Q: My question is this : how would you frame abuse? In particular I've been gang raped, held against my will etc in my life as a heroin addict. I've been clean and sober now for 18 years. Still struggle some with those issues. I'm starting to see that the people (almost all men) who did these things were confused about how to get their own needs met. However, it still leaves me with an exaggerated sense of fear. I've been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
A: Firstly, extract your attention from the event and the story you tell about this. It only keeps you in victim and victor mentality - which although may for a while feel empowering - accomplishes nothing causal. You extract your attention from these aspects of the experience through entering unconditional felt-perception of the residue.
When entering Present Moment Awareness, what becomes clear to us, is that if something happened - it was required. Asking why at this point of the game is futile.
Whatever happened within our past is the consequence of previous experiences we had - experiences often occurring well before the perceptual borders of our current life experience.
If you only believe in "one life" - like some religious people do - then you are stuck in a world of meaningless and chaotic activity - one in which there is a vicious God who does things for absolutely no reason at all. However, when we realize we live forever - and that this current experience is one of countless - we also realize that this life experience is full of incidents which make no sense if this current life experience is the only barometer from which we measure "consequence".
However, realizing this experientially is not necessary in order to impact the causality of our experience. The fear you feel now is the causality. Underneath it is anger, and underneath this is grief. Your only task is to be with this fear without condition through direct felt-perception. Drop the event, and story about the event, as having any relevance within your intent to integrate this experience. We cannot integrate through understanding, blame, or revenge.
Consuming heroin and for being gang raped was 100% required. You simply cannot yet perceive the causal activity which unfolded, possibly over many life experiences, to eventually manifest such an event. In another experience you may well have been a heroin pusher and a gang raper. At this point in the game we have all been everything - this is why judgment is futile and ridiculous. We have moved through the darkness as willingly as we have moved through the light.
Our only choice now is drama, or dharma. To access the dharma, we feel without condition the arising emotional states within our life experience right now. There is no requirement for mentally investigating the past - such activity is useless to us now. The past is forever present within the felt-resonance of our current experience. We therefore engage with it not mentally, but through direct, unconditional, felt-resonance.
Any other path leads us out of the moment and into a time-based mentality - which is madness. Feel your fear unconditionally - it will transform into anger - feel your anger unconditionally - it will transform into grief - feel your grief unconditionally - and then you shall know the meaning of the teaching: "Blessed are those who mourn - for they shall be comforted."
