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Meeting the Pain of the World: A Path to Collective Healing · Deep Transformation

• 0:00
  Welcome beloved community to this amazing conversation with spiritual teacher Thomas Huebl.
• 0:05
  I've known Thomas for many years and he has always impressed me with his piercing insight, intelligence, courage and integrity.
• 0:12
  In this conversation we look through the lens of Thomas's life work, healing the cultural, historical and current collective trauma that keeps us prisoners of our darkness and despair.
• 0:23
  This is work of great depth and moral seriousness.
• 0:30
  Welcome to Deep Transformation - Self, Society, Spirit.
• 0:34
  Life enhancing, paradigm rattling conversations with cutting edge thinkers, contemplatives and activists with Dr.
• 0:41
  Roger Walsh and John Dupuy.
• 0:46
  I'm Roger Walsh and our co host is John Dupuy.
• 0:49
  And our guest today is the wonderful human being, Thomas Huebl, who's world renowned in many ways.
• 0:57
  He's a teacher, an author, a facilitator.
• 1:01
  He has worked with primarily around the focus of trauma, with both enormous number of individuals, but also with groups and communities and some of the most challenging communities of all, such as bringing together perpetrators and Holocaust victims, some
• 1:19
  of the most difficult and challenging human interactions that are possible.
• 1:23
  And Thomas has been a healing force that has really brought a deep understanding of the nature of trauma as it impacts us both individually and collectively and even in culture wide.
• 1:36
  He's made real contributions in this area and has also articulated those in a series of books beginning with his book Healing Collective Trauma subtitle A Process for Integrating our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds.
• 1:51
  His second book is this one which is Attuned Practicing Interdependence to Heal our Trauma and our World.
• 2:00
  And most recently is his book with Richard Schwartz, the founder of Internal Family Systems Work, Releasing Our A Guide to Healing Individual, Ancestral and Collective Trauma.
• 2:14
  Thomas, there's a lot to talk about.
• 2:16
  You've done so much good work, but I think it would be wonderful.
• 2:19
  You know, you're remarkable in what you bring together multiple streams, you've done deep contemplative practice, you bring that to bear.
• 2:28
  You've also opened deeply to the whole therapeutic community and stream of wisdom.
• 2:34
  You draw on both spiritual and scientific perspectives.
• 2:39
  You work at both individual and collective domains.
• 2:43
  It'd be beautiful if you could sign your work.
• 2:45
  So much as your work has been about integration, maybe you could tell us how you yourself have come to this kind of integration which allows you to do this work.
• 2:54
  Yeah.
• 2:55
  Thank you Roger and John for having me again here.
• 2:58
  It's a long time.
• 2:59
  We had the last interview here.
• 3:01
  I remember this vividly and yeah, so I mean you studied, Roger that.
• 3:07
  I loved science.
• 3:08
  When I studied, I felt called to go on a four year meditation retreat meditating I think 35 years or more now.
• 3:17
  And I always felt that this has to be a part of cold me.
• 3:21
  It gave me an opening into many, many, or let's say into many areas that are crucial for me being able to do the work that I do.
• 3:32
  Especially also in the collective sphere.
• 3:34
  I think without my meditation practice, it wouldn't be possible to hold this large field, to be attuned to these large fields.
• 3:42
  It expanded my perception or my perceptive capacity.
• 3:46
  And it opened me deeply to a more profound state that I think is very important.
• 3:52
  If we deal with such deep pain and trauma and especially these kind of deep collective wounds, they are so subject to our regular daily experience as individuals.
• 4:04
  That there's no way to have a bigger holding space without a contemplative practice.
• 4:09
  I believe.
• 4:10
  And that's what we also training with a lot of facilitators, our facilitation program is five years.
• 4:15
  Because I think collective holding collective spaces around collective trauma is very complex.
• 4:21
  It needs individual understanding, ancestral understanding, collective understanding, spiritual understanding.
• 4:27
  And so, yeah, and I find the beauty in having the mystical voice and the scientific voice be in dialogue and see where is agreement, where is disagreement and hold both in a space that is figured than that.
• 4:40
  And find out how these voices dialogue with each other.
• 4:43
  So, yeah, that's a short.
• 4:45
  In a nutshell, I think, for our conversation answer.
• 4:49
  And clearly it's so clear that your contemplative work informs the way you work with people in a number of ways.
• 4:59
  What strikes me, you know, I've now spent a fair bit of time studying your work and also watching videos and seeing the way you work with people.
• 5:07
  And I'm particularly struck as a therapist by the beautiful way in which you.
• 5:12
  There is no pathologizing in your approach to people.
• 5:17
  There's an embodiment of your own warmth and acceptance and openness to whatever experience people have.
• 5:25
  Not a lack of judgment about it, coupled with a real care and acceptance.
• 5:30
  And if there's anything we've learned in psychotherapy, it's the quality of the relationship that is the key to therapeutic outcome.
• 5:38
  And it just feels like your contemplative practice allows you to bring to each interaction this kind of presence that is so healing.
• 5:49
  Yeah, that's very true.
• 5:50
  That's what I meant before.
• 5:51
  Without that deep practice, I think I wouldn't be able to do what I do today.
• 5:56
  Also the level of attunement, as I wrote in Attuned.
• 5:59
  I believe that our nervous systems have this tremendous capacity, as we know that, that like to attune to each other.
• 6:07
  And I think that attunement is another way to say interdependence in our hurt places.
• 6:16
  It seems like we need to relate to each other in order to be related.
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  But actually our natural state is deeply related anyway.
• 6:26
  And so that bridging of our.
• 6:30
  The separation that we might experience is in a way pandemic in the world.
• 6:37
  And so the contemplative practice can help us to get a bigger and bigger perspective without.
• 6:44
  And there is a danger that I think a healthy spiritual practice is very embodied and transcendent or transpersonal and not bypassing the specific embodiment.
• 6:57
  And if they are combined, if it's a grounded spiritual practice, then I think it's amazing for holding space, for being able to discern what is actually the data flow of the current process that's unfolding and to be dialed
• 7:11
  in and not to have concepts about the process, but to learn from the process, which needs humility because only if you're not the one that knows.
• 7:20
  Yes, whatever we might know is great, but it serves the bowing to the process because the process needs to inform us.
• 7:30
  And so.
• 7:30
  And I think my contemplative practice definitely added a lot to that.
• 7:35
  Yeah, yeah.
• 7:36
  And there's also a sense, and you just implied this, that you have a profound trust in at a variety of levels, both profound trust in the human being in front of you, profound trust in your own true nature
• 7:53
  to be able to respond and attune effectively, and a trust in the relationship and even deeper trust in being that somehow being or consciousness, the ground is manifesting through you and working through you both to.
• 8:12
  In a potentially very, very beautiful healing way.
• 8:16
  Yeah, that's very beautiful.
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  It's that and.
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  And it's also the deeper understanding and life teaches me all the time, so I all the time learn more about it, obviously.
• 8:25
  So.
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  And like how all what we call defense mechanisms or weaknesses or all the.
• 8:31
  The parts where we struggle and where we feel stuck, that they are actually not bad parts.
• 8:36
  As also Richard Schwartz writes.
• 8:38
  It's like these are intelligences that made a lot of sense in traumatic situations.
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  And reframing those as an intelligence that try to cope with or stay better alive in a certain situation is a very different approach to a fragmented self than, oh, these are my good parts and my bad parts of
• 8:58
  my strength and my weakness.
• 9:00
  I think that framing needs to change and like being more in touch with the beauty of that intelligence, even if it creates a lot of symptoms today because we suffer.
• 9:11
  But I think that's very important to Accelerate healing.
• 9:15
  Yes.
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  And it's a beautiful appreciation that these responses were the best that a person could do at the time and a wonderful demonstration of the fact that today's problems are yesterday's solutions.
• 9:33
  Keep carrying them on.
• 9:35
  John, I'm talking a lot is this.
• 9:37
  And I can happily continue, but is there something you want?
• 9:41
  Well, I just want to say I've been following you for a long time, and the first time I became acquainted you was at a German integral conference.
• 9:48
  And you got up on the main stage and you looked like Jesus back then.
• 9:52
  You're so beautiful.
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  And you had.
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  I couldn't understand it all.
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  My German is not that good, but I was getting parts of it.
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  Then you did this toning thing with everybody.
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  And I at that time in the Integral Movement, we were having problems with gurus and wannabe gurus.
• 10:06
  And I said, oh, this guy can be a real problem.
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  And then we had dinner later in Berlin and I met your.
• 10:14
  She wasn't your wife then, but you did.
• 10:17
  And I was like.
• 10:18
  I said, if she says this guy's okay, he's okay.
• 10:22
  That gave me a lot of trust.
• 10:24
  And I commented to Roger before we started that I've noticed when you teach, I mean, it's very powerful and everything, but they're.
• 10:31
  There's so little ego that comes through, you know, it's definitely not about you.
• 10:38
  You're, you know, you're doing something very useful.
• 10:40
  That is so refreshing and deeply moving to me.
• 10:43
  So I just wanted to hold up that mirror.
• 10:46
  Thank you.
• 10:46
  Thank you, Jim.
• 10:47
  Yeah.
• 10:48
  Let's see.
• 10:49
  There are a lot of ways we can go here, but since we've been talking about the healing of trauma in relationship, maybe before we move into, say, collective what.
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  What do you see as the processes that most facilitate healing?
• 11:05
  How do you.
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  How do you understand the healing process?
• 11:10
  Yeah, but that's a big question for podcast session.
• 11:14
  So maybe we need to unpack it.
• 11:16
  But like, at the heart of it, I believe that what we said already before, a bit that a child.
• 11:27
  And then we can open this up.
• 11:28
  Ancestors and the collective.
• 11:30
  Okay, but let's stay with an individual like that.
• 11:33
  A child grows up in a given ecosystem, that ecosystem has specific properties or processes, and the child will find its highest equilibrium that is possible within this ecosystem.
• 11:47
  So every defense mechanism or every traumatic impact that creates like trauma structure is ecosystemically absolutely relevant.
• 11:58
  And if not healed through deep relational support, it becomes an ecosystemic design factor in that person's life.
• 12:08
  So that person experienced a, A.
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  That person later is a team leader or a CEO of an organization or works on a team.
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  And the defense mechanism spread around it as a kind of a design factor in that ecosystem.
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  So it's a ecosystem.
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  The same is true for large wounds in cultures.
• 12:29
  Now, what I found over this, I don't know, 25 years.
• 12:33
  Is that when the nervous system of a facilitator or a therapist or a coach can be so attuned because of one's own integration.
• 12:45
  Integration in a facilitator or therapist means inner coherence, like inner data flow and inner outer data flow, unobstructed.
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  So I can feel you while I feel me.
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  And I can represent you both in me.
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  So the John and Roger that I see they are happening in my central nervous system.
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  The more I am embodied and regulated and grounded, your information will show up in me in a clearer and clearer way.
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  And I will call that intimate.
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  Now, when I sit with somebody and my nervous system starts to role model Parts of the qualities that were missing or they're or too exaggerated.
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  That defense needs to be put in place.
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  When I can meet that at that time.
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  Let's say that happened at age 5, or between 5 and 10 or whatever.
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  My nervous system knows all these developmental levels.
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  And if they are integrated, I can resonate on those levels.
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  Even if my client cannot resonate on that level because it's hurt.
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  And so when that resonance starts, it's a very specific attunement to a certain developmental period.
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  But the same is also true in the collective.
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  When we sit with hundreds of people.
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  And like a collective wound or defense comes up and we can hold it together, it actually starts to give us its gift.
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  If we deny it or kind of push it away because of the discomfort that it comes with or because of that, we are unconscious in our own rejection of this.
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  So then it's not working.
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  But if we have some awareness that this is actually important for us to onboard bring into our awareness.
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  And that's the next step.
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  Unconscious information is destiny.
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  Conscious information has a choice, like has a future.
• 14:45
  That's good.
• 14:46
  Yeah.
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  So the specific attunement, the capacity to mirror or supplement the qualities that were absent.
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  Witnessing, protection, nourishment, love, warmth, whatever it is.
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  And that the defense mechanism is unconscious, like the energetic repetition compulsion.
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  And if we bring awareness to it through a mutual mirroring, we have a choice.
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  So it can change.
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  If not, then it will keep repeating itself.
• 15:17
  Sorry.
• 15:18
  I just wanted to add that the way I see it is that when you're doing that work.
• 15:22
  And the spaciousness that you have inside of you that you created by working.
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  All this stuff allows for the person you're working with.
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  It gives space for them to grow and to move and to heal.
• 15:35
  Exactly, exactly.
• 15:36
  And that's another deep principle, is that the intelligence is always anyway in the client present.
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  I don't need that.
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  That's not my job.
• 15:43
  My job is exactly what you said, holding a space to see how that developmental intelligence wants to unfold more and what's inhibiting that process and why that inhibition is intelligent, I think.
• 15:56
  So that these are a few principles, because that's a big topic, but.
• 15:59
  Yeah, that's perfect, Sean.
• 16:01
  Yeah.
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  And, Thomas, you've moved from a long time now to focusing on or opening to collective healing and some of the most difficult forms of collective healing of all.
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  Let's dive in the really deep end.
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  Looking at the world today with just you.
• 16:22
  You're in Tel Aviv, I understand.
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  Are you?
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  So you've been at the heart of the current Palestinian, you know, this.
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  This recent horrific war and the challenges and the horrors that were inflicted when Hamas killed so many people.
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  Have you found any way of working with this incredibly difficult situation?
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  First of all, yes, yes, yes.
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  And it's also, in my experience, very, very challenging to see the beginning, like what happened on October 7th.
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  And it's equally challenging to feel the two years of war, the tremendous pain that.
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  And destruction and displacement that has been, you know, done in.
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  In Gaza itself or Gaza and the West Bank.
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  So for me, it is like to.
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  And I'm like, I'm very open to this collective field.
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  So this doesn't matter that if it's hundreds or whatever, miles away, doesn't mean that it's far away.
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  It's very close.
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  And so on the one hand, I want to say that I can feel the tremendous pain on both sides, and I honor this very tragic situation that is unfolding here.
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  And.
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  And we have, from the beginning, we have worked on developing eight projects for the victims, for example, of the Nova Festival, the whole killing.
• 17:59
  And then I have seen, like many people, because I got invited into a center that many of these survivors of the Nova Festival came at the beginning two days later.
• 18:11
  And that.
• 18:12
  That was very strong because it was very clear people went through a tremendous traumatic experience and also often on drugs.
• 18:24
  So because the festival was the psychedelics.
• 18:28
  So that was one part.
• 18:29
  And so I supported that center to.
• 18:31
  Or the woman that put this in place at the beginning to help organize the therapist teams and speak a bit about collective trauma and our work.
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  And so and.
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  And help that center to grow but at the same time we tried to fundraise money for.
• 18:46
  Because before, already before I was working on developing a joint Palestinian project also, so that we would have one project in Israel, one in the west bank to bring multiple organizations together and work with them to develop a
• 19:03
  collective trauma impact project.
• 19:05
  And on both sides first separate and then maybe later, if it felt appropriate to bring some of those together.
• 19:12
  But that blew up through the war.
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  So that.
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  And then we tried to fundraise money for both sides and we had some promising projects in place to create a wider Middle Eastern system.
• 19:25
  And so, yes, some of it we started to happen through one of our NGOs.
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  Another NGO that we are working with is more committed to work on the governmental level.
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  And we're also training diplomats in crisis areas to work on conflict resolution.
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  And so there, there are multiple impact points, like a top down impact point, the bottom up work.
• 19:47
  And.
• 19:47
  But it happens, of course, I travel a lot, but I'm very exposed to the tremendous pain and also the seeming like this strong stagnation.
• 19:59
  And, and that's also one reason why I'm here in the region is because I think this is a place where collective trauma is.
• 20:07
  Has one of its strongest expressions at the moment.
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  And it's so heartbreaking to feel like how this thousands of years of repetition compulsion are unfolding through us.
• 20:20
  And it's very, very sad.
• 20:22
  It's very, very troubling.
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  Heart troubling.
• 20:24
  And it's also a place where I think this work is so much needed.
• 20:29
  And so all of this is true and much more that I cannot share in a few sentences.
• 20:34
  But yeah.
• 20:36
  Has it stretched your own capacity to hold this amount of trauma and pain?
• 20:41
  For sure, it stretched it and it grew.
• 20:44
  I think I learned a lot in these two years, being exposed to many missile attacks, to many.
• 20:50
  Like my own life was endangered in a way, and I experienced it from inside out.
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  And I was engaged in multiple initiatives.
• 21:00
  And so, yeah, definitely it's challenging, it's stretching, and it's also accelerating a lot of my learning.
• 21:11
  And I'm trying to contribute whatever I can contribute in such a storm.
• 21:17
  It's basically because it is an energetic storm.
• 21:21
  Yeah, yeah.
• 21:22
  And clearly this speaks so much to your concern, which you bring up in, throughout your work, but particularly in your book Attunement, that the need for the healing is relational, so deeply relational.
• 21:38
  It feels like you're making yourself available for relationship with and intimacy with people and the pain of huge numbers of people here.
• 21:52
  Yeah, yes, yes, it's the pain.
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  And if we manage to come together in appropriate sized groups, which means it always depends on the ecosystem.
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  The architecture needs to adjust itself obviously to the ecosystem.
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  And and for me it was very evident that of course in hot trauma it's different than when we deal with historic collective trauma.
• 22:19
  Like something that happened some time ago and now we are dealing with the after effects or with both.
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  Like massive trauma is being triggered and a lot of new trauma is being inflicted.
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  And so that in itself has a very special quality and needs a lot of support.
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  But you can't really do trauma work in a very life threatening situation.
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  You can just help to take care of the basic life needs and the kind of a stabilization.
• 22:47
  So that needs smaller settings where some kind of collective safety can be established and regulation practices and co regulation practices can be established.
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  But yes, also in the work with collective fields, with these larger wounds like colonialism and the Holocaust at the time in Europe or the east west separation in Europe, that I believe has not been dealt with properly as
• 23:16
  we see and led to another cycle of war.
• 23:18
  Because after World War II we said, oh, there won't be any war anymore in Europe.
• 23:21
  Now we got the it and we will of course not because we don't have any process really to deal with how many millions of Russians have been killed in the second World War.
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  The trauma that happened before between Russia and Ukraine, a whole lot more and a lot of pre existing trauma.
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  And I believe we don't have any architectures or processes to deal with with that.
• 23:48
  And of course the repetition compulsion might need decades, but it will happen.
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  And then we say okay, history repeats.
• 23:58
  Yeah, because we don't have any good mechanism to deal with that history appropriately.
• 24:03
  So.
• 24:03
  Well, that's what happened with World War I too.
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  They'd never done any work and World War II was just an extension of stuff that hadn't been healed.
• 24:12
  Just boom.
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  Horrible.
• 24:14
  Exactly.
• 24:15
  So that's why in our work globally we are working now Also through these two NGOs and all our teaching work, Global Restoration Institute, more from the governmental level and the conflict resolution level and how to bring conflict resolution
• 24:31
  and mediation and collective trauma work together and bring it into these hot spots.
• 24:38
  And from a grassroots level in our poker project, for example, we are supporting already for three years Ukrainian therapists.
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  We pay them to work with and we create supervision spaces to work in Ukraine, but also with refugees all around Europe with Ukrainian refugees.
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  And that became a beautiful process.
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  And so.
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  But the, the main aim is to create an architecture over time like a health care system for collective trauma like that takes care of the legacy that all of us have been born into.
• 25:13
  And I think for this we need a lot of attunement, like teach and develop and learn a lot of attunement to this collective, culturally specific trauma areas.
• 25:24
  And so, yes, that's a huge endeavor indeed.
• 25:29
  And you're trying to set in place institutions and processes and skills for healing trauma and for dealing with the effects of historical injustices and wars.
• 25:47
  And yet at the same time, there are political forces working in the other direction.
• 25:52
  You know, historically, as you know better than I, for countries such as Soviet Union, Russia have an authoritarian, governments in general have a whitewashed history.
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  And now we're witnessing the same thing in my own country, in John's country, the United States, where the Trump administration and a number of conservatives and particularly Republicans have even legislated that we only provide a positive view of
• 26:24
  American history.
• 26:25
  And we're basically whitewashing slavery and segregation and things like that, Editing history for.
• 26:34
  What you want it to be and not what it was and is.
• 26:38
  Yeah.
• 26:40
  So any reflections you have would be much appreciated.
• 26:45
  Yes.
• 26:45
  So, as I said, in some ways, given the work we are doing, I'm also keeping a kind of a more neutral stance on taking care of the trauma because of our involvement in various processes.
• 27:05
  At the same time, I think, of course, that the work that I've seen in the US on racism and on the after effects of colonialism is absolutely crucial and necessary because there is no flourishing of a society with
• 27:25
  these large wounds, unintegrated wounds, that's not possible.
• 27:30
  So, and, and given that there are multiple layers, including, I believe, like there is, of course, 400 years of slavery, there's a Native American genocide, it's now speaking only about the US and of course, in many other places,
• 27:43
  it's.
• 27:43
  It's all kinds of other huge trauma wounds.
• 27:48
  And I think one collective drama in the US that is not so often spoken about, but I think incredibly important and triggered right now is immigration.
• 27:59
  All these waves of immigration that happened over the course of hundreds of years and finding a new life, walking away from hardship, from famine, from all kinds of trauma or poverty or whatever, and going into a new place.
• 28:19
  I think we need a collective space, like healing space to.
• 28:27
  Because everybody that is alive now has been born into that legacy.
• 28:35
  Like we have been born into a world that carried that trauma fracture.
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  And that's why it has become normalized.
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  And so it clouds our perception and is often dangerous to open up.
• 28:48
  So then the best is we say, okay, let's move on, let's just continue.
• 28:52
  So that's one thing.
• 28:53
  And then we try not to have that because it's a very challenging process to go through.
• 28:59
  On the other hand, I have also seen in some of the work that has been done in the recent years, I often said, like some of it became too self righteous and that created also a backlash that now
• 29:19
  is happening.
• 29:20
  And, and I think there needs to be a learning on all sides to say listen, here is something very complex.
• 29:29
  I've seen in my own groups and in groups all over the world how challenging it is to come closer to these deep wounds in our culture that divide us so strongly and that are recurrent often.
• 29:42
  So the racism is still going on.
• 29:44
  So it's a threatening process for many people.
• 29:47
  So that makes it even more challenging to be able to hold that or deepen the exploration because of the constant threat.
• 29:56
  And so these are very delicate processes.
• 29:59
  And I don't think we have yet the public education, even the public awareness as a first step not to know that this is our history.
• 30:08
  Yeah, we all know that that's the history.
• 30:10
  No matter how we frame it, there is a history, but that we have a deeper awareness of the wounding that they created and how many symptoms we have in society and that there is no them anymore.
• 30:28
  I believe that there is no them and there is also no out there.
• 30:32
  So the, you know, with the global village, the best example is plastic.
• 30:37
  So we threw the plastic out there.
• 30:39
  Now it's in our brain.
• 30:40
  So.
• 30:41
  Well, in a global village, like technology created a global village, we don't have any out there anymore.
• 30:48
  So the pain that is in the culture is a direct health implication for everybody.
• 30:56
  And I think that's very important to understand.
• 30:57
  There's no.
• 30:58
  If one part of the society suffers, the entire society suffers and nobody can wall themselves off those impulses or of that impact you can't escape.
• 31:10
  And the public awareness that this dimension of being out of sync or out of balance as a society is not yet fully in our awareness.
• 31:23
  And we see it now through climate change more.
• 31:25
  If nature is out of balance, our bodies will be out of balance is clear.
• 31:29
  But this kind of principle of interdependence is, is in this hyper individualistic world too far away still for us to fully take in.
• 31:41
  And of course some of us embrace that deeply.
• 31:44
  But I'm talking about the mainstream movement and I think only that would help us to get to another level together.
• 31:51
  Because otherwise we stay in the polarization between us and them.
• 31:55
  And that's very painful because it just recreates Potentially the past that we know or the US knows already.
• 32:03
  Thomas, I found this in your book, in your work.
• 32:06
  One time I was in a conversation and it was about racism and slavery.
• 32:11
  And I said, well, slavery was really bad for white people too.
• 32:14
  And people were outraged.
• 32:17
  How can you equate, you know, you know, murder is bad for the murderer and the murder, you know, it's soul destroying.
• 32:23
  And I think that recognition, you know, when you mispreat people with you enslaved people, you're killing a part of yourself.
• 32:32
  What parts of you do you have to just put away so you can commit these kind of atrocities or injustices?
• 32:39
  So I think that is kind of important that, you know, it's like it wasn't just about black people, it was about everyone.
• 32:46
  You know, it's like it poisoned our country.
• 32:50
  No, definitely.
• 32:50
  And of course the pain has been inflicted on part of the population, on African American descent or Native American descendant people.
• 33:00
  But we see in the collective trauma studies that are more and more coming out that cultures kind of as a defense mechanism, create some kind of cultural amnesia to cover up that absent point.
• 33:22
  Because in order to hurt somebody, I need to not feel a part of myself, otherwise I couldn't do it.
• 33:29
  If I feel myself and you, I cannot hurt you.
• 33:32
  That's all the principles of interconnectedness or inter being.
• 33:35
  So that's why non violence is a natural consequence of interdependence.
• 33:41
  Yeah, because I can't hurt you.
• 33:43
  But if I'm disconnected because of my own trauma and I don't feel you and I don't feel myself.
• 33:50
  So more trauma is being created which leads to more absence.
• 33:54
  And then we see that cultural amnesia, like the, or erasing part of our collective history as a defense mechanism is a direct reflection of what's happening in our nervous systems.
• 34:09
  It's like absent, absent parts of our nervousness.
• 34:12
  We don't feel otherwise.
• 34:14
  We couldn't do certain things.
• 34:16
  And, and so all the movements that are working on uncovering what you just said, that these actions hurt both of us, but in a different way.
• 34:27
  The pain is being inflicted on the one hand, but the absencing, and the reason for that absencing is creates, I think, a lot of health issues.
• 34:36
  And our, you know, we are trying scientifically to get to the root of some of the health issues that we have.
• 34:44
  And we can't because ethics and health are inherently interrelated.
• 34:50
  And I believe we have to.
• 34:52
  There's some collective awareness process that needs to happen.
• 34:57
  And that's why I'm so strongly speaking all the Time about collective trauma.
• 35:01
  Not because it's just the only issue that we have.
• 35:03
  We have many issues.
• 35:05
  But it's something that needs to arise more in us so that we more and more subject object transcend what is so us, what has been so normalized.
• 35:19
  We need more subject object transcendence in the collective.
• 35:23
  Not just knowing history, but many people, I believe, mix that up with, oh, I know about our history.
• 35:29
  Yeah, but that's not enough.
• 35:30
  If you can't feel it, if we can sense it, if our bodies can show us where we are not participating in that history because we are numbing ourselves, then we don't know.
• 35:42
  Even if we read history books, we don't know.
• 35:45
  And that's also why it's at all possible to edit history books or edit stuff out that is not true because.
• 35:54
  Or that is like we change history and we create history books that are not fully true because the narrative in the body is absent.
• 36:03
  So it becomes like an intellectual construction.
• 36:06
  More than, oh, my body is the living hard disk of life and all the data is somewhere in there.
• 36:16
  It might be turned off, it might be turned on.
• 36:20
  But we are participating in that history.
• 36:22
  And then you cannot erase history because it's a felt experience in our bodies.
• 36:27
  And it will come out in some other way.
• 36:29
  If you take it out of your history books, it's going to emerge all over the place.
• 36:34
  Of course it can't.
• 36:36
  Like what?
• 36:37
  Life's data cannot be erased.
• 36:40
  That's whatever is true will anyway surface over time.
• 36:44
  We can't manipulate energy.
• 36:46
  Energy is like information in movement cannot be manipulated.
• 36:50
  And one of the beauties of your work, Thomas, is the recognition that pain, resisted or defended against or forced out of awareness, leads to suffering and pathology.
• 37:03
  But when open to it has a potential for healing and maturation.
• 37:09
  That's a really beautiful perspective.
• 37:11
  And I want to go back to something you said in passing because it seems so important.
• 37:16
  You talked about interconnection and the fact that there's only we can unpack this, but there's only us now in our global village.
• 37:27
  But you also pointed to the fact that it's easy to score corrections to swing to excess.
• 37:34
  And that we've witnessed in recent years, particularly in some Western countries, and perhaps most in the United States, A real emphasis by a subsection of the population on the injustices that have been done, which is a very important
• 37:52
  acknowledgment.
• 37:53
  But it got co opted, as you implied, in many cases, to a kind of righteousness and attack that just of course, set up a reaction and is more problematic.
• 38:10
  And of course, now we are not only dealing with our individual relationships, now we are dealing with the problematic exaggeration of separation and polarization and righteousness by social media.
• 38:25
  So we have another whole electronic communication dimension to deal with here in our healing work.
• 38:32
  Yeah, yeah, no, and I completely agree.
• 38:35
  I think we need to always honor the deep motivation that many people want and want to do really good things and important things and that we want more social justice.
• 38:46
  We want more equal society that has equal possibilities and rights and of.
• 38:52
  Absolutely, yes.
• 38:53
  And we want to work on racism and we want to work on healing our societies.
• 38:58
  Absolutely, yes.
• 39:00
  And the only thing that I have seen is like sometimes like an unconscious.
• 39:06
  I think the self righteousness is a way to, is a defense mechanism against the pain.
• 39:14
  And that's why it needs like a lesson learned, I think is to see, okay, like, what are my ways to defend myself against the pain?
• 39:26
  And then this find certain expressions that are somehow exaggerated.
• 39:32
  But it's actually a way to say, this is really hard and this is really painful.
• 39:41
  Same as I, I feel it in the Middle east.
• 39:43
  When I'm in the Middle east, it's so painful to see that like, and then some of the conversations go very fast into what's right or wrong.
• 39:50
  And of course we have to talk about this, but often it's also a way to not be able to stay with, wow, this is really painful.
• 40:00
  And what can we do that becomes actually a solution that is possible versus one that is not possible?
• 40:06
  And we are part of creating an impossibility like a deeper stagnation or a deeper fragmentation.
• 40:12
  And I think that's what you also spoke about.
• 40:16
  And so I think every time to learn something from that, not to pathologize that either, but to go a bit deeper.
• 40:23
  And we see how many people ask in their healing work, how long do I have to do personal work?
• 40:30
  Or how long do we have to do healing work?
• 40:33
  And for me that's a big sign.
• 40:35
  Like what that really says, I think is it's hard to be in this world.
• 40:41
  It's hard because the deeper we come into our bodies, it's.
• 40:46
  We see, it's painful to feel the reality that we create with each other.
• 40:52
  And so a way to say, okay, where is the end?
• 40:56
  Says, like in the traumatic moment, life says here and now.
• 41:03
  In this body, in this experience, life is not good.
• 41:09
  In the traumatic moment, it makes completely sense to fragment space, time.
• 41:13
  To say, not here, now is better.
• 41:16
  And then if that fixates itself, we have billions of people in the world that their hope is in a revelation to come, versus that hope is in the agency that I can do something about this situation now.
• 41:32
  I can contribute small things and big things because I feel my agency.
• 41:38
  But in the traumatic moment, not here, not now, I think is the highest intelligence possible.
• 41:44
  I think when we are on the path, because in a.
• 41:47
  In a moment when you're really present with somebody, you don't.
• 41:52
  You never ask how long it's going to take.
• 41:56
  You know that that question doesn't even arise when you are.
• 41:59
  When I'm in a group and there is a deep presence in the group and nobody in the room asks, okay, when is the break?
• 42:08
  It's so.
• 42:09
  You're so there that the future is already folded into this moment.
• 42:14
  You're not going outside of this moment for the next moment.
• 42:17
  But then it's an uncomfortable moment saying, okay, how long does this take?
• 42:21
  When will it be over?
• 42:23
  So these thoughts that all arising in us and in the mindfulness or spiritual movement, pathologizing the parts that are not present, is equally a misunderstanding because it's not trauma informed.
• 42:38
  Because I would know, oh, when I'm not present doesn't mean that I cannot be present.
• 42:43
  That's a misinterpretation.
• 42:45
  But many people think that, and they, oh, I should be more present, you know.
• 42:49
  Yeah.
• 42:49
  So these are just a few examples, but they'll all feed in, I think, into that mechanism that you just brought in.
• 42:58
  Thomas.
• 42:58
  I wanted to share an experience or realization.
• 43:01
  Anyway, I was working with the question, how could the Jew forgive the knots when their family were carted off and put in trains?
• 43:09
  Some of them died in the boxcars, and they got into your children, your grandchildren, your mother, your father, your brothers, your sisters, your friends, and were taken, stripped and put into gas chambers, are put into these camps where
• 43:21
  they just starved to death and were brutalized until they died.
• 43:24
  And the question how could a human being forgive such a thing?
• 43:29
  And what came to me was that I am the Jew and I am the Nazi.
• 43:38
  And I've been doing this to myself all these years.
• 43:43
  And it wasn't just an intellectual thing.
• 43:45
  It was a deeply felt, intense thing.
• 43:47
  And I don't walk around in that consciousness all the time.
• 43:50
  Obviously, I get angry and this and that, but ultimately, to attack someone else is to attack yourself, and to love someone else is to love yourself.
• 44:00
  And it just opened up a spaciousness.
• 44:02
  And I like, okay, it's not us versus them or this or that.
• 44:07
  At this level.
• 44:08
  It's, yes, exactly.
• 44:11
  And I think in the moment that Atrocities are being inflicted.
• 44:16
  Yes, that consciousness is absent, boy.
• 44:20
  And so, yes, in a deeply connected space, when we are connected or integrated space, I believe what you just said is the reality.
• 44:33
  But in the moment that people have been brought into concentration camps, it's not so in that moment, it's intellectually true, practically not.
• 44:48
  And therefore, I think when we.
• 44:51
  Because you ask a very important question, and I think that's a very.
• 44:57
  That's a great Cohen.
• 44:59
  So how can we as humans, and some of us have been more affected than others, obviously some of us are more privileged than others, and.
• 45:09
  But how can this kind of tremendous violations of life be ever forgiven?
• 45:18
  And I think that the only answer comes with us doing, like, going through the process needed to.
• 45:30
  The answer for me is always frozen in the permafrost of that past.
• 45:35
  Let's say a lot of the Second World War past is frozen in the collective unconscious of life.
• 45:45
  So.
• 45:46
  But the answer to your question for me lies in that permafrost.
• 45:51
  But we have no access to it.
• 45:53
  So we actually don't know.
• 45:56
  We will only know if we find a way to melt appropriately, that permafrost, thaw it, and let the reconciliation or the restorative process happen enough that in many people there is this sense that we come towards a certain
• 46:18
  forgiveness that is not the bypassing of that process.
• 46:22
  Right.
• 46:23
  And I think this is actually one of the most important questions, because the maturation that is possible in healing these large wounds is absolutely what we need to deal with the current ecological progress.
• 46:39
  A lot of the ethical line of development is actually frozen in the permafrost of our cultural wounds, same as in an individual.
• 46:49
  When there's trauma and people react regressively, they are pulled back into a time collapse in their psyche.
• 46:57
  And as collectives, we see this too.
• 47:00
  So then we don't have the capacity to deal with certain things.
• 47:04
  And we cannot even think about forgiveness because the energy that can forgive is still frozen in the wound.
• 47:11
  And so I think what you're bringing up is such a tremendously important question for our time.
• 47:18
  If you need to collaborate globally, how will we do that without that question being solved to a certain degree?
• 47:26
  And it has to.
• 47:27
  You have to keep melting these layers of trauma.
• 47:31
  And you can't jump to what I just said like that.
• 47:34
  But when you begin to melt lower and lower and lower, do you get to the collective?
• 47:39
  Do you get to the youth?
• 47:41
  Down to the unitive thing that we were talking about.
• 47:44
  But there's a lot of work in between that has to go there.
• 47:47
  That Just doesn't work.
• 47:48
  Yeah, exactly, that's what I meant.
• 47:50
  Because otherwise, intellectually it's true, or even spiritually it's true, but practically it's not because we can't access that state with this massive fragmentation in our collective unconscious.
• 48:03
  And so yeah, the way that like that we need to walk to come to a certain level of forgiveness.
• 48:10
  And that's true for Latin America, for Africa, for all the colonial wounds that we see, like for genocides and for dictatorships all around the world.
• 48:21
  I think there's a lot of work that will.
• 48:23
  Only with this work and the post traumatic learning can we release enough energy, I believe, to yield or to work with the current technological progress in a way that will not create another trauma cycle later.
• 48:41
  Yes, indeed.
• 48:43
  And yes, and already is with the many challenges we're facing, both recognized and unrecognized.
• 48:50
  You mentioned plastic.
• 48:51
  As you said, half a percent of the adult brain by weight is plastic.
• 48:56
  I mean, we haven't discovered this two years ago.
• 48:59
  It's like, hey, well, there's a lot we could get into here.
• 49:04
  But to honor your time and your brief schedule, maybe we could fill out of this discussion by asking you to Thomas, what have you seen and what's your vision of what?
• 49:19
  Someone who has done this kind of really deep healing work.
• 49:25
  What is such a person like?
• 49:26
  What are the characteristics of someone who's really, really faced these difficult issues, accepted parts of themselves and of our human nature.
• 49:40
  What do you see as some both what do you see and what's your vision?
• 49:45
  What I see is in when more healing happens.
• 49:50
  What happens is first a deeper connection to oneself.
• 49:55
  It's naturally the dissociation in the trauma from my original self.
• 50:00
  Like in fragmented into different parts maybe like to more and more something's melting back into an authenticity, a vulnerability, like an openness to own one's own process, own one's own beauty, and to own one's own difficulties.
• 50:22
  It's like.
• 50:24
  And it's less and less a vision of like some kind of perfection or even the absence of pain.
• 50:35
  Yes, it's a more realistic relationship to that.
• 50:40
  The world will at times be challenging, difficult.
• 50:45
  My life might be challenging and difficult at times, but that is my life that is not.
• 50:50
  I'm not looking for like the healed state because being here is so difficult.
• 50:56
  So I want something ideal to strive for.
• 50:59
  It's more that I more and more develop the capacity to be in myself.
• 51:04
  And of course, when we heal, some things will more flow, more will become easier.
• 51:09
  I will feel more integrated and have More capacity to respond to the world, to my life, to my intimate partner, to my children.
• 51:17
  All of that is true.
• 51:18
  But the more hurt we are, the more we are looking sometimes for like a.
• 51:25
  An unrealistic vision of being healed and.
• 51:30
  Or young spiritual practitioners, you know, ask more often about all the amazing bombastic outcome versus when you become more senior in your practice, you become more grounded in the simplicity of the practice.
• 51:44
  That is very powerful.
• 51:46
  But the simplicity is more naked that this is what it is.
• 51:51
  And often we are looking.
• 51:53
  I believe one of the trauma symptoms is that we believe that there is a paradise or a world that comes after.
• 52:05
  And what I believe a sign of healing is, is that we can meet the pain of the world and the people that are in need.
• 52:13
  And even the pain that is mute, that doesn't speak, which I think is the deepest pain in our humanity, is where no cameras go, where the.
• 52:25
  The people that we never hear because they are mute, they're frozen and people are parts in people.
• 52:31
  And so when we talk about healing, I think this more naked that the energy and the word, or my word and my heart express the same information or more and more the same information.
• 52:48
  And I think the more this comes together, this is what in creation, also in the Bible, this is what in creation is that the Word is light.
• 52:59
  The Word is what it says.
• 53:01
  And often in a third world, we talk a lot about life.
• 53:05
  And in a healed world, we talk life.
• 53:09
  You know, we speak life, not about life.
• 53:11
  And so these are just a few characteristics, but the deeper capacity to resonate with each other, more relationality, more warmth, more generosity.
• 53:23
  Of course, these are all qualities.
• 53:25
  But I think for many people it's this, that I can melt more into what's happening and not constantly project an ideal state on my partner, on, I don't know the world, how the world should be, how we should
• 53:39
  be, how you should be, but to have more capacity to be with who we are right now.
• 53:46
  And so it becomes more naked, it becomes more in one way simple, but that simplicity can hold a lot more complexity.
• 53:56
  Beautiful.
• 53:56
  It's the simplicity on the other side of complexity.
• 53:59
  And there's so much in what you said, just to maybe I can highlight, you emphasized that to use the Indian phrase, we're living in Samsara, there is suffering in this world and in part of life, the Buddha's first
• 54:14
  noble truth.
• 54:15
  But second, you said that being the willingness to be with that, to not to pathologize it or ourselves, but to be open to the fullness of experience.
• 54:27
  Kind of like One of Carl Rogers central the theses.
• 54:31
  But a healthier person is one who is open to the full flow of their experience.
• 54:38
  So you said that and then you emphasized the importance of integrity that.
• 54:44
  The integrity in the sense of a congruence between our experience and our behavior.
• 54:53
  Very, very beautiful.
• 54:55
  We just have a couple of minutes.
• 54:56
  I want to say first off, I'm just so touched by this dialogue.
• 55:00
  Thomas.
• 55:01
  It's always a gift to dialogue with you and to really.
• 55:06
  It's for me, when you talk of resonance, it's not just a concept.
• 55:10
  It's like I really always feel that you in a very beautiful, heartwarming and touching way.
• 55:17
  And I think John also.
• 55:18
  I just picked up your sensing that also, John.
• 55:21
  And so in the couple of minutes we have left, is there anything you'd like to say?
• 55:26
  Anything else?
• 55:28
  No, just first of all to thank you both.
• 55:31
  I feel your deep commitment to your path and your work and how we come together and resonate together in a space and walk away inspired and by each other's paths.
• 55:45
  And so I want to thank you both for all the work that you did so far and that you are doing.
• 55:50
  And that's also.
• 55:52
  And every time we come together, I think we all bring our updates into the space.
• 55:56
  That's beautiful.
• 55:58
  I think for the listeners, I think that the.
• 56:02
  Even if at times like it sounds very grim or dark when we look at, okay, the state of the world, the fragmentation and so on.
• 56:12
  But I deeply believe, and I have learned over the years, working with this kind of more collective spaces, the power that I've seen and people coming together and being together with the most tremendous or most horrific wounds of
• 56:30
  humanity's history made me very hopeful because I think if he managed to create more healing collectives where we harvest the power of the collective that I spoke before about, like this is a tremendous acceleration of healing and social
• 56:50
  transformation.
• 56:51
  And I think we need, we need to invest more in this kind of collective healing spaces because I deeply believe in their power.
• 56:58
  And like this we can transform much more energy.
• 57:01
  And then in thinking about healing as one on one therapy, or like I'm sitting with myself and meditating, all of that is very important, but can be lifted into collective spaces that amplify those practices.
• 57:17
  And so I'm very hopeful that we can really create a new architecture in the world that will help us to integrate the legacies that we were born into.
• 57:26
  And I believe that's the citizens responsibility.
• 57:31
  Yeah.
• 57:32
  And in your book you call it the collective burdens that we have.
• 57:35
  Yes.
• 57:35
  I find that Such a powerful concept.
• 57:39
  And the title of your new book, releasing Our A Guide to Healing Individual, Ancestral, and Collective Trauma.
• 57:46
  Well, you're certainly doing all you can with your life to do that.
• 57:50
  Thank you so much for Thomas, for your work, for who you are, and just the privilege of dialoguing with you and exploring learning together.
• 58:00
  Yeah.
• 58:01
  Thank you, both of you.
• 58:02
  Good seeing you again.
• 58:02
  Good seeing you.
• 58:03
  Yeah, good seeing you both.
• 58:05
  John and Roger, thank you very much.
• 58:07
  Thank you.
• 58:09
  Thank you very much for being a part of this conversation.
• 58:12
  Conversation.
• 58:12
  We hope that you were moved, as we are moved, being part of it ourselves.
• 58:17
  We'd also like to say that this is being funded by Roger and myself.
• 58:20
  It comes out of our pockets.
• 58:22
  So if you would like to help us to.
• 58:24
  Mainly to get this podcast out to more people because the bigger audience have, which is steadily growing, but the more people we can reach and the more marketing we can do, the more positive effect we can have on
• 58:34
  the world.
• 58:34
  So we've done that a couple of ways, but we'd like you to buy us a couple of coffee.
• 58:38
  Very simple.
• 58:39
  And I do that with podcasts that I support and I find it's very satisfying.
• 58:44
  So thank you for your help.
• 58:45
  Thank you for your presence and thanking for all you are and all you do.
• 58:48
  We love you.