Thomas Hübl, renowned spiritual teacher, author, expert on collective trauma, and creator and facilitator of The Collective Trauma Integration Process, shares fascinating, life changing information about the dynamics of collective trauma — how it is embodied and perpetuated in the language we use, and how we are bound together in a sort of “mutual collusion” that predisposes us to repeat our past, and to repeat over and over the things we would much rather leave behind. With remarkable insight and wisdom garnered from years of study, exploration, and effectively working with large groups to integrate collective shadow, Thomas also explains how we can create space for a new future by metabolizing the suffering held in both our personal and collective unconscious and making awakening and spiritual clarity the indubitable priority of our lives.
Recorded at the Science and Nonduality Conference, October 2019, with Dr. Roger Walsh, John Dupuy, and Douglas Prater.
Note: This podcast was recorded live and includes, at times, some extraneous noises in the background. Please excuse them — we felt the conversation was very valuable and well worth sharing with our audience. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
Topics & Timestamps: Part 1
- Introducing Thomas Hübl (01:03)
- By definition, awakenings are not nondual if people haven’t dealt with their shadow: nondual needs to be the talk and the walk (3:03)
- The body is a sophisticated energy pipe system; mystics are like plumbers or electricians who free up the pipes (05:50)
- On stabilizing, generalizing, integrating insights: state practices versus process awareness (07:10)
- Tibetan Buddhism’s three developmental maps: 1) turning towards contemplative practice, 2) the stabilization of realized states, 3) ongoing purification (08:56)
- We need to commit to a spiritual path, to cleaning up, and make space to clear things or the same difficulties will repeat again and again (10:12)
- Trauma is the collapse of time/space (11:46)
- Making divine awakening your highest priority is what constitutes a serious practitioner (14:06)
- All serious shadow and trauma work is relational (15:24)
- How can we stay committed to the path? Community, an externalization of our intention (18:22)
- Two challenges: We are tempted to abandon our practice both when it gets very dark—and when life gets very good (20:35)
- Consciousness is catching: the way to develop desired qualities is to hang out with people who embody the qualities we want (22:14)
- Our cultural relationship to hierarchy: we’ve thrown it out, but there are hierarchies of development, maturity, wisdom, insight, and compassion that should be honored
- What are the most valuable ways to engage with what is inside us and integrate what we discover? (25:18)
- Paying attention to congruence and coherence in our mental, physical, and emotional expression (28:21)
- Collective trauma: all of us have been born into a traumatized world (29:10)
- Healing the broken reality: every trauma healing needs to result in an ethical upgrade; we have to become better people (31:54)
- Thomas’ collective trauma group work where the field in the room is able to mirror the unseen dimension stored in the cultural unconscious (32:31)
- We are all sculptures in a transpersonal nervous system, called to metabolize the suffering held in both our personal and collective unconscious (38:14)
- The work of purification is more than only shadow work (00:48)
- Shadow, encoded trauma, and the “it-ification” of processes: how language embodies and perpetuates shadow (02:40)
- We are in mutual collusion in perpetuating shadow in this collectively traumatized world (06:22)
- Language keeps the past in place and the destiny of humanity fixated (08:50)
- Our relational network is an extension of our immune system (10:43)
- The word is creation and the art of truth telling is a practice (11:10)
- Climate change is an externalization of the pollution in our interiors (15:44)
- The need for us (and our leaders) to say I’m sorry to each other publicly (16:52)
- Letting go of the need for comfort (20:01)
- We are all writing or composing our experience moment by moment (22:07)
- We find God in the deepest expression of our own purpose (23:42)
- Our energy needs to be consciously integrated to clear a space for a new future (27:37)
- It is essential to adjust our practice over time (31:11)
- Spiritual clarity = knowing what we see and also what we don’t see is God’s will (35:05)
- Opening to the bottomless mystery (37:45)
- Walking the path of karma yoga (39:36)