourself off. No, the difference is make sure your sense of identity is not in the old pain. That is very important, because if it is, you will always fight any attempt to get rid of it. It's an unconscious attempt of the ego to survive. Very normal egoic motivation. It wants to survive. So the same thing can happen with deeply held viewpoints or opinions. If you have certain, whatever it is, political, religious, or whatever thing you might have seen on the Internet, which suddenly has taken possession of your mind and become a kind of mental virus in your head that has taken over 75% of your thought processes. And then your identity is in it and you don't want to let go, or the ego doesn't want to let go. So presence, access the presence when the pain is not obvious at those times, so that when it comes, you can continue to be there as the accepting witness or presence behind and around it. So when it comes you accept forces you to go beyond identification with form. And a point will come where you are thankful for anything, even though it seemed at the time seemed terrible for anything that forced you to disidentify from the egoic sense of self. That's why retrospectively, often people become thankful for their suffering. But then you have to realize you can't just go through the motions. It has to be a true thing. And that may happen to you also. That's the important thing, is that the old pain is no longer able to. To use your thought processes and control your thinking so that you can feel when it comes. It comes in waves. Occasionally it comes up so that you can be there as the presence and accept it without it moving into your mind and make you think the memories of what happened and so on. All kinds of thoughts associated with the energy of the pain that keeps it in place and renews it all the time. And then you get into a vicious circle. So this is why it's helpful to be here. As you sit here, even if you don't do anything, presence power grows in you. So it comes more and more. And then that begins to surround, so to speak. That begins to surround the accumulated pain. It may dissolve, it don't know. But even if it doesn't, basically if you are no longer self identified with it, you are free already. So it's a and in. The strange thing is, and you may not realize it until later. So I'm not trying to convince you that what I say is true, that it is often humans who go through intense pain of that kind and sometimes already children have to go through it. It happens. It's often those that are that becomes their opening into the transcendent dimension because the pain is too much and the crack opens in the ego. The opposite can also happen, that the pain solidifies the ego. And then the human being becomes totally enclosed in their painful identity. And it goes like. Or it could potentially. It can always be the opening, the crack in the shell of the ego. So there may be quite a few of you, I don't know what the percentage is, who have suffered traumatic events. And all of you have had certain forms of pain in your life. As a child, as an adult, my childhood was there was not one traumatic event, but the whole thing was traumatic. So it wasn't concentrated in one event. It was dispersed. Not as intense as one traumatic event would be, but dispersed over a period of whatever, 15 years of my life, and especially the first 12 years when my parents divorced at the age when I was 10. And then for two or three years after that, it was still very unpleasant. Every day. Nobody's fault. Every human being acts according to their level of consciousness. SA.