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Working through trauma by using the dharma
skydancer
Veteran
I thought I'd start this topic since it's been my personal focus for the last several years or so.
I moved from Portland Oregon to Northern California at the suggestion of my meditation teacher. I had already been spending six weeks to five months at a time to be near the monastery and teachings so in 2002 I packed up and moved, buying some property and a mobile home just two miles from the meditation center. I had the intention to do some long retreat which I eventually accomplished.
During the time I was in retreat at home, and traveling closeby to see my teacher for instruction, I became aware of the family living next door and their issues. It was unavoidable. We shared a well, ingress and egress through a road that spanned their property and creek water rights for an irrigation system.
The woman who moved into that property had two children and many problems and while she knew I was at home not engaging externally she would still meet me in the road when I went for a walk and tell me her many problems.
I talked to my teacher about this and he told me that this family was part of my retreat and that I should be kind and try to help them as best I could. So that's what I did I befriended the woman, her father and her two children, and included them in my meditation practice as objects of concern and compassion.
Long story short, the woman got in a relationship with a man I knew that had been asked to move away from the Buddhist center because of his anger and violence. I had sat in six week retreat with this young man, and I was close friends with his mother who was my age. So I had many mixed feelings about him, and my connection to him and felt motherly concern for him and the family.
Suffice it to say, the young man moved in, and domestic violence and child abuse followed. I am a counselor and social worker by trade but I wasn't working in that capacity being in retreat. It was as if I had chosen to be in retreat with demons living next door.
The young man did his best to separate my influence from his girlfriend and her children and became increasingly drunk and abusive toward the family, and toward me.
The unremitting attacks made my meditation retreat seem impossible. By this time, my own teacher was unavailable as he himself was in three years retreat. I wrote to him of my difficulties and suggested that I come out of retreat and go back to work.
The attacks continued and the atmosphere at home was stressful and hostile. Cooperation was needed to maintain our shared roads, and water systems and each became a source of a new fight.
I had pujas said for the conflict. I tried digging a new well. We ended up with a 5,000 dry hole. The neighbor/former dharma brother would turn up screaming at our door and one time my partner let him in and he kept yelling and refused to leave our house. I called the police for the first time.
I ended up calling the police out to the house three more times, the last time after he had shoved me to the ground, bruisng me, threatened me with a pitchfork, and called me all manner of anti-female, anti-gay slurs. I was afraid he would eventually kill me.
I had to file a restraining order, go to court and press charges, and deal with the stress of selling our place and emergency moving two months into a new and very stressful job.
I want to discuss family violence, trauma, how a spiritual community can best address it when it occurs in the community, and what spiritual practices and outlooks help and don't help in healing from abuse and trauma.
So I've offered part of my own story as a starting place for what I hope will be an inclusive and interesting discussion for all concerned.
I'm currently in therapy, I have a daily spiritual practice, I teach awareness techniques in the community and I'm a resource to others.
I'm halfway through a domestic violence training course to learn to be an emergency responder for women and families in the community.
Looking forward to discussing the topic further.
A book that has been useful to me is Feeding Your Demons by Tsultrim Allione.
Any interest in this topic?
I moved from Portland Oregon to Northern California at the suggestion of my meditation teacher. I had already been spending six weeks to five months at a time to be near the monastery and teachings so in 2002 I packed up and moved, buying some property and a mobile home just two miles from the meditation center. I had the intention to do some long retreat which I eventually accomplished.
During the time I was in retreat at home, and traveling closeby to see my teacher for instruction, I became aware of the family living next door and their issues. It was unavoidable. We shared a well, ingress and egress through a road that spanned their property and creek water rights for an irrigation system.
The woman who moved into that property had two children and many problems and while she knew I was at home not engaging externally she would still meet me in the road when I went for a walk and tell me her many problems.
I talked to my teacher about this and he told me that this family was part of my retreat and that I should be kind and try to help them as best I could. So that's what I did I befriended the woman, her father and her two children, and included them in my meditation practice as objects of concern and compassion.
Long story short, the woman got in a relationship with a man I knew that had been asked to move away from the Buddhist center because of his anger and violence. I had sat in six week retreat with this young man, and I was close friends with his mother who was my age. So I had many mixed feelings about him, and my connection to him and felt motherly concern for him and the family.
Suffice it to say, the young man moved in, and domestic violence and child abuse followed. I am a counselor and social worker by trade but I wasn't working in that capacity being in retreat. It was as if I had chosen to be in retreat with demons living next door.
The young man did his best to separate my influence from his girlfriend and her children and became increasingly drunk and abusive toward the family, and toward me.
The unremitting attacks made my meditation retreat seem impossible. By this time, my own teacher was unavailable as he himself was in three years retreat. I wrote to him of my difficulties and suggested that I come out of retreat and go back to work.
The attacks continued and the atmosphere at home was stressful and hostile. Cooperation was needed to maintain our shared roads, and water systems and each became a source of a new fight.
I had pujas said for the conflict. I tried digging a new well. We ended up with a 5,000 dry hole. The neighbor/former dharma brother would turn up screaming at our door and one time my partner let him in and he kept yelling and refused to leave our house. I called the police for the first time.
I ended up calling the police out to the house three more times, the last time after he had shoved me to the ground, bruisng me, threatened me with a pitchfork, and called me all manner of anti-female, anti-gay slurs. I was afraid he would eventually kill me.
I had to file a restraining order, go to court and press charges, and deal with the stress of selling our place and emergency moving two months into a new and very stressful job.
I want to discuss family violence, trauma, how a spiritual community can best address it when it occurs in the community, and what spiritual practices and outlooks help and don't help in healing from abuse and trauma.
So I've offered part of my own story as a starting place for what I hope will be an inclusive and interesting discussion for all concerned.
I'm currently in therapy, I have a daily spiritual practice, I teach awareness techniques in the community and I'm a resource to others.
I'm halfway through a domestic violence training course to learn to be an emergency responder for women and families in the community.
Looking forward to discussing the topic further.
A book that has been useful to me is Feeding Your Demons by Tsultrim Allione.
Any interest in this topic?
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Comments
I have taken a life vow to end harmfulness so that goodness may arise. Learning how to do this skillfully has been a winding road. I attempted to remain neutral in situations where harm was obviously being done and came to realize that doing nothing in the face of harmfulness may actually contribute to it's arising and enduring over and over again. I moved to intervening in ways I thought was helpful to find that what I thought as helpful was often not.
What a dilemma.
I finally decided to kinda let my 'guts'/Heart lead. I engaged in training to cultivate that ole intuitive sense of what is needed in circumstances and tested (continue to test) that approach in practice. A friend once told me to learn to dance with circumstances. That's what I've been doing.
Today I simply attend to that deep sense of agreement or disagreement with stuff happening based on confidence that the years spent in committed training has transformed this being to more accord with goodness. In this sense any sharp sense of disagreement may be a 'red flag' and imagining applying all possible solutions as a way to approach those disagreements. The one I imagine as having the greatest potential for actualizing good for all I usually apply, without much concern for how it appears to others. Then I simply wait to see what results.
Recently, that approach has brought more and more good and less harm.
So, If one is acting foolishly and harmfully they need to be arrested, somehow. I think you know this. Also, I imagine we are obligated as a first responders to do that, if called for.
So, maybe listening deeply to others, self, and circumstances in tranquil tenderness then responding with the intention to do good for others is all we can do? However that appears.
what exactly I AM?
A lot of Pema Chodron's material is targetted at that. I think Tonglen helps in many ways. Meditations on suffering too. There is always this tension between practice and aversion\craving. Trauma arises from aversion I guess, so whatever practice you do should be able to help.
The problem is with what I call the "eclipse effect". I am sure there's a concept like this somewhere in psychology. It is like one thing becomes the focus of your attention while the other things that are also important have to "wait in line". So religion moves over the pain, the discomfort, the whatever it is like a moon moving over the sun. It blinds you for reality instead of helping you deal with it. Gotta be careful with that because we are not always ready to face our problems directly, so we might fall in this trap.
It is not always some obvious thing like "oh, this doesn't hurt, this is just my non-existent ego". It can be more subtle. You feel bad, religion comforts you to the point it numbs the pain, it might even change the patterns superficially, then after a while you go back to your old habits, your old responses that emerged from such and such event (I have seen that happening with drug addicts in the past). It might also be something like "enlightenment is my greatest goal, all the rest of my problems are secondary" and you start distancing yourself from your 'mundane concerns'. It might be something like procrastination "I know I have to do this but I haven't gone to the Buddhist Center for so long it will only take a while" and that dance of gentle repression can take a while. Does that make sense? x-)
I've thought about the best way to provide help when people ask for it. Your story certainly was horrific in how it developed and unpleasant for you. So I'm not commenting on whether you could have helped her 'better' or differently. But I think that people (including me) listen and try to be supportive, but sometimes real support would be to clearly tell someone that they are heading down a dangerous road. She should not have gotten involved with this fellow. But you know what, even if you had given her a clear warning, she may still have gone with him - based on her own history with men. In the end you had to look out for your own safety and that of your partner.
Its a good thing that he was expelled from the Buddhist centre.....
Through not seeing fools constantly, constantly one would be happy.
For, living with a fool, one grieves a long time.
Painful is communion with fools, as with an enemy always.
Happy is communion with the enlightened, as with a gathering of kin.
So: the enlightened man - discerning, learned, enduring, dutiful, noble, intelligent, a man of integrity:
You should follow him - follow one of this sort;
-- as the moon, the path of the zodiac stars.
Dhp 206
As he was seated to one side, Ven. Ananda said to the Blessed One, "This is half of the holy life, Lord: being a friend with admirable people, a companion with admirable people, a colleague with admirable people."
"Don't say that, Ananda. Don't say that. Being a friend with admirable people, a companion with admirable people, a colleague with admirable people is actually the whole of the holy life. When a monk is a friend with admirable people, a companion with admirable people, a colleague with admirable people, it is to be expected of him that he will develop the noble eightfold path, and make much of it. . . . And through this line of reasoning one may know how being a friend with such people is actually the whole of the holy life: It is in dependence on me as an admirable friend that beings subject to birth have gained release from birth, that beings subject to aging have gained release from aging, that beings subject to death have gained release from death, that beings subject to sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress & despair have gained release from sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress & despair." SN XLV.2
We wish that people would make more rational decisions in their lives, but the lady who you wanted to help, obviously talked about the advice you gave her in respect to her abusive boyfriend who then took you on as an enemy he needed to crush. And as a consequence, you became entangled in the madness that was their life.
Under the protection of a legitimized agency, he would have been more likely to defer from retaliation against you. Long jail sentences probably are effective deterrents in some instances. But since you are weaker and smaller than he is, and he does not have to withstand the police, he dealt with you the way he usually deals with those he feels are vulnerable. He intimidated and hurt you, just the same way he did with the woman.
As a consequence, your life has been entirely disrupted, turned upside down, and you have been traumatized and you have to wonder, to what end? It wasn't clear if he had been incarcerated or not, or if he still lived with this woman and children he picked on.
It may be prudent to leave dealing with violent, dangerous people to agencies that can deal with people like this.
The thing that sometimes is not understood by people who don't have extensive experience with systems such as the one this lady lived in, is that there is all kinds of dysfunction going on, and from both partners. For example, this lady that asked so vehemently for your help, eventually set you up to be drawn into all of this chaos. The person who stood by her, and tried to help, she sacrificed.
You can be kind and caring from a distance. You can be a supportive friend without becoming a lightning rod for the fallout. It is good that you want to become involved with agencies with resources. You can be a force in this situation by being a part of a bigger, more powerful alliance. People like him, thrive on picking off people, one by one.