Healing Combat Trauma

Quotable Quotes -- Joseph Marshall III on the Warrior as "the Shadow Man"

After a discussion with his grandfather about the words their native Lakota Sioux tribe use to discuss war and their warriors, story teller Joseph Marshall III writes:

"One day, still somewhat confused by the seemingly convoluted labels, I asked my grandfather for some kind of clarification. Consequently, he brought up an entirely different phrase and its concept: nagi wica, or "shadow man." He expounded at some length on the issues of war and warriors. His explanation was a foundation for insights I am still developing over this most chaotic of human institutions, and of understanding those who are thrust into war or go by choice.

In my grandfather's opinion, war is really a fight between the good and the bad sides of humans, and both emerge during the hostilities.  It is within each of us to bring out the best or the worst part of ourselves. In all endeavors, he said, we must strive for balance, even within the context of war." -- Joseph M. Marshall III, "Walking with Grandfather: The Wisdom of the Lakota Elders."

In saying this, Marshall's grandfather, and Marshall himself, are espousing some of the central concepts of the Warrior in the Tao, that of integrating the yin and the yang, the darkness and the light, within the same being, and that in that route lies greater emotional and spiritual health.

Souls Go Out to Combat, Many Come Home -- Angels of War

More from the longtime Navy vet, a leader in the mythopoetic men's movement of the 80s and 90s. He writes:

Combat Trauma -- Angels of War

 

Souls go out to combat. Some come back as angels, brought on the dark wings of the Black Hawk. Rough hands lifting and holding the black bag containing the Angel, strain not just the arms backs also the Soul.

“You’re in the arms of the angel

May you find some comfort there

 

So tired of the straight line

And everywhere you turn

There’s vultures and thieves at your back

And the storm keeps on twisting

You keep on building the lie

That you make up for all that you lack

It don’t make no difference

Escaping one last time

It’s easier to believe in this sweet madness oh

This glorious sadness that brings me to my knees

 

In the arms of an angel

Fly away from here “

 

Excerpts:

Sarah McLachlan  “Angel” lyrics

Valkyries in the heart of a giant Black Bird moving with the rough love of detachment -- fear of offending ones own soul, taking an Angel starting the journey  back from the crossing of the Styx of this world.

Combat trauma comes in many guises. Taking an Angel from its last battle in this life -- knowing the loss from this world has just begun, and will last in many hearts for years and lifetimes. The clatter of the mechanical Black Bird, lifts the Angel spirit, ferrying it away from the vast width of the Styx.

The soul of whom lifts the angel bears a burden the mind must ignore, shifting the grief to the soul. The strongest, yet most vulnerable in the struggle of love and life.

The Angel is leaving the field of horror, destruction, grief and despair. Taking the love and grief of those souls left behind. These Angels leave the field of dissolution with the ultimate honor. They did their duty!

Now their honor be born out of this dissolution by warriors, who must stuff the love, hate and tenderness in the soul, stuff it down, keep hidden away until it can be faced it in the light of awareness.

So many of us miss the vulgar life of destruction, the rage of absence of comrades who have gone before, crossed the river of absolution, the visceral reality that we must chose to exist -- to keep our souls here in this world, amidst the grief, angst, and longing for relief. We must honor those Angels who have been released from the torture of delivering the blessing of life or the deliverance of death.

For those who have been in the sacred place of combat, we must remember a sacred place must have the smell of shit and blood of sacrifice that makes it sacred.

We will all know the sound of beating wings, each time, for the rest of our lives, when vibration of a mechanical bird is felt by the soul long before the mind registers a sound. Our soul remembers Angels we know -- sometimes we say hello  -- mostly faces, sights. Floods up from the soul -- not down from the mind.

As a new friend said, “I am too old to fight “ but I might add, we will always remember when we were fighters, and honor those who have taken up the fight, living every breath, minute by minute, and those Angels who have finally come home."

© 2010 by Lily Casura / Healing Combat Trauma. All rights reserved. Use with attribution.

 

The Way of the Snake -- Healing Combat Trauma

From the writer of the recent pieces on ritual and cultural healing for warriors, which we've all gotten to enjoy -- something I genuinely believe is the among the very best writing and thinking we've seen on this site this year. This is totally from the heart, and soul-level wisdom, soul to soul. He writes:

"Since writing these small pieces for your site, memories have come flooding back.I work hard at being detached and articulate, but when I get ready to send a piece, I get lost in a huge feeling of grief.

There are so many stories of love, even in the tragedy of combat, it brings me to tears. which I thought I would not have, trying to be objective in writing about combat and the soul. I am not sure I have ever had a muse, but if I do, she is kicking my ass today. I get so fucking lost in my feelings, working to objectify healing the soul.

I hope Mercury come out of retrograde soon. Just an attempt to ground myself.

Sitting here with tears, wondering WTF. You really are doing great work for warriors."

Then he quotes from a favorite poem, "The Way of the Snake" about combat trauma:

"I lost a year somewhere.

It must have been in Vietnam, I think.

The memories I have from there aren’t

real; they can’t be mine. I don’t know

whose they are, but I hope they

claim them soon—I’ve kept them

far too long.

-- Terry Hertzler, "The Way of the Snake and Other Poems: Writings from the War in Vietnam."

The writer continues:

I spent years looking for Terry, after finding his small book of poetry, and buying all six copies the San Diego store had, little knowing he lived in the same area. I used his writings with many men and women along my path. It as not until 2008, that I finally located Terry on the internet. I called him and we traded stories about his time In country, my use of his poetry, and his coming back stateside. I hope he will write about his “Achilles Tour” in coming back to America.

I write about Terry today, because he stays in my heart, as does his poems and recitations of the things he did after his return to the states. While I would love to recount stories Terry told, they are his stories, and he is the only one that has the right to tell them, however his poems show the effect of the trauma induced by combat.

I share some parts of poems, because he has given me personal permission to us his works. I am not so sure if I were as talented as he, I would be so generous.

I share these thoughts, because they reflect the view of a young warrior after war return, and know they reflect the feelings of many men and a few women I have talked with, in the reconciliation of my own deeds, and failure to understand what price my soul was paying, in all of my involvement in that war.

The fact, that I will carry some things until my death, and perhaps beyond has become less of a burden because I was seen, touched and loved by many people on my path of life. I have had, and still have, great teachers, and have been seen, as worth saving.

I have one picture of me when I was in Vietnam; it was a shock when I discovered it. It was when I began working toward understanding how I could help our returning warriors from these current wars. I could not accept how ragged, out of uniform I was. My mental picture was of a squared away sailor, not an uncovered. Shirt open to the belt, sleeves rolled up, and spiked uncut hair sticking out at angles a nineteen year old kid, standing on the bridge of our small converted LST.

That’s what happens to old veterans, the pictures are as they were, not as we like to recall. The exception is the agony of experience. A picture is perhaps in those days one sixtieth of a second. Memories are in the soul forever. As I was taught, the Huna belief is, the most powerful memories come unbidden in those unaware moments.

For one who has experienced the over pressurization of a M-2 fifty caliber machine gun, so well articulated by Colby Buzzell in his book “Killing Time In Iraq”, or the experience of thrown by the concussion of an explosion, the soul is never unaware.

It should come as no surprise that a returning warrior is hyper vigilant, startled by unexpected noise, people getting in their space, or nervous in crowds.

Returning warriors are evaluated by their chain of command with one purpose. Are they “good to go”. So basically, combat trauma is first observed and evaluated by the lowest ranking personnel in a supervisory position.  Of course highly scientific terms such as “Crazy as a fucking bed bug, but I need him” is the criteria for judgment of combat trauma. Does it qualify as a diagnosis, most assuredly yes! Is the troop mentally impaired? “Fuck No! He’s just like the rest of us!”   

Does obsessively disassembling, cleaning and reassembling a weapon represent a sign of combat trauma?  Who is to know? Perhaps the soul has given the body a function to eliminate physical or mental distress. “Has he got his shit together” “does she have her shit together”? Good to go!

Should we as a nation, or should congress, judge the effect of combat on a person eighteen years old, “Down Range”, when our learned specialists can not agree on what constitutes Combat Trauma. Perhaps we can rely on William Blake, when he wrote “You never know what is enough, until you know what is more than enough”

I return to Terry’s writing, a few excerpts from his writing, “A Vietnam Alphabet":

'D is for dead

E is for E-1, E-2, E-3, etc. those are army ranks. The higher the number, the less chance you will fall under D.

N is for nothing

O is for officers, they often knew nothing.

P is for piece it goes well with

Q which is for quiet. Sometimes too much peace and quiet makes me nervous

R is for R&R, rest and recuperation, rest and relaxation, rest and return.

S is for my friend Sam. Also for shrapnel. Sam stopped a piece of shrapnel with his heart one night.”

-- Terry Hertzler.

Combat trauma starts the first time one hears “Congratulations, you are now a member of the armed forces of the United States of America,” and it never goes away, after experiencing personal danger. It is with us day in, day out, the rest of our lives. The severity of actual personal participation can only be judged by a person’s Soul. To be given a pill, a shot, a cup of foul tasting goop, is not healing the soul. It may deaden, kill, alleviate, delay pain in the body, but it will never heal the soul. Only a person’s soul will know, what it will take to heal their soul, and many warriors are going to need soulful help, in finding comfort for their soul.

A final poem, "Year's End":

“When I was twenty, I lost

Christmas. Like Alice’s rabbit, down

Some dark hole, it disappeared.

I remember New Year’s well

enough. At midnight, the perimeter

Despite all orders to the contrary,

lit up with red, green and white

flares, as tracer rounds

from M-60 machine guns 

wove bright delicate patterns

through the sky.

But Christmas is gone and it frightens me

Christmas is gone—not veiled

in a mist of memory, or crouched

in some dark and secret corner

in my mind, but vanished, completely,

   like some Cheshire cat—leaving

   not even a smile behind

   not even a smile."

-- Terry Hertzler

And finally,

“we never asked to be put into this position

we never had high demands,

we never claimed to be on some kind of mission

like we had some kind of master plan,

it’s not as if we know exactly what we came for

so we settle for what comes our way,

we’re always unprepared for the final encore

what the fuck are we supposed to say.”

-- Clawfinger, "The Price We Pay."

In the Stillhouse of Dread after Combat

(From the ongoing series on ritual as cultural healing for the trauma suffered in combat. Written by a longtime Navy vet who was a leader in the mythopoetic men's movement.) He writes:

Combat Trauma -- The Stillhouse of Dread 

“Oh tear my stillhouse down 

Let it go to rust 

Don’t leave no trace of the hiding place 

Where I made that evil stuff 

For all my time and money 

No profit did I see 

That old copper kettle 

Was the death of me” -- Gillian Welch 

Trauma from combat is an evil brew indeed. It besots the mind, controls the body and absent self intervention can lead to death. The mind remembers, the mind’s eye sees, the body remembers and the soul exists, filled with anger and grief. Sometimes the mind swells inside the brain- which some learned people will deny. 

Nevertheless the mind expands, transcends time and physical bounds, leaves the body. Goes back in time. The taste of fury rises,and a gorge of power races through the body. Sounds, smells, vibrations and the pulsating wave of rapid fire exists, right here, right now. The aura of the body pulls in tight, the body reacts, the limbic of ancient humanity struggling for survival rise from the soul’s depths. The timelessness of intensity is maintained until overload occurs and blocks the mind from the soul, to enable the soul to survive. 

The soul remains to pull the body back from extinction. Unfortunately for some warriors, the soul’s power is greatly diminished and the body continues over the precipice into the solace of suicide. There is no suicide prevention short of physical restraint, which only exacerbates the mind’s disconnection with the Soul. "Talking the talk" helps strengthen the resolute soul, but the inability to change the past, to accept the nature of the soul, through scenes projected by the minds eye leads to the absolute cessation of the strength of the soul. The soul’s power is so depleted, the body mind demands the overload be negated by complete shutdown of all systems. Since the limbic soul fights to live, only an external force can quiet the internal strife that is maddening to the soul. The EVIL BREW of combat trauma prevails: 

“And somewhere a wind ready to find lost (souls) And cover their tracks We walk on, leaves blow past” William Stafford (souls substituted for men because we now have women in combat -- author.) 

Going back to the opening song, we can deconstruct the verse with combat trauma. “Oh tear my stillhouse down let it go to rust” (Eliminate the problems of my soul or psyche.) “Don’t leave no trace of the hiding place” ( No residual disturbance.) “Where I made that evil stuff” (What I did was against the laws of humanity.) “For all my time and money no profit did I see” (My youth, my life was wasted.) “That old copper kettle was the death of me” (The cauldron of warfare has killed my sense of righteousness, I must go underground to rectify my Soul.) 

Mircea Eliade in his work “Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy” discusses ideologies of the Indo—European ideas of life after death, the ecstasy of decent into Hades as an initiation and absorption into magical realm of fallen heroes. Without discussing religious beliefs in various churches and denominations, we can see through many complex civilizations there is a belief of life after death. Eliade also discusses the use of hemp and mushrooms in achievement of intoxication before or during séances. 

In the same discussion he notes the beginning of the use of alcohol and tobacco as the beginning of decadence in shamanic techniques. “Narcotic intoxication is called on to provide an imitation of a state that the shaman is no longer capable of attaining otherwise.” It is not a long step to the position of altering the state of mind through the use of mood or mind altering substances, to alleviate the pain in the mind and Soul. 

While intoxication or the use of mind or mood altering substances can influence conscious pain or confusion (suffering) in returning warriors with extreme mental or physical disturbance, the root of the disturbance lies in the soul. 

The Soul of a returning warrior must go through a metamorphosis to return to a different world, to ascend from Hades, as is indicated in myth and teachings of the ancient teachings of many civilizations. To understand the angst of combat trauma, one must learn the old myths and folklore, and learn to listen to the shadow of the returning warrior. 

If one is to look at military suicides, one must stop at simple interdictions with mood or mind altering substances and go to the interpersonal healing touch of hands and souls. The honest feeling of care and concern given freely. One cannot help but feel in awe of those souls that maintain the watch at suicide hotlines, Those are the last touchstone for many warriors and their families. Not only are they compassionate human beings, they are also warriors in combat with the daemons at war for souls. 

(This writing is meant in no way to impugn any religious belief or practice.)"

In the Dungeon -- Laying Down the Burden after War and Letting It Go

More from the longtime Navy vet and former leader in the mythopoetic men's movement:

“We tend to call it the real war. The rest of it’s just the show biz war. The real war involves getting down there and killing people. And being killed yourself or just barely escaping it. It gives you attitudes about life and death that are unobtainable anywhere else.” -- Paul Russel, "The War" on PBS.

---

"He had 80 weight of Spanish iron

Between his breast bone and his knee

But Billie broke locks

And Billie broke bolts

And Billie broke all that he came nigh

Until he came to the dungeon door

And that he broke most manful lie."

                                    -- Old Ballad.

How can one be free, with 80 weight of “Spanish Iron” trauma between the breast bone and the knee? Out of the combat zone, out of danger, but not out of the trauma, but still have 80 weight of trauma between our breastbone and the knee, that one must carry. Is there a place one can store that “Spanish Iron"?

 Is there a place one can lay down the burden, perhaps just for a while? Just long enough to get some rest, sleep without dreams of horror, not jump from noise, trust someone to touch the body with compassion. Some place where understanding does not get in the way of rest. A place the body can move freely, not tense with expatiation or anticipation... 

If that weight is on the soul, how does one remove it, leave it behind for a while, remember where it is, trust it will stay there forever? We may have to back and check on it, a lot at first, but learn to trust it is in safekeeping. So we can continue on our path toward a new life, unburdened with “80 weight of Spanish Iron”.

There are old ways of leaving heavy burdens borne by warriors, returning from bloody encounters of enemies. There are ways other warriors and community can show a sacred place to store the burdens of war, guarded by ancient spirits of warriors past.

Each warrior has a choice of the manner in which to leave their burden. Some have been washed in lamb's blood, others blessed by a holy man or holy woman, Some, though not many have left burdens to be watched by Fairies and Unicorns. Others have sent their burden into a drum, or flute, instruments taken down from walls, held as one would hold a small child, playing with abandon.

According to ancient warriors, only a ritual or mystical path, will lead one to the right place. The soul of the warrior will know the place none other. Each soul knows the best path to take, though sometimes the body will resist, out of respect to the memories contained in the warriors' Spanish Iron .

Some bodies follow an unknown path, and find solace in a poor storage container. Sometimes these paths promise to be easy. They lead to containers of spirit smoke, and drink, and false intensity which is so familiar to the body, the voice of the Soul is muted.

The correct path for the warrior may also be his or her most difficult one. Many have words that describe this path. One spirit of courage left this saying for those who choose their path:

 “to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”

 “let it go-the

smashed word broken

open vow or

the oath cracked length

wise-let it go it

was sworn to

                     go

let them go-the

truthful liars and

the false fair friends

and the boths and

neithers-you must let them go they

were born

                to go

let all go-the

big small middling

tall bigger really

the biggest and all

things-let all go

dear

       so comes love”

 -- e.e. cummings, U.S. poet (1894 - 1962). 

Warrior Suicides and the Need for Spiritual Rituals for Returning Veterans

(From our ongoing series on ritual for cultural healing after war; again written by the longtime Navy vet who was a leader in the men's movement.) He asks:

"How can we heal the wounds of warriors that are so deep and mystifying that the only solution is to end all consciousness, via suicide?

Vietnam veteran and therapist Arthur Egendorf in his book, Healing from the War: Trauma and Transformation after Vietnam," states that "Healing ins't complete when the pain subsides." He later quotes a Vietnam veteran, Bill Broyles, as saying, “Men love war.” One only has to read a little further to find he states this “is a deep dark secret” that men “don’t dare admit.”

War is combat -- and combat is the "arena of the Gods" -- where the ability to take life from another comes into play. It's the mystical world of life and death, decided in battle or struggle. Perhaps myths of the gods originally came from the miracle of birth, and the unknown of death. Where there was a blow to the head in anger, in play, or happenstance, and death came, unexplained. To cope with this unknown required the evolving human mind to accept the phenomenon of sudden death, such as happens in combat.

We know that combat preparation requires the transformation of a person from the everyday world of youth, which is mostly ignorant of mortality, its own or others', into a god-like position of “Life-Taker and Heart-Breaker”. In the military, this transformation is accomplished through ritual. 

The effect of this ritual can be illustrated in writings of many veterans in speaking of their first Drill Sergeant or Company Commander. This induction into the world of “Life-Taker and Heart-Breaker” leads one into the Realm of the Gods. The power to deliver death or grant life extension, and be the harbinger of wrath and destruction, by the simple movement of one digit of the hand, is sanctioned by the indoctrination ritual. 

This reinforces the ritual in the body, mind and psyche of the warrior. Each sunrise, combat ration, sunset, night patrol or watch increases the intensity of the initial ritual. An additional ritualistic enforcement is the individual performance of cleaning weapons, combat ammunition load, water, stimulants, checking twice or more that everything is in place, and ready to complete the ritual of “Life-Taker and Heart-Breaker”.

Returning warriors come back to land of difference. No longer do they have the power of the Gods. They are returned to a strange land, whose customs are unfamiliar and the people are foreign. There is no ritual of forgiveness of the sins of the soul. There is no magic balm to heal the sin-sick soul. Only loss of life intensity. The skills that were necessary to stay alive and protect comrades are no longer needed.

The ancient way of ritual would be to get the village together and tell a “dilemma story,” and create movement from one world to another. By embodying the dilemma, displacement would occur, allowing the warrior to take a rightful place in the village, or society.

While the ceremony of returned warriors brought back under their shield is the most moving of military ceremonies, the grieving of remaining family and friends must be done outside the government care. One only has to read the stories of destitute loved ones of the abandonment of the relatives after the burial ceremony is complete to hear the angst of unresolved grief. 

Unfortunately alternative healing professions, or Medicine Men and Medicine Women, embodiment through movement, and other non-medical therapeutic modalities are not recognized by the government, the military, or some circles of society.

We lament about suicide but are unwilling to accept spiritual rituals as healing, in the face of veterans utilizing their own resources to obtain better health, through alternative, non-traditional, non-medical or non-Judeo/Christian methods."

After Combat, Healing the Sin-Sick Warrior Soul with Ritual

Periodically we have the honor here of running someone else's writing/thinking with their permission. In this case, it's a longtime Navy vet who also served as a leader in the mythopoetic men's movement in the 80s and 90s, writing about warrior despair, suicide and the culturally healing power of ritual. This is the first of several pieces on the subject. Look for the others, which will appear shortly. Here goes:

"Perhaps only those who have been to the "Arena of the Gods" -- and have been capable, like the gods, of delivering death and destruction -- can understand the true costs of warfare on the soul.

Jonathan Shay, M.D., Ph.D. writes: 

“Acts of war generate a profound gulf between the combatant and the community he left behind. The veteran carries the taint of a killer, of blood pollution...that many cultures respond to with purification rituals. Our culture today denies the need for purification and provides none, even though in the past it has done so.... In the medieval Christian church, everyone who shed blood in war had to do penance. If you committed atrocities, you had to do more penance, but even if you wore a white hat and were a perfect model of proper conduct, you had to do penance. Most warrior societies, as well as many not dominated by warfare, have historically had communal rites of purification of the returning fighter after battle...” 

An Israeli psychiatrist comments:

"It's important to understand the long-term consequences of war and to minimize them," says Dr. Zahava Solomon, a professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Social Work and head of the Adler Research Center for Child Welfare And Protection in Israel. 

“While people tend to perceive war as only taking place on the battlefield," she says, " for many the effects linger long after the battle is over.” "War does not end for a considerable portion of these individuals," she continues, "and relatively high rates of combatants continue to suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) [an anxiety disorder that can occur following the experience or witnessing of a traumatic life-threatening event]. They continue to experience the war in nightmares and flashbacks. We pretty much liken it to cancer of the soul," she said.

And finally, from a Christian leader's perspective:

 “The reality of war is that everyone gets wounded. Some wounds heal rapidly, but some last for a lifetime. The reality is that the wounds of heart, soul and spirit have a spiritual component that is not being adequately addressed. Despite the valiant efforts of many organizations and the commitment of billions of dollars to address these issues, there remains a serious gap – the faith gap.” -- Major General Robert F. Dees, US Army (Retired), Executive Director, Military Ministry, from his introduction to "The Combat Trauma Healing Manual: Christ-Centered Solutions for Combat Trauma," by Chris Adsit.

A recent article by Barbara Barrett covered the work done by a Defense Department task force "devoted to preventing suicide in the military." According to the article, the task force presented 76 recommendations in four primary areas, and additionally made 13 "foundational" recommendations "considered vital to developing a comprehensive Defense suicide prevention model." But none of these recommendations made any mention of the spirit or the soul, or more importantly, how to heal the souls of our returning warriors. Though our currency may say "In God We Trust," the military makes no acknowledgment of the soul of its warriors, and no provisions for their spiritual healing. 

(Ironically, though, it does send warriors off with ceremony. Troops go into battle often accompanied by a chaplain, priest, or other "holy" person, who invokes a "spirit" to bless them in their mission - which in its own way is usurping their opponents' right to life and death.)  

We lament as a nation that so many of our warriors are committing suicide. But at the same time, we ignore the need for any healing rituals for our returning warriors. There is no balm in Gilead for the sin-sick souls. If we can't look to VA or DOD for methods that embrace ritual, perhaps we need to take a look at indigenous peoples in other cultures, or even a few years back in our own.

In the 80s and 90s in this country, men came together in “mythopoetic gatherings,” doing ritual to help veterans and others heal the soul wounds of the Vietnam war. A sacred space was established and the men used storytelling, poetry, music and movement to explore their path to healing. These gatherings were led by Robert Bly, James Hillman, Michael Meade and others, and I was privileged to be a part of them as an elder.

In some of the gatherings, Meade would tell what was known as a "dilemma story." The men would then choose sides and state their case for the correctness of their positions in an attempt to resolve the dilemma.  The ebb and flow of discussion often became heated. The ritual of the dilemma story became a container to hold the anger and angst of the discussion. Even though there was anger, sadness and confusion, the dilemma story remained in the Sacred Space, a container within a container, which guaranteed safety.

According to Meade, when a large group of men gather, there are two questions that reside in the limbic brain (commonly called the lizard brain). “Is someone going to be killed?” and “Is that someone me?” When the lizard brain is able to resolve these questions in the affirmative, the man could begin to participate in the gathering.

In 1992, Native American medicine men traveled from East coast tribes, Midwest tribes and Western tribes to San Francisco to hold a gathering of men. Those men, many of them veterans, participated in ritual alongside these medicine men, using rituals the medicine men brought from their tribal cultures. During this time as well, there were stories of an increasing number of veterans committing suicide. 

The returning warriors from the Vietnam war had fought in combat as a tribe, but then were returned "unceremoniously" stateside, rotated out individually, when their service was ended or when they were discharged -- to no fanfare whatsoever, and to a land that had become different since they left. Little if any attention was paid toward establishing a ceremony, much less a ritual, to help the souls of these warriors, women and men. And the results of this neglectful in-action are still evident in our society. The Vietnam war is a gaping wound in our collective consciousness, and the residual guilt has become one of the reasons why returning OIF/OEF warriors are being welcomed slightly more warmly than their Vietnam war fathers were.

One of the prominent medicine men who helped to establish sacred space and ritualize a healing process was Malidoma Somé. In his book, “Ritual: Power, Healing and Community,” he recounts a ritual done specifically for healing the internal wounds of Vietnam.

As a participant in that ritual, I recently revisited Malidoma’s writings, and the grief that was expressed. While as one of the Elders of the Gathering, I can say that is was one of the most powerful moments in my life. It is my feeling now, that those of us in a leadership role, did not realize the depth of grief men had about the war, and it transferred into the ritual. I believe every man in that gathering went away with a deep knowledge of how powerful ritual is."

Serving the Dragon: The Power of Ritual in Men's Healing after Grief and Trauma

Yesterday we introduced African tribal elder, Malidoma Somé, and a brief excerpt about using ritual for healing in the West. In today's excerpt, we have an excellent, longer interview done with Some, which goes into much greater detail about the richness and purpose of ritual. Big thanks to journalist,  poet and playwright Reid Baer who graciously gave us permission to use his interview in full. (A veteran and advocate well-acquainted with Some's work calls this the best interview he's seen, to date.)

It's fascinating to hear him discuss how simple and powerful ritual can be in helping selves and others to heal after grief and loss. Enjoy...

An interview with Malidoma Somé

In the Dagara tribe of West Africa, the name Malidoma means “He who makes friends with the stranger/enemy.” One wonders if the parents of Malidoma Patrice Some sensed that the name they gave their son would portend so much of his life.

Rising out of his spiritually rich, yet materially impoverished village in Dano, Burkina Faso, West Africa, Malidoma has become a world wide friend, teacher, public speaker, and author of three books: Of Water and The Spirit (his autobiography), The Healing Wisdom of Africa, and Ritual: Power Healing and Community. With the permission of the Dagara tribal elders, Malidoma is now sharing the indigenous wisdom of Africa with the West. This amazing man from humble origin has earned three masters degrees and two doctoral degrees – the first from the Sorbonne (in Paris) and the second from Brandeis University. In a remarkable way, Malidoma bridges cultures like no one else I know.

As Malidoma speaks, his voice carries the excitement, passion, and palpable spiritual quality that befit a gifted medicine man. Only the most accomplished Diviners, Gate Keepers, Shamans, and spiritual leaders are invited into a special “Elder” initiation in the Dagara tribe. Due to Malidoma's accomplishments and importance to his community, he became, at the age of 42, the youngest ever to become an Elder; not to mention the first with a full Western education. He possesses a unique understanding of how psychological disciplines and spiritual rituals can be utilized together in assisting individual personal growth.

“Ritual is the most functional means by which archetypal energies are dealt dealt with,” Malidoma began. “Indigenous people have been aware of that for eons. In the modern era, we focus too much on psychological counseling, he noted. There is a tendency for people to ‘linger endlessly’ in therapy for without receiving significant help. The “shadow” parts of our lives “keep coming back.” Malidoma believes that dealing with “the things we cannot escape” is best accomplished within the sacred space of ritual.

“Ritual facilitates and provides us with a unique channel to access higher power,” he said. “Certain issues don’t want to be resolved mechanistically. We don’t have to know how the power works; we just have to show up and let the higher forces deal with the issues. The trap we feel inside ourselves is removed once we enter into sacred space. The energies know how to push obstacles out.”

Malidoma said we tend to “project a godly power” onto human beings with a resulting dependency on others. It is in the nature of humans to project, he added. The question is, where do we direct the projections?

“Humans can not become god,” he intoned. “So we have to step away from that for a moment and remember the only place where we are authorized to project is in sacred space. If it is divine, then we are healed; if we project onto humans, we are deeply pushed into turmoil.”

Malidoma suggested that men should learn to trust their own ability to create sacred space, where they can be “vulnerable in a sacred fashion and allow themselves to be dismantled so that the rebuilding can produce a lasting result. The sacred space to initiate men is not necessarily a physical place, but an energetic place.

“It’s very hard to do this as an individual thing,” he said. “This kind of healing requires community -- men with men. The healing begins with the destabilization of a man’s energy. When he starts to feel unstable, it is best put in that place where other men or humans are. And eventually he will let go.”

Men usually fool themselves into “serving the big dragon,” Malidoma stated. However, with the help of other men observing from the outside, an initiate will begin to see his own dragon. The collapse of the traditional internal structure can then begin, and the “great opportunity of rebuilding the self occurs.”

“That idea is a hard-sell in this culture because men like to stay in control,” he continued. “Men have no room for a place of risk. In the business of healing, more often than not, we paint over the problems. This danger place that we are obligated to move into is a sacred danger because it endangers the very problems we deal with; and when it endangers them, we feel it endangers us too.”

Modern men identify too closely with their problems, he added, “and we become the problems, not the solutions.”

Malidoma said he believes men use the need for “safety as a condition of healing” as an excuse not to deal with the problem.

“We must endanger the problem by confronting it,” Malidoma instructed. “It is to be dug out of its hiding and exposed to the air. It cannot breathe oxygen. The light of day is lethal to it. That’s why the dragon tells us that we should be safe, because the dragon wants to be safe. We end up actually serving the very thing we want to be rid of.

The creative process is essential in coping with dragons, the Elder noted. “In talking about expression, we have to visualize it as more than speaking English,” he said. “Creativity includes non-verbal expression and the ability to use the entire body as a means of discourse.”

Malidoma said the dragon wants us to be introverted.

“Expression rips open the hidden cages and blind boxes, thereby releasing all the information hiding in there unbeknownst us to us and others,” he said. “To speak constantly into sacred space is to give oneself the opportunity of transcending … taking our lethal pain and diluting it into the ether.”

Malidoma experienced pain early in life when he was abducted from his tribe by Catholic priests and forced into a foreign Western culture. After a number of years, he escaped and returned home, where he was initiated into his indigenous community.

“Ritual or initiation provides a safe place for the soul and body to affirm life over death,” he declared, “to affirm continuity over discontinuity.”

The author said he has found “hope and dignity” through the daily practice of his tribe’s ancient rituals. He prays at the shrine of his ancestors, offering them water or libation, and asking the spirit of nature to walk with him throughout the day.

“After 30 some odd years, everywhere I am, I don’t feel alone,” he said. “I feel like a patrol of powerful spirits surround me. They give me a certain sense of reassurance and pride, so I can walk in the middle of adversity really knowing that in order for the adversity to get to me it will have to get through all these forces. It’s quite reassuring.”

Men don’t need a “sophisticated construction” to participate in ritual. Malidoma recommends we “look up at a tree” or “go to a creek and see the flow of water.”

“There may be some powerful genie dwelling in the water,” he said. “Talk to him like we talk to each other.”

The response may not be the loudest one we hear, but if we’re willing to listen carefully, we can hear the “big noise or echo” of nature tell us that “we’re right and to go on and walk proudly.”

In Malidoma’s village, the men are the spiritual leaders.

“Why? Because this is the kind of power, this is the responsibility every male is born with, and when assumed properly, it becomes authentic,” he said. “Women and children find themselves reassured by the men’s true power. It is when we pretend to assume the power that in fact we are derogatory and chaos is created. True male power is very healing for everybody. And so, if a man is not a self-centered control freak, he is one that will be serving, protecting, and holding the sacred space …. holding the space for everything and everybody to live.”

So, what keeps Western modern man from being the spiritual leaders in their own homes? “Men get caught up in the socio-economic nightmare of giving away most of their time in order to survive,” he answered. “We didn’t come into this world to give all our energy to stay alive, we came here to live. The biggest dragon is the one that tells us we have to work eight hours a day … and we end up being so tired that the very thing our soul is yearning for we don’t have time for. We have to tell each other to take time, and we need to hold hands with each other. Men have to be willing to come together to express what they feel to each other as the first step toward moving into that sacred space so they can heal enough to assume true responsibility in their own household. If we find a little moment to get together to pound on this problem, then we can go back to our respective homes and our partners and children … and they can see us shining in our true glory.”

“Community” is a strong recurring theme in much of Malidoma’s work. He defines it as a “bunch of people willing to come together in a circle in which they are conscious enough to invoke the sacred, the divine … to be with each other so they can express their authentic self to one another.”

“If men are willing to come together and be with each other, knowing they need supervision of the divine in order that their being together is not limited to talking about current events and drinking beer, then they have become a community.”

The community is strengthened by “invoking the sacred,” he added, but not by making themselves exclusive.

“Once we start attacking and excluding other communities then we have become a club,” Malidoma explained, “and then we have taken the ideas of society into our club, and the dragon prospers in us as a community.”

People sitting around and talking about the faults of other people are not a true community.

Malidoma expresses his own sense of community and his personal spiritual creative process this way: “I draw from bone energy and the memories that come from the bone. I allow myself to surrender to the higher forces with the clear intention that I want to be as clear and precise as possible. What comes out is something almost independent of me. There’s something quite militant in it, because when I express myself, and not after heavy duty preparation, I know that spirit is speaking through me. When I feel that intensity coming out, when I feel it, I know someone else will feel it. Every time I have attached my own emotion or capacity, I have to stand back and get out of my way so higher forces can speak. That has been transforming. I like to call that spirit. Spirit expresses itself in a way we cannot map, cannot tell ahead of time, and has its own plan – a plan not known to us. To know it, we have to surrender to it. It’s a risky thing. And risk-taking in the business of feeling, is worth doing. Check out www.malidoma.com.

© 2005 Reid Baer. Used with permission.

It Takes a Village: Ritual, Power, Healing and Community

Ritual is another way that human collectives (tribes, societies, etc.) attempt to purge grief communally after trauma. While military tradition may be strong on tradition and ceremony, it's noticeably light on ritual. Ritual is more primitive, primeval, visceral. But it's also got a long, long background, anthropologically speaking, in helping human beings all over the world cope with the benchmarks of life on earth: birth, death, and everything significant in between. 

Recently we took a look at storytelling among Native American warriors as a way to address trauma after war communally. Here we hear African tribal elder Malidoma Somé, Ph.D., bridge the gap between first world and third world as he describes a ceremonial "cleansing" ritual in which various men participated. We'll go into more detail on this topic later, and hear about and from those experienced with the popular men's movement in the 80s and 90s, who followed examples such as the one Somé describes -- but in the meantime, let's use this excerpt from one of Somé's books to orient ourselves to some of the benefits of ritual after grief, such as that which warriors -- servicemembers and veterans -- experience:

"The cleansing was happening. So much grief surfaced that ... it was a success. I saw hot tears flowing from wet eyes. That felt good. I heard sincere groans and yells and screams that almost made me feel like I was home again (in an African village). The ritual was working.

Even though it was just scratching the surface, the scratch was at least opening something. In a way, there was an invitation to unleash grief. The experience left people empty, light, and -- above all -- miraculously prone to celebrate. I understood why, in the village, life rotates around grief and celebration. People celebrate because they have paid their dues to the dead. The other side of real grief is real joy. Unfinished grief translates into petty joy and silly amusement. The experience taught me a great deal. Without ritual, humans live in nostalgia.

When there is an opportunity for people to mourn their losses, the horizon for rites that heal will be pure and bright, and healing will come pouring into the souls in a great moment of reunion."

-- Malidoma Patrice Somé, from "Ritual: Power, Healing and Community: The African Teachings of the Dagara." 

The Healing Space between Inspiration and Destruction

As the last quote I'd like to introduce from Robert Johson, the Jungian analyst, for now, it's a passage about a type of altar seen among "primitive" peoples in Peru, who often carry this altar with them, the better to address spirituality wherever they are. I've made a botch-up of the illustration, because I wasn't able to find a "perfect" representation of the mesa, so it's a combination of several that I saw. Here is Johnson's quote. Once again, it's part of the ongoing "conversation" we're having, about whether one side has to "win out" in our natures in order to heal. Johnson and the curanderos of South America would seem to say, "no." Healing is what takes place in the space between...

 "A particularly powerful form of (overlap between darkness and light, or the self and its shadow side) can be seen in the customs of South American curanderos, who are a curious mixture of primitive shaman and Catholic priest. Their mesa (table) is an altar where they say Mass for the healing of their patients. They divide this altar into three distinct sections. The right is made up of inspiring elements such as a statue of a saint, a flower, a magic talisman; the left contains very dark and forbidding elements such as weapons, knives or other instruments of destruction. The space between these two opposing elements is a place of healing. The message is unmistakable: our own healing proceeds from that overlap of what we call good and evil, light and dark. It is not that the light element alone does the healing; the place where light and dark begin to touch is where miracles arise." -- Robert A. Johnson, Jungian analyst, author of "Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche."

For more on the topic of the "Tao of Healing," click here. It's a selection of quotes that represents the ongoing, organic process that we undergo whenever we want to get well.

Editor's note: For more on the curanderos and their mesas, click here or here.