Healing from Samskaras

 I will stay with it and endure through suffering and hardship and once the heaving sea has shaken my raft to pieces, then I will swim.

Homer (The Odyssey)

I do not understand the Google analytics: Such high numbers from all over the world noted as "engaged sessions" but when one checks the engagement time...they see 0 seconds. How can they be called engaged sessions when they are only on for a second.  When I check the posts of what was read over the course of the last 24 hours, I see far less numbers:  4, say on one post, 2 on another...and that seems more realistic.  Is it? The writer in me that naturally seeks a reader to complete the cycle...would be happy with those numbers on the post page ...very happy. The human in me, who still doesn't trust the universe as much as she wants to ...is worrying over why she is getting such high numbers on Google analytics.  Why are these high numbers with little to no engagement registering on a site that is suppose to eliminate that noise?  What do these bots or whatever they are want? Can they do damage in one way or another? What would they get from coming to this site?  This IT impaired mind just doesn't understand it. When I do not fully understand something...I am left with an uncomfortable feeling that drives me to know more. :) 

Regardless, I keep writing. I keep doing my thing. 

Anyway....

I have been thinking and talking about Samskaras alot and see purifying from them as the truest form of healing and liberation.  That sounds so woo-woo when I say it like that, because of the selected terminology I use. 

I can change how I phrase that to:  I am thinking about psychological healing by examining how we have  repressed and suppressed (stuffed and stored)  painful memories from our past in our subconscious forming unhealthy beliefs, and how those core beliefs and trapped emotional energies can haunt us through out our lives . Running from them by pushing them down, numbing from them with substances, avoiding triggers etc doesn't work. We need to heal by understanding what we have hidden away inside us and letting it go- that means being willing to face the pain we stuffed and stored. Without this painful barrier in the way we will be free to experience life fully and joyfully. 

Does that sound any better? 

However we put it...so, so many of us need to heal. I use the terms and methods of yoga, you may use the terms and methods offered by psychotherapy ...but they are all referring to the same thing! We need to heal so we can live the lives we are meant to live. 

Anyway, I watched a documentary on Netflix last night about an alternative form of PTSD treatment for veternan Navy Seals: a combination of psychodelics: Ibigaine which is used to open up a person to what they have supressed and repressed and then 5-MeO-DMT to open them up to higher consciousness.  One exposes and brings the samskaras to the surface of awareness; the other opens them up to a way of viewing Life without them ( liberation...in the yogic view). It was pretty cool to watch these big rigid men who have been conditioned to hide all emotion and to adamantly resist such "hippy nonsense" go through the process of purification: facing and healing from their samskaras. 

Plant therapy might offer humans  a quick means to purify. Regardless if we seen combat or not, most of us have some childhood trauma stuffed within us that is coloring the way we process through life as adults.  For many, it is holding us back from experiencing what we could be experiencing.  Infact, despite what these Seals have experienced on the battlefront...the Ibigaine carrying plants took them beyond that to show them the real traumas they needed to heal from which, occured when they were children. Hmm!

The transformation these suicidal vets underwent were remarkable. They discovered a joy in Life they never had since they were children. Imagine, having that!

I am using yoga to purify and heal from my samskaras.  It is a slow and somewhat painful process. Sometimes, I say to myself, "It would be nice to accelerate this process, just blast these samskaras up to the surface, deal with them and be done." I considered plant medicine. I have. Yet, here I am still going the slow and painful route. Why? Besides being somewhat terrified of having to face head on and all at once what I have stuffed in here, I am actually enjoying the learning process the slow route offers. 

Sigh ! I don't know. Maybe someday I will change my mind and go the plant therpay route. Who knows.  For now, it is important that we all recognize the need to heal, cleanse, purify ( whatever word you choose to use to describe this process) and begin doing so.

All is well. 

Bonnie Cohen & John Shenk's (2024) In Waves and War. Neflix