Meditator as Crying Baby in the Crib

Gnosis of the Body

Mushing together learning mediation, Western Vs Eastern conception of God, Developmental Psychology, trauma release and healing via Eastern Body practices as seen by today's established psychology "hero", Bessel Van Der Kolk and the Archetype of Initiation by violence through mythic figure of Persephone... all using my personal story.

I cover what learning Eastern meditation has in common with the baby learning to self soothe, as seen by Developmental Psychology. I compare Western and Eastern conceptions of relation to the Divine, to a baby hoping for an outside source of comfort to respond to their crying and this carries on into our adult years and what this had to do with the emergence of my spirituality after years of detesting religion.

What learning to sit in silence, and its discomforts taught me, how it pushed to me edge, how Eastern meditation pushed me over the edge in spiritual breakthrough and what the angry meditator has in common with the crying baby having to learn to self soothe in the crib.

Ending with discussing how Eastern body and mindfulness practices can bring about healing from trauma, using a quote from Van Der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score and sharing my own story of healing.

Using my education in Developmental Psychology, I compare how the essential developmental step of the infant learning to self sooth is an edge that is met again in learning meditation and mindfulness. We develop coping mechanisms as adults (we rage, we exercise, we use substances, we over work, we over sleep, we freakout) and how in meditation we meet silence, stillness and are confronted the limit of those inadequate self soothing habits, which forced me to reach for something deep inside, and surprise, I found the infinite, and had a major cosmic spiritual experience.

I break down how the Western concept of relation to the Godhead, as it had been preached to me by Christians and priests, where it was taught as “Divine power outside yourself, greater than “little unworthy you” created spiritual and embodied separation from Source for me; and how the doctrine and teachings of Yogic Philosophy created union and oneness with the Divine, and truly healed my split created by a false idea of unworthiness and sin, how the Western religious concept of separateness from the Godhead was reorganized by Eastern teachings of the relation to the Divine during my experience of training in yoga.

I discuss how this experience of union brought through somatic traumatic memory and healing, and how trauma can be a form of initiation to embark on a Hero/Heroine's Journey to go forth and become a Seeker. I raise Persephone as a mythical archetypal figure of initiation by violence.

I then bring in the text from The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk to explain how psychology and science see the healing power of Eastern body practices for the discomfort in the body of traumatised people.