Trauma & Bliss (Part XV)

Healing as traumananda.
Welcome to Part XV of the series exploring the question, “What does it mean to heal trauma?” In this final thread to unravel, I explore an idea that came to me last fall, as I was laying down to take one of my usual afternoon naps. As I began to relax and slip away, a word arose in my thoughts: traumananda.

In several yogic lineages, including the lineage of my guru and teacher Paramahansa Yogananda, the gifted surname is bestowed by one’s guru and is often a word combined with ananda, typically translated as “Bliss.” The idea is that their life is marked by “the bliss of” something. For Yogananda, his life was to be marked by “the bliss of yoga” (yogananda). One of his disciples was given the surname Kriyananda, or “the bliss of kriya.”

While I am not seeking or feeling that my own life is marked by “the bliss of trauma,” the word traumananda came to me out of the experience of seeing the deeper truths unveiled by the process of healing trauma. These deeper truths offer experiences of not only Bliss on their own, but also offer the possibility of realizing all life as an experience of Bliss.

As we explored earlier, this Bliss is not to be conflated with the idea of physical pleasure. Instead, this is the idea of dropping the value judgement of experiences being “good” or “bad” or “damaging” or “healing,” as well as even physical sensations being “good” or “bad,” and experiencing all of life as intensities of Life, experiencing the sometimes violent smashing together of the Life Force, the Fundamental Consciousness, in all its forms in all its various ways and the incredible energy that is felt, that courses through us as a part of All of it.

It can also be imagined as the Bliss of unbinding that is felt through the healing process. The binding process that occurs offers an experience to the Divine of then unbinding itself from this restriction and feeling the sense of Bliss that occurs as if for the first time. I think there is a quality to this experience that Yogananda describes as the “Ever-new Bliss” of God. Through countless repetitions of this process of binding and unbinding, the Divine gets to experience the wholeness of it-Self as if for the first time. It experiences it-Self in ever new ways. This process of binding and unbinding becomes the lila, the Divine Play of God, including the various forms of overwhelming experiences that create trauma symptoms. Through the healing process, this offers experiences of recovery, release, healing, and Wholeness. Referring once again back to Levine’s quote, this release and experience of freedom is the “gift of the gods.” This Bliss of unbinding becomes traumananda. It becomes the bliss of healing trauma.

Part XVI of this series will conclude this exploration, through the lens of what I have experienced and learned from my own journey of trauma healing.

References

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