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How Do We Heal Mental Trauma?

Healing Mental Trauma From Deep Within

Optimizing our energy centers (chakras) is a powerful approach to healing mental trauma. This is because energy centers manage the energetic residue of traumatic experiences, which are typically stored as blockages in the subtle astral body. As Christina Lopes (DPT, MPH & Heart Alchemist) explains, trauma isn’t what happens to us. It’s what happens inside of us. Healing mental trauma through the energy centers is a process of consciously unlocking, processing, and releasing this stored energy. This allows us to integrate past experiences without being continually controlled by them. Is focusing deep within the key to jumpstarting the energetic process of healing?

Edgar Cayce Readings (1158-3, 1173-6) explain that all healing must be and is of a deeper source than just the administration of a drug or of the knife. They further explain that medications only attune the body for the proper reactions from the elemental forces of divinity within each cell and atom of the body (1173-6, 1173-7). Could medications and other outside help (e.g. gurus, shamans, energy healers, doctors) simply put us in a more conducive, receptive state so that we can take the reins and heal ourselves? Perhaps outside help should act as a supplement to or amplifier of the innate healing power we each possess within ourselves.

Introspection and Shadow Work

Inner Work

The Law of One (4:20, 5:2) explains that true healing occurs when we realize deep within ourselves there is no disharmony and that all is balanced and whole through unity. This realization kickstarts the energy-balancing and purification process in our minds, which eventually manifests through our energy systems and bodies — similar to how the placebo effect works. The placebo effect is said to be effective because the mind’s belief in healing (a change in consciousness/vibration) overrides existing programming — ergo, conscious realization is used to restructure the energy system.

Aaron Abke (Spiritual Teacher) explains that all true spiritual balancing, cleansing, and healing must first come from within (introspection) through self-awareness, self-realization, and forgiveness. Perhaps this includes performing shadow work or inner work. Shadow work is exploring and integrating the unconscious and hidden parts of ourselves we deny, ignore, suppress, or repress, as made popular by Carl Gustav Jung (Psychologist, 1875 – 1961). Awareness, acknowledgement (observation without judgment), and acceptance (integration) are key to shadow work since, as Christina Lopes (DPT, MPH, Heart Alchemist) explains, energy only becomes stagnant when we are unconscious of it. 

Yes fellow souls, apparently our shadows become bigger the more we feed it with ignorance.

3 Step Balancing Process

The Law of One eludes to a three step balancing process synonymous with shadow work, helping to move us from a state of being triggered to a state of equanimity (5:2, 42:2).

  1. Identify the Negative Event or Feeling: The first step is to identify and re-play negative events, triggers, and feelings in our consciousness rather than repress or run away from them (42:9). For example, we could imagine a time where we experienced physical harm, felt shame, or had a need for control.
  2. Seek the Opposite of the Event or Feeling: The second step involves finding a positive counter-emotion to the negative event, trigger, or feeling. This would create a mathematical balance in the mind and switch the harmful to the beneficial as Swami Mukundananda (Bhakti Yog Saint & Yoga Teacher) explains. Based on our example, we could imagine experiencing total safety, feeling completely accepted, or having a need to serve the whole.
  3. Bring the Two into Unity: The third step involves imagining both the negative and positive versions of the event, trigger, or feeling side-by-side in our consciousness until they cancel each other out. Once this happens, we are no longer the victim of the event, nor are we the hero. We are simply the observer.

Essentially, focusing within or performing shadow work can help us process and reframe all of the triggers, traumas, material attachments, aversions, samskaras (tendencies carried forward from past lives), and ego-driven belief systems that are derailing our inevitable path to spiritual ascension.

As Law of One (49:6. 52:7) explains, we must purify our minds and strengthen our will to ensure each of our experiences are observed, experienced, balanced, accepted, and seated within us. As we grow in self-acceptance and awareness, our overall vibrational frequency will rise because we’re generating spiritual energy that will burn away, transmute, and transform karmic seeds and negative energy within our energy systems. 

This is corroborated by Christina Lopes (DPT, MPH, Heart Alchemist) who also explains that we should vocalize our trauma, release what words can’t through movement, and then energize the trauma to restore energetic flow.

Healing Through Forgiveness

Can diseases like cancer be healed through forgiveness (Law of One: 18:12, 40:12-13)? Well, forgiveness is certainly a great way to start. Perhaps forgiveness acts as sort of a lubricant that allows light to pass through the heart energy center without creating resistance. Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (Guru & Humanitarian) explains that showing compassion and practicing forgiveness (both asking and giving) means we’re taking responsibility for clearing up conflict that has happened in the past, bringing harmony in its place. BK Shivani (Spiritual Teacher) affirms this, explaining there are seven things we can do to heal past karma:

  1. Apologize to those we’ve wronged
  2. Forgive ourselves for wronging others
  3. Let go of our past wrongdoings
  4. Affirm that our past karmic accounts are over
  5. Accept the wrongdoers for who they are and affirm that they accept you
  6. Send love, blessings, and respect to the wrongdoers
  7. Envision that our relationships are very strong

We know. All of this is easier said than done. But, as with most things, it gets easier as we shift our mindset. As Swami Mukundananda explains, mindsets are mental habits we establish internally. With sufficient repetition, a new thought or behavior can solidify into a new habit, replacing the old one. Trust the process fellow souls.