By his own strength man cannot control himself, others and the world. Every man experiences his own personal vulnerability. Scientific evidence confirms this reality that man continues to endanger himself and the world. If a man does not understand the nature of life and the history of everything he does and lives, he can fall into traumas and fears, which make him defective and deviant. Our reactions are the visible side of good and evil in us, they reveal the wound, the trauma, the place and source of pain, suffering, tears, guilt and the longing for the health of the spiritual soul. St. Augustine said, “The history of the world is a struggle between two kinds of love: love of self to the destruction of the world, and love of another to the denial of self”. This fight is still going on today. Evil has infiltrated every detail of the world, of life, of relationships, of will. How to create a new man, who would create a new society? It would take an immense amount of goodness to wash all the relationships in the world and to cleanse all the conditions of life of evil and suffering. (cf. T. Ivančić, Hagiotherapy in the Encounter with Man).
Each man is especially wounded on a spiritual level. Woundedness is not man’s reality. Spiritual trauma is an injury to a man’s spiritual soul. They are not a disease, they are wounds. Trauma is like a code that, without man’s will, triggers negative reactions in him. Regularly, man is powerless over these reactions because they are like a mechanism that responds to certain words, gestures, and situations with aggression and fear. (cf. T. Ivančić, Diagnosis of the Soul and Hagiotherapy).
The sources of trauma to the spiritual soul are man himself, other people and the state of the world. Man traumatizes himself when he lives frivolously, immorally, promiscuously, addictively, when he neglects his health and does not care about humane life. Others can inflict trauma on him through infidelity, insults, humiliation, attacks, threats, abuse, rape, injustice, persecution, and hatred. Trauma may result from the death of a loved one, the ravages of war, imprisonment, natural disaster, accidents, and disease. Every faculty of the spiritual soul can be traumatized. Yet not only the spiritual capacity but the whole man responds to trauma. Trauma such as wounds create in man a nervous and mental tension, fear, anxiety and a need for constant control, which exhausts man. Epigenetics, the scientific discipline in biology that studies all things that affect the alteration, expression and manifestation of genes, and these changes are not caused by changes in the DNA sequence (Waters 2010). Epigenetics focuses on changes outside the DNA sequence (genotype), i.e. changes in gene expression (phenotype). These changes can be passed on from generation to generation, but not by classical inheritance mechanisms. Recent research focusing on changes in the very DNA of the traumatic experience supports the fact that humans are beings whose environment greatly influences changes in the body. One study was conducted by Yehuda and colleagues in 2016 on Jewish Holocaust survivors and their descendants. They used a control group of Jews who did not experience the trauma as did their descendants. Holocaust survivors and their descendants had lower cortisol levels, responded more difficult to stress, and reported higher levels of depression and anxiety.
Hagiotherapeutic path from trauma to spiritual-anthropological health
It is fundamental for the healing of our traumas to recognize and practice what is good in life. Goodness is present, indestructible, and eternal. Goodness is absolute, and all trauma is temporary pain and suffering. This vision of the absolute and the indestructible gives us the strength to look back on the good that we have, to recall a good experience from the past, some success, a good liberating conversation with a friend. It is good to remind ourselves of the good experiences we have now, walks in nature, the beauty of nature, a good and delicious lunch or dinner, a good play, a concert.
A traumatized man needs someone to be his friend and to justify him. He must have someone who gives him a human trust from which a man can then be convinced of what he is told and of which he need not fear within himself. They need someone to take them by the hand, inspire motivation, show them the possibilities, inspire confidence in their abilities and motivate them to seek help.
The next step is to enter the door of goodness. The best way to enter goodness is to try to stay focused only on goodness, to enter the realm of absolute goodness. Since good is absolute, it quickly fills in all the areas of the soul where a deficiency has arisen, where the integrity of some capacity of the spiritual soul has been destroyed. At first, we may find that concentration is difficult to achieve, and we are easily distracted. It takes persistence, doing it several times a day. Experience shows that this is how betterment for man is born.
Closing the sources of evil that enter us through thoughts, words, deeds and omissions is our daily path and experience. Our spiritual dimension also knows many other ways and mechanism to free ourselves from heavy thoughts and fears. Instead of looking at the trauma, look at what you can do creatively. Recognize who you are, and that the Creator stands by your side just when everything conspires against you.
Goodness is also a person, and that is the Creator. That is why entering goodness is making a friendship with Him. He rejoices in our progress because He created us. We are not alone in our centre. We have the Almighty as our ally.
The experience that we are not alone in our centre activates the power of our spiritual soul and we do not have to give in to fatalism, as well as the idea that we are determined by childhood, upbringing, life experiences and acquired trauma. Man is not determined by his psychophysical and psychosocial conditioning, but by his spiritual dimension. The spiritual dimension reaches deeper than the psychophysical and social levels of man and determines man’s future. Epigenetics clearly teaches that the body remembers, not matter, but the life spirit that animates the body. Our spirit carries archived good and bad experiences, beautiful and negative words, sad, stressful and joyful encounters. Spiritual memory records and preserves the spiritual processes in man, events in the faculties of the spiritual soul, spiritual longings, visions, man’s cries and regrets, his inspirations, his cries, his longing to be loved, his trust, his hopes, the Creator’s speech in the conscience, the subtle interpersonal unspoken cries of the soul.
An important step toward spiritual health is to discover and acknowledge why our reactions are negative. Remembering evil is like a ticking time bomb. Severe traumatic contents in the memory are temporarily forgotten and become subconscious or unconscious. Though unconsciously wearisome, they torment man spiritually and make him unmotivated and incapable of effort and initiative. It is important, therefore, to eradicate negative content from the memory, that is, to eradicate feelings of anger and guilt. They need to be stripped of their destructive power. But one must be very careful. If too much strong negative content is stored in the memory, then awareness of its contents can create a shock and make man even sicker. So first we need to experience the unconditional love of the Creator, and only then the decision and the path of forgiveness or the path of repentance if we ourselves were the source of the trauma. That is why in the hagiotherapeutic path to health, memory is very important.
Dear reader, memory and recollection are best healed by putting healthy and good thoughts into the memory, by saying positive words, by uttering words of hope and trust, and by deciding to do good to someone every day. It heals memory and recollection even more powerfully, if you practice some virtue every day, if you know how to consciously repent of your sins before Jesus of Nazareth as a person, if you forgive others and ask them to forgive you too. To memorize encouraging texts, to have a few wise anecdotes, to be able to tell a joke, and especially to train in the habit of laughing at your mistakes and self-pity. Why? Because that is what helps the soul to understand and accept how the Creator guides your life and every moment, and that everything will be well. This heals the soul and awakens the brain and psyche, especially the emotions, so that they too can heal. (cf. T. Ivančić, Hagiotherapy of PTSD).
Silva Vrdoljak, theologian, mentor in hagiotherapy who has been working as a hagioassistant for 20 years.
