Awakening, Trauma, and Dissociation

[0:00]awakening trauma and dissociation. You know, this could be a very big topic. I could spend a lot of time talking about this. I could probably break it into many videos or make courses out of this, but, um, I think I just wanted to make a kind of introductory video to to this topic. And just touch on a few points, uh, that I think are important based on my experience working with people going through this awakening process. And most of what I'm talking about is going to be in reference to people after awakening, after a shift in identity. Uh, first I'm just going to say a little bit about dissociation, what I mean by it. There are certainly pathological versions of dissociation, um, depersonalization, derealization, and then very severe pathology, uh, in relation to severe trauma that could really lead to or result in dissociative identity disorder. Um, that's not really what I'm talking about here, these sort of pathologic forms of dissociation. But more broadly, when I talk about dissociation, understand, I'm talking about something that happens to everyone. Uh, I said many times that mind identification or thought identification is a stable state of dissociation. The thing about it is it's it's socially endorsed, it's socially upheld, it's, uh, subliminally reinforced and communicated among humans all the time through communication, through even through body language. Uh, and it's stable in that it doesn't seem pathological or wrong for most people. Stable in that it actually helps us function, uh, as a, as a collective, right? There are certainly aspects to language, thought, and communication that are probably not just errors, um, not just mistakes in evolution, but that have some evolutionary advantage and it's probably something to do with planning, communication, planning, talking to others in groups about ideas, plans, um, exchanging information in a more objective way that uses objective symbolism to convey a message, uh, cleanly, right? So there's, there's language and and thought and so forth, but the the internal experience of being the thinker is may actually be a kind of error, or it just could be as Jung put it an unstable stage of the evolution of consciousness. But, um, the the ability to do this, the ability to form an internal world and actually have a conversation before you're having a conversation, to plan what you might say, to continue to self-talk, even when there's no one to talk to, or not even planning to to speak to anybody, but the internal self-talk and self-referential thoughts that just go on and on. This is what I mean by the stable dissociation, because we don't just internalize that, obviously, we externalize that as well, and when we talk to others in certain ways about time and doership and, um, agency and all that, or we use those, we use terms that aren't directly referring to those, but it, they all, um, suggest those, right? They suggest doership, agency, time, space, distance, right? Uh, planning and so forth, problems, solutions. Then we are participating in this agreed upon dissociated state of thought identification. So that's what I mean by dissociation, that that kind of interaction with others, um, comes with, I don't know if it, it's not, it definitely doesn't require dissociation, but it comes with dissociation, and until realization starts to really clarify in my experience, uh, there's always going to be some degree of that. And until we really start to to feel, um, deeply congruent with the non-dual aspects of realization, and then the no self-realization, uh, we there's going to be some degree of that kind of reflecting into the inner world, as if that's required to communicate. So this, um, this stable, um, agreed upon dissociation, again, doesn't feel pathologic to most people, it's certainly not considered pathological by by mental health professionals. Uh, however, it comes with symptoms, for sure, absolutely comes with symptoms. They're everywhere, anxiety, depression, and then violence, right? Self-violence, violence towards others, uh, this this life of quiet desperation that thorough talked about. I mean, just look around, you see it all the time. Even when people are communicating how well they're doing, often beneath it, you see that that's a reaction formation. They're actually not doing well, they're they're trying to convince you that they're doing well or convince themselves and underneath it, there's just a lot of struggle and strife. And it doesn't mean everybody's totally unhappy, but there's so much more unhappiness than people let on. There's so much unhappiness underneath the surface for for humanity, right? This is the side effect, right? Or these are the side effects. This this is these are the symptoms of the the disease that we don't call a disease, that we don't label a disease, that we don't most of the time don't recognize as a disease. And then some people are very sensitive to this. Some people are very sensitive to that. And they have a specific symptom that is kind of an unavoidable symptom and it's a symptom that just gets worse, the more you, the more you notice it. And that is what we would call suffering, or Duka or unsatisfactoriness. Um, it's not suffering in the wider connotation of suffering, it's very specific experience of something just being off about the way you experience yourself and the way you experience the world, and the way you experience other people. It's the self-perception, the self-reflection, the self-consciousness itself feels really off or uncomfortable. That's what I mean by this kind of suffering. So that's a symptom that in the more sensitive people, sensitive to this, um, becomes kind of unavoidable, and then it becomes at some point intolerable, and then you, you have to do something about it. And then, and then you find something you can do about it. You find a way to address that, right? That's awakening, that's Ken Show. Uh, you may find it through say Zen practice, or you may find it through Zog Chen inquiry, or practice, or attunements to their doctrine and their teachings and so forth. You may find it through Advaita Vedanta, or even the newer forms, new Advaita or online Dharma types of pointings, but you come into contact with someone or something that can can resonate to you or resonate with you, such that you get the sense that you can actually address that, right? That's the recognition is what I usually call that. And that leads to a kind of process of inquiry or investigation into the nature of that suffering and the nature of identity itself. And and how you've been taking yourself to be something, someone, based in thought, and that investigation leads to a shift, right? That first shift is really when we start to address dissociation, um, directly. It's when the mechanism for that stable dissociation starts to break, and at first it feels like it's totally broken, it feels like it's just not there. My Zen teacher used to say, yeah, it feels like there's no ego suddenly, like the ego's just completely obliterated. But he says, it's not, it's not gone, it's just off in the periphery for a while, but it will come back and it will come back with fire. And anyone who's been through this knows, and that fire feels like massive suffering, right? It feels like now, not only do you realize your suffering, you realize how much, and how much you're causing your own suffering, which kind of adds to it. gives you hope in a way, but it also makes it feel like almost insurmountable, how much, uh, momentum there is behind that, those tendencies to cause yourself to suffer and cause others to suffer. So, but now, but now at least you're in contact with it. You can see it, you can see the mechanisms of suffering, and you see how much of your experience, your internal experience is made out of it, right? This is the shadow work, right? This is the, the real deep work starts to happen here, and it, there's trauma, everyone carries some form of trauma, some people far more than others, right? Now you're working with trauma as well. Um, and this is where I want to start talking about dissociation in the way I meant to, um, address it in this video. And that is I see that some people, I think all people do to some degree. We all I've been through this, we've all been through some version of it, but some people, uh, do it far more than others, and I'm not sure they always realize they're doing it. But they, they kind of mistake, at some point, they start to mistake dissociation with, or, or yeah, the, the mistake dissociation for presence, is what I'm trying to say. They they conflate presence with dissociation. Even non-dual presence, they conflate it with dissociation. Because there is something about dissociation when we're not thought identified anymore, that is very easy to do. And it's it's kind of almost on a spectrum with unbound consciousness. Now, unbound consciousness if practiced well and balanced, you're neither pushing or pulling on thought, you're neither pushing or pulling on consciousness, so it feels like a very neutral equanimous experience of consciousness. Dissociation doesn't feel like that. Dissociation feels blank in a way. It feels not there in a way. It feels contentless in a way and and that's where it overlaps with consciousness, it feels contentless. And I think it is a a way that we're using consciousness actually, but it doesn't have that feeling of equanimity. It doesn't have that feeling of a kind of contact. It feels like you're out of contact actually. It doesn't have a feeling of okayness and settledness, rather it has a feeling like there's something not right. A little bit of sometimes it's it's kind of weird quiet urgency that's almost not there, but it is there, and there's just this contentlessness. That's what I mean by dissociation. And a lot of times people who have been very traumatized, don't know they're doing it. Uh, they don't realize how frequently they're doing it, and they don't realize to what degree they're doing it, because it's it's always been an escape for you, right? It's been a a very convenient way to not feel that intense pain of suffering that you felt when you were a child and even, you know, later in life. So that dissociation, um, although you have more access to it in a way because you have far more access to consciousness after awakening, um, becomes a conven an well, I'd say an inconvenient escape, right? It's it's it makes sense. It feels good in the moment. It feels good for a moment, but it feels horrible for a lifetime. Meaning like to to dissociate for just one moment from an uncomfortable feeling, let's say, right? And this gets into the trauma stuff that we have to address, but say there's a feeling that feels uncomfortable, and we dissociate for a moment, there's just a moment of like, a kind of relief, right? So it feels good for a moment. But the longer you stay there, the worse it feels. It's kind of like being addicted to benzodiazepines for instance. Like it feels good the first time you take one, but when you once you're chronically addicted to benzos, it feels absolutely horrible, and then you feel like you can't get off, right? It's something like that. It's it's it's a matter of instant gratification, but not realizing the long-term effects of what you're doing, right? And again, you may not even know you're doing it. You, you may not realize, you may feel like it may feel kind of meditative, it may feel like you're kind of dissolving into presence or something, right? But the key distinction that I'm going to make, because people are going to ask on this video is, does it feel whole? Does it feel totally, uh, intimate? Does it feel kind of complete and stable and, um, does it feel okay? Is there is there a deep sense of okayness? No, not really. In fact, often it's like now something feels off. Um, also, do you feel your body? Like, do you feel your actual sensations right now, and often, no. And not always, but often there's a pattern of sensation, but it's not core sensation. It's not a feeling of like warmth in the heart, or openness, or even even pain in the heart. Whatever, but it's not so much in the center, the midline, the chakras. It's out in the hands sometimes, like cold hands, tingling, right? Back of the head sometimes. So it tends to be like a peripheral sensation that feels sort of tingly, maybe cold. Um, it's kind of the opposite of the of the feeling of like warmth at the center, or some kind of even intensity at the center. But more importantly, the, the sense of me, the sense of who you are, or the, the sense of just being and presence as a, as a self, conventionally speaking, is just kind of like obliterated. It's like there's just nothing there. Uh, and again, it's often not equanimous, really, even though it's calm. Um, it's not doesn't have a deep sense of okayness, even though it's contentless, right? That's how you know, that's how you know the difference. Um, and it's also not particularly adaptable. It doesn't have the adaptability, the fluidity, the spontaneity of profound presence and and ongoing stable non-dual realization, let's call it, yeah? Um, yeah, so that that's how that's the those are the distinctions I'll make. And then, again, how does it relate to trauma? Well, it's the echo, the it's the, it's kind of the after effects, the, the, what do I want to say, like the ghost of the trauma that happened so many years ago that just keeps echoing through consciousness, that's affecting consciousness in a certain way that's helping consciousness to keep interpreting experiences as intolerable. Because for that child, it was intolerable, right? The child went through something that was just totally overwhelming to its system, and it wasn't allowed to, not only was overwhelming to the system, the child often wasn't allowed to actually emote properly because they were taught not to, Um, not to scream, not to feel fear, not to feel rage, but to just close down, and so they didn't have the bandwidth that they would naturally have. They didn't have access to it because they were taught not to, and then they get overwhelmed, so then they just go into nowhere, right? They shut down. It's a dorsal legal shutdown, a dissociation pattern, and for that child, when this happened, it was overwhelming. They couldn't handle it, right? They didn't have the capacity, or they weren't allowed to use the capacity to handle it. So what happens is that gets echoed in consciousness, all the way through adolescence, young adulthood, later adulthood, all the way through to death for some people. And the echo is basically saying, I can't handle this. This is too much. This is overload. And if you have a dissociative tendency, then the answer is dissociate, right? Because you really can't stop physical sensations from occurring. They're going to always have, the body's going to have sensations, the body's going to have emotions. The only thing you can do is dissociate, right? And it works. It works for a moment. It works for the child, in a way, right? It's best, best, best choice they have is to just not be there. Um, but it becomes pathological for the adult, right? That just keeps dissociating, especially when they dissociate from things that really aren't threats, right? Emotions is essentially what we we dissociate from emotional experiences, emotional intensity. And sometimes it's intense emotions that we're dissociating from, but sometimes it's just changes in emotion, or just simple, day-to-day fluctuations in in the emotion body that just something says, can't handle it, too much, I'm going away, right? So that's how it relates to trauma. That's how I think dissociation relates to trauma. And the the litmus test I gave you is is what to look at, really look and see when I'm feeling suddenly calm after an intense emotional experience, did what happened? Am I feeling calm because I've completely integrated that emotion and I'm feeling the emotion from all aspects, and and there's this kind of flow and the intensity has evolved into something that that's much more equanimous and and fluid and accommodating and, um, starts to incorporate other emotion like joy, or did it just suddenly cut off and you're not there? Just disappeared. This also happens with joy, by the way. This also happens with intense, what we might call positive emotions, um, to the person who tends to dissociate. So, this is what I wanted to point out. Uh, and there are other versions of this, of course, like, let's say spiritual bypassing where you are kind of dissociating, but you're dissociating into, uh, a kind of cognitive pattern of using spiritual terminologies and ideas to discount your own experience or discount someone else's experience perhaps, but to just kind of tell yourself something spiritual is happening when you're really just dissociating from a strong feeling or dissociating from responsibility or something like that. It's a little bit of a different version of this, but it it also can happen. Uh, but I really do want to point this dissociation thing out that happens, um, when we really start coming into contact with trauma. And again, this is in awake people, awake traumatized people. Um, and even people sometimes who don't seem that particularly traumatized, they can have this pattern. And I don't know what it is. It's a personality, not personality so much, maybe it's a nervous system tendency or something. It's not a flaw, it's nothing, there's nothing wrong with with this, it's just one thing that happens. But it's tricky because you could almost, you could almost mistake it for enlightenment or something, right? But it's just not. And again, it's because it's fundamentally uncomfortable. Like if you feel like you need to go get help for this, or you feel like it's just intolerable, or you feel horrible, or you don't feel adaptable to the, you know, the eventualities of life, um, because of of this emptiness, this spaciousness, this nothingness, um, then then it's probably dissociation, or at least some, some version of it.