Meditation to handle emotional trauma

Meditation to handle emotional trauma
Monday June 2 2008 00:00 IST Express Features KOCHI

FREEDOM is the most difficult thing to obtain. When a nation battles for its political freedom,we call it freedom struggle.

A similar struggle for freedom from the fetters created by our own thoughts and emotional attachments is constantly happening. This is for most of us an inner struggle. This is not a trauma that can be relieved by swallowing some pills or going to a doctor.

Medical fields like psychiatry, psycho-therapy, clinical psychology and hypno-therapy are there but their curing is at the surface level – a temporary realignment of the chemical processes in the body with the help of medicine and psychiatric treatment.

At a much deeper level, the patient has got to be his own doctor. There is much of physical pain caused by emotional attachments to individuals, situations, places and things.

When the attachment is being formed – whether it is love for a person, a place or objects and things that evoke a happy feeling within and keep us in bliss – we are mostly not thinking about the changes that can happen.

The person we love may leave our life, may turn around with some sudden expression of hatred that could have been unbelievable to think about during those golden times of oneness, a twist in relationships that shake the very foundations of our faith and belief, even a natural catastrophe that can snatch away from us things and people we consider most precious - anything can happen.

Anything can happen because the Earth we live in is composed of particles of matter that are in a constant state of agitation and one moment is not like another moment.

Our attachment gets us lost in a very limited perspective, which we cling on to as it gives us joy. But change is the inherent nature of anything that we know of. It is non-negotiable.

Meditation is one way of helping ourselves. “Be like a lotus leaf where water simply rolls around,” says Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita.

The help to get to that state of emotional detachment is right within. It is as close to you as your breath. Think of any emotional trauma or personal loss that you may be suffering from. Just take a deep breath and let it all out with the exhalation.

Do it as many times and as long as you need. Your breath is like a rope tied to a pail running through a pulley in the well, bailing out the murky waters of old emotional attachments we want to throw out.

When the well is cleared of the scum, it doesn’t run dry, but gets filled soon with fresh water breathing with life, oozing out from the Earth and pouring in from the skies too.