My character has what I would call a traumatic core. It's why shamanism is relevant to me, in particular, as well as to Georges Bataille and to Nietzsche, Marechera, and all those who also have it. Should your psyche be structured differently, you will not have the same needs and will not respond in the same way.
Enlightenment about oneself occurs slowly. Only of late have I begun to really understand the origin and extent of my own traumatic core. This came about, I now realize, through the unpredictable and extreme beatings I received as a child.
The consequence of these beatings is that my emotions do not flow smoothly in a situation where I feel I am under duress. At the point of my feeling pressured to respond in ways I don't feel like responding, a switch flicks. After that, I can't respond to subtle emotional cues. I may see the need to do so, but I've lost track of the way humans negotiate emotional situations. I once tried to override the sense of numbness, but the results were spectacularly awkward. I spoke stiltedly, expressing niceties, whilst feeling that the relationship I was so desperately trying to forge did not have any subjective value to me. The person I was trying to speak to excused herself mid-sentence, and I realized there's no point trying to push through one's emotional numbness once it takes hold. One has to ride out the numbness sensations for several hours, or days, until one starts to thaw.
Very little bothers me except having to be socially adept in ways that do not suit me. I can't forge social links then they're compulsory. I have no trouble doing so when I am free, but the very necessity of having to develop them in professional settings produces a raging conflict that ends with my inability to sense the finer emotional threads stretching through any particular social situation. I'm too busy attending to the logic justifying the childhood beatings: "This hammering will teach you to love and respect me." Instead, it taught me to distance myself and switch off.
Shamanism is for those who have such an innate capacity to auto-detach and switch off. It's not for those who are already very emotional, and it's not for those who do not have their emotions under control.
Shamanistic techniques use visualizations and fantasies to reconnect to emotions that don't want to remain in the present. One can also "return to nature" -- breaking with the patterns of normal sobriety and conformity in order to recover one's wholeness.
Last night, I healed myself by shamanistic means, after a a day or two of feeling terrible duress and numbness. The night before, I'd dreamed of leading my horse up a busy motorway, through an underpass. This was no place for humans or horses. The setting was stark and the underpass was expressly forbidden.
I was told I would be free to go, but the horse would be confiscated. I was devastated. I visited the motorways official to ask what had happened to my horse, and she said in a matter of fact way: "She's been put down."
The dream's interpretation is obvious. My capacity to feel emotion had been taken from me, due to some fault I'd committed. I would not be able to reconnect with them. The law had spoken.
Last night, however, as I sat on a large chair, in the dark, an enormous barn, covered in thatch appeared before my mind's eyes. The barn went all the way up to the sky and signified my life until death. It became narrower as it reached beyond the Earth's atmosphere. Moving through it was a large white ball, like a planet, which signified my life moving through old age on to death. The ball ascended peacefully into the Universe. Inside the barn was my horse -- my emotions.
After entertaining this vision for a period, I felt calm and completely whole. I slept really well and woke up feeling free of trauma.
Shamanistic techniques work in the way I've outlined above for those who need them.
Enlightenment about oneself occurs slowly. Only of late have I begun to really understand the origin and extent of my own traumatic core. This came about, I now realize, through the unpredictable and extreme beatings I received as a child.
The consequence of these beatings is that my emotions do not flow smoothly in a situation where I feel I am under duress. At the point of my feeling pressured to respond in ways I don't feel like responding, a switch flicks. After that, I can't respond to subtle emotional cues. I may see the need to do so, but I've lost track of the way humans negotiate emotional situations. I once tried to override the sense of numbness, but the results were spectacularly awkward. I spoke stiltedly, expressing niceties, whilst feeling that the relationship I was so desperately trying to forge did not have any subjective value to me. The person I was trying to speak to excused herself mid-sentence, and I realized there's no point trying to push through one's emotional numbness once it takes hold. One has to ride out the numbness sensations for several hours, or days, until one starts to thaw.
Very little bothers me except having to be socially adept in ways that do not suit me. I can't forge social links then they're compulsory. I have no trouble doing so when I am free, but the very necessity of having to develop them in professional settings produces a raging conflict that ends with my inability to sense the finer emotional threads stretching through any particular social situation. I'm too busy attending to the logic justifying the childhood beatings: "This hammering will teach you to love and respect me." Instead, it taught me to distance myself and switch off.
Shamanism is for those who have such an innate capacity to auto-detach and switch off. It's not for those who are already very emotional, and it's not for those who do not have their emotions under control.
Shamanistic techniques use visualizations and fantasies to reconnect to emotions that don't want to remain in the present. One can also "return to nature" -- breaking with the patterns of normal sobriety and conformity in order to recover one's wholeness.
Last night, I healed myself by shamanistic means, after a a day or two of feeling terrible duress and numbness. The night before, I'd dreamed of leading my horse up a busy motorway, through an underpass. This was no place for humans or horses. The setting was stark and the underpass was expressly forbidden.
I was told I would be free to go, but the horse would be confiscated. I was devastated. I visited the motorways official to ask what had happened to my horse, and she said in a matter of fact way: "She's been put down."
The dream's interpretation is obvious. My capacity to feel emotion had been taken from me, due to some fault I'd committed. I would not be able to reconnect with them. The law had spoken.
Last night, however, as I sat on a large chair, in the dark, an enormous barn, covered in thatch appeared before my mind's eyes. The barn went all the way up to the sky and signified my life until death. It became narrower as it reached beyond the Earth's atmosphere. Moving through it was a large white ball, like a planet, which signified my life moving through old age on to death. The ball ascended peacefully into the Universe. Inside the barn was my horse -- my emotions.
After entertaining this vision for a period, I felt calm and completely whole. I slept really well and woke up feeling free of trauma.
Shamanistic techniques work in the way I've outlined above for those who need them.
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