Humanity’s greatest danger is not coming from Global warming, as many scientists are predicting. Humanity’s greatest problem lies in the fact that the nature and power of Primal Pain is not understood.
The future of mankind lies in understanding how our brain works. The world rejoiced when we landed a man on the moon, and the general feeling seemed to be that if we can achieve that wonderful technical feat then we can achieve anything we put our minds to. Amongst all the euphoria of the time I can clearly remember some important scientist saying that now we have conquered outer space, the next great achievement for mankind will be to conquer ‘inner space’ (meaning how the human brain works).
By all accounts the efforts of trying to conquer ‘inner space’ is proving more difficult than landing a man on the moon. Despite billions of dollars being spent on brain research, the mental health industry cannot fully explain what causes anxiety and depression, and therefore are struggling in their efforts to find cures for these common disorders effecting millions of people in every country on earth. Primal Pain is rarely ever mentioned, and yet it is one of the strongest forces within the human brain. Imagine getting a rocket off the earth if scientists did not understand the force of gravity. The same applies to issues within the human brain. Our “rockets’ in medical science are not getting off the ground because hardly anyone understands the force of Primal Pain, much less the effort it takes to overcome that force so the journey into ‘inner space’ can blast off.
So what’s the problem? Why don’t brain scientists understand Primal Pain? For that we need to understand that the human brain has three different levels of functioning – the cognitive mind, the feeling mind and the mind that deals in sensation. The cognitive, or intellectual mind is used when putting a man on the moon, because physics is an intellectual type of knowing. Sensations and feelings are put aside when a scientist is trying to work out gravity and how to build rockets and the mathematics of moon landings. Primal pain, depression and anxiety are functions of the feeling/sensing brain, but brain scientists are trying to solve these problems from their intellectual brain. Just like a rocket scientist needs to put his feelings/sensation brain aside to land a man on the moon, a brain scientist should put his cognitive mind aside when dealing with feeling and sensation – and Primal Pain is a function of this part of the brain.
Putting my cognitive brain aside was one of the things I experienced during Primal Therapy. The primal journey starts in the cognitive mind and the patient is guided to gradually open up into the feeling brain. As the journey down into deeper feeling progresses. the ability to talk and think gradually decreases until the pain of reliving childhood trauma completely over-rides the ability to talk. Then the journey continues down into the sensations, where the body /mind relives the original trauma, and responds in reptilian like movements because sensation is generated from the reptilian part of our brain.
The most notable thing about experiencing my feelings and sensations was that they carried with them a huge amount of knowledge, not about how to put a man on the moon type of knowledge, but knowledge of the power of Primal Pain and how it stopped me from enjoying my life to the fullest.
This year I have decided to finish the units I need to complete my bachelors degree in psychology. My visit to a University bookshop had me up to my shoulders in academic books of all kinds. I stood in the aisle and reflected that my journey back to excellent mental health and better physical health did not require any textbooks at all. Instead I had to lay down on a mattress in a padded room where a therapist guided me into my feelings and then deeper into sensation. The knowledge that I gained from my ‘inner space’ of feelings and sensation was more beneficial to how I experience life on this earth than all the intellectual books I was surrounded by.
(The next post will focus on the debilitating effects that Primal Pain has on individuals, and how that shapes our beliefs and actions).