How to Heal Trauma and Global Weariness with the Ancient Art of Deep Listening

By Yeye Omileye, M.Ed, NCC, LPCA

One morning I woke up and felt like I just could not watch another mass shooting, killing of a young innocent life of color, read about another natural disaster or children dying in war. Worse still I found I was getting depressed, couldn’t sleep properly and began to feel really hopeless about the world.  Frankly I began to wonder if we were all going to caput.  I began to worry when I started feeling like I couldn’t function from day to day.

It was only when I began to research into the neuroscience of trauma, modern and ancient science surrounding it – that I began to realize that I was suffering from trauma, and judging from conversations I had, so were a good few people.

I use to think of trauma as those really big events and it is. But it is also those many many events that leave us feeling bewildered, confused and unable to cope. In the DSM 5 Trauma, that little book counselors and psychologists get their diagnosis from, Trauma is defined as “exposure to actual or threated death, serious injury, or sexual violence.”  If we accept that definition then we ignore many of the traumatic experiences we go through, do not have a name or word for it. According to Peter Levine, author of Walking the Tiger, trauma is not so much of a definition but a sensation, that is unresolved.

What is really exciting to know, is that according to Mark Wolynn much of our trauma didn’t start with us. Wolyn’s expresses this sentiment in his book title, “It Didn’t Start With You.” That’s right, our trauma  started before us. It started with our mother, grandmother and great great grandmother. Also let’s not forget pops, it starts with him too. However, the precursor egg that made us who we are was already in our mother’s womb when she was a fetus in her mother’s womb. So, the role of the maternal lineage in passing on our gifts and our traumas is a key factor.   In summary, trauma is carried up to three generations in the womb. So that ancient Native American saying, For the Next Seven Generations has a meaning to it. It relates to ancient epigenetics.

The good news is that trauma can be healed within one generation and scientist have even found that within 8 hours of meditation, various neuron pathways of meditators changed and re-wired themselves. I remember once reading somewhere on the internet a quote by His Holiness the Dalai Lama that said, “If every 8-year-old in the world is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world within one generation.” How true.

Which all brings me to my next point, I have discovered some sure fired ways that can help us with that feeling of Global Weariness many of us are plagued with today. I found many techniques in the ancient world from Africa to Tibetan traditions to help with this. In fact, the ancients really seemed to have the answers to helping us release ourselves from suffering and living with more peace and emotional equilibrium. One of those ancient ways is the art of Deep Listening.

I recently found out my father was taken into critical care, just out of the blue. He was strong and healthy and then bam, he was in hospital. I was far away and really out of it when I found out. I was in the USA and he was in the Caribbean. Within a few moments of hearing about my dad’s dilemma, I started experiencing all the classical symptoms of trauma: Dissociated, headaches, aches, feeling overwhelmed etc. I felt like I was spiraling out of control. According to ancient wisdom I was experiencing soul loss, when certain elemental essence that constitute my soul become fragmented, lost and travel.

Deep listening, I discovered, is one of the ways to bring the soul back to balance.  It sounds strange and a little too simple. How can deep listening help us? In the Caribbean I remember I would often see many people sitting on their porches. They would just sit there very very still still, as though they were listening to something beyond what our normal hearing can pick up. I call this a third way of listening. It is a listening beyond the words, a listening into that meditative space. Some call it the sweet spot. In this space we can hear all the noise and stay still enough for long enough to hear the stories we keep on telling ourselves – then we can just sit and let everything float on by until we just hear the bliss and the silence within our silence.  We can do this for our own stuff, but we can also do this sort of deep listening when we are with others. Suddenly they are not the other, but a sacred space of love and connectivity with our very essence.

Today this deep way of listening is often referred to as Mindfulness. Mindfulness is described simply as “paying attention in the moment”. It is drawn from the art of listening deeply which comes from the Buddhist tradition and therefore ultimately from the ancient cultures of India and Tibet. It is almost like the art of being a Yogi sitting on a mountain and like Shiva in deep meditation. In the Tibetan Bon tradition this way of listening is often referred to as Taking the Three Pills. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche’s talks about this a lot in his books, such as Awakening the Sacred Body. The Three Pills are Stillness, Silence and Spaciousness. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche claims that these three things alone can help us become aware of those deep hidden thoughts that plague us, so they can be released into the healing place of spaciousness where wisdom exists and arises. It was through practicing the Three Pills of Stillness, Silence and Spaciousness that I was able to release myself from the grips of anxiety and fear, when I discovered my father was in a critical condition. That was when I was able to move into action, and make wise decisions to help him.  My Flight and Fight response was able to unleash its full cycle and not stay stuck in one place. When the Flight and Fight response is unable to go through the full cycle Peter Levine reveals, that is when trauma sets in.

In the African tradition this place of deep listening help us to achieve Sururu – peace, a freedom from suffering. The Aboriginal call this place of deep listening Dadirii. As Judy Atkinson reveals in her book Trauma Trails, “Dadirii is a process of listening, reflecting and observing the feelings and actions within. ” She says, “Dadirii is the search for meaning”. The aboriginal often say with Dadirii “we call it and it calls on us.

I don’t know what will ultimately happen to my father, but I know this place that calls on us and us on it, is guiding me wisely through a sea of turmoil, to drink from yet another river that exist deep within me -– the river of peace. I can learn to drink from this river and now often do, every time I listen to the news or am exposed to the global weariness many of us suffer from today.

Art by Yeye Omileye

Comments