Osho

"Knowledge destroys wonder, destroys the capacity to feel awe. It makes you capable of explaining away everything. It takes away all poetry from life. It takes away all meaning from life. The knowledgeable person is never surprised by anything because he can explain everything. But no explanation is true for they don't explain anything at all. The mystery remains. The mystery is infinite."

~ Osho

The Prevalence of Complex PTSD by Esther Veltheim

"Post Truamatic Stress, from a neurological standpoint, is not a dis-order. It is a re-ordering of your neural networks and pathways and your sensory pathways, so that you can survive in a really dangerous situation."

– Janet Seahorn, PhD, author of Tears of a Warrior

When many of us think of PTSD, we often imagine a single, severely traumatic event (war, accident, rape etc.). This event can still have several incidences, but they tend to be put under the one umbrella even though we may need to address the specific components. However, as practitioners, we will more often need to address Complex PTSD also known as C-PTSD. This particular stress disorder generally results from prolonged and repetitive trauma. It frequently involves abuse or abandonment by a family member or caregiver in a situation where the power dynamic is skewed.

Unfortunately, violent and mentally or emotionally abusive relationships are just as prevalent as they have ever been, but they are often kept very hushed and can even go unrecognized by the victims. The following experiences and situations can easily leave a person with C-PTSD symptoms:

• Physically and mentally abusive relationships from childhood
• Mentally or emotionally abusive marriages/partnerships (E.g. repeated infidelity)
• Being bullied at school (leading to child suicide and more gun use in schools)
• Cyber-bullying
• Being bullied or abused by parents (alcoholic parents, drug abuse, or parents with mental disorders); being bullied by other children (siblings, school mates)
• Being gaslighted by a partner or parent
• Sexual abuse--incest, rape, etc.
• Environmental--living in a hostile environment (E.g. where there are gangs, etc.)

The profound damage gaslighting causes is only beginning to be acknowledged. If you are unfamiliar with the term gaslighting, it involves psychological manipulation that causes the victim to doubt their own memory, their own perception and their own sanity.

Gaslighting is experienced more among women, but is certainly not limited to them. Although gaslighting is sometimes accompanied by physical abuse, the abuser usually confines their attacks to the psychological realm. They lie pathologically and consistently, in the process deeply convincing themselves that their own distorted reality is truth, the only truth. That truth is lies and lies are the truth is the state of mind the gaslighter projects upon their prey and all those who surround them.

The depths of self-doubt and helplessness catalyzed by gaslighting can feel psychologically paralyzing. The most basic acts of self-preservation are being eroded and the idea of escaping the abuse can appear increasingly impossible.

One of the goals of gaslighting is to draw the other so strongly into their web of lies as to totally convince them "you are the crazy one!"  Another is to ensure the projection takes hold. To this end, they isolate their prey by convincing all who will listen that she or he is "mentally unstable," "mentally fragile," "has lost all grasp on reality" or is "crazy." The more devastating and persistent the attacks are, the stronger the gaslighter's own psychological wall becomes. To others they can appear powerful and charismatic. To their prey, what was once something endearing and charming is now seen for the façade it is; a wall that feels increasingly isolating. The perpetrator wants their prey to live out for them everything they are unwilling to face within themselves.

Because there is no physical damage as evidence and proof that these abusive attacks have taken place, the effects of gaslighting can be far more long lasting and pervasive than those of overt physical abuse. Consequently, many victims and survivors remain oblivious to the fact that what they are experiencing is Complex PTSD.

To read this brief description of gaslighting is, possibly, to realize that it is a term that not only describes the dynamic within a personal relationship. On the world stages, authoritarians are master gaslighters. From not only a psychological but also a philosophical standpoint, the concept of gaslighting has much to teach us about human nature and its transformation. Wherever there is gaslighting, our Savior/Martyr (or Disabler/Enabler) archetypes are invoking a spell. Because these two archetypes are universal and not individual, whether we are overtly affected by gaslighting or not, there is much we can learn from studying its dynamic. Because gaslighting is, essentially, abuse administered through distortion of the truth, it is very possible more of us are inured to gaslighting than we realize. This makes it equally possible that by shedding a steady light on gaslighting and acknowledging its prevalence, we can break its spell.

The World and The Mind

"The world and the mind arise and set together, as one; but of the two the world owes its appearance to the mind alone. That alone is real in which this inseparable pair, the world and the mind, has risings and settings. That reality is the one infinite Consciousness, having neither rising nor setting."

~ Ramana Maharshi

Wendell Henckel

“All the possibilities: like anger, fear, frustration, greed, envy, joy, happiness, freedom, love; they all exist in a deeper part of us, in a seed form, as though they are at rest. And when an external impression comes in of an equivalent nature it awakens the equivalent seed form and that seed form then fills the mind and the body. This level, that is deeper down than the mind, is called the human nature.

"Now in the human nature are all the possibilities for every human being. All the negative possibilities and all the positive possibilities are equally in every human being. What is drawn out in any moment is based on your external impression at that moment..... It awakens a seed form and that seed form then fills the mind and the body.”

~ Wendell Henckel

Your duty is to be and not to be this or that.

'I am that I am' sums up the whole truth.

The method is summed up in the words 'Be still'.

What does stillness mean? It means destroy yourself. Because any form or shape is the cause for trouble. Give up the notion that 'I am so and so'.

All that is required to realize the Self is to be still. What can be easier than that?

Your own Self-Realization is the greatest service you can render the world.

~ Ramana Maharshi

"If we can stay with the tension of opposites long enough --sustain it, be true to it--we can sometimes become vessels within which the divine opposites come together and give birth to a new reality."

~ Marie-Louise von Franz

When Conflict Cannot Arise

"Living one’s life involves a series of happenings in which an awareness of the ‘me’ as a separate entity really does not exist. The ‘me’ becomes conscious of itself only when there is conflict. Until then, so long as everything is moving smoothly without any frustration, without any contradiction, there is no consciousness of oneself in action. I am aware of myself and my ‘problem’ only when I am blocked by something that the ‘other’ has done which has affected me adversely. It is necessary to understand the relationship between ‘me’ and the ‘other’. Normally, if I am hurt or opposed, my immediate reaction is that the ‘other’ has done it and so I hate him. If, however, I am able to accept that in life, as the Buddha has so clearly stated, everything is a happening and nothing is a deed done by anyone, the ‘conflict’ simply cannot arise. If I am hurt, it is obvious that the event – according to the Cosmic Law – was supposed to hurt me, and, most importantly, through which body-mind organism it happened is totally irrelevant."

Balsekar, Ramesh (2013-03-14). The One in the Mirror (Kindle Locations 96-105). Yogi Impressions Books Pvt. Ltd.. Kindle Edition.