As someone who has been experiencing with both acid and shrooms, I'd say it will definitely create katarsis(look it up if u have not heard of it), but they're not going to cure anything. Most likely if anything, they are capable of revealing you something new about urself. It will give u a space to see it from a new perspective but when the effects wear off, so does the understanding. For me, it was enough helpful to take an action afterwards but generally going to the experience and expecting something to change immediately is just bound to disapoint you. It's like a new girl you suddenly meet and next thing u know, everything is clear and amazing. Life is good for the honeymoon period. It'll come to its end aswell. Then again, I have never taken any drug under controlled environment, but I've done enough drugs to say from experience that everytime I seek for something from them, nothing happens. The saying "you don't find psychedelics, psychedelics finds you" is very true. The most helpful psychedelic trips I have had, have taken place without any preparation. Now obviously it doesn't mean I'm gna pop some acid if I'm at a situtation that doesn't allow me to trip properly. Set n setting is essential, and actually the best set n setting has been when things are going generally well and suddenly I discover that there's acid available. It's like it was meant to happen. Nowdays I don't do psychedelics anymore, perhaps in the future but not now. I've already discovered that either I was trying to run towards or away from a problem, all I was doing was running on a mat and thinking I'm moving. But I believe that if someone wants to have an drug experience, they should be allowed to.
Dealing with Complex PTSD as well and discovering Daniel’s channel has been a blessing. So much value in every video, years of wisdom compacted in a concise way that makes you feel you’re in the same room as him, talking with a good old friend. Fantastic. So grateful to have access to his knowledge and insights on healing trauma.
I always thought that saying “be in the here and now” is so dismissive and a form of avoidance. Sure rumination isn’t beneficial but one shouldn’t go to the other extreme either. Thanks for your insight.
Meditation helped me explore my trauma. Nothing about my meditation practice has ever suggested I can't, don't or shouldn't grieve. It gives me the strength to grieve and without it if have crumbled over the weight of my trauma.
Each part of the past needs a chance to speak, and then it will happily and contentedly become a part of you, no longer haunting you but instead becoming a part of your wisdom. The more you do that, the stronger and nicer your inner self, who should be your best friend, becomes.
I still like him, but I've found it helpful to look at other ideas in addition to his. And he seems reasonable; I doubt he'd object if I asked him about it.
And I kept reading that book like "If I just pay good enough attention then the dummy that I am will finally get it and I will be free from my pain." Should've said "free from myself"
This is so refreshing. These spiritual cliches get thrown out so often and they just become dogmatic terms that devotees just assume unreflectively. Having lived in a spiritual community for 24 years, it is so refreshing to hear someone truly look with a beginners mind at some of these teachings. If I may add a few thoughts to round this out. My experience is just like yours Daniel. In Buddhist teachings there was a line of the Buddha's I used as a near mantra for decades "having abandoned memories and intentions based on the household life, the monastic ..." and there are a few different endings to this. I really had no idea that all those literally 10s of thousands of hours sitting meditation was simply me dissociating. I actually haven't heard many people say " I live in the here and now", but they teach as though they have mastered this skill, and give teachings on how to attend to the present. One thing though to round this out, is that I feel (perceive) that there are truths that are subtle, real and extremely valuable that one can only access through an application of the mind to the present moment. This I feel is an important additive to your observations Daniel, lest people conclude that present moment awareness is LESS relevant than coming to understand your past. It's not less relevant, and perhaps we could say there are much more relevant (meaning consequential) things to perceive about the present moment than details about our past traumas and psychological development. But for so long as the steering wheel of attention is controlled by a traumatized being with intentions that are rooted in a childhood experiences and faulty understandings of the world - simply 'paying attention to the moment' fails to appreciate how little the dissociated mind can actually influence anything! Especially in one's mind. It is worth observing I feel that disciplines around present moment awareness are, I suspect (and this is for discussion, not a statement of certainty) perfectly valid and the ocean of wisdom that lies in those past sages that have perhaps never dealt with their trauma through dissociating is a very real and valuable wisdom. I believe strongly I have known some remarkable beings that don't seem to have any dissociation in their being. (True, who am I to say - but I feel it is quite apparent). But these teachers seem to not be aware of what the mind is like that is chronically dissociating. Many of them were raised on a farm in rural Asia, and joined the monastery as a teenager. As for western monks I have met. or Urban asian monks (monastics) I count probably less than 5 that seem untouched by dissociation (of hundreds). In monasteries, there may be a bit of a self-selective process - in order to become a Buddhist monk for example, especially in former decades, often it require a personality type that was willing to go profoundly no contact with family of origin, to assert one's identity usually in opposite to a family and world that has no faith in your intentions, and possibly have a personality that is willing to coral their wisdom and will in such a way as to be something of a corrective to dissociative states. And furthermore, people in less industrial times/places - for example rural Asians who grew up on a farm in rural North East Thailand - we see beings who are so in their body, so connected to their being that it may be correct to say their past perceptions are best to be let go of. If the aim of processing past trauma and memories is to re-associate, there will be some for whom this is not needed, and thoughts of the past are a form of escaping from the present. In a way, for such types, THAT is a kind of dissociating. Thoughts of the past are dissociating from the task of realizing certain truths that are available in the present. I like to think of dissociating as "self-abandonment in regards to those perceptions that are immediately relevant to heal and move closer to one's integrated will and experience of real freedom". (this is not as abstract as it may sound :). But such beings are rare these days, even in simpler countries. (the influence of WEIRD culture (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic) is reaching, I feel, into the hearts of the vast majority of beings alive). I see three kinds of spiritual teachers: 1) Those rare ones who seem genuinely non-dissociated. They may teach the value of present moment awareness - but I intuit they don't understand what it means to be dissociated, and don't grasp what an epidemic it, or how to heal it. I don't believe such beings are being dishonest. Far from. They just genuinely don't seem to get what the dissociated self is. Such teachers I have known seem truly puzzled and bewildered by their student's inability to simply 'be present'. 2) Then there are the teachers who are actually dissociated but don't realize it. I am afraid to admit this, but this is probably the VAST majority of teachers I have known. They don't see it in themselves, they don't see it in others. They teach present moment awareness I feel in a way that may be quite unhelpful and misleading - maybe even quite harmful. 3) And then there are the rare ones who grasp this, and recognize the path to healing dissociation, and see the need for this work before entering on the work of 'abandoning the past'. And - it is honestly hard to even think of an example of such a teacher. Beings in the first group are truly rare in my experience, and I feel they still have much to say that is valuable about present moment awareness. But I see in myself now just how much dissociation has perverted my experience of the present moment, and how futile simply 'applying the mind to the here and now' is for one like myself. I have been reading spiritual books and psychology books my entire life, all the while not aware that deep inside I was committed to the belief that I am broken, and I deeply believed there was no way to address what I see now as my dissociation. At 54, it is suddenly dawning on me that dissociation can be addressed through comprehending some key traumatic experiences, and accessing the rage that has the power to reinterpret my entire understanding of who I am, who my family is, how to care for myself and using that rage to overcome my despair, depression and fear (if there is one thing rage knows nothing of, it is despair, depression or fear!) (remembering of course, that what makes rage safe to feel is a commitment to non-violence. If I may add that). I sense for myself that dissociation is a precise thing, a kind of wound that one in time can say 'this is done. I am healed'. I am not a mental health professional, and I half expect many would say it is like an onion, and one only gets 'less dissociated'. Well, I am far from a model here, but I have a strong sense that there will come a time and not that many years hence, I will be able to say 'I understand my past. I understand how my ego formed. I am unafraid of my rage. I am confident in declaring my values. I have defined myself in a way that will protect my autonomy and gifts' - and I believe then I will want to revisit those teachers that go on about the truths that are apparent in the here and now and use their advice in a way that will help. I will give you all an update in 3 years and let's see if I am being naive. Thanks as always Daniel. Such unique, insightful words.
The wave of new age has made people into self proclaimed gurus who regurgitate the verbal vomit they have licked off someone else's floor in order to sound somewhat innovative. It's annoying and this video puts it all in the right perspective. We love to pretend, yet we are all wounded, bleeding, traumatized individuals whom rather pretend that all is OK, rather than telling the Truth and standing in that Sovereignty of Truth, no matter how vulnerable. Salute Daniel and a huge pet on the back for putting Truth above all!
I totally agree. Gosh even I caught fleas from this thinking only positive and live in the moment crap, I want to slap myself silly for even considering it in the past. Everyone tells everyone what to think these days and that alone triggers me because of the memories from my past.
Problems with New Age spirituality: Celebrates the ego, pushes moral relativism, no lineage of knowledge/gurus/teachers, is often mercantile/profit based, puts an overemphasis on positive thinking, leads to ideological globalism, is hedonistic, has a distorted view of oneness, and has produced an epidemic of spiritual bypassing. This watered down fluff is everywhere now. Luckily a lot of people are started to see through all its flaws..
@@EsotericHighway But somewhere along the way, everybody has to go there. That's why you know it's a "problem". I would call it a stepping stone. Because we all have been there before. And more and more people keep going there. It's simply happened and I'm glad for that.
I came to write this comment a year after watching and being convinced by this video, because experience has shown me the other side about the 'living in the here and now', and I wanted to share this comment just incase someone is watching the video to decide whether meditation/mindfulness is good for their trauma. Just read the comments already in the chat, and I see lots of people who have had bad experiences with someone telling them to shove their past under, because yoga and mindfulness are the best things in the world. I'm sorry for that. That's not helpful, I see why you'd never want to see a person like that again. But it becomes as simple as this : Become so present, that you're able to see things that are caused around by your traumas (contrast : so present that your traumas vanish). If you are present and have traumas (who doesn't), you'll see them manifest - Yelling at someone, or feeling excessive shame in some situation - there are countless manifestations, some more common than others. For me, meditation and mindfulness began off as a grounding tool (the more popular way they use it), when there was already enough of darkness (depression, anger and anxiety). And it acted as a support at that time to help me out, accelerating me into recovery, into a place of peace (the sort of thing that they advertise). But that recovery was just the tip of the iceberg, it was a temporary phase. Here on there are two ways to go, and I got stuck throughout last year on this. When I recovered, the entire world seemed brighter, more alive, and I just felt better and better and better (you know the feeling if you've recovered from depression or such ), but that feeling had to stop somewhere, and start to stabilise. This stabilisation is often felt as calm, but after a year or so can change to boredom, a desire to again have the ecstacy you feel during a quick recovery. That's a trap, and the first way after initial recovery, never fall for chasing that feeling, or chasing the feeling of "healing" - it's you using "recovery" and "healing" in the same way as an addict uses heroin - for hits of pleasure. Well, the entire idea took me a year or more than a year to process - it's an anchor, but it's not there so that you can avoid pain, it's there to help you in the same way the rope helps someone doing bungee jumping. Take a deep dive into the past if you're feeling brave enough ! But don't cut the rope, because you want to come back. I won't use the word mindfulness, proceeding further, because I have been more familiar with the word meditation, and I hope it'll also help because we tend to associate bad experiences with words, and 'mindfulness' therefore might carry some baggage. Your traumas prevent you from being completely present. But one doesn't need overthink that - for people who've been doing long term meditation (challenge : find one such person in this chat - yep, we tend to have like-minded people around orders of magnitude more), they'll tell you how true it is that things come up in their meditation and you'll find most of them have a deep awareness of their traumas. Meditation's amazing I think - an anchor, a healing tool, if used the right way. You get to see places in you you didn't even know existed, and it'll happen in a way that's non-conceptual, not ideas being hammered into you from a book on healing (or a book on mindfulness or Buddhism for that matter), but ideas that are your own (it'll be sort of a "how to heal" book emerging from inside you - among other great things). But similarly, bad things that surprise you also come up. You see them all, with unbiased attention, and when it's too much you use your breath (or some other object) to support yourself. Since the material people in the comments have been exposed to has been dismissive material, I'll add some that I've found helpful. 1. Good medicine by Pema Chodron 2. Gelong Thubten's recordings 3. Tara Brach You can also check out Peter Levine and Bessel Van Der Kolk's work, which reflects on some similar uses for grounding and not dismissive ones. May we all heal, and be free of the desire to heal. Peace
I think the issue you have isn’t with being present in general, but rather the act of tricking yourself into thinking you are present when really you are still being controlled by unconscious processes or past pain. Truly being present doesn’t mean that you avoid anything that is operating within you. You acknowledge it, you sit with it, you allow it to be and even allow yourself to feel whatever it is you’re feeling. There is no avoidance with real presence. The difference is you see it for what it is when you are truly present. You see it as just pain, or your mind doing it’s thing, or whatever it is that you typically have identified with and been controlled by. And in this seeing, you are naturally freed from whatever has typically been controlling you because now there is some distance between you and it, and it can now no longer completely overtake you. Another way to look at it is when you are truly present, it’s like you’re observing yourself from a higher, unbiased perspective. Like imagine your mind is the busy streets of a city but instead of being completely stuck in the thick of things, you are watching everything unfold in a hot air balloon floating right above. From this height, you aren’t stressed out or controlled by everything down below but can clearly see everything that is going on. You can see the chaos without feeling like you are totally absorbed in it. And let’s imagine there’s a car crash. From this perspective, it becomes much easier to see everything involved in the creation of this crash and you can easily understand why it happened in the first place. Basically, true presence is not escaping your past, but bringing awareness and acceptance to your past as it arises in the present. You aren’t denying or resisting anything that is operating within you, but instead allowing it to be there and seeing it for what it truly is without judgement or being totally possessed by it. There is space between you and the pain or the unconscious processes. And in this space, it becomes much easier to see everything for what it is and why it’s there in the first place, making the healing process much more efficient.
If I may add drummerkid38, my experience as a monk for 24 years, and meditation teacher for 15, your thoughts sound like the thoughts of someone who doesn't understand how dissociation interferes with intention. Forgive me if I am incorrect here - I don't say this to be a contrarian. Your words seem theoretically true. And I believe they are conveying a wisdom that for one who isn't dissociated might be extremely valuable. But I can't help but feel it reminds me of stuff I would say for decades, a slightly inspired, articulate description of how the here and now embraces everything, including trauma, and so to allow the moment to be we can all just let our traumas reveal themselves and heal themselves in the warm embrace of now. (lol. I am playing up my flowery way of talking back when I used to teach). But at least when I would speak like that, I can see it now almost as a form of gaslighting. Because I had such unshakeable faith in the Buddha and believed nothing he could say could be incorrect, and he so avidly taught about abandoning perceptions and memories of the past, I believed that to eulogize the present moment would be always relevant, always correct, always the path. I've now come to realize that the vast real estate of my consciousness was locked up, quite literally like a little child in the corner of a dark part of consciousness rocking back and forth. And everything I did and pursued, all those shadow workbooks I did, all that journalling, all those tens of thousands of hours sitting with legs crossed, all the teachers I visited and conversed with - it was all aimed at keeping that child safely locked up, alone in a corner of the unconscious. Imagine you have a 1 year old child, and she is in her crib in her bedroom screaming, and you are meditating in the living room. Through the power of determination, you stay focussed on the here and now. Baby's cries? "sound touching the ear". Pain in the back? "just sensation". Inhale? "just sensation". Baby crying? "sound". After the meditation you go look at your baby and she is fell out of the crib and got badly hurt. That's not a perfect analogy, but the present moment can be like that for one afflicted with dissociation, and I believe that's the vast majority of westerners or urbanites. The baby represents cries from our inner child demanding that we process something. Something needs to be acknowledged about our past, grieved perhaps, owned. To say that everything is embraced in the present moment is kind of true, but the point is there is something the past, especially past trauma, that is actually demanding a response from us. Some teachers might say 'sit and accept whatever comes up. "Anxiety? let it be. Grief? let it be. Notice the sensation". But the real point is, that if you are dissociated, that anxiety and grief and all the other feelings you might feel are a kind of language that needs to be deciphered. There is meaning that has to be discerned, and I know from my experience to just all everything be as it is here and now DID NOT give the respect to the messages that my inner child was trying to say. Or better put, the messages my inner child needed me to hear but was actually trying to hide from me. I wonder how that lands and if you have any thoughts about that?
Your thoughts mirror mine. I often dissociate, and this is caused by anxious thought and fearful explorations of thought. You give me hope to find an answer that can wrap up what i was born with. Your comment on gaslighting yourself and perspective on hearing an inner child cry but turning away, not doing what we should truly do, to help ourselves. I see what you mean. I hope you have a great day, and have the courage to go on, and inspire. Keep voicing your thoughts because i really have been feeling alone recently. You helped me realize im not totally a goof.@@brada-smith2807
My therapist is big on Core Mindfulness, and it annoys me to no end, that he's very dismissive of my past. This makes me ask more questions about him, more than myself.
I agree with TofuDream. I had a therapist who was big on practice, protocol and techniques, emphasizing that if I just keep to the regimen, then the numbers show that I should get better. Once I did say no, he didn't inquire with me but just doubled down on his suggestion, saying I should think about it. That's when I new he was out there and not here with me, so there wasn't another session with him. Although, I do think that confronting your therapist first is a good test - sometimes there's just a misunderstanding and a therapist becomes very accommodating once you reflect to him.
"You lack peace of mind because you are running after an idea of total peace of mind. That's backwards. Be attentive to your mind in each moment, no matter how unpeaceful it may seem to be. Great peace of mind is realized only in the practice within this unpeaceful mind. Real peace of mind only exists within unpeaceful mind. It arises out of the interplay between peaceful and unpeaceful mind." -Kodo Sawaki
Couldn’t agree with this more. About 5 years ago I read some Eckhart Tolle and started exploring this ideaology and ultimately it led me here and I’m not upset about it, BUT at the time I was implementing this it became very harmful for me. I was giving everyone in my life a pass no matter what they did... I wasn’t there for myself or recognizing any boundaries. Dangerous stuff
"Here and now" is not the end of the story with mindfulness meditation. "Grounding" or "centering" yourself, usually achieved by techniques such as attending to the breath or other present moment sensations, can be thought of as a tool for providing a reference point from which to relate to your condition i.e. the external world, or in this case your past trauma. Observing your thoughts "from" the "here and now", instead of being lost in them, makes all the difference between constructive contemplation and futile rumination. That's how mindfulness enables healing.
sometimes being in the here and now helps a lot in understanding and accepting the past,because it gives a space for calm and conscious thinking, in the other hand thinking about the past very often, even in a reflective way could damage someone's life
Yoga, meditation and mindfulness are so popular ("trending") in our society because they're tools for denial and avoidance. Not that those activites are bad in themselves, but they're being abused. I know quite a lot of people with narcissistic tendencies (or perhaps they are just narcissists, or worse) who almost obsessively travel and do yoga. Yet when they're with other people they're cold, closed, selfish, egocentric, lack empathy and, from what I've seen, sociopathic at times. Edit: add to this the cult of positivity we see and hear everywhere, in music, marketing, social media. As though being happy is just a decision and an objective in itself, instead of what being happy really is: an emotional reaction to your actions, relations and environment. I think we live in a disassociated, miserable society, where most people are desperately trying to ignore their trauma, and very often desperately trying to forget their own life.
@@legalfictionnaturalfact3969 Mindfulness is a coping mechanism for other people too. If they can convince you to just "forget about it" and "stop living in the past" (i.e. "live in the present" and "meditate" etc.) then they can get you to stop reminding them of what's wrong in their lives. This is real toxicity. I'm not very religious, but the best recovery advice I know is: the truth shall set you free.
I remember I made a horrible mistake of saying ok to a therapist who was big on mindfulness in between me and my narcissist father. He kept this performative hypnotic calming voice all through very aggressive behavior on my dad. Dad is narcisstistic/aspergers, of which there's significant overlap. My dad insisted that no feelings could be expressed and the therapist had absolutely no boundaries and absolutely was not ok with healthy anger. So much of mindfulness communities is like that. It's filled with privileged people with poor boundaries and buried anger, to the point where it's as much about compliance as it is being present.
I totally agree on your observation. One thing that I´ve got to say is, that I think ppl saying that have some point sometimes maybe: I think it´s not a good option to just keep reliving your past and just tell the story and tell it and always tell it, because there is no change in it, unless you use the present remaining parts of you to connect that to your past experiences, so that their meaning and quality start slowly shifting if that makes sense. That´s something that I think with some psychoanalysts gets lost in treatment, because they just have their clients tell and tell and tell them stuff while being really dissociated themselves and their clients being totally unpresent in some sense. Meditation can be a tool for reconnection or disconnection to all parts of you I think.
I also struggled with this quote for a long time, until I understood that, the feelings that were created by past events and yet being experienced at the current moment is an important part of my "here and now". Anchoring in the "here and now" does not mean that I should judge a feeling by when it was created. As long as I am experiencing it, it is present. This teaching is not the best for people with traumas I agree.
Thanks for sharing. I've found that I need to manage my mind, restrain it's wandering and take steps to obstruct the destructive use of imagination; but all that being said, I agree completely. This can easily be an excuse to deny my trauma and how I really feel.
I’ve been thinking about this same thing lately and then you put a video out on it.. amazing. Thank you for always putting out thought provoking content Daniel..
Thank you again...this resonates with Jeff browns books that have also given me a sense of peace & validation after being immersed in so many other concepts.
I agree with resolving underlying emotions and traumas, but I guess I understand being here and now differently - it is acting out in reality instead of abstractly overthinking in one's own mind. It is about rejecting perfectionism and making our best bet and sticking with it despite sacrificing all the other opportunities because we have limited resources and we can choose between doing nothing and doing our best to live here and now. Nevertheless I agree with the main idea of the video
You very much nailed something I see happening again and again. People use philosophies out of their respective contexts as one-for-everything-tools. Once they realize that a tool is useful for something that they didn't know could be done, they assume everyone should use it for everything. Certainly something I have been guilty of numerous times in the past. It contributes to a castle in the sky effect where the fantasy of enlightenment becomes so sweet to you that you successively get out of touch with yourself moreso than you already were to begin with. And the less you can hear your consciousness telling you no, this is not the way for you.
The usefulness of the here-and-now is most noticed within the context of group therapy. Irving Yalom has promoted this through his extensive writing. I'd have to agree that it does serve an important purpose.
My pet peeve is everyone is calling themselves an empath because that's the new cool thing to be. I just see a lot of codependent. Being an empath isn't all that great. I am an empath, I am easily traumatized with just pictures of abuse animal rescues on my UTube feed. I can't watch most movies as I am too sensitive to watch people in pain. I am a Social Worker and work with terminally ill patients. I get them clothes even though that's not part of my job, because I want them to have dignity. Last week I caught a German Shepherd and my act was instrumental in the dogs safety and its return home. Everyday I do some thing helpful. I look for opportunities to help someone. I have always been like that and always will. I am trying to start a challenge and ask everyone to do one nice thing at least once a week. Living in the moment, in the here and now is hard as an empath.
I started watching the animal rescue videos and they kept coming up to the point I had to shut them off. TH-cam will flood you with them until you're depressed. I then found out some of them are actually staged, people do anything for money. I was a hospice volunteer for about a year and I found it very rewarding.
Grieving implies hope. Often, the psychological pain can be so bad that I don't understand how it doesn't knock me out or kill me. How do we find hope?
i read eckhart tolle's book in prison and while the book is important (i especially appreciated learning about how everything is energy and energy is always moving), its very hard to practice stillness and presence when there are painful memories to grieve and process. Something still doesn't feel right about myself when i just jump into spirituality without processing what it is im jumping from. Thanks Daniel for this video, it doesn't make me feel weird or like im wrong cause i "live in the past"
many people mentioned Eckhart Tolle and his "the power of now", I do read it years ago, the experience of reading that book is very impressive but later on I found it wasn't that helpful.his approach and writing can make reader become alert and aware of about their present tense or the moment. but he just lack of the knowledge to conceptualize and articulate the hidden dynamic and logic of "how our past shape us today". Alice Miller said that, our feeling in the body convey our history to us, as long as we have the sensitivity to see the connection. reading Alice Miller is not a very easy experience at the very beginning, but afterwards something happened and made me see some of my emotion and reaction, then the feeling would remind me about what Alice Miller said in her books. and I know that's the truth. but Eckhart Tolle and his writing do not has that lasting influence after the reading. another author I want to mention is Jiddu Krishnamurti, he also said about "self observe", and his main reader or audience are Indian or people in the west but interest in oriented philosophy. he criticize all religionand the blind in society. and point to the fact that "people were conditioned" and he said that "there is no freedon if no free from the past", one of his book is "free from the known". he also say that "after sorrow is wisdom", and "it take a lot of intellectual to understand the intellectual of body". the meaning in those words is very similar to what I learn from "trauma psychology". besides he also don't agree with that parents truly love their kids, and he criticize to the behavior parents have about their kid. even though he don't mention the word "trauma" too much. and last point I want to mention is that Daniel, I do agree many of your point and trust you, but you don't mention the relationship between feeling of childhood trauma and the body, which I now aware that it have huge significance to understanding and healing trauma. grief do important, especially at the beginning, but the rage and anger toward unfair is also important, maybe more important to bring back our long lost vitality and strength of trueself,, as long as those rage and anger is justified one.(usually been repressed and dissociated because of the fear of inner child)... I discover and validate it's significance in my our healing journey. Dan, I start watch your video since 2015, only after a while of reading Alice Miller. since then I began my inner journey of healing myself and reclaim my authentic self. and your point and understanding is always inspirational for me and I trust you personally and feel close to you. I am not an native English speaker, but your English is always easy understand for me due to the emotional connection I have with the content you talking about. regardless of those important agreement I have about you, I sometime still feel that you are a bit dogmatic in some point. not dogmatic to the institution of all sort of academic or thought school, but to an idealized value. (though that value is also right and healthy. but been dogmatic reflect your weak point. to some extend it's like the position of a passive kid that don't vary a bit from the norms). you criticize the common norm in a problematic society a lot, but at the same time seem stick or attach to a new idealized norm and value with so much royalty, that in some sense still make you (unconscious) been in the similar situation of the submissive kid you once were. don't get me wrong, I still agree with many point you criticize about the society and people's cruelty and blindness in general. the reason of saying this is also want to share one of my observation and feeling. hope you don't feel bad about it. your approach to study is very different from those institutionalized approach, which many doctor or professional adhere with. and both approach are valuable in my perspective. but many of those professionals in academic field may investigate their personal childhood so seriously and profoundly, therefore may has some blind spot about the real deep cause on some issues. and I also see myself as a researcher on childhood trauma issue, and I also realize that so many things are related to a person's childhood experience, except those of "model of intimacy relationship", "way of living their life", "character , personality and behavior", their political standpoint, the special type of intellectual they would develop, the way they express their creativity, the the imagination they would unfolding in their mind, and the specification difficulty they could confront in the process of their foreign language learning. and their taste about literature, music, movie, and all sort of art. and all sort of inclination and tendency in different things. all those issues can be related to their childhood experience. (these also reflect that people can't get rid of their past so easily).. I really want to talk with you personally, and share many of my point of view, my discovery and experience. I believe that ccould also be helpful and inspirational to you.. if you are willing to talk, please contact my Skype or WeChat: xigenzhang11
True, l dissaciated to survive. In order to thrive, at 60 l reteived myself by going into theraphy to support me to walk back into experiencing all the pain as l could handle slowly. Journaling and staying with the anxiety grew me. It has giving me meaning, waking up to the people pleasing, giving away me to feel safe and be liked. What a waste and tragic for me. Each day l stay mindful of the old patterns of forgetting me and l bounce back into my body and reteive me again. I stay away from people l dont feel safe with as l learn and give me full permission to matter and get stronger and stronger. God does it piss them off that l am no longer available.
Thank you Daniel Mackler!! You help me understand the human psyche. I am so glad you are here to help me and so many others, I imagine. I don't feel so alone in my pursuit of the truth. Again, thank you!!
I totally agree - study the past, know it well ! It does effect us, it made who we are so we need to understand it. Then we can live not only in the present but in the future as well. I always thought that "Ummmm" "present" stuff was nonsense.
It’s aspirational to aim to be present, but we cannot exist without our past and a desire to move into our future. All neurosis lies therein. “Wild is the world and lonely is the path to come to You.” Madonna - Perhaps an unusual and unanticipated source of wisdom for many, but whether the You in question is your higher self or what you perceive as God or the Universe, it rings true with both maturity and poetry. Excavating one’s past is rarely met with shared encouragement or enthusiasm for when we change our own narrative, we force others to adjust accordingly. I’ve come to understand that most people have broken inner children and that they have never learned to self-parent; they stay infantilized in their determination to remain safe from the pain they imagine will annihilate their false sense of identity. Self-discover certainly isn’t for the faint of heart!
This is very accurate. I used to meditate to get in the "here and now". I was able to find some thoughts and techniques that could help me to dissociate, but they never worked for very long. I was unable to force myself to the here and now any more than I already am in it.
4 ปีที่แล้ว +1
Thanks for your sharing, it motivates me to keep doing this inner work even if it's not that FUN. :)
Oh yeah, totally agree. That so much annoys me in spiritual people. Still, I use meditation. Because I think it *can* help to get connected with deeper parts of myself. It depends on how to meditate. But going into a quiet place, focusing on the body, etc., instead of media and work and gossip - that really can help bring up more and more of myself. But yeah, many use meditation only as a kind of medication.
I agree! However, there is a way in which being openly focused in the present (a relaxed concentration in bodily sensations, for example) can bring up unresolved past issues that are relevant and need attention. But we have to have that intention and disposition to integrate whatever comes up, and not repress it. That being said, I am also not against an active exploration of past trauma, both methods can help eachother.
I think some do this to be present to be mindful to be accountable for whatever their trying to accomplish. Some can bury the past and some cannot. I think we say this to heal. I believe we do have to deal with the things that are affecting us for sure.
I'm living in the here and now in the sense that I allow all the thoughts about the past, present, and future to be there. If you aren't aware that you're ruminating on the past then you truly aren't present
I completely agree that saying it is a defence. But what yogis and other gurus are talking about is that a person actually is present to the moment. You can't just push all ur garbage away, the garbage is in the present moment too. There simply is no choice. The present is all there is. It's kind of "if you want to build a house, you need to work on materials and resources instead of driving your bike around beautiful neighbourhood" All your physical imperfections and conditions will always be there, but only if you're present to the moment, you're able to choose the right action. As for myself, since I begun to meditate actively, those problems actually seem alot worse than they previously were. I'm just more aware of them, they always were the same. But now I notice this little "yes" inside which doesn't give up, even if the situtation looks devastating. Guess I'm trying to say that I have learned a little tiny bit of damage control so I'm not helpless anymore.
Give your past a voice - acknowledge and validate all of the injustice, inconsistency, and inhumanity...and be willing to move forward and begin to tell a new story about who you are that may include aspects of your past, but is not solely defined by it. Let the past be a place of reference, not a place of residence.
Amen. This is why the shamans do "soul retrieving" first. One needs to go down into the depth first and then up. But being in the here and now remains a relief mechanism to make the difficult work bearable.
I don't know... in the end it's all about energy. Grieving releases energy but so does having a still, hopeful, confident mind that's guided toward the future. Don't just keep dwelling on the past. You have to understand what creates energy and what brings you forward.
The popularity of this mindfulness technics speaks about how incredibly difficult is to contact and working through the childhood traumas,lot of people if not the majority choose to take the most weird ideas about the internal world in order to avoid the pain of a more real version of their own history...and society gives constantly a tsunami of denying ideas to impose the very,very convenient dissociation that it needs to replicate itself.
I think there's a kind of false dichotomy here--yes being in the present can be (mis)used in order to avoid the past, one's true feelings, etc., but genuinely being in the moment means that those buried feelings would rise up and make themselves known (this is what he says towards the end).
I understand and agree with what you (Daniel) and the other commentators are saying and I'm glad you brought it up. People in general are copycats and mindlessly do things that others say to do, just to appear like they know what they're doing. I would say though that one time concentrating on what's happening in the present is helpful is when someone is having a flashback of sexual or physical abuse and is being overwhelmed with the traumatic feelings and that idea should be used at that time. It's not necessary or even healthy to try to be in the "now" or whatever you want to call it all the time.
I believe that "mindfulness" and living in the "present" is important - like a skill. Like a hammer, mindfulness isn't the sole solution to all problems. You need screwdrivers, nails, and other tools as well- working together in different situations and contexts.
It is impressive how the traumatic process is an integral part of our psychology (not only to us humans). "Not knowing", to survive, but to be sick of it... what a strange way to do it. So why were we built that way?
One of the best critics, kudos to you l would say l am 1 per cent in the present, for the most part. The rest of the time l am mainly thinking about my past childhood and traumatised experiences with family and friends. Whilst trying to put my best foot forward 😢😢😢😢😢 Meaning you not really enjoying the present, even when on holiday l think about my past.😢😢
When Jesus said: "Deny thyself", he is not saying: "Dissociate thyself". It is to go beyond the person, then there is not past and future. But, in the psychological level there is a past. For me, it is good to work in the two levels, and face the traumas and meditate too; the key it is the sincerity.
Love this video! In the last year (after about 10 years of work on my trauma, history, in therapy) I strangely feel a 'spiritual' side of myself coming through, something that I have been deeply exploring and very much enjoying (I still struggle to use the word spiritual without cringing)!. In this exploration I am coming into contact with what feels like a movement that is made up of individuals that are saying the past doesn't matter and the present is all there is. Whilst I agree the present is all that exists currently , to ignore the past is another way to turn away from dissociated parts of the self and live inauthentically. Meditation and grounding myself has been a huge part of my journey - not to avoid but to be able to stay present when going into big past feelings. I experienced depersonalization 'disorder' for around 15 years and completely dissociating every time I got near a childhood feeling caused me to get stuck. Importantly, this was all done whilst training to be a therapist and a lot of it took place in open group (a bit like group therapy). This allowed me to explore old family patterns and for the first time be vulnerable in a holding space. It is only after all this work that I've even considered any school of thoughts around the present moment and I will always split between work in grounding myself and work on my past in therapy and in my life. Thank you for putting this video together Daniel! It wonderfully articulates something that's been on my mind for a while now.
If someone was just sent away to an island retreat on their own with total safety, all things provided for them, and stayed there for 3 years, due to lack of dissociation would their traumas start to come up and grieve?
I'm concerned that some people will watch 20 seconds of this video and think that their addiction to internal suffering is fine. Studying our past from the lens of the present is key
Being here and now means different things to different people. According to buddhism and the religions you refer to, it simply means the absence of thoughts. Being dissociated from your constant thinking and intellect isn't an escape, it's the mastery of your thoughts and subconsciousness. It's not pushed down, it's gone from your thoughts, and replaced by a deeper presence and awareness. Dissociation isn't real. Your awareness, absent of thoughts and identity is more real than the reverse. :) Also, being able to have "healthy" relationships to frantic, fast-talking modern people, or living in an urban environment, aren't measurements of health.
I would not call it dissociation. When meditation and self inquiry is practiced properly, the individual is training themselves to gradually open up to everything (thought, emotion, sensation, etc). The difference is that they do not cling to what ever arises, through grounding and finding centre they can become the witness and allow the trapped energy to unfold and release through the body. It's very similar to modern somatic therapy techniques. Unfortunately, a lot of people misunderstand this and do indeed end up dissociating. It is possible to experience many altered states of consciousness and yet still suffer with many unresolved wounds on a human level (just look at all the spiritual guru's that are now facing accusations of sexual harrassment). True liberation is in fact embodied, embracing both the transcendent and human aspects of our nature.
Oh trust me, dissociation IS real. What about people with DID who have it to the point of having amnesiac walls that separate different parts of themselves or their memory due to what's been happening in their childhood? Do you think it's also not real? Actually many people have it, just not in a form that's as extreme as in DID. Some people are just healthy enough not to bother to explore traumatized parts of themselves, but it's still there while others are not so healthy and are literally running away from themselves. People have trauma memory in their body or in their subconscious and it can't just disappear all of the sudden, without these issues being explored. Perhaps, meditation can be helpful in some ways temporarily for people who have a lot of unresolved stuff, but it's not the same as therapy or self-therapy Daniel is talking about.
@@themetamorphosisofgipsy Perhaps you have misunderstood me, I am not disagreeing with Daniel's message regarding the dangers of these ideas and practices (especially for those with significant traumatic histories). I don't, however, believe in throwing the baby out with the bathwater in this case. Eastern philosophy and spiritual practice when utilized and applied in an embodied way (and not "spiritual bypassing") can be incredibly transformative - and I talk from personal experience here.
Yes, but at the same time, to live in the past and drown in shame or regret isn’t good for you. I say acknowledge the trauma and try to heal from it, while also doing healthy things to take your attention off of the pain. This way you don’t surrender fully to toxic positivity or drown in guilt or pain.
Having watched many videos on this subject of being in the here and now not one has addressed this so eloquently. Eckart Tolle gave a talk on this subject and it crossed my mind then that without being whole how can one be anchored in the here and now if traumas are still lurking within. That’s like getting on a train and getting off half way of your destination and settling there. This is something I needed to hear. Thank you Daniel.
You’re one hell of an authentic person. You are the basis of transformation, then comes Michael Singer then Tolle. Without you as a foundation the wall and the roof can’t stand
Well i think its only a practice to do it zo understand what causes you to be away from the here and now. Like you should fisrt free your body, (through deep breaths etc) of the trauma, and then the mind can try. Its just one of the suggested teqniques to free oneself from the conditionimg
Great video. An increasingly well known occurrence in 'spiritual' communities. The 'spiritual bypass', meditate it away, give it all to god or whatever your preferred term. Nothing to see here. Denial. Thank you Daniel.
Excellent. Grieving through forgiveness of the past is cleansing. In the Lord's prayer there is a central line: "forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us." Central in Jesus' message of our personal walk with God is forgiveness, including forgiving ourselves. Focusing on forgiveness is not seeking justice. This is not a fair world. We can't right all wrongs, but we can forgive. On the cross Jesus prayed, " Forgive them for they don't know what they do"
Religious folk always gotta bring Jesus into everything, but their own life and lifestyle. Jesus, unlike most hypocritical Christians, practiced what he preached. Ironically, the most monstrous and despicable behavior has been done by Christ proclaiming predators who in turn push the forgiveness brainwashing on everyone because they are guilty and know it. Jesus was a Renegade and would curse Christianity to Kingdom come, let alone associate with it. So please, leave Jesus out of it and stop using his name in vain as if he'd perpetuate any of the fuckery these demonic pastors of churches do. Jesus does not know ya'll! And no, I am not Christian, thank Jesus!
If/when feeling numbed out & weak, Don't take on the world/ all the issues. Just do what you must, little steps to prove you're not broken and stronger than you think (like writing out lists, playing a video game, going for a walk, etc. if/ when that low) ask questions, delve into the past, accept it.... No expert, wish I had all the answers. But yeah dissociation/ disconnection with the past, I mean it's a way...if one wants to become a numbed out robot. But there's far better ways to grow and live I doubt therapy is absolutely essential. But if you find someone you feel you can trust and help you thru some stuff, ok why not try... But any movement is better than nothing. Life Isn't an all or nothing affair (that it commonly might feel like)
I don't understand the meditation you're talking about.I learned TM years ago and still practice it, but not regularly.It helped me immensely.It doesn't seem to be anything like the meditation I hear people talking about.What I hear seems like the latest fad, which people have no real clue about.It seems to require effort, which TM doesn't.
Your process of integrating the trauma into the here and now sounds a lot like what we do in Internal Family Systems. Unburdening and retrieval it's called.
Our past is PRESENT at all times. It influences every moment of our now lives and every decision we’ve ever made as adults.
As I struggle daily to manage all the symptoms of Complex PTSD, Daniel has become a beacon of strength, compassion and survival for me...a lighthouse.
@@legalfictionnaturalfact3969
In all fairness, eating healthy is never bad advice.
As someone who has been experiencing with both acid and shrooms, I'd say it will definitely create katarsis(look it up if u have not heard of it), but they're not going to cure anything.
Most likely if anything, they are capable of revealing you something new about urself. It will give u a space to see it from a new perspective but when the effects wear off, so does the understanding.
For me, it was enough helpful to take an action afterwards but generally going to the experience and expecting something to change immediately is just bound to disapoint you. It's like a new girl you suddenly meet and next thing u know, everything is clear and amazing. Life is good for the honeymoon period. It'll come to its end aswell.
Then again, I have never taken any drug under controlled environment, but I've done enough drugs to say from experience that everytime I seek for something from them, nothing happens. The saying "you don't find psychedelics, psychedelics finds you" is very true.
The most helpful psychedelic trips I have had, have taken place without any preparation. Now obviously it doesn't mean I'm gna pop some acid if I'm at a situtation that doesn't allow me to trip properly.
Set n setting is essential, and actually the best set n setting has been when things are going generally well and suddenly I discover that there's acid available. It's like it was meant to happen.
Nowdays I don't do psychedelics anymore, perhaps in the future but not now. I've already discovered that either I was trying to run towards or away from a problem, all I was doing was running on a mat and thinking I'm moving.
But I believe that if someone wants to have an drug experience, they should be allowed to.
Dealing with Complex PTSD as well and discovering Daniel’s channel has been a blessing. So much value in every video, years of wisdom compacted in a concise way that makes you feel you’re in the same room as him, talking with a good old friend. Fantastic. So grateful to have access to his knowledge and insights on healing trauma.
You hold all the answers my friend.
I always thought that saying “be in the here and now” is so dismissive and a form of avoidance. Sure rumination isn’t beneficial but one shouldn’t go to the other extreme either. Thanks for your insight.
Meditation helped me explore my trauma. Nothing about my meditation practice has ever suggested I can't, don't or shouldn't grieve. It gives me the strength to grieve and without it if have crumbled over the weight of my trauma.
That's right, there's no denying that unreleased traumas and regrets affect your present
😂😂😂
Each part of the past needs a chance to speak, and then it will happily and contentedly become a part of you, no longer haunting you but instead becoming a part of your wisdom. The more you do that, the stronger and nicer your inner self, who should be your best friend, becomes.
Eckhart Tolle has left the chat.
Hajikkaki Tolle is nuts and fake.
The way Tolle describes his "enlightenment" sounds just like depersonalisation disorder to me
funny
I still like him, but I've found it helpful to look at other ideas in addition to his. And he seems reasonable; I doubt he'd object if I asked him about it.
@@popiejopie1 wow that's very interesting... what made you conclude this? i've only heard one lecture from him but he sounds so peaceful
Thank you for that! Reminds me a bit of the way Jeff Brown stated it: "The Power of Now is actually the Power of self-avoidance."
And I kept reading that book like "If I just pay good enough attention then the dummy that I am will finally get it and I will be free from my pain." Should've said "free from myself"
😂😂😂@@veganfire4218
Saying "Just live in the here and now" is a favorite thing that gaslighters like to say.
This is so refreshing. These spiritual cliches get thrown out so often and they just become dogmatic terms that devotees just assume unreflectively. Having lived in a spiritual community for 24 years, it is so refreshing to hear someone truly look with a beginners mind at some of these teachings. If I may add a few thoughts to round this out. My experience is just like yours Daniel. In Buddhist teachings there was a line of the Buddha's I used as a near mantra for decades "having abandoned memories and intentions based on the household life, the monastic ..." and there are a few different endings to this.
I really had no idea that all those literally 10s of thousands of hours sitting meditation was simply me dissociating. I actually haven't heard many people say " I live in the here and now", but they teach as though they have mastered this skill, and give teachings on how to attend to the present. One thing though to round this out, is that I feel (perceive) that there are truths that are subtle, real and extremely valuable that one can only access through an application of the mind to the present moment. This I feel is an important additive to your observations Daniel, lest people conclude that present moment awareness is LESS relevant than coming to understand your past. It's not less relevant, and perhaps we could say there are much more relevant (meaning consequential) things to perceive about the present moment than details about our past traumas and psychological development. But for so long as the steering wheel of attention is controlled by a traumatized being with intentions that are rooted in a childhood experiences and faulty understandings of the world - simply 'paying attention to the moment' fails to appreciate how little the dissociated mind can actually influence anything! Especially in one's mind.
It is worth observing I feel that disciplines around present moment awareness are, I suspect (and this is for discussion, not a statement of certainty) perfectly valid and the ocean of wisdom that lies in those past sages that have perhaps never dealt with their trauma through dissociating is a very real and valuable wisdom. I believe strongly I have known some remarkable beings that don't seem to have any dissociation in their being. (True, who am I to say - but I feel it is quite apparent). But these teachers seem to not be aware of what the mind is like that is chronically dissociating. Many of them were raised on a farm in rural Asia, and joined the monastery as a teenager. As for western monks I have met. or Urban asian monks (monastics) I count probably less than 5 that seem untouched by dissociation (of hundreds).
In monasteries, there may be a bit of a self-selective process - in order to become a Buddhist monk for example, especially in former decades, often it require a personality type that was willing to go profoundly no contact with family of origin, to assert one's identity usually in opposite to a family and world that has no faith in your intentions, and possibly have a personality that is willing to coral their wisdom and will in such a way as to be something of a corrective to dissociative states. And furthermore, people in less industrial times/places - for example rural Asians who grew up on a farm in rural North East Thailand - we see beings who are so in their body, so connected to their being that it may be correct to say their past perceptions are best to be let go of. If the aim of processing past trauma and memories is to re-associate, there will be some for whom this is not needed, and thoughts of the past are a form of escaping from the present. In a way, for such types, THAT is a kind of dissociating. Thoughts of the past are dissociating from the task of realizing certain truths that are available in the present. I like to think of dissociating as "self-abandonment in regards to those perceptions that are immediately relevant to heal and move closer to one's integrated will and experience of real freedom". (this is not as abstract as it may sound :).
But such beings are rare these days, even in simpler countries. (the influence of WEIRD culture (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic) is reaching, I feel, into the hearts of the vast majority of beings alive). I see three kinds of spiritual teachers:
1) Those rare ones who seem genuinely non-dissociated. They may teach the value of present moment awareness - but I intuit they don't understand what it means to be dissociated, and don't grasp what an epidemic it, or how to heal it. I don't believe such beings are being dishonest. Far from. They just genuinely don't seem to get what the dissociated self is. Such teachers I have known seem truly puzzled and bewildered by their student's inability to simply 'be present'.
2) Then there are the teachers who are actually dissociated but don't realize it. I am afraid to admit this, but this is probably the VAST majority of teachers I have known. They don't see it in themselves, they don't see it in others. They teach present moment awareness I feel in a way that may be quite unhelpful and misleading - maybe even quite harmful.
3) And then there are the rare ones who grasp this, and recognize the path to healing dissociation, and see the need for this work before entering on the work of 'abandoning the past'. And - it is honestly hard to even think of an example of such a teacher. Beings in the first group are truly rare in my experience, and I feel they still have much to say that is valuable about present moment awareness. But I see in myself now just how much dissociation has perverted my experience of the present moment, and how futile simply 'applying the mind to the here and now' is for one like myself.
I have been reading spiritual books and psychology books my entire life, all the while not aware that deep inside I was committed to the belief that I am broken, and I deeply believed there was no way to address what I see now as my dissociation. At 54, it is suddenly dawning on me that dissociation can be addressed through comprehending some key traumatic experiences, and accessing the rage that has the power to reinterpret my entire understanding of who I am, who my family is, how to care for myself and using that rage to overcome my despair, depression and fear (if there is one thing rage knows nothing of, it is despair, depression or fear!) (remembering of course, that what makes rage safe to feel is a commitment to non-violence. If I may add that).
I sense for myself that dissociation is a precise thing, a kind of wound that one in time can say 'this is done. I am healed'. I am not a mental health professional, and I half expect many would say it is like an onion, and one only gets 'less dissociated'. Well, I am far from a model here, but I have a strong sense that there will come a time and not that many years hence, I will be able to say 'I understand my past. I understand how my ego formed. I am unafraid of my rage. I am confident in declaring my values. I have defined myself in a way that will protect my autonomy and gifts' - and I believe then I will want to revisit those teachers that go on about the truths that are apparent in the here and now and use their advice in a way that will help.
I will give you all an update in 3 years and let's see if I am being naive. Thanks as always Daniel. Such unique, insightful words.
The wave of new age has made people into self proclaimed gurus who regurgitate the verbal vomit they have licked off someone else's floor in order to sound somewhat innovative.
It's annoying and this video puts it all in the right perspective.
We love to pretend, yet we are all wounded, bleeding, traumatized individuals whom rather pretend that all is OK, rather than telling the Truth and standing in that Sovereignty of Truth, no matter how vulnerable.
Salute Daniel and a huge pet on the back for putting Truth above all!
I totally agree. Gosh even I caught fleas from this thinking only positive and live in the moment crap, I want to slap myself silly for even considering it in the past. Everyone tells everyone what to think these days and that alone triggers me because of the memories from my past.
TheMetamorphosisOfGipsy
Mindfulness...phooey! Lol.
Problems with New Age spirituality:
Celebrates the ego, pushes moral relativism, no lineage of knowledge/gurus/teachers, is often mercantile/profit based, puts an overemphasis on positive thinking, leads to ideological globalism, is hedonistic, has a distorted view of oneness, and has produced an epidemic of spiritual bypassing.
This watered down fluff is everywhere now. Luckily a lot of people are started to see through all its flaws..
The Way
Yeah what we need to heal is affirmation, not blind forgiveness.
@@EsotericHighway But somewhere along the way, everybody has to go there. That's why you know it's a "problem". I would call it a stepping stone. Because we all have been there before. And more and more people keep going there. It's simply happened and I'm glad for that.
I came to write this comment a year after watching and being convinced by this video, because experience has shown me the other side about the 'living in the here and now', and I wanted to share this comment just incase someone is watching the video to decide whether meditation/mindfulness is good for their trauma. Just read the comments already in the chat, and I see lots of people who have had bad experiences with someone telling them to shove their past under, because yoga and mindfulness are the best things in the world. I'm sorry for that. That's not helpful, I see why you'd never want to see a person like that again.
But it becomes as simple as this : Become so present, that you're able to see things that are caused around by your traumas (contrast : so present that your traumas vanish). If you are present and have traumas (who doesn't), you'll see them manifest - Yelling at someone, or feeling excessive shame in some situation - there are countless manifestations, some more common than others. For me, meditation and mindfulness began off as a grounding tool (the more popular way they use it), when there was already enough of darkness (depression, anger and anxiety). And it acted as a support at that time to help me out, accelerating me into recovery, into a place of peace (the sort of thing that they advertise). But that recovery was just the tip of the iceberg, it was a temporary phase. Here on there are two ways to go, and I got stuck throughout last year on this. When I recovered, the entire world seemed brighter, more alive, and I just felt better and better and better (you know the feeling if you've recovered from depression or such ), but that feeling had to stop somewhere, and start to stabilise. This stabilisation is often felt as calm, but after a year or so can change to boredom, a desire to again have the ecstacy you feel during a quick recovery. That's a trap, and the first way after initial recovery, never fall for chasing that feeling, or chasing the feeling of "healing" - it's you using "recovery" and "healing" in the same way as an addict uses heroin - for hits of pleasure. Well, the entire idea took me a year or more than a year to process - it's an anchor, but it's not there so that you can avoid pain, it's there to help you in the same way the rope helps someone doing bungee jumping. Take a deep dive into the past if you're feeling brave enough ! But don't cut the rope, because you want to come back.
I won't use the word mindfulness, proceeding further, because I have been more familiar with the word meditation, and I hope it'll also help because we tend to associate bad experiences with words, and 'mindfulness' therefore might carry some baggage.
Your traumas prevent you from being completely present. But one doesn't need overthink that - for people who've been doing long term meditation (challenge : find one such person in this chat - yep, we tend to have like-minded people around orders of magnitude more), they'll tell you how true it is that things come up in their meditation and you'll find most of them have a deep awareness of their traumas. Meditation's amazing I think - an anchor, a healing tool, if used the right way. You get to see places in you you didn't even know existed, and it'll happen in a way that's non-conceptual, not ideas being hammered into you from a book on healing (or a book on mindfulness or Buddhism for that matter), but ideas that are your own (it'll be sort of a "how to heal" book emerging from inside you - among other great things). But similarly, bad things that surprise you also come up. You see them all, with unbiased attention, and when it's too much you use your breath (or some other object) to support yourself.
Since the material people in the comments have been exposed to has been dismissive material, I'll add some that I've found helpful.
1. Good medicine by Pema Chodron
2. Gelong Thubten's recordings
3. Tara Brach
You can also check out Peter Levine and Bessel Van Der Kolk's work, which reflects on some similar uses for grounding and not dismissive ones.
May we all heal, and be free of the desire to heal.
Peace
From Paul Simon's "The Only Living Boy in New York: "Half of the time we're gone, and we don't know where..."
Drive A Good Man Bad
Great Song!
I think the issue you have isn’t with being present in general, but rather the act of tricking yourself into thinking you are present when really you are still being controlled by unconscious processes or past pain.
Truly being present doesn’t mean that you avoid anything that is operating within you. You acknowledge it, you sit with it, you allow it to be and even allow yourself to feel whatever it is you’re feeling. There is no avoidance with real presence. The difference is you see it for what it is when you are truly present. You see it as just pain, or your mind doing it’s thing, or whatever it is that you typically have identified with and been controlled by. And in this seeing, you are naturally freed from whatever has typically been controlling you because now there is some distance between you and it, and it can now no longer completely overtake you.
Another way to look at it is when you are truly present, it’s like you’re observing yourself from a higher, unbiased perspective. Like imagine your mind is the busy streets of a city but instead of being completely stuck in the thick of things, you are watching everything unfold in a hot air balloon floating right above. From this height, you aren’t stressed out or controlled by everything down below but can clearly see everything that is going on. You can see the chaos without feeling like you are totally absorbed in it. And let’s imagine there’s a car crash. From this perspective, it becomes much easier to see everything involved in the creation of this crash and you can easily understand why it happened in the first place.
Basically, true presence is not escaping your past, but bringing awareness and acceptance to your past as it arises in the present. You aren’t denying or resisting anything that is operating within you, but instead allowing it to be there and seeing it for what it truly is without judgement or being totally possessed by it. There is space between you and the pain or the unconscious processes. And in this space, it becomes much easier to see everything for what it is and why it’s there in the first place, making the healing process much more efficient.
If I may add drummerkid38, my experience as a monk for 24 years, and meditation teacher for 15, your thoughts sound like the thoughts of someone who doesn't understand how dissociation interferes with intention. Forgive me if I am incorrect here - I don't say this to be a contrarian.
Your words seem theoretically true. And I believe they are conveying a wisdom that for one who isn't dissociated might be extremely valuable. But I can't help but feel it reminds me of stuff I would say for decades, a slightly inspired, articulate description of how the here and now embraces everything, including trauma, and so to allow the moment to be we can all just let our traumas reveal themselves and heal themselves in the warm embrace of now. (lol. I am playing up my flowery way of talking back when I used to teach).
But at least when I would speak like that, I can see it now almost as a form of gaslighting. Because I had such unshakeable faith in the Buddha and believed nothing he could say could be incorrect, and he so avidly taught about abandoning perceptions and memories of the past, I believed that to eulogize the present moment would be always relevant, always correct, always the path.
I've now come to realize that the vast real estate of my consciousness was locked up, quite literally like a little child in the corner of a dark part of consciousness rocking back and forth. And everything I did and pursued, all those shadow workbooks I did, all that journalling, all those tens of thousands of hours sitting with legs crossed, all the teachers I visited and conversed with - it was all aimed at keeping that child safely locked up, alone in a corner of the unconscious.
Imagine you have a 1 year old child, and she is in her crib in her bedroom screaming, and you are meditating in the living room. Through the power of determination, you stay focussed on the here and now. Baby's cries? "sound touching the ear". Pain in the back? "just sensation". Inhale? "just sensation". Baby crying? "sound". After the meditation you go look at your baby and she is fell out of the crib and got badly hurt.
That's not a perfect analogy, but the present moment can be like that for one afflicted with dissociation, and I believe that's the vast majority of westerners or urbanites. The baby represents cries from our inner child demanding that we process something. Something needs to be acknowledged about our past, grieved perhaps, owned. To say that everything is embraced in the present moment is kind of true, but the point is there is something the past, especially past trauma, that is actually demanding a response from us. Some teachers might say 'sit and accept whatever comes up. "Anxiety? let it be. Grief? let it be. Notice the sensation". But the real point is, that if you are dissociated, that anxiety and grief and all the other feelings you might feel are a kind of language that needs to be deciphered. There is meaning that has to be discerned, and I know from my experience to just all everything be as it is here and now DID NOT give the respect to the messages that my inner child was trying to say. Or better put, the messages my inner child needed me to hear but was actually trying to hide from me.
I wonder how that lands and if you have any thoughts about that?
Your thoughts mirror mine. I often dissociate, and this is caused by anxious thought and fearful explorations of thought. You give me hope to find an answer that can wrap up what i was born with. Your comment on gaslighting yourself and perspective on hearing an inner child cry but turning away, not doing what we should truly do, to help ourselves. I see what you mean. I hope you have a great day, and have the courage to go on, and inspire. Keep voicing your thoughts because i really have been feeling alone recently. You helped me realize im not totally a goof.@@brada-smith2807
My therapist is big on Core Mindfulness, and it annoys me to no end, that he's very dismissive of my past.
This makes me ask more questions about him, more than myself.
That description seems to be sending out warning signals in my humble opinion.
I agree with TofuDream. I had a therapist who was big on practice, protocol and techniques, emphasizing that if I just keep to the regimen, then the numbers show that I should get better. Once I did say no, he didn't inquire with me but just doubled down on his suggestion, saying I should think about it. That's when I new he was out there and not here with me, so there wasn't another session with him. Although, I do think that confronting your therapist first is a good test - sometimes there's just a misunderstanding and a therapist becomes very accommodating once you reflect to him.
I had the same experience with a therapist I saw for about 6 months, she pushed the mindfulness crap too. 🙄
"You lack peace of mind because you are running after an idea of total peace of mind. That's backwards. Be attentive to your mind in each moment, no matter how unpeaceful it may seem to be. Great peace of mind is realized only in the practice within this unpeaceful mind. Real peace of mind only exists within unpeaceful mind. It arises out of the interplay between peaceful and unpeaceful mind." -Kodo Sawaki
technological akshually void spaghetti seeds
It’s hard to have peace when you’ve been mind F’d as a child.
Go forth my son! Lol.
Couldn’t agree with this more. About 5 years ago I read some Eckhart Tolle and started exploring this ideaology and ultimately it led me here and I’m not upset about it, BUT at the time I was implementing this it became very harmful for me. I was giving everyone in my life a pass no matter what they did... I wasn’t there for myself or recognizing any boundaries. Dangerous stuff
"Here and now" is not the end of the story with mindfulness meditation. "Grounding" or "centering" yourself, usually achieved by techniques such as attending to the breath or other present moment sensations, can be thought of as a tool for providing a reference point from which to relate to your condition i.e. the external world, or in this case your past trauma. Observing your thoughts "from" the "here and now", instead of being lost in them, makes all the difference between constructive contemplation and futile rumination. That's how mindfulness enables healing.
Among many good qualities, I find your lack of patience for hippies refreshing.
sometimes being in the here and now helps a lot in understanding and accepting the past,because it gives a space for calm and conscious thinking, in the other hand thinking about the past very often, even in a reflective way could damage someone's life
Sorry if the writing wasn't good , English is my second language
A totally original and interesting perspective. I fully agree with you, Daniel. Thank you for your honesty and professional insight.
Ovo je fenomenalno objasnjeno.
Yoga, meditation and mindfulness are so popular ("trending") in our society because they're tools for denial and avoidance. Not that those activites are bad in themselves, but they're being abused. I know quite a lot of people with narcissistic tendencies (or perhaps they are just narcissists, or worse) who almost obsessively travel and do yoga. Yet when they're with other people they're cold, closed, selfish, egocentric, lack empathy and, from what I've seen, sociopathic at times. Edit: add to this the cult of positivity we see and hear everywhere, in music, marketing, social media. As though being happy is just a decision and an objective in itself, instead of what being happy really is: an emotional reaction to your actions, relations and environment. I think we live in a disassociated, miserable society, where most people are desperately trying to ignore their trauma, and very often desperately trying to forget their own life.
@@legalfictionnaturalfact3969
Mindfulness is a coping mechanism for other people too. If they can convince you to just "forget about it" and "stop living in the past" (i.e. "live in the present" and "meditate" etc.) then they can get you to stop reminding them of what's wrong in their lives. This is real toxicity. I'm not very religious, but the best recovery advice I know is: the truth shall set you free.
@@the81kid What you're describing is unrelated to actual (properly taught) mindfulness.
I remember I made a horrible mistake of saying ok to a therapist who was big on mindfulness in between me and my narcissist father. He kept this performative hypnotic calming voice all through very aggressive behavior on my dad. Dad is narcisstistic/aspergers, of which there's significant overlap. My dad insisted that no feelings could be expressed and the therapist had absolutely no boundaries and absolutely was not ok with healthy anger.
So much of mindfulness communities is like that. It's filled with privileged people with poor boundaries and buried anger, to the point where it's as much about compliance as it is being present.
I totally agree on your observation. One thing that I´ve got to say is, that I think ppl saying that have some point sometimes maybe: I think it´s not a good option to just keep reliving your past and just tell the story and tell it and always tell it, because there is no change in it, unless you use the present remaining parts of you to connect that to your past experiences, so that their meaning and quality start slowly shifting if that makes sense. That´s something that I think with some psychoanalysts gets lost in treatment, because they just have their clients tell and tell and tell them stuff while being really dissociated themselves and their clients being totally unpresent in some sense. Meditation can be a tool for reconnection or disconnection to all parts of you I think.
I also struggled with this quote for a long time, until I understood that, the feelings that were created by past events and yet being experienced at the current moment is an important part of my "here and now". Anchoring in the "here and now" does not mean that I should judge a feeling by when it was created. As long as I am experiencing it, it is present. This teaching is not the best for people with traumas I agree.
Thank you.
Thanks for sharing. I've found that I need to manage my mind, restrain it's wandering and take steps to obstruct the destructive use of imagination; but all that being said, I agree completely. This can easily be an excuse to deny my trauma and how I really feel.
Excellent
Loath Tolle
Loathe the people making him repeat a teaching he finished 20 years ago
I’ve been thinking about this same thing lately and then you put a video out on it.. amazing.
Thank you for always putting out thought provoking content Daniel..
Absolutely perfect!! THIS
Thank you again...this resonates with Jeff browns books that have also given me a sense of peace & validation after being immersed in so many other concepts.
I agree with resolving underlying emotions and traumas, but I guess I understand being here and now differently - it is acting out in reality instead of abstractly overthinking in one's own mind. It is about rejecting perfectionism and making our best bet and sticking with it despite sacrificing all the other opportunities because we have limited resources and we can choose between doing nothing and doing our best to live here and now. Nevertheless I agree with the main idea of the video
You very much nailed something I see happening again and again. People use philosophies out of their respective contexts as one-for-everything-tools. Once they realize that a tool is useful for something that they didn't know could be done, they assume everyone should use it for everything. Certainly something I have been guilty of numerous times in the past. It contributes to a castle in the sky effect where the fantasy of enlightenment becomes so sweet to you that you successively get out of touch with yourself moreso than you already were to begin with. And the less you can hear your consciousness telling you no, this is not the way for you.
Thank you for this. I would also love to hear from you about any progress you’ve made in healing your traumas
The usefulness of the here-and-now is most noticed within the context of group therapy. Irving Yalom has promoted this through his extensive writing. I'd have to agree that it does serve an important purpose.
This was amazing and much needed! Thank you 🙏
My pet peeve is everyone is calling themselves an empath because that's the new cool thing to be. I just see a lot of codependent. Being an empath isn't all that great. I am an empath, I am easily traumatized with just pictures of abuse animal rescues on my UTube feed. I can't watch most movies as I am too sensitive to watch people in pain. I am a Social Worker and work with terminally ill patients. I get them clothes even though that's not part of my job, because I want them to have dignity. Last week I caught a German Shepherd and my act was instrumental in the dogs safety and its return home. Everyday I do some thing helpful. I look for opportunities to help someone. I have always been like that and always will. I am trying to start a challenge and ask everyone to do one nice thing at least once a week. Living in the moment, in the here and now is hard as an empath.
I started watching the animal rescue videos and they kept coming up to the point I had to shut them off. TH-cam will flood you with them until you're depressed. I then found out some of them are actually staged, people do anything for money.
I was a hospice volunteer for about a year and I found it very rewarding.
Grieving implies hope. Often, the psychological pain can be so bad that I don't understand how it doesn't knock me out or kill me. How do we find hope?
i read eckhart tolle's book in prison and while the book is important (i especially appreciated learning about how everything is energy and energy is always moving), its very hard to practice stillness and presence when there are painful memories to grieve and process. Something still doesn't feel right about myself when i just jump into spirituality without processing what it is im jumping from. Thanks Daniel for this video, it doesn't make me feel weird or like im wrong cause i "live in the past"
many people mentioned Eckhart Tolle and his "the power of now", I do read it years ago, the experience of reading that book is very impressive but later on I found it wasn't that helpful.his approach and writing can make reader become alert and aware of about their present tense or the moment. but he just lack of the knowledge to conceptualize and articulate the hidden dynamic and logic of "how our past shape us today". Alice Miller said that, our feeling in the body convey our history to us, as long as we have the sensitivity to see the connection. reading Alice Miller is not a very easy experience at the very beginning, but afterwards something happened and made me see some of my emotion and reaction, then the feeling would remind me about what Alice Miller said in her books. and I know that's the truth. but Eckhart Tolle and his writing do not has that lasting influence after the reading.
another author I want to mention is Jiddu Krishnamurti, he also said about "self observe", and his main reader or audience are Indian or people in the west but interest in oriented philosophy. he criticize all religionand the blind in society. and point to the fact that "people were conditioned" and he said that "there is no freedon if no free from the past", one of his book is "free from the known". he also say that "after sorrow is wisdom", and "it take a lot of intellectual to understand the intellectual of body". the meaning in those words is very similar to what I learn from "trauma psychology". besides he also don't agree with that parents truly love their kids, and he criticize to the behavior parents have about their kid. even though he don't mention the word "trauma" too much.
and last point I want to mention is that Daniel, I do agree many of your point and trust you, but you don't mention the relationship between feeling of childhood trauma and the body, which I now aware that it have huge significance to understanding and healing trauma. grief do important, especially at the beginning, but the rage and anger toward unfair is also important, maybe more important to bring back our long lost vitality and strength of trueself,, as long as those rage and anger is justified one.(usually been repressed and dissociated because of the fear of inner child)... I discover and validate it's significance in my our healing journey.
Dan, I start watch your video since 2015, only after a while of reading Alice Miller. since then I began my inner journey of healing myself and reclaim my authentic self. and your point and understanding is always inspirational for me and I trust you personally and feel close to you. I am not an native English speaker, but your English is always easy understand for me due to the emotional connection I have with the content you talking about. regardless of those important agreement I have about you, I sometime still feel that you are a bit dogmatic in some point. not dogmatic to the institution of all sort of academic or thought school, but to an idealized value. (though that value is also right and healthy. but been dogmatic reflect your weak point. to some extend it's like the position of a passive kid that don't vary a bit from the norms). you criticize the common norm in a problematic society a lot, but at the same time seem stick or attach to a new idealized norm and value with so much royalty, that in some sense still make you (unconscious) been in the similar situation of the submissive kid you once were. don't get me wrong, I still agree with many point you criticize about the society and people's cruelty and blindness in general. the reason of saying this is also want to share one of my observation and feeling. hope you don't feel bad about it.
your approach to study is very different from those institutionalized approach, which many doctor or professional adhere with. and both approach are valuable in my perspective. but many of those professionals in academic field may investigate their personal childhood so seriously and profoundly, therefore may has some blind spot about the real deep cause on some issues.
and I also see myself as a researcher on childhood trauma issue, and I also realize that so many things are related to a person's childhood experience, except those of "model of intimacy relationship", "way of living their life", "character , personality and behavior", their political standpoint, the special type of intellectual they would develop, the way they express their creativity, the the imagination they would unfolding in their mind, and the specification difficulty they could confront in the process of their foreign language learning. and their taste about literature, music, movie, and all sort of art. and all sort of inclination and tendency in different things. all those issues can be related to their childhood experience. (these also reflect that people can't get rid of their past so easily).. I really want to talk with you personally, and share many of my point of view, my discovery and experience. I believe that ccould also be helpful and inspirational to you..
if you are willing to talk, please contact my Skype or WeChat: xigenzhang11
True, l dissaciated to survive. In order to thrive, at 60 l reteived myself by going into theraphy to support me to walk back into experiencing all the pain as l could handle slowly. Journaling and staying with the anxiety grew me. It has giving me meaning, waking up to the people pleasing, giving away me to feel safe and be liked. What a waste and tragic for me. Each day l stay mindful of the old patterns of forgetting me and l bounce back into my body and reteive me again. I stay away from people l dont feel safe with as l learn and give me full permission to matter and get stronger and stronger. God does it piss them off that l am no longer available.
I do strongly agree with. That is my experience too.
Thank you Daniel Mackler!! You help me understand the human psyche. I am so glad you are here to help me and so many others, I imagine. I don't feel so alone in my pursuit of the truth. Again, thank you!!
Do you think a trait of ‘trauma" is to be disassociated from ones honesty?
That is such a good question!!
Thank you Daniel. My thoughts exactly, but much better put than I could. I love the comment below about Eckhart Tolle.
I totally agree - study the past, know it well ! It does effect us, it made who we are so we need to understand it. Then we can live not only in the present but in the future as well. I always thought that "Ummmm" "present" stuff was nonsense.
It’s aspirational to aim to be present, but we cannot exist without our past and a desire to move into our future. All neurosis lies therein. “Wild is the world and lonely is the path to come to You.” Madonna - Perhaps an unusual and unanticipated source of wisdom for many, but whether the You in question is your higher self or what you perceive as God or the Universe, it rings true with both maturity and poetry. Excavating one’s past is rarely met with shared encouragement or enthusiasm for when we change our own narrative, we force others to adjust accordingly. I’ve come to understand that most people have broken inner children and that they have never learned to self-parent; they stay infantilized in their determination to remain safe from the pain they imagine will annihilate their false sense of identity. Self-discover certainly isn’t for the faint of heart!
This is very accurate. I used to meditate to get in the "here and now". I was able to find some thoughts and techniques that could help me to dissociate, but they never worked for very long. I was unable to force myself to the here and now any more than I already am in it.
Thanks for your sharing, it motivates me to keep doing this inner work even if it's not that FUN. :)
Love this Daniel. You are a realist and are authentic at all times. We love and need you so much. God bless you.💯💕💕💕💕💕🥰🥰🥰
Oh yeah, totally agree. That so much annoys me in spiritual people. Still, I use meditation. Because I think it *can* help to get connected with deeper parts of myself. It depends on how to meditate. But going into a quiet place, focusing on the body, etc., instead of media and work and gossip - that really can help bring up more and more of myself. But yeah, many use meditation only as a kind of medication.
I agree!
However, there is a way in which being openly focused in the present (a relaxed concentration in bodily sensations, for example) can bring up unresolved past issues that are relevant and need attention. But we have to have that intention and disposition to integrate whatever comes up, and not repress it.
That being said, I am also not against an active exploration of past trauma, both methods can help eachother.
I think some do this to be present to be mindful to be accountable for whatever their trying to accomplish. Some can bury the past and some cannot. I think we say this to heal. I believe we do have to deal with the things that are affecting us for sure.
You are amazing
I am hearing you. Yes: Grieving the past is living in the past in the purposeful way in order to resolve and transition it.
I have been going through the same process with Jesus Christ. It has been the best healing process I have been a part of
I'm living in the here and now in the sense that I allow all the thoughts about the past, present, and future to be there. If you aren't aware that you're ruminating on the past then you truly aren't present
I completely agree that saying it is a defence. But what yogis and other gurus are talking about is that a person actually is present to the moment. You can't just push all ur garbage away, the garbage is in the present moment too. There simply is no choice. The present is all there is.
It's kind of "if you want to build a house, you need to work on materials and resources instead of driving your bike around beautiful neighbourhood"
All your physical imperfections and conditions will always be there, but only if you're present to the moment, you're able to choose the right action.
As for myself, since I begun to meditate actively, those problems actually seem alot worse than they previously were. I'm just more aware of them, they always were the same. But now I notice this little "yes" inside which doesn't give up, even if the situtation looks devastating.
Guess I'm trying to say that I have learned a little tiny bit of damage control so I'm not helpless anymore.
Another good piece, I'm on a similar journey. Finally starting to make some progress as well.
I had to watch this one at least 5 times 👍
Give your past a voice - acknowledge and validate all of the injustice, inconsistency, and inhumanity...and be willing to move forward and begin to tell a new story about who you are that may include aspects of your past, but is not solely defined by it. Let the past be a place of reference, not a place of residence.
James Bush Well said
Amen. This is why the shamans do "soul retrieving" first. One needs to go down into the depth first and then up. But being in the here and now remains a relief mechanism to make the difficult work bearable.
Agree on all.
Im struggling to learn the difference between dissociative and meditative states
Daniel, you are adored! Many thanks for showing up for you!
I don't know... in the end it's all about energy. Grieving releases energy but so does having a still, hopeful, confident mind that's guided toward the future.
Don't just keep dwelling on the past. You have to understand what creates energy and what brings you forward.
The popularity of this mindfulness technics speaks about how incredibly difficult is to contact and working through the childhood traumas,lot of people if not the majority choose to take the most weird ideas about the internal world in order to avoid the pain of a more real version of their own history...and society gives constantly a tsunami of denying ideas to impose the very,very convenient dissociation that it needs to replicate itself.
I feel the same. People going on being 🎁 silly most cases. I realize this too.
I think there's a kind of false dichotomy here--yes being in the present can be (mis)used in order to avoid the past, one's true feelings, etc., but genuinely being in the moment means that those buried feelings would rise up and make themselves known (this is what he says towards the end).
I understand and agree with what you (Daniel) and the other commentators are saying and I'm glad you brought it up. People in general are copycats and mindlessly do things that others say to do, just to appear like they know what they're doing. I would say though that one time concentrating on what's happening in the present is helpful is when someone is having a flashback of sexual or physical abuse and is being overwhelmed with the traumatic feelings and that idea should be used at that time. It's not necessary or even healthy to try to be in the "now" or whatever you want to call it all the time.
I believe that "mindfulness" and living in the "present" is important - like a skill. Like a hammer, mindfulness isn't the sole solution to all problems. You need screwdrivers, nails, and other tools as well- working together in different situations and contexts.
It is impressive how the traumatic process is an integral part of our psychology (not only to us humans).
"Not knowing", to survive, but to be sick of it... what a strange way to do it. So why were we built that way?
One of the best critics, kudos to you l would say l am 1 per cent in the present, for the most part.
The rest of the time l am mainly thinking about my past childhood and traumatised experiences with family and friends.
Whilst trying to put my best foot forward 😢😢😢😢😢
Meaning you not really enjoying the present, even when on holiday l think about my past.😢😢
When Jesus said: "Deny thyself", he is not saying: "Dissociate thyself". It is to go beyond the person, then there is not past and future. But, in the psychological level there is a past. For me, it is good to work in the two levels, and face the traumas and meditate too; the key it is the sincerity.
@@legalfictionnaturalfact3969 I am talking by my experience.
Love this video! In the last year (after about 10 years of work on my trauma, history, in therapy) I strangely feel a 'spiritual' side of myself coming through, something that I have been deeply exploring and very much enjoying (I still struggle to use the word spiritual without cringing)!. In this exploration I am coming into contact with what feels like a movement that is made up of individuals that are saying the past doesn't matter and the present is all there is. Whilst I agree the present is all that exists currently , to ignore the past is another way to turn away from dissociated parts of the self and live inauthentically. Meditation and grounding myself has been a huge part of my journey - not to avoid but to be able to stay present when going into big past feelings. I experienced depersonalization 'disorder' for around 15 years and completely dissociating every time I got near a childhood feeling caused me to get stuck. Importantly, this was all done whilst training to be a therapist and a lot of it took place in open group (a bit like group therapy). This allowed me to explore old family patterns and for the first time be vulnerable in a holding space. It is only after all this work that I've even considered any school of thoughts around the present moment and I will always split between work in grounding myself and work on my past in therapy and in my life.
Thank you for putting this video together Daniel! It wonderfully articulates something that's been on my mind for a while now.
What a guy💗👍
If someone was just sent away to an island retreat on their own with total safety, all things provided for them, and stayed there for 3 years, due to lack of dissociation would their traumas start to come up and grieve?
I'm concerned that some people will watch 20 seconds of this video and think that their addiction to internal suffering is fine. Studying our past from the lens of the present is key
Being here and now means different things to different people. According to buddhism and the religions you refer to, it simply means the absence of thoughts. Being dissociated from your constant thinking and intellect isn't an escape, it's the mastery of your thoughts and subconsciousness. It's not pushed down, it's gone from your thoughts, and replaced by a deeper presence and awareness. Dissociation isn't real. Your awareness, absent of thoughts and identity is more real than the reverse. :) Also, being able to have "healthy" relationships to frantic, fast-talking modern people, or living in an urban environment, aren't measurements of health.
I would not call it dissociation. When meditation and self inquiry is practiced properly, the individual is training themselves to gradually open up to everything (thought, emotion, sensation, etc). The difference is that they do not cling to what ever arises, through grounding and finding centre they can become the witness and allow the trapped energy to unfold and release through the body. It's very similar to modern somatic therapy techniques.
Unfortunately, a lot of people misunderstand this and do indeed end up dissociating. It is possible to experience many altered states of consciousness and yet still suffer with many unresolved wounds on a human level (just look at all the spiritual guru's that are now facing accusations of sexual harrassment). True liberation is in fact embodied, embracing both the transcendent and human aspects of our nature.
Oh trust me, dissociation IS real. What about people with DID who have it to the point of having amnesiac walls that separate different parts of themselves or their memory due to what's been happening in their childhood? Do you think it's also not real? Actually many people have it, just not in a form that's as extreme as in DID.
Some people are just healthy enough not to bother to explore traumatized parts of themselves, but it's still there while others are not so healthy and are literally running away from themselves. People have trauma memory in their body or in their subconscious and it can't just disappear all of the sudden, without these issues being explored. Perhaps, meditation can be helpful in some ways temporarily for people who have a lot of unresolved stuff, but it's not the same as therapy or self-therapy Daniel is talking about.
You completely missed the point, didn't you!?
@@DKooks85 You too seem to have completely missed the point and gem of this message.
@@themetamorphosisofgipsy Perhaps you have misunderstood me, I am not disagreeing with Daniel's message regarding the dangers of these ideas and practices (especially for those with significant traumatic histories).
I don't, however, believe in throwing the baby out with the bathwater in this case. Eastern philosophy and spiritual practice when utilized and applied in an embodied way (and not "spiritual bypassing") can be incredibly transformative - and I talk from personal experience here.
Yes, but at the same time, to live in the past and drown in shame or regret isn’t good for you. I say acknowledge the trauma and try to heal from it, while also doing healthy things to take your attention off of the pain. This way you don’t surrender fully to toxic positivity or drown in guilt or pain.
I completely agree with u
❤❤❤
Also, do you believe there is a time and place for meditation? If so, please explain.
Hi Daniel, i love listening to you, it calms me. Being here and now can take us to this moment of safety
Having watched many videos on this subject of being in the here and now not one has addressed this so eloquently. Eckart Tolle gave a talk on this subject and it crossed my mind then that without being whole how can one be anchored in the here and now if traumas are still lurking within. That’s like getting on a train and getting off half way of your destination and settling there. This is something I needed to hear. Thank you Daniel.
Great video, thank you Daniel.
You’re one hell of an authentic person. You are the basis of transformation, then comes Michael Singer then Tolle. Without you as a foundation the wall and the roof can’t stand
Well i think its only a practice to do it zo understand what causes you to be away from the here and now. Like you should fisrt free your body, (through deep breaths etc) of the trauma, and then the mind can try. Its just one of the suggested teqniques to free oneself from the conditionimg
Your channel is a miracle
Awaken with JP before has entered the chat .
Right! And I think it is a convenient platitude that makes people feel "good" right now
Thank you Daniel
Great video. An increasingly well known occurrence in 'spiritual' communities. The 'spiritual bypass', meditate it away, give it all to god or whatever your preferred term. Nothing to see here. Denial. Thank you Daniel.
Excellent.
Grieving through forgiveness of the past is cleansing. In the Lord's prayer there is a central line: "forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us."
Central in Jesus' message of our personal walk with God is forgiveness, including forgiving ourselves.
Focusing on forgiveness is not seeking justice. This is not a fair world. We can't right all wrongs, but we can forgive.
On the cross Jesus prayed, " Forgive them for they don't know what they do"
Religious folk always gotta bring Jesus into everything, but their own life and lifestyle. Jesus, unlike most hypocritical Christians, practiced what he preached. Ironically, the most monstrous and despicable behavior has been done by Christ proclaiming predators who in turn push the forgiveness brainwashing on everyone because they are guilty and know it. Jesus was a Renegade and would curse Christianity to Kingdom come, let alone associate with it.
So please, leave Jesus out of it and stop using his name in vain as if he'd perpetuate any of the fuckery these demonic pastors of churches do. Jesus does not know ya'll!
And no, I am not Christian, thank Jesus!
But the question though is how?
If/when feeling numbed out & weak, Don't take on the world/ all the issues. Just do what you must, little steps to prove you're not broken and stronger than you think (like writing out lists, playing a video game, going for a walk, etc. if/ when that low) ask questions, delve into the past, accept it....
No expert, wish I had all the answers. But yeah dissociation/ disconnection with the past, I mean it's a way...if one wants to become a numbed out robot. But there's far better ways to grow and live
I doubt therapy is absolutely essential. But if you find someone you feel you can trust and help you thru some stuff, ok why not try... But any movement is better than nothing. Life Isn't an all or nothing affair (that it commonly might feel like)
I don't understand the meditation you're talking about.I learned TM years ago and still practice it, but not regularly.It helped me immensely.It doesn't seem to be anything like the meditation I hear people talking about.What I hear seems like the latest fad, which people have no real clue about.It seems to require effort, which TM doesn't.
Living in the past in a purposeful way. That seems like the tricky part.
Tolle encourage dissociation and hyperfocusing - two trauma responses.
Your process of integrating the trauma into the here and now sounds a lot like what we do in Internal Family Systems. Unburdening and retrieval it's called.
Thank you Daniel. You and I think exactly alike. I can’t stand hearing this bs.