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While driving across the Richmond Bridge from Berkeley to Marin County in California I had a random 70’s song list playing on iTunes. (I know… I can hear my DJ son rolling his eyes). Anyway, Carly Simon came on singing an old favorite…

‘Cause I haven’t got time for the pain
I haven’t got room for the pain
I haven’t the need for the pain
Not since I’ve known you

You showed me how, how to leave myself behind
How to turn down the noise in my mind.

As I sang along, I heard the words differently. Earlier that day, on a zoom call with two colleagues who are experts in creating large scale spiritual and self-development summits I was shocked to discover that there were hundreds of thousands of people attending summits on TRAUMA. If you look up ‘trauma summit’ on google, you will get 350,000 results in less than one second and if you google ‘trauma’ directly, over 9 trillion results in the same amount of time. That’s A LOT of interest in trauma.

It’s worth taking a moment to contemplate humanity’s relationship to ‘trauma’ beyond possibly our own personal experience. Since the dawn of time the human story, though filled with great achievements and development, has been one of fragmentation, separation and suffering. The evolutionary template for human existence is a design emphasizing individual development through a kind of hero’s or heroine’s journey. Our existence depends on being separate individuals learning to survive and succeed in this world.

One simple example is the split between matter and spirit we experience through our individual incarnation. We can feel trapped, lost, alone and disconnected from source. We focus on trying to stay anchored into our bodies or we meditate and try to free ourselves from the limitations of the mind and density of physical existence.  The endless struggle to overcome separation defines our relationship to the earth, ourselves, our bodies and each other. And even with all the time and energy devoted to our individual healing and development, we seem to be swimming in an overwhelming amount of...