Threat removal

Understanding

The first step is to understand what has or is causing hurt.  So the first step is a list that we add to over time, of all the known things which have given us or are giving us pain. 

Here we get an initial list of the more obvious, but occasionally the more important, things.

One of the very obvious threats still operating world wide that does affect survival, is the competition for ‘resources’, whether this is water, oil, food, or I suppose one’s own job, competition is a needed thing, but it is also a diversion.

Another threat is the sense of pain.  To the somewhat simplistic question many people ask of ‘why is there pain’ – meaning physical pain - the answer is extremely simple.  Because without it one wouldn’t avoid whatever is threatening your existence.  The fact you get pain from diseases that are incurable is only a message from your body saying it is in real trouble.  I suspect it hopes you can do something about it, even if you can’t.

So here is an initial list:

• I look like I might be made redundant
• I think my wife is about to leave me
• My right knee is hurting me
• I have gout
• I have a headache
• I feel cold
• I am really hungry
• My neighbours are making a terrible racket next door and I can’t hear myself think
• I am a bit lonely I haven’t many good friends
• My children hate me
• My dog has distemper

I made this list up, but I must admit to feeling sorry for this poor chap, now I have invented him.

Add to the list by recording moments that cause pain.

Using this list, the next step is to keep a diary in which you add to the list every time something happens that gives you pain  - this can be physical or emotional.

Initial lists always include the more obvious things but we are apt to forget the subtle environmental stimuli that actually produce ‘artificial pain’ – pain with no real cause.

The TV, newspapers, radio are all sources of threats of enormous proportions – we are barraged by documentaries and news programmes about terrible happenings we can do nothing about. Artificially induced angst.

At one time I used to enjoy nature programs, but even they have deteriorated to some wonderful filming with a commentary taken from East enders, where the writers assume that animals have a mentality and a life similar to a soap opera player.  They don’t of course, watch your dog, your hamster or your gold fish, not a lot of angst there.  According to the compilers of nature programmes, animals are obsessed by killing.  But animals do not spend their entire lives killing and being killed. Go to Africa and find out.  Lions seem to spend a lot of time asleep.

Maybe you don’t realise either that many of the books you read or ‘entertainment’ with its violence, blood shed, and anger also produce artificial angst.  It frightens us, it frightens the child within.

So over time you will get your complete list.  Now you need to do something about it on a permanent basis. Let us now go back to my poor example man.

The action plan

There are some threats he can do something about immediately, but there are quite a number of threats that he is going to have to see through and solve. 

Someone with this level of problems won’t be able to have any form of meaningful spiritual experience with all these threats [so problems] hanging over him.  His mind will be churning round and round with all the pain.

There has to be an action plan

He can have something to eat [we hope] , he can put more clothes on and warm up the room, he can take a paracetemol for his headache and doctors and healers these days can treat gout and may be help him with his knee.  He can also go somewhere where his neighbour’s noise does not distract or maybe he should consider moving if he can, or asking them to keep the noise down [politely of course].  So an action is possible to take away these threats 

But somehow he is going to have to solve the other problems and threats himself by finding solutions.

I am no counsellor or therapist, but this is where they come in – they are someone to talk things through with. They are not there to provide solutions, but they can tease solutions out of you.  If they are really good they make you face up to the causes of the pain.  I always remember a chap I knew whose pain was appalling when his wife left him for another man.  But he never faced up to the reality of why – he had had affairs and the pain he felt was hurt pride, not loss of love, so he clearly did not love her, which is why she left him for someone who did love her.

Too many people blame others, but you may need to face up to the reality and work at changing.  But what is key here is that you must have an action plan for everything that is giving you pain and you must execute that plan – do what it says.

Pain diverts, pain prevents spiritual experience unless it is so overwhelming it knocks you over the head with its ferocity, but we are seeking the route of kind suppression not the route of unkind overload.

Take away the wounds

Once the action plan has been executed, we are going to try to train the child in you to stop thinking that something which hurt it before will hurt it again.  In this we will use the very things that children love - games, pictures, jokes of a very gentle silly sort, music, stories, play. 

So again we use the list, but weave a story with a happy end round a hurt, or create a myth that shows the silliness of believing that the same thing can happen again, or create a picture that creates a different view of the pain that a child could understand.

So none of this is an obvious lesson, instead it is like a glorious game with symbols and puzzles and ways to help it forget the hurt, heal the wounds and calm down enough to let the composer through.

The objective is to relearn via symbols, myth, story, pictures and games.

For example suppose someone really hurt you.  Take a picture of them – large – and paint over it with acrylics so that they become a clown – an object of fun, or a donkey, or a worm.  Perhaps make a plasticine or wax model of the person, then symbolically melt it. [No pins that is hurt and we don’t want hurt or revenge].

Divert it

In the time between finding a solution and getting it executed, one way of finding peace – a way that may even prove to be better than a solution in some cases - is to divert the hurt child in you.  And here is where Beauty, Art and Music come in.  The feminine side/the child loves all these things, so we have to find a way of surrounding ourselves with just this and diverting it, so it forgets the terrible pain and is soothed.

Music in particular has a very positive effect in alleviating pain, a fact recognised in the Bible.  For example, when an ‘evil spirit’ torments Saul (1 Samuel 16:14) his attendants suggest he send for David, famed for his skill with the harp. From then on, "whenever the spirit came upon Saul, David would take his harp and play. Then relief would come to Saul; he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him”.  Listening to music.

Give it love

The technique of Being Comforted is hopefully something people will do to the one hurt, but it is also possible to be kind to yourself.  Again imagine the child within. 

Give it love and affection, kindness and consistency, gentleness and honesty.  No sneakiness – straightforward stuff every time. 

If it has been hurt, you need to be open about the hurt and admit, as the ‘parent’ of this ‘child’ that it may be our fault it got hurt.  You are talking to yourself remember.

Only use symbols.  The Subconscious understands symbols.  Use the symbols I have provided on the website, these work.

Finally, don’t beat about the bush with yourself.  Give your inner child clear wordless and thus symbolic pictorial orders as to what you are trying to achieve.

Observations

For iPad/iPhone users: tap letter twice to get list of items.

• Epictetus - The Enchiridion - 12
• Socrates - Misc. Quote - Turn the other cheek
• Steiner, Rudolf - Nature spirits - The misuse of power
• Tirrukural, the - Book 1 Gratitude
• Tirrukural, the - Book 2 The Unswerving Sceptre