Spirituality's Fork In The Road: The Trauma Bypass

Embodiment encapsulates the all of who we are; to recognise and understand our expansive vastness, individual representations of the collective ... Universe.

Pt. RoadKnight Beach: 9 am, July 18, 2024, the day of the messages in this post.

The terrain leading to the carpark at the surf beach was predictably studded with overflowing rain filled potholes, breadth and depth of battered saucepans. My chunky little 4WD Jimny ... my toy ... a gift from John ... symbolic of our dream tree change, was at home. She was purpose fitted with roof racks to shoulder my surf SUP. A tough-nut, light-weight, Jimny would have accelerated with glee to slide over the obstacle course and skid to a grunting finish, relieved to free herself of the restrictive asphalt road. She likes to play rough.

Kiddo, however, gets the beach run in Winter. Being a campervan, she affords me more protection from the biting wind seeing as you need to get naked; peeling off sodden wetsuits, in public carparks that were once primary and secondary dunes fronting the Southern Ocean’s stinging winds. Kiddo’s three tonne heavy-weight division requires a more temperate, even course over said obstacles, to her sweet spot, parallel to Di’s Terra. The slow crawling grumble of her engine speaks to the crunch of her tyres on sand strewn with a token cast of gravel. Like us, her footprints leave a deep imprint. Though, they are eventually swept away, like everything on this plane … recycled, reincarnated.

Clearly, my toy cars are symbolic of freedom and adventure for this 58, going-on-8-year old. Back to my happy place with beach and brunch buddy Di. The vans invite us to imagine new adventures as the inner children come out to play; cars replacing bikes as it seems.

Is any object really inanimate when it enables connection to the animate?

Di had recently returned from a tour of The Kimberley Region, W.A; an outback red dirt fix. Not only does the red dirt permeate every orifice, she seeps into your blood in offering an experiential opening to an ancient and sacred portal of understanding; embodiment. She connects us to all of her kin, all sentient beings ... today being the surf beach ecosystem of her southern Australian shores.

I hadn’t been for a paddle while Di was away. Not that I thought I minded. It is mid-Winter in these parts and at 7.30am the ice had only just begun its frosty descent from the windscreen. Whatever the season, Di and I seek assistance from the weather-gods for respite; a genuine prayer for Gaia to abate her fierce breath of wind; the same frenetic winds that tirelessly partner with the waves to sculpt the iconic Twelve Apostles; a scattering of limestone stacks standing solitary, eroded from their cliff face headlands. I am not as tough as I like to think I am.

It takes the best part of 50 minutes to skirt around the Otway Ranges for my frigid embrace with the beach and given the Ranges, weather conditions can vary in what is a relatively short distance ... 33km as the crow flies.

Reversing out of the driveway, the Sun breaks through the dissipating Otway Blanket, a local term for the damp fog that sits over our town, consequence of its locality in the foothills of the Ranges. In the instance of snatching your first breath, she layers a smooth glaze not dissimilar a feeling to the one after drinking a glass of milk. My tongue rotates in circular motions trying to dislodge the invisible film from gums and teeth. She hitches a ride on that breath, a silky slide into my lungs, shifting weight to lodge into my bones, dissipating her numbing density to the extremities of every digit. Simultaneously I reach into a pocket for the relic of a tissue, dabbing to suppress the threat of residue that seeks an exit. I feel a creeping chill follow the curve up my spine, it doesn’t matter how many layers you’ve got on!

I am truly grateful to meet the Sun’s gaze, for her glint is a hint of a promise to vanquish the smear of grey masquerading as clouds. Eyes drawn to the confident backdrop of blue sky, I enthusiastically coo, Ooh Yeah, I hope it’s the same down there, you’re not just teasing me are you? Her intensity is soft on such Winter mornings, I can lock eyes with her for a few seconds. The winds too are light, prayers granted! I had been kidding myself thinking I hadn’t minded the 6 week hiatus, I was keen for the instant soothe for mind and body; it would offer relief to my eternally patient soul.

About half way a thought pops in my head. If you’ve read any of my previous posts you’ll know driving presents a space where I can receive guidance. I resisted the urge to pullover and write it down; these are narrow and not so well kept roads that are frequently used by farmers and local tradies with super heavy-weight units! Poke, poke, I pull over near a patch where I once spotted Bunjil, perched high on the top of a gum. I was in Jimny that day, so safer to ease off the road and watch while the Ancestral Wedge Tail Eagle, creator of this land, scoped his territory and took flight; launching his bulk, and soon finding his grace in a rhythm that was powerful in its eloquence. I watched until I lost sight of him in a thick of forest. I thanked him before bumping back onto the road. A pause, a presence, a wow!

I looked around for him, just in case, before quickly scribbling this down on an auto-service invoice retrieved from the glovebox:

We have to be embodied enough to feel all of our emotions and the landscape validates our feelings with unconditional love.

Written down, I let it be. Di and I clicked over an hour on the water (the photo accompanying this post is what greeted us). Granted, it was a decent workout paddling to catch a teeny-weeny wave. Nevermind, the opportunity to stand on the board, soak in the salty essence of her breeze, watch the water sprites frolic and skim along the surface, never ceases to explode a feeling of joyful wonderment within me. I peer through the transparent water to catch the shadow of schools of bait fish scurry in their energetic collective; including those on the periphery who singularly stray from the group, like birds sometimes do. Soon the ocean current, emits a vibrational pull from the collective, leading it back to the sheltering harbour of the One.

I relish the feel of the beach as she lingers on my skin, the stretch of her crusty tightness, her briny smell. I notice the flecks of sand glued to the back of my hands on the return drive. I have been well watered and fed, Di sharing stories and photos of her recent trip; photos that took me back to the same route John and I had taken nearly 20 years ago, when the red dirt first snagged us.

The sun continued to watch over proceedings, the clouds moving swiftly enough in their passing that her fleeting absence was nothing more than a blink. I was pondering the perpetual movement of multiple types of clouds, how they were layered, why some were white and others grey, their separate function in the one sky? The clouds always remind me of my maternal grandfather. Pop and I used to send each other photos of clouds. His is another energy I sometimes feel when immersed in nature. I miss my grandfather.

Eyes back on the road, my attention returns to a Podcast I am supposedly listening to. In drops another message:

 Remember your refugee students, Simone. A message from John.

A little perplexed, the meaning of either message wasn’t immediately apparent. I have learned not to over-think it in these instances. I turn my attention to the Podcast, knowing that clarity would come when I was either sitting in the silence or in meditation. I was soon home.

Extending from last week’s post, I had felt a persistent niggle all week. Apparently (one of John’s favourite interjections) there was something I needed to address more directly. The silence revealed the meaning of this second message, meditation gave me access to the meaning of the first message, and its subsequent link to the second.

Last week’s post referred to the importance of individual stories as representations of a collective experience. My teaching career began in the late 1980s. I am a high school teacher, my specialist areas being English and  English as a Second Language. My work was central to my social, political and personal identity. I came from the seed of an Eastern European, post WWII political refugee. I grew up in a culturally diverse inner city suburb of Melbourne and went to school with other second generation off-spring of European refugees. Also, many first generation refugees, all ESL students; predominantly Russian Jews. I was witness to accepted cruel and overt racism from many peers and  two, too-many teachers.

Over the next 25 years I worked in low socio-economic schools, in the inner western suburbs of Melbourne, teaching refugee and asylum-seeking adolescents from every pocket of predominantly, civil wars around the globe. We are the minority working for the minority, was the anthem I adopted in my practice as an ESL teacher and the sole mantra I repeatedly espoused to those ESL training teacher-candidates I lectured and tutored in my 5 year stint as a University Academic.

Being an ESL teacher, you become a bridge to their acculturation; they obtain comfort in knowing that their ESL teachers typically aren’t wedded to the broken and often hypocritical layers of government, the system. Our connections with our students necessarily extended beyond the classroom. We established a mutual trust and respect, a suspension of judgement for all that was shared. They shared their stories; their trauma.

Those harrowing stories are not mine to tell, though I can share that some of our students featured in two compilations of short stories, Dark Dreams (2004) and No Place Like Home (2005). It was an empowering experience for these students; to share their stories. I remain in awe of their resilience; their compassion and humility. When the students were published; their stories became a collective story of the all of humanity. Connections with some of them continued. Zia, who perceives John as a father-figure, was present when John died. Zia, his wife and children came to visit my mother Sandy, the day before she died. The kids called her GG. They are family.

So, as a collective, the probably thousands of ESL students I have had the honour and privilege to work with, have brought clarity to that niggle, both in its identification and resolution. Another lesson for Simone. In two previous posts, The Elder Woman And Her Inner Child and Forgiveness: An Act Of Courage, I discuss trauma and forgiveness, the premises of which were relevant to my individual trauma experiences and how they have shaped my spiritual endeavours in understanding self, making necessary shifts etc.

I have also alluded to the prevalent misnomers posited by schools of spirituality and what I understand as spiritual-egoism; the propensity of some to bypass what essentially is the human experience, via the mainstreaming-ly familiar, should, would and could. Particularly, in reference to what mainstream classifies as negative emotions. As I express in last week’s post:

I do not profess to know any more than what I have been guided to in the context of my spiritual needs. We are each an individual expression of the One Source energy; how we attain the same truth is therefore determined by a lineage way beyond my human comprehension. Our journeys are eternal and therefore not confined to this one life time. Herein lies the foundation of The Illusion.

John asked me to remember my refugee students; so I could better understand my own childhood trauma, how it links to other traumas I have experienced in my life, including self-inflicted trauma. Furthermore, how our individual experience of trauma is reflective of the collective experience of humanity’s trauma.

An added reassurance that yes, spiritual-egoism and spiritual by-passing are indeed part of the human reality we create. There was what that niggle was, my second guessing ego. Ye of little faith, turn of phrase John often used with me when I expressed self-doubt. Always delivered with his quirky smile. Trust, his simple reminder.

So, while childhood trauma links to other subsequent adult trauma, I would like to make a distinction, the lesson learned from my work with refugee students. Our souls observe all the choices we make in this one human aspect of itself. This is our free will. Our human experience comes from the realm of unconditional love. It is our soul’s curiosity to view life through the human eyes of the physical third dimensional plane. Soul groups and soul contracts are part of the human experience of contrast and comparison; our full experiences of all emotions.

However, we have no control over the choice of others in how they exercise their free will. Never are the cruel and abhorrent actions imposed on children part of any soul contract.  To claim so suggests that the child shares responsibility with the perpetrator; that the child held some control over the other’s free will. Any said claim that inflicted trauma on children is a soul’s choice is a spiritual bypass.

As shown through the writing of some of the refugee students I worked with; to actually survive horrific acts is of itself empowering. Our human aspect can never be separated from its overall consciousness, the soul. Forgiveness is not forgetting or excusing; it involves understanding self, so that we can take responsibility for maintaining the safety of our inner child, through our adult free will choices in how we further respond and behave in our human experience.

And, how does this relate to the first message I received on the drive down to the beach?  We have to be embodied enough to feel all of our emotions and the landscape validates our feelings with unconditional love. As John suggests, in part the answer lies in the description, my connection with landscape in the opening of this post and in many of our posts.

Today, I woke up with this thread. This time pen and note pad was at the ready.

Be patient Simone! You already know you are not the sum of all you are! Your expansive soul is not the sum of all you are! Your soul needs to expand because it is a fragment of the One. Look at the trees in your yard and see their resilience. See the angle of the Princes Gum. Look at your Meyer Lemon. See her resilience. Look at the Banksia, see her resilience ... They survived their trauma. Look not at their awkwardness, look at the beautiful flowers, taste the juicy lemons, bow to the whispering elegance of the Princes’ slender crimson branches as she arcs over the veggie box. See the beauty in surviving trauma. You are in your garden and she is in you.

Our landscapes are sentient beings. My understanding of the One, is the all-inclusive One of everything that connects this Universe.

With love and gratitude, my learning continues.

John, and team Simone, thank you for the guidance. I love you.

And so it is.