Healing Combat Trauma

The Healing Space between Inspiration and Destruction

As the last quote I'd like to introduce from Robert Johson, the Jungian analyst, for now, it's a passage about a type of altar seen among "primitive" peoples in Peru, who often carry this altar with them, the better to address spirituality wherever they are. I've made a botch-up of the illustration, because I wasn't able to find a "perfect" representation of the mesa, so it's a combination of several that I saw. Here is Johnson's quote. Once again, it's part of the ongoing "conversation" we're having, about whether one side has to "win out" in our natures in order to heal. Johnson and the curanderos of South America would seem to say, "no." Healing is what takes place in the space between...

 "A particularly powerful form of (overlap between darkness and light, or the self and its shadow side) can be seen in the customs of South American curanderos, who are a curious mixture of primitive shaman and Catholic priest. Their mesa (table) is an altar where they say Mass for the healing of their patients. They divide this altar into three distinct sections. The right is made up of inspiring elements such as a statue of a saint, a flower, a magic talisman; the left contains very dark and forbidding elements such as weapons, knives or other instruments of destruction. The space between these two opposing elements is a place of healing. The message is unmistakable: our own healing proceeds from that overlap of what we call good and evil, light and dark. It is not that the light element alone does the healing; the place where light and dark begin to touch is where miracles arise." -- Robert A. Johnson, Jungian analyst, author of "Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche."

For more on the topic of the "Tao of Healing," click here. It's a selection of quotes that represents the ongoing, organic process that we undergo whenever we want to get well.

Editor's note: For more on the curanderos and their mesas, click here or here.

Finding Your Own Personal "Gold" in the Crucible of Hardship and Illness

We've talked a lot on the site for the last four years about integration as a "path" for fuller healing, and lately we've been posting what we hope you've found to be some thought-provoking quotes about what healing is and isn't. (You can find the whole set under either "Quotable Quotes" or under the "Tao of Healing" hyperlink.)

One thing we haven't explored explicitly, though now would seem to be the time to, is the purpose that tremendous suffering can have in our lives, which can be to clarify and move us towards what can actually become our lives' work. Strange that there would be any awesome takeaway from massive suffering, but it sometimes seems to be the case.

I have been reading the "Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche" book by Jungian analyst Robert A. Johnson lately -- see yesterday's quote for an indication of some of the themes he covers. But mulling over Johnson's work, which includes the idea that a bout with tremendous suffering or illness can "break open" (almost like a nutshell) the self to something major within, like remarkable personal progress and understanding, that might not have come about any other way, I was struck today when I read the obituary of an older woman who had just passed away. It described her early life in fairly familiar terms -- schooling, marriage, family, job -- and then it mentioned that she suffered a serious illness -- and after she recovered, it went on to say, she became a talented painter, and her work was shown all over the world.

And it reminded me of how much this fit in with what Johnson was saying, how her capacity for whatever -- personal growth? artistic expression? broadening her impact on the world at large? -- was somehow connected to an initially very destructive episode -- her own brush with death.

I know I've experienced this in my personal life. A five-year struggle with chronic fatigue syndrome years ago, followed by a complete recovery -- turned my attention to things I might never have noticed before, including my now-present passion and compassion for post-traumatic stress disorder and veterans who suffer from it. Without my life-opening, life-breaking illness, and personal transformation through suffering, would I have either noticed or cared? Perhaps. But certainly not in the breadth or to the depth that I do now. Through illness, so to speak, I found my calling. How odd. But when it's your life and you look back on it, also how very true.

The Bible talks about how we learn compassion through our suffering, and because of that, can extend our compassion to others (2 Cor. 1). At the same time, it talks about affliction (which can be illness or suffering) as a "furnace," which tests us and refines who we are (Isaiah 48:10). Whether we look at those passages as religious literature or just plain wisdom, they seem to ring true.

And then we go back to Johnson, who makes it even more explicit:

"Some people may suffer a severe shock or illness before they learn to let the gold out. Indeed, this kind of intense experience may be necessary to show us that an important part of us is lying dormant or unused. In tribal cultures, shamans or healers often experience an illness that gives them the insight they need to heal themselves and then bring wisdom to their people. This is often the case for us today. We are still operating with the archetype of the wounded healer who has learned to cure himself and find the gold in his experience." -- Robert A. Johnson, "Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche."

Editor's note: The illustration is of a crucible for melting gold. Impurities rise to the surface and are burnt right off, floating away into the atmosphere. If you've never seen it in real life, it's a powerful visual.

Quotable Quotes -- War Provides the Enemy Within

"A Jewish chaplain once told me that in war, you face two enemies. The easy one is the enemy, but the hard one is the one within — because it can bring out the worst in people. But it can also bring out the best in people." -- Lt. Col. John Fenzel, III. "USA: The Human Dimension of Human Rights," delivered at the "Ethical Dilemmas for Special Forces Workshop," June 11-12, 2003 Ft. Bragg, NC.

(Fenzel is also the author of "The Lazarus Covenant.")

Quotable Quotes -- Confucius on Walking the Healing Path

""Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." -- Confucius, Chinese philosopher and reformer. (551 BC - 479 BC.)

And also:

"It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop." -- Confucius.

Quotable Quotes -- Lonny Jarrett on the Tao of Healing

"No human resolution can make up for the loss created by injury.  The only real healing comes from rolling the two of right and wrong back into the one primordial Tao in which all opposites are harmonized.  Along these lines, the Tao te Ching advises us not to seek justice but rather to 'repay injury with 'te' (virtue)'."--Lonny Jarrett, in "The Empty Vessel" magazine, Spring 2000.

Editor's note: We've talked an awful lot about the essential nature of "integration" on this site. Many, many posts reference it. Look for it particularly in the "Spirituality" section, linked here. Also be on the lookout for it in your life and others...

 

Quotable Quotes -- Lonny Jarrett on the Meaning of Healing

"We may only be considered to be healed when the damaging events of life no longer limit self-expression and the manifestation of life's purpose." -- Lonny Jarrett, in "The Empty Vessel" magazine, Spring 2000.

Quotable Quotes -- The Tao on the Cycle of Healing Following Upheaval

"All life is continual destruction and healing, over and over again. That is why, even in the midst of an extreme situation, the wise are patient. Whether the situation is illness, calamity, or their own anger, they know that healing will follow upheaval." -- Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao.

Editor's note: This most painterly photograph is by Zoriah, whose incredible work -- humanitarian photography from war-torn parts of the world -- is at www.Zoriah.com.

Quotable Quotes -- Thich Nhat Hanh on Health

"Keeping the body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos -- the trees, clouds, everything." -- Thich Nhat Hanh.

Editor's note: For more on Thich Nhat Hanh, who has one of the most wonderful quotes about veterans being "a force for healing in the world," go here. Claude Anshin Thomas, a Vietnam veteran and former Army soldier who wrote a powerful book we've talked about quite a bit on this site, called At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey from War to Peace, has been profoundly influenced by his interaction with Thich Nhat Hanh and his work.

Martin Luther King Jr Had a Dream for Combat Veterans, Too

Martin Luther King Jr., from a speech delivered exactly one year before he was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn.:

"This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love." -- Martin Luther King Jr, speech at Riverside Church in New York City, April 4, 1967. 

Editor's note: A link to the online text and audio of his full speech is here.

Holiday Gift: Rudy Reyes' Hero Living

If you're stumped for a holiday gift this year, think about the new inspirational book by Rudy Reyes, called "Hero Living: Seven Strides to Awaken Your Infinite Power," linked here.

Rudy Reyes is an inspirational "everyman" -- former Marine 1st recon, star of Generation Kill, who grew up admittedly hard and has honed, ever since, a set of internal values modeled on attributes of classical warriors. While Reyes, a former world martial arts champion, has honed his body to a superlative degree, it's his inside that's even more interesting -- how he's dealt with, and is still in the process of dealing with -- assaults on his soul, from childhood through combat.

Reyes has much in common with his childhood hero, Bruce Lee, from the unparalleled attention to fitness, to the equal attraction to the philosophical underpinnings of what success really is.

There's something for everyone in this book, and best of all, it reflects someone who's inspirational, yes, in his attitudes towards obstacles -- systematically conquering them all, in a focused way, one after another -- but is also, even by his own admission, very much "still a work in progress." Go, Rudy!

Editor's Note: For a recent article in "Military Times" about Rudy Reyes, entitled "The Hero Life: For Rudy Reyes, Inspiring Others is a Full-Time Job," click here.