Just A Minute To Breathe

8/7/2014

Child in the Aftermath of Israel and Palestine

With Gaza, The West Bank and Israel now quietly in ruin, I found some thoughts this morning. I may need to see these words again some day, in case I forget all this. Israel and Palestine, I look at as two PEOPLE, not two NATIONS. Both people I see, live with the same human nature. Half of their soul, lives in the light. Half their soul, lives in darkness. Light, is pure LOVE. Darkness, pure FEAR, not HATRED as we've been taught is our nature in terms of Yin and Yang. Love, embraces. Fear, defends. So for me, both nations in terms of their behaviour are living a life drama in absolute fear of one another. The net-outcome on both sides now living in hell and war.

Culturally, Palestine has imprinted deep into her sub-conscious mind, beliefs that are today far removed from any inner-sense of love. At least, that's what our own propaganda machine is training us all to believe. On mass, the cultural and psychological imprinting of fear now clouds the Palestinian people's perceptions. And in my view are entirely DEFENSE-DRIVEN.

Due to years of oppression invoked into their hearts by Israel at the bequest of other nations, our Arab brothers and sisters are living with the fear of terrorism themselves and terror remains thickly piled upon us all since the horrific tragedy of 9-11. Thank you, George W. Bush and Friends. What a grande historical legacy you've left for us to psychologically contend with.

Five-Hundred-Thousand soldiers with PTSD have returned home from Iraq and Afghanistan in the United States alone. Most are still fighting beurocracy and are having such a hell of a time in their lives. There is nothing more additionally traumatizing than to struggle through inept benefits systems. This is happening to our soldiers, world-wide. Signing up to serve country and liberty, I doubt any in control ever mentioned that any one of our young, misinformed soldiers would come back home to family struggling so hard.

With the current conflict in the Middle East, like it or not, Israel is the dominant force in the region. The Occupier. The people of Israel live much further up the primate hierarchy in the Middle East in terms of social structure than do their Arab neighbors. Israel, for the purpose of this argument, remains the person holding all control over Palestinian life in this fragile and vulnerable relationship. They are the dominant monkey in the collective troop of monkeys in the Middle East. We can't really effectively argue against this truth.

The subconscious cultural imprinting upon the people of Israel, is evolutionarily and collectively gentler than their perceived enemies. Study Robert Sapolsky if you'd like to learn about the negative biological impacts on both monkey and human primates, battling for dominance in societal hierarchies. He's proven that our insistence to maintain such structure in human society causes the majority of our social problems and physical ailments plaguing North America. Reading Sapolsky, I'm pretty sure you'd draw these same conclusions. Israel, based on Sapolsky's teachings, is more able as a nation to live closer to the light of human nature.

ISRAEL HOWEVER STILL LIVES IN FEAR OF THE EXTREME TERROR OF HAMAS. I agree, Israel certainly does have a terror problem. What stands out on mass, through the eyes of life experience with psychological traumatization, is that most of this war is due to years of suffering in the region with trauma now the central demon living in the Middle East. Just as one of my more recent teachers discovered while living there during another time of historical carnage, Dr. David Berceli. Trauma that is now blooming, societal PTSD, in my view. What I see in terms of human nature is that only darkness is being fed on both sides. We don't do our best thinking when we are living inside ourselves, the stress-chemistry of fear and self-defense.

God? Both sides story-telling teaches that both Israel and the Arabs once knew HIM by the same name. They've simply forgotten this fact now, having lived so much irrational thinking due to stress and trauma programming in the brain. They've all forgotten that once-upon-a-time in their original mythology, they lived only as human. Without any ideology of religion standing in the way, both sides once worshiped One God. The Great, I Am. Today, after centuries of redefining the inner psychological mythology in the region, this understanding of God is seemingly lost.

Once each side had culturally accepted that all the other gods weren't serving them any longer. They adopted new beliefs of monotheism for their lives. How is it then that both sides in the conflict have forgotten history in the region and divided themselves against this One and Only God commitment? From previous history to today, both peoples have reverted again to living animal dominance and submissive tactics in their society. Just as Robert Sapolsky uncovered while studying his Baboon Troops in the Savanna.

To find a personal position on the issues in the Middle East, I turned this thinking towards the mirror. I looked right into myself and at the domestic conflicts I've lived through with two destroyed homes and families. TRAUMA if it is left to itself unhealed, leaves couples eventually living only in fear of one another. Living in fear and stress raises in both man and wife all the self-defenses we've learned over the years. Our childhood imprinting then explodes out of us at one another, without either side any longer able to control or stop it. 'What I learned in anger management class, works great. Right up until the instant, I'm triggered with anger.'

According to neuroscience, it is impossible to think clearly and rationally with trauma and fear driving our thinking computer-tool, the brain. Under chronic, trauma-infused stress, we are driven into self-defense, functioning ONLY from our most primitive area in the brain, the Limbic System. I call it, Snake Brain and it's the only part of the brain that lights in MRI studies of those courageous enough to submit to any research on PTSD. Even snake-brain (studies now show) isn't functioning anywhere near it's most healthy best.

In fact, when survival needs fire in us, Our Thinking Brain, the Pre-Frontal Cortex and other Grey Matter areas, shows in fMRI study to be almost dead. In SHOCK, so-to-speak. With a condition of shock in the brain, with blood shunting to ensure survival, humans under intense stress are biologically SHUT DOWN to any possibility of rationality. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO THINK REASONABLY AND RATIONALLY WHILE FUNCTIONING IN SURVIVAL MODE, FIGHT-OR-FLIGHT.

Trust me, in my experience, this is no state to attempt making any kind of reasonable decisions. Such irrational thinking leads to decisions and choices often with irreversible, negative impact on future dreams. Sometimes in this state we do things that simply can never be undone or fixed. As I see it, it's sometimes better to simply let the sky fall and be done with it. Domestic war breaks-out behind walls of protective sanctuary, symbolic of the wall surrounding Palestine, elevating further our bodies response to all the stress. We then find ourselves living the psychological trauma-drama in the family home that PTSD life inevitably creates.

With trauma raging, I know my own resiliency to any stress at all fires off my own mortar rounds at home, with my mouth pointed toward my family like a rifle. When the dust settles, I always find that I was in fact so fully enraged - at nothing. My own misguided and irrational thinking at the time, fueled fires and bombings with words once the trigger was pulled. It's always in this raging state of self-defense that my enemy (my wife) suffers the leveling of her own soul with the shelling I can inflict upon her with words

Unfortunately, this is PTSD illness at it's worst. We sometimes live a frenzy of ranting that I learned to use to destroy any enemy. Anyone who knows me well enough will say that if you pick a verbal fight with me - I will not stop against you until I win. Trouble is. In war - nobody wins.

My once loving relationships are both gone from my life today. The love-of-my life just recently needed to leave me. Ultimately, out of fear. Fear, as over-exaggerated and as out of touch with reality as it can be, insists now that I no longer accept PTSD as responsible for my negative behaviour. I've learned to accept, disease or otherwise, I created the fear in the woman I love today. The behaviour isn't justified, no matter how we look at such things. Understandable, maybe. But never justified. Today, with my mind clear, I am so broken inside, knowing that my own self-defensive words would make anyone fear me so much they'd need to run. I'm so sorry for this in my life.

I know, I know: 'Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys'. I'm not asking anyone out here in the rest of the world to accept any responsibility for themselves. But I will fully accept such responsibility for myself and my behaviour. In fact, I've now learned, I haven't a choice in life any longer. I've now spent all the grace my family granted to me. I'm grateful today, that treatment finally came my way. I'm even more grateful that with my martial-arts training in my background, no one in my family ever ended up permanently, physically damaged - or, God forbid - DEAD!

We do this to ourselves in society even when living without the symptoms of PTSD. Human-beings are this minute, driving through every city in North America in thick traffic. The stress of maybe being a couple of minutes late for work or home, combined with the pressure of an asshole for a boss or an impatient family, can turn this fight-or-flight self-defense crap full-on in us HARD AND INSTANTLY. We've all felt that rage. If anyone else can recall, ROAD RAGE KILLINGS, RIGHT HERE IN NORTH AMERICA, were for a time the trauma-drama stories the news media drove into us all as a scoop to exploit this fragility of human life. With the past weeks world and home events processed, I've rested with the conviction that in this latest Middle East and at home domestic squabble. Israel had no choice but to defend itself. My wife had no choice but to leave.

INTENSE FEAR, DROVE THEM TO GO MUCH TOO FAR, IN THE MIDDLE-EAST IN MY OPINION. In marital arts, I learned, YOU PUT HIM DOWN, AND STOP WHEN HE IS NO LONGER A THREAT. With GUNS AND WITH MORTARS. WITH BOMBS, HATCHETS, STONES AND MAYBE EVEN SPEARS, IN BOTH HANDS, OVER THERE - I know, human nature, and I know myself. I won't hold a gun, ever in my own hand. Because if I had one, I'd use it. I'll use my own hands against the attack of any man. So I do humanly understand the position Israel stood in this conflict. I know, without doubt, I have it in me to physically kill a human-being. Cross the threshold of my sanctuary and TRY to hurt those I love or myself. I don't need killing someone on my own conscience, on top of every other commandment I've broken in life. Thank God, I'm now leaving behind all that inner and outer emotional pain

I rest with this. My wife and Israel had no choice in this conflict. Neither in my view did Palestine. HAMAS I SEE AS FRANKLY INSANE - PSYCHOTIC IN FACT. Terrorists. Very much collectively mentally ill. You don't see anything like this going on in our world, except in psychosis. Again, I'm looking only at one human at a time in this, as I processed through where I personally stand.

In the end, for me. I STAND WITH ALL HUMANITY - NO SIDES. I stand with this as well, in the domestic destruction now evident in my family situation. In both, however. I do see hope. I'm in trauma remission and, it's sticking, , THANK GOD. My illness may have caused us all pain at home. Underneath all of our own, PTSD driven, self-defensive posturing, none of us were even truly alive. None of us are truly responsible for our family demise. It certainly was not the burned-out, vicariously traumatized, beautiful woman forced to safety in my life. My angel, who tried to stand me back up on my on my own two feet hasn't anything at all to do with any of this loss. My behaviour, my symptoms. It's only me who can take full responsibility for any of that. Israel and Palestine too, seemed to have finally calmed for a time.

I say thank you to the Middle East this morning. For acting out the drama as it played out also in my personal life. I say thank you God, for using all of life to teach me the lessons. Universally, I think we all might need to learn something from these past weeks of hell. If I've overstepped with this conclusion. I apologize in advance for any emotional conflict, this might drum up inside any one of you.

I only pray now, for peace. In my personal life, and for the world. It's time we all had this little minute in our lives to breathe. We can't get anywhere near peace, continuing to live in fear. ONLY LOVE can ultimately conquer all that. For two-thousand years now, the world has been CRUCIFYING any real opportunity for humanity to experience any sense of unconditional love. The relative teachings we now hold that come with the other humanly fragile religion we practice, are fracturing as well. All three world religions from THE GREAT I AM. Legalism seems still to be standing in the way of Christian Faith. I'll leave that argument, perhaps for another day. I will though, grant us all this short prayer for peace. I changed around the words a little. I know God won't mind. Be Well.

“The Lord bless us and keep us;
The Lord make His face shine upon us,
And be gracious to us;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon us,
And give us peace.”’ ~ Numbers 6:24-26New King James Version (NKJV)

Darren Michael Gregory. August, 7th, 2014. Darren Is A Community and Workplace Traumatologist, currently living in Creston, British Columbia, Canada.

4-Runner: Cain's Blood