Healing as realizing wholeness. (Part IV)

Healing as realizing wholeness.
Welcome to Part IV of the series addressing the question, “What does it mean to heal trauma?” The next step we take pulls at the thread around wholeness (related to the definition of “heal” as restoring something’s wholeness).

If healing is about realizing wholeness, there at least two possible paths. The first is one in which wholeness itself does not exist, or has been somehow disrupted, and so healing, including healing trauma, is restoring and thus realizing (making real) wholeness. A second path is the idea, offered by many spiritual traditions, that wholeness already exists as a kind of deeper, more fundamental state, but that somehow our perception has been clouded, our thoughts or feelings misguided; so the work of “healing” is really about removing the veil, the thing obscuring our ability to see or feel this fundalental wholeness. Healing becomes revelation, it becomes discovering, uncovering, unveiling the truth of wholeness.

I will offer a third idea here: both are true. This is possible if our ontology (our idea about the nature of what is real) is one in which consciousness is taken as the fundamental building block of reality (as opposed to consciousness being a product of material processes, which tends to be the dominant worldview in many Western cultures). Within an ontology of fundamental consciousness, there might be a level of consciousness in which it is actually true that there is a lack of wholeness, while on another level of consciousness there is the realization that wholeness already exists, always does, and always will.

My own experience of this is such that, depending on the state of consciousness in which I find myself, I experience both of these theses to be true, and sometimes in the same day. I might find myself in a state of consciousness in which I perceive a rupture in a relationship, or a diminishment in my experience of physical or mental health, and in that state, there is not the realization of wholeness. Wholeness is not present, is not real. However, I might through my own efforts or with the assistance of others, take some kind of action (have a conversation, take some medication, go to therapy, go for a swim, rest, and so forth) that appears to change the situation, resulting in what I have experienced as a restoration or return to wholeness.

I might also find myself in the same circumstances – perceiving a rupture in a relationship, etc., – and by accessing or shifting my state of consciousness, I perceive both the “problem” within the field of one level of consciousness, and also realize that wholeness exists despite whatever ebbs and flows of life and relationships and health might bring.

One meditative metaphor, that of ocean and waves, is perhaps applicable here. Both “ocean” and “waves” co-exist. No matter how choppy or stormy waves might become, “ocean” persists. The wholeness of the ocean is unaffected by the comings and goings of waves. The surface may appear to break, to be violent even, and even so, “ocean” remains.

Perhaps this is a possibility for us to consider within the context of healing, and specifically with the question at hand, “What does it mean to heal trauma?” Two answers might be:

“To heal trauma means that, within one level of consciousness, trauma has disrupted one’s sense of wholeness, and by taking actions intended to restore that sense, the sense of wholeness can actually be realized in that same state or level of consciousness.”

“At the same time, to heal trauma also means that there is a state of consciousness in which it is possible to see that trauma never destroyed the integrity of my wholeness, and that in fact wholeness has always been, is now, and will always be. Whether or not one’s actions in a different level of consciousness succeed in restoring the felt sense of wholeness in that level of consciousness, wholeness remains. Original purity or original integrity persists despite my state of consciousness.”

We continue our exploration of the question “What does it mean to heal trauma?” in Part V, “Healing as curing trauma.”

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