Essay, first published in ‘Trauma and Encounter’, Yearbook of the DGfS, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017. – Part 3 –

Trauma and Spirituality
So far we have seen how trauma works physically, what a fundamental role illusion plays in this process, and how the soul itself traumatises us through our consciousness (‘I am’). Trauma comes from the human soul and it is also from the soul that it can heal. So let us look at the phenomenon of ‘spirituality’ as a general code for accessing the soul, the inner side of our aliveness.
Spirituality is initially something very private in the sense of: This living being is mine, it only concerns me and is only my business. In this sense, spirituality is experienced as something deeply personal. The inner contact with one’s own aliveness opens up through the personal, through one’s own story.
Now other beings are also alive. Being alive is the same in everyone, it is simply alive. This connects us to each other, whether we want to or not, whether we are aware of it or not. In this way we are connected to everyone else who is also alive through our own aliveness. In this sense, spirituality is collective and public. This other side of spirituality goes beyond the private. It is experienced as something transpersonal, as a connection to the greater whole.
Many call the experience of this transpersonal connection the ‘spiritual dimension’. I know of no universal word for it, only linguistic references such as Great Mystery, Spirit, Yahweh, God, Allah, Tao. The list could go on. In everyday life, these words refer more to religious group affiliations that have grown out of each culture than to the thing itself. Vibrancy is not a ‘thing’ that can be talked about directly. Rather, it is already contained in language itself as its inner movement.
The question now is: Can spirituality in the broadest sense help to transform trauma? Or to put it another way: Can trauma lead to a deeper contact with one’s own aliveness, i.e. to a deepened or renewed spirituality?
Spirituality’ as a broad term for the preoccupation with one’s inner self or with what one imagines to be the spiritual aspect of existence has become a buzzword of our time, a cultural scene in open societies, and in some respects even an (entertainment) industry. If we understand trauma as an attempt to avoid contact with the immediate present for the sake of better chances of survival (in the face of inner images of the overwhelmingly destructive contact with the present at that time), then spirituality in this sense would be nothing more than a symptom of trauma.
Spirituality as mere inwardness functions according to the same rules as illusion: with my mind and my perception I am not where I am, but somewhere else. As we have seen, mental distance from the immediate present is itself part of the trauma, a symptom of our survival instinct. In this respect, any spiritual practice that takes people away from the immediate perception of their present serves the trauma itself, preserving it, perpetuating it and reviving it again and again.
Spirituality in the sense of an escape from the present actually becomes, to use an old dictum of Karl Marx, the ‘opium of the people’, a kind of anaesthetic or painkiller. I have nothing against painkillers. They help us to bear the unbearable. They do the same thing as trauma: they numb us for the sake of survival. Anyone who has experienced severe pain knows how valuable this is, whether the pain is somatic or psychological. However, no painkiller can reach the inner source of the trauma or its symptom, which is pain. Painkillers cannot heal. Only reality itself, the present moment, can heal. For me this means that spirituality is not about what you do, whether it is meditation, religious ritual, prayer or whatever. It is about where you focus your inner attention, what you open up to.
Any direct contact with the present moment is spiritual because it is always connected with contact with your own aliveness. Perhaps this is where the biblical phrase ‘pray without ceasing’ meets the Eastern ‘every minute Zen’. I see that the religions and spiritual schools I am familiar with meet in the same place in their depths: in the encouragement to open oneself to the present moment, to surrender to one’s own being and thus to life itself – not to flee, but to remain with oneself and to trust one’s inner vitality, even to surrender to it. In this sense, in everyday presence (‘fetching water, chopping wood’), spirituality can be a powerful force in healing trauma. In this sense it can reveal the illusions associated with the trauma that create and maintain it, acknowledge them as such and then let them go in order to turn to the present moment. And in this sense, constellation work naturally has a spiritual core, a core of present spirituality, a centre of contact with aliveness.
When it entrusts itself to this inaccessible centre, constellation work can be applied spirituality, present and everyday, like ‘fetching water and chopping wood’. In this way, it can support what the soul clearly wants: to make visible and available to life the survival skills and resources hidden in the trauma. It is about recognising the trauma itself more and more deeply as an illusion, and perceiving the unthreatened present as reality.

Literature

Geßner, Th. (2018). How we love. And what we do or avoid for love. Cologne, Innenweltverlag, Edition Neue Psychologie.

Giegerich, W. (1992). Killings. Violence from the Soul. In P. M. Pflüger (ed.), Violence – why? Man: Destroyer and Creator (pp. 184-234). Olten and Freiburg i. Br: Walter.

Giegerich, W. (2010). The soul always thinks. The Collected English Papers of Wolfgang Giegerich. Vol. IV. New Orleans: Spring Journal.

Giegerich, W. (2013). Neurosis. The Logic of a Metaphysical Illness. New Orleans: Spring Journal.

Hölderlin, F. (1993). Exzentrische Bahnen. Munich: dtv.

Levine, P. A. (2012). Language Without Words: How Our Bodies Process Trauma and Restore Our Inner Balance (4th ed.). Munich: Kösel.

Nelles, W. (2010). Life has no reverse gear: The Evolution of Consciousness, Spiritual Growth and Family Constellations (2nd edition). Cologne: Innenwelt.

Nelles, W. (2016). Everything is consciousness is everything. On the Psychology of the Present. Essays, Conversations, Aphorisms. Cologne: Innenwelt

Nelles, W., Geßner, Th. (2014). The longing of life for itself. The process of life integration in practice. Cologne: Innenwelt.