TRIGGER WARNING: This post mentions severe abuse and if you are triggered by such things please take care of yourself and do not read what you are not ready for. If you do choose to read it through I promise you it ends on a happy note. A lot of people seek out Buddhism because they want to end their suffering. The entire system of practices in the various forms of Buddhism are to illuminate the reality of the present moment without all the stories that we normally cling to in our heads. Those stories then activate the negative seeds in our minds such as worry, fear, anger, hatred and so on. This causes suffering. Today I am going to talk about my own personal realization about the present moment to illustrate. I have had many brief glimpses of moving beyond my own suffering but this morning I had a major shift - I would say THE major shift I have been working towards. By no means am I saying my work is done. No, it has truly just begun in some respects. If you feel you are ready to hear what I have to say let us proceed.
# Insomnia and Psychedelics
One of the first essays I wrote on Steemit what about healing my C-PTSD with psychedelics. What this does is allow you to fully experience pain that we usually try to avoid. I am not cured of C-PTSD but I didn't sleep for an entire month at the time and I was desperate. The short story is I found someone to do a psychedelic session with. It was excruciatingly painful. I experienced a lot of suppressed trauma. After I was done I slept for the first time in a month. A short while after to continue to integrate my healing I started meditating through the instruction in a book called Radiant Mind in a sitting practice called just sitting. It was through that practice I had my first experience of being fully immersed in the present moment. I spontaneously had all thinking cease. It was the most liberating feeling I ever experienced. Absence of all suffering. It lasted a few days then the thinking crept back in. Soon, it was back to normal and, understandably, the story of my trauma hooked me again over and over until I was convinced it was very important that I listen to this story. This is the lesson I have learned about this and why I am sharing it with you in detail.
# Severe Trauma ( [Click here to leave now!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hfy_yAc9YNE) )
My father was a very disturbed person. To the outside world he was a distinguished minister. On the inside he was a depraved pedophile. My father had four children (at this time, there were others before us) for the express purpose of us being used in a child pedophilia ring in NYC where I grew up and where I live now. I sustained major injuries to my internal organs and had to have surgery when I was 7 years old. I still have nightmares to this day and I'm 50 years old. I have chronic pain and bouts of serious depression.
One unfortunate thing is happens to a lot of children who are victims of sexual abuse is that they become easy prey for other pedophiles and rapists. So, when I was thirteen I was lured into the woods by a neighborhood eighteen year old man and he violently sexually assaulted me. To make a long story short 2 years later he came to my home while I was home from school one day (he was watching me) and sexually assaulted me again. This then went on for 2 years until I got pregnant at 17 and I had the child. I was a kid. I ended up with the rapist because my mother left the state and I had nowhere to go. My mother left me there because I wanted to stay there with him because I had [STOCKHOLM SYNDROME](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome). I have forgiven my mom because she was a victim of my father's horrific violence and she basically didn't know what reality was anymore, which happens to victims of violence. To make a long story short I escaped from the rapist finally when I woke up and realized what was happening 3 years later. A few years after that the rapist took my son away from me while I was in the hospital and sued me for child support. I still have to pay him $27,000.00. My father came back into the picture and got his hands on my son and sexually abused him. My son tried to commit suicide in September of 2016 and is now permanently brain injured. The rapist (my son's father) who was who was homeless at the time of my son's accident went to the court to become my son's guardian because my son, who is 32, became incapacitated. Now my son is stuck with him and his father controls his SSI check. It's a horrible situation that just won't end.
# Scary Stories in Our Head
So, I've got some stories. And I literally got a headache typing that up. But there is a difference between stories and situations. PTSD is the illness that occurs as a result to response to trauma. The illness is also a situation. When rumination occurs that is stories. So, say you wake up on a winter day and you are warm and cozy in your home and you walk over to the stove to make a cup of tea. What are you paying attention to? The cup of tea or the or you paying attention to the thoughts in your head? Normally, when I wake up in the morning it is very difficult for me to pay attention fully to what I am doing because I have nightmares nearly every night and when I wake up I have the residual thought patterns in my head. It's hard. But, I do meditate every morning and I'm up to 25 minutes now so by the time I'm done with my meditation I have cleared those thought patterns out and I feel pretty clear. Within a few hours, though, the patterns return. The intensity of the thought patterns or the daytime flashbacks usually depend of the quality of sleep I am getting.
Earlier I referenced how I started my meditation journey through Radiant Mind. A while after that I learned that Zen sitting is very similar and also, something I forgot to mention, is with eyes open. A lot of people with PTSD or heavy negativity or trauma cannot tolerate meditating with eyes closed so if this feels like you even if you don't have trauma you can do it with eyes open! In Zen study I learned a number of things that I ended up recently kind of forgetting about then remembered with this realization I had this morning. What I'm about to say may seem like common sense but common sense can fly out the window very easily hen bad habits try to creep back in. Simply put, when you sit you should make sure you are well rested. You should you have lightly eaten, not too much or too little, to make sure that your stomach does not provide a distraction. You should not be too hot or too cold. You should not be too ill. If you are ill it is perfectly fine to meditate lying flat in bed or meditating later in the day if you are so sick you need to sleep instead of get out of bed.
~
<div class="pull-right">https://steemitimages.com/DQmSXrHoh9m78WNKb1u4aW92o6HNoiZMDbhG8FsdG1gGtJz/christmas-3010137_640.jpg</div> Yesterday morning I had not slept for three nights. Yes, I'm going through that again. I started feeling really bad when I realized "of course you feel bad you need to sleep." So, I remembered I had some sleep medication (a prescription antihistamine) and I took it and slept. But, I also realized that I needed to establish some new habits to keep my mind on track other than sitting meditation. So, last night when I went to bed I listened to a beautiful guided meditation for sleep that lasted for about ½ hour. I had no nightmares last night. I'm not saying I'm cured but it was a nice relief. So, I'm going to do that every night now. I also decided I am going to start every morning with positive thought recordings to start my day while I'm having my tea when I first wake up before my sitting meditation. But, that is what my sitting and mindfulness has given me. The ability to see clearly what I need to do to take care of myself.
#### So, this morning, the realization I had was this: even the horrible, very real situation that is happening in my life that I feel like I have no immediate solution to - the story in my head actually does have an immediate solution. It's just a story. In my head. I'm standing or sitting in my apartment right here right now. And that is where life is.
~
It is not easy to get to this *realization* because the stories will try to hook us again and again. But it is so worth it to stick with it. It's like to lottery - you can't win if you don't play but unlike the lottery in this everyone who plays wins.
*The Wheel of the Dharma and Karma*
# Moving Forward
My friends, I thank you if you were able to stick with it and I also thank those who couldn't who need to click away. I want to say a final thing about these awful situations happening. Writing this has been incredibly cathartic for me and solidified for me even more why I'm on the right path and what I need to do. And that I'm going to be just fine. On my end my job is meditation, acceptance, mindfulness and taking care of myself. I am not cured of PSTD and it looks like it may be time for another session with psychedelics so I sleep naturally for while. I may have some answers emerge that lead me to appropriate actions to take when certain things ripen and my subconscious mind presents them to me. The ultimate solution for us all is *karma*. Karma is real but often misunderstood and I'll be writing more about the mechanics and philosophy of karma. My father died a horrible, painful death with no real friends, just two mentally feeble persons he had taken advantage of. My decision to not get revenge and commit myself to ethics of The Noble Eightfold Path, to train my mind with meditation and take care of myself no matter what will assure without a shadow of a doubt set the Wheel of the Dharma in motion and I will have peace, joy and true friendship in my life. Woe to those who actions come out of greed, to harm, steal, lie and covet. You will have to face the fruits of your actions. It is law.
*What do you think?*
PS. Please do not run out and look for someone to do psychedelics with if you are suffering from trauma. Do your due diligence and read this article I wrote and was published last year by the largest psychedelia and psychedelic medicine renaissance publisher in the world **Psymposia** - [Precautions with Underground Psychedelic Therapy](https://www.psymposia.com/author/brenda-brewer)
*@soulsistashakti is a musical artist and writer based in NYC as well as a practitioner of Buddhist teachings. You can check out my music on my FB artist page at https://www.facebook.com/soulsistashakti*
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