I seek to overcome my trauma through my practice.
Should I focus on the trauma during my bowing and meditation,
Or should I just try to clear my mind?
If you focus on your trauma,
Then you might fall into the trap of chasing after your past memories.
However,
If you want to clear your mind,
Clearing your mind is not something that happens with the intent of clearing your mind.
During meditation,
No matter what kind of past memories come unbidden to you,
You should not pay any attention or imbue them with any meaning.
Just let them be and focus rather on your breath.
However,
If the past memories of traumas come to you,
Then you fall into the trap of being trapped inside that memory.
And that triggers emotional reactions like anger,
Fear.
Basically,
Past traumas are continuous and hurting you today.
However,
If you think about the memories of the past trauma,
By continuous practice,
Not imbuing them with any meaning,
But observing them as they go by while you focus on your breath only,
Eventually you get to the state in which past memories just become dry memories without eliciting any emotion.
At that point,
You will have been healed from your past trauma.
The fundamental difference between past trauma and just past memories is that with a trauma,
If you recall the memories associated with that trauma,
It elicits an emotional reaction,
A strong emotional reaction.
However,
If you get to the state in which you can recall memories of the past trauma,
But your emotions don't tremble,
They don't agitate,
Then you have healed from the hurts associated with that trauma.
The principle of trying to heal your trauma through bowing is a little different,
However.
Say that you were abused as a child by your parents,
Or your divorce of your parents kind of affected you very deeply.
So when you recall or remember about your parents,
When you think about them,
There is a degree of anger or sadness.
Because your life was so difficult,
You were just angry.
Because you didn't know your mother's condition,
You were hurt.
Instead of focusing on the pain you were in at that time,
Instead of focusing on the pain you were in at that time,
You should understand the feelings of your mother,
Father,
And the person at that time.
One is to think back and re-look at the situation,
Not centered from your own hurt or your own trauma,
But centered from the perspective of the parents.
And think how difficult it must have been for my mother to have to go through that,
To have to deal with a husband that doesn't agree with her.
And because you were ignorant of the difficulties they were facing at that time,
Try to re-look at the situation from their point of view.
And if you really re-look at the situation,
Re-examine it with a deep understanding of their perspective,
As they were facing the situation,
It will automatically heal your trauma.
So at that point,
You tell yourself,
I was too young to understand.
I wasn't fully there to really understand the difficulties you were going through.
So I apologize for my ignorance at that time,
For not fully trying to be understanding.
And I was just focusing on my hurt,
The anger that I saw in you.
And that's how you repent.
So it wasn't that the mom,
My mother,
Was a bad person.
It's that I was too young and too unknowing to be able to understand fully what she was going through.
And if you shift your perspective like that,
It allows you to heal your own hurt.
Another way,
Method,
Is for you to offer prayers of gratitude to your mom.
So the mind you're trying to exhibit here is that,
Thank you mom for having born me and having raised me through such difficulties.
Basically offering a prayer of gratitude.
You mom,
You have born me,
You have raised me.
You might have cursed at me,
Insulted me,
Abused me.
However,
You also did clothes me,
Fed me,
Sent me to school until I was five years old.
And now I'm almost 10 years old,
For example,
Despite all the difficulties you're facing in your own life.
So offering a prayer of gratitude for the things that she did for you.
So basically trying to heal your trauma through bowing,
The first stage is the deep understanding.
And comes then a sense of deep gratitude that you were at that time too young to understand,
Too young to empathize with.
And that's the basis of your repentance or atonement for that time.
However,
If the trauma is too deep to begin with,
You initially need some kind of medical help,
Professional help,
Whether it's through therapy or medication.
But once you have dealt with it a little bit,
If it's less deep,
Then bowing based on sense of deep understanding and gratitude does help.
So with such deep trauma,
You need that kind of more of emergency type of treatment so that when you get into meditation,
Meditation can help you,
Can be effective in getting rid of the remnants of that hurt.
If the trauma is too deep and the injury is too deep,
It's very difficult during meditation for you not to focus and elicit emotional reaction.
Self-control at that state is very difficult.
