The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Trauma and free will

Practices Christian Living
#21

That’s good stuff, Randy.
In your experience, you have seen physical ailments cured - almost instantaneously, as we see in the N.T.? I have not witnessed that myself but also I have no doubts that has happened countless times.

What I have seen is the truth of the old saw: “As the twig is bent, so grows the tree”. That bending can be ‘good’ or ‘bad’, mainly due to the influences of the family. And those that have been bent by traumas - depending on the severity - do not seem, overall, to ever fully recover (based on my experience), no matter the amount of prayer or counseling. There ARE successes of course, thank God; but most of the others continue to have the trauma at the center of their being, and learn to work around it - which is not a recipe for success - or learn to work with it - a homeopathic stance that asks the person to ‘listen’ to the trauma, stay with it, ride it out, and when it is no longer feared, live with it - much of the ‘sting’ being removed by the work of ‘listening’. That can be done various ways - stillness in prayer or meditation, ‘centering’, some rituals - well you know better than I do the various methods.

I’ts good to get these ideas floating around - I know they are already out there in the pop-psychology world, and that a lot of that world is kinda ridiculous - but I don’t throw the ‘baby out with the bathwater’. Wherever there is true understanding, I think we need to honor it.

But with you, Randy, I’m preaching to the choir! You’re much more in tune with the variety of religious experience and healing experiences.Some of which are foreign to me - shamanism etc. - but I find interesting.

#22

OK, Dave. Let me respond.

Yes, I have seen instantaneous healing of folks, by spiritual healing, gifts of the spirit, and Native American ceremonial ways. But I have also seen partial healing, healing at a later date and no healing at all. Only God knows the real reason.

God had a covenant with the Jews. But I also believed God communicated his presence to other cultures. Like the Upanishads and Vedanta of ancient India. Or the visions of the Native American people, from which they derived their medicine and ceremonial ways. But Christ is still the fulfillment of these ways.

And to ride a trauma out, both psychology and Buddhism, place great stock in mindfulness meditation.

If a person has trauma and a psychiatrist is prescribing a variety of meds, it’s harder to heal them by other ways. But trauma can be treated by homeopathic methods. Usually be a super high dose of Aconitum (AKA Monkshood) and Rescue Remedy. But these are general remedies. And a person must consult a homeopath, who is also a licensed M.D.

#23

Mine started when I was born. In the first grade I was sent to a special school at lunch time for shy kids because I wouldn’t talk or play with the others. It escalated to a social phobia. I had 2 close friends in high school but I was always different. Completely terrified of speaking in front of groups. I started drinking after high school when I started junior college after the break up by my girlfriend. Alcohol released my fears. I know why they call it liquid courage. Marijuana intensified my self-consciousness as the social anxiety got worse. It escalated 1000 times with my few bad trips on acid. I consider my LSD trips as my traumatic experiences. It terrified my the first time yet I did it a few more. Why? I don’t know. When I started A.A. I stopped everything for a couple of years and delved into the philosophy and logic quite heavily. It was in my twenties that I had my first psychotic break after an argument I had with the astrophysicist Hugh Ross on the radio. I had to go to the hospital. I wasn’t making sense and thought that people were coming after me. That’s when I was diagnosed as schizoaffective (bipolar type). I guess my psychotic break can be considered a traumatic experience. It seems like everything in my life was building and building up the psychotic break. The causes are unknown. I’ve tried the Niacin thing without medicine and it doesn’t work. I get delusional. My head starts spinning and I get obsessive. I believe that people on the internet, T.V. or radio are against me and then swing into thinking I’m God. Everything becomes connected and I start thinking that others are controlling my thoughts and emotions. My anxiety and fears multiply to where I think others are tracking me and then coming after me. Then when I try to talk to others about it I’ll forget the topic and flow of the conversation or don’t reach the goal I’m headed to. I slip off track and change the subject. I’ll go from one idea to another and reach conclusions that don’t follow from other ideas. Everything becomes jumbled up in my head. When I speak nothing comes out right and people don’t understand what I’m talking about. I constantly focus on myself. They haven’t been able to prove whether or not substance addiction causes the disorder or whether the disorder causes substance addition.

#24

Quite a history there St. M.

#25

:smiley:

#26

I went through a lot of chidhood trauma. Frequent moves, brawling parents. Got into drugs and alcohol as a teen in the late 60s and damaged my mind from several bad acid trips. Started studyng eastern mysticism and shamanism. Also started reading the book of Revelations. I was sitting in a basement in the ghetto of Detroit with a group of “heads” (what we used to call street level sorcerers) when I had my first revelation of Jesus Christ. I had been praying, “God whoever you are and whatever you are please show me” for several months- and He did. It was like a bubble burst in my soul and every cell in my body knew that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and I saw Him crucified( as a matter of overwhelming consciousness more than as a vision). I also heard the call to pick up my cross and follow Him, and it made me reluctant and afraid, so I ran from God for another year or so, but I got out of the street life and started looking into Jesus and the Bible. He met me at every turn, began to draw me and also confront me. I eventually yielded and began to seek Him and to study the scriptures and testout churches. The healing of my mind took maybe 2 or three years. He rebuilt my intellect and healed my consciousness through meditation in the psalms and vigorous consumption of the word of God, along with healthy doses of prayer, Christian music and fellowship with believers.

The two verses that really impacted me powerfully in the beginning were 1) “Ask and it shall be given, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be opened”… I read this and determined to bite into the scriptures like a bulldog and not let go until God had shaken me out of all the garbage I was lost in…2) “If your eye causes you to offend pluck it out, it is better to enter heaven maimed than to enter hell whole”. Strange combo perhaps, but every walk is an individual one, and thats how God dealt with me.

Then I began my Alice in Wonderland like trek through Christian religion- fundamentalism, Pentecostalism, Charismatic iterations of various modes.

Its a jungle out there.

Evrything we go through is a lesson and an opportunity. We will understand it better by and by. :smiley:

#27

Truer words have never been spake. :smiley:

Thx.