AVIA……………………………………….wendy salter

Post Trauma Stress Disorder by Wendy Salter

During a trauma we suffer stress: physical, mental, emotion stress. Afterwards we expect to recover, over time. The symptoms can vary from person to person. ‘Strong’ people recover normally but some people, perhaps more sensitive, and possibly seen as ‘weak’ people, take longer. Some people don’t recover and they never reclaim an ‘ordinary’ life. This latter group of sufferers is now diagnosed as having PTSD – Post Trauma Stress Disorder.

With regard to the article sent to me by friend and journalist, Brenda Hanson, outlining the results of a study done on a group of PTSD suffers in Canada, reported in Thunder Bay [Variants in stress-related gene help ...
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhttddcw_0cmz2rrcf&invite=r2q4vz ], and illuminating the subject of a variant gene being involved, I outline here my own observations on the subject.

It is always exciting when a new discovery is made. It is then up to us to decide whether this discovery adds to our knowledge or not, and whether it can be utilised to good effect. The scientific world looks to prove something, with clinical trials to provide data and statistics. When this backs up previously held suspicions or beliefs it is a wonderful thing. We must, at all times ask whether the new information expands our wisdom on things, rather than just making a statement that limits us.

Are the faulty genes the cause of the problem or are they the end result of a problem? To allocate the cause of any dis-order to faulty genes, we may run the risk of limiting ourselves, by halting the ever-necessary investigation into the true nature of dis-ease. We could say ‘Ah! We have found the dastardly culprit, now we can blame it and stop looking!’ But does that lead us to a healing process and a cure?

If a sufferer is told ‘It’s in your genes’ the general assumption of a lay-person may be that it’s just their bad luck and that there is nothing more they can do about it.

This doesn’t mean that the identification of a contributing gene may not be relevant. It may be relevant in identifying the person who may be more prone to the condition – QED- but not that their fate is not only pre-determined but that it is also final and fatal.

Should we not ask, when considering the cause of a disorder, to research into the possible purpose of that disorder? PTSD is a set of symptoms, not a disease from a known virus, for example. Each person who is presenting any one of, or all of the identified symptoms is a unique case and is presenting a unique, to them, set of circumstances. PTSD is possibly the acute or chronic stage of other stresses, which are coped with but at this level the person just cannot cope any longer and there is a breakdown, physically, mentally and emotionally. PTSD becomes evident after an accumulation of stress, or excessive stress. The external, circumstantial causes can be from any type of trauma.

To land conveniently on the genetic platform and announce ‘eureka!- this is the cause’, is bypassing the problem, for it requires another leap to saying it is the cure. Nevertheless, there has to be benefits of knowing the gene state.

• The presence of the gene can be a contribution to the solution

• The presence of the gene can identify the level at which stress becomes acute and PTSD

• The presence of the gene can identify groups of people who accumulate such levels of stress.

Dis-ease and dis-order is the physical outcome and end result of a disruption in the well-being, safety, life-force, spirit/body relationship and evolution of the person. It can also be the set of keys to unlock the cure.

Any one gene which is seen to be contributing to a certain condition can be looked at as the cause, but then we must ask the question ‘How did that gene become the signature of that condition?’ If a gene brings about a physical manifestation, it will be seen as the cause, but what caused it to be different.? What is the cause of its nature? What happened to it to make it different to others and create a pattern within itself to cause that condition? Is it possible that the condition itself, over generations, caused the gene to change?

Do potential soccer-playing genes, accumulating information and creating specific patterns over generations, suddenly present a soccer-player gene?

Genes are the patterns of DNA held in the chromosomes that split during fertilisation of the ovum. The accumulated information from past millennia forms patterns which shows up as a personal attribute, physical feature, character trait or defect in the person. Some are good, some are bad, all are changing. Evolution determines those that survive and those that disappear by making the person strong or weak. This is Darwinism. There is another ‘ism’ and that is that we, as incarnating spirits choose the lineage that can offer us the best circumstances for us to evolve in, as a spiritual being. ‘Spiritualism’. Either way we have a very diverse gene-pool to choose from.

Continual ’stress’ will sift the proverbial wheat from the chaff. Some of us will weaken under stress and some of us will thrive. All humans who start demonstrating the inability to cope with stress, [hard-ship, shock, trauma, degradation, malnutrition, lack of love, etc.,] will find an opportunity to find a new approach to coping. They will seek it out, investigate, experiment, persevere and survive, or cave in and perish. And there will always be doctors, scientists, therapists and healers to help them.

At this time in history we have an opportunity to strengthen our inherent genetic patterning with some very new, innovative, ground-breaking, exciting and positive approaches, with new understanding of how the mind works, the spirit/body relationship and the role of diet and natural medicines. Perhaps we are remembering and rediscovering some very old ways, too.

In days gone by, a soldier finding himself unable to cope with the extra-ordinary stresses of the war he has to fight, the battle-field he finds himself on and the conditions he has to deal with to either live or die, will have several choices.

• He may just survive, by the skin of his teeth, and with a lot of good luck.

• He may do something extra-ordinary and be held up as a hero

• He may find he doesn’t have a choice and gets killed

• He may not cope and run away, or tries to.

• He may just survive long enough to come home, only to find his life is in ruins and his ability to recover from his injuries has gone

In the old days all surviving soldiers were heralded as heroes – some more than others and those got medals. Those who suffered ’shell shock’ didn’t recover. Those who ran away were shot. They were branded ‘cowards’, ‘weak’, or having ‘low moral fibre’, or ‘LMF’.

I saw a TV program on the subject of heroism: why and how heroic deeds were done and who became a ‘hero’. Out of the 6 veterans that were featured, who had been awarded medals for bravery, not one of the six knew they were being brave at the time. Not one of the six had decided to be a hero. Not one of the six thought of themselves as heroes and not one of the six had their medal on display or talked about it.

Is it all about being in the right or wrong place, at the right or wrong time? Or is it about having the right or wrong genes? Or is it that at any one time any one of us has a choice? Do we know we have that choice at the time or do we just find ourselves doing something? Who we are and how we got to be that person is such a complex subject, it is a lifetime’s study.

If we believe that this one life is all there is, then nothing matters anyway; none of it is for any reason, it has no purpose; it is just an accidental occurrence and not worth discussing.

But we all know that that’s not the case. We know that what we do in any situation affects others as well as ourselves. In that case what we do is important and if it is important it’s not just for five minutes self-gratification. It must have a lasting significance, even after our passing and if that’s the case then we are all experiencing now the lasting effects of what happened before - that which others did before us.

If the genes we inherit were designed by our ancestors, everything they did to evolve those genes, to change them for better or worse, are in us now and it is up to us to do what we will with them. So what do I do if I inherit a bad gene which will pre-dispose me to cope badly with stress; what do I do about it? Roll over, give up and die? Go to a shop and but a new one? Or re-design the one I’ve got? I guess re-designing a gene takes some time, so where do I start?

What came first, the chicken or the egg? If I am past the age of passing on my genes to my offspring, how does changing my genes benefit anyone else? The Native Americans say that whenever I heal myself, I do it for all my relations: ‘Mitakwe Oyasin’. So what do I change?

I change the way I think. I change the way I view things, get a new perspective. I change the way I do things, behave differently. I can change the way I deal with things. And I can show others that I didn’t give up, that I can learn from it and in that way help others that come after me. Wounds heal. Stress can be relieved. Lessons can be learned. PTSD can be cured. Genes can change, in us and in those who learn from us.

But that is only the physical, mental and emotional side. What about the non-physical side? This, I know, is hard for a lot of people to understand. If I start talking about ‘energy’ or ’spirit’ many people will think I am talking about fairies, or ghosts, and religion. I am talking about neither.

It is scientifically proven that we are energy – vibrating, moving, living energy which ranges across such a wide spectrum that we can only see one part, hear one part, sense another part and have no idea about the rest. Some people, like me, ’see’ and ’sense’ more than others and so I ‘know’ there is more to life than what we are physically aware of. [Convincing others is more difficult].

It is also proven that energy is influenced by thought and so how and what we think is a relevant point to discuss.

If someone who has a disability in coping with post trauma stress is told ‘It’s because you have a different, faulty or bad gene’, they will lose hope in ever recovering. If they are told they can be helped, hope returns. Positive thoughts return and already things are changing for the better.

When someone who understands and can communicate with the complex negative thoughts and memories in the unconscious mind and can work synergistically, i.e. using a variety of techniques together, and can say ‘we can help you’, even more hope comes to the sufferer.

And when the Power of healing – the highly charged energy - that moves, re-charges and re-enlivens every atom of that person, even in the genes, that person will feel so much hope, have so many positive thoughts, that any inherited gene that says ‘you will not cope with stress and you will not recover well from trauma’ will begin to change. The encoded information will change. Pre-set negative and destructive patterns will re-organise themselves and start to create a new pattern and the consciousness in that gene will be changed. The new consciousness in that gene will return to the collective consciousness after death with a different message and will then return in a new life with new abilities. It will have evolved.

The term ‘Akashic Records’ [origin unknown] describes the unlimited store of information about all life, forever, from the beginning to the end. It is a record of all lives and experience and it is also a library of all potential life and experience. It may be that the DNA in every cell in all living things holds the link to the Akashic Records and the genes are what has been selected for that life-time for that person.

When studying the aspects of ‘Past Lives’ we can tap into information that is in the unconscious memory from before this life-time. A past life scenario can play like a film demonstrating an event of a personal connection that can throw some light onto why certain circumstances are being experienced now.

‘Soul Retrieval’ is another method of healing, where lost memories, aspects of the ’self’ can be retieved, to awaken dormant DNA, or eliminate erroneous information that is now redundant or not belonging to the present situation. Akashic Records, past lives and soul retieval do not belong to the cientific world and yet old cultures of the indiginous people of the world have practiced this form of healing for millenia. It is provable in its efficacy by the results. Maybe we do not have to understand it more than that. Let the researchers do some test trials on these proceedures to witness the results but we have to give up for good the need to know and understand the ‘how’. We all believe the grass grows because we can witness it. We can observe it, scientifically study it and learn it’s process but we don’t really understand the ‘how’.

Another aspect is this: we are all unique. We are all born with a unique set of circumstances. No one cure-all can be 100% right for all people. Each one of us has a choice – are we going to let a trauma, a little gene and some bad thoughts and feelings get in the way and destroy us or are we going to use this opportunity to learn something, especially about ourselves, and discover something new – that the little gene can change, traumas can be healed and bad thoughts and feelings can dissipate allowing new good ones to arrive? It’s up to us.

“The nature of dis-ease holds the key to the cure of that dis-ease”

“If you want to change your life, change the way you think, because thoughts manifest according to their nature”.

An Example of gene programming: Back in time, something took place which we call ‘The Slave Trade’. Black people were enslaved by white people. According to the accounts, both personal, eye-witness and third-hand, extreme cruelty was inflicted on the slaves – not just once, but continually for some, and for successive generations. These experiences may have caused a ‘variant gene’, which was passed on and is now in the present generation, as a memory, to serve a purpose. The descendants of the slaves may experience something similar – child abuse, racial prejudice, injustice, poverty, poor social standing, and lack of freedom. If a traumatic event is experienced by someone in this generation, and they have a serious lack of ability to cope, they may be diagnosed as having PTSD. Investigation reveals a certain variant gene, in more than one case, and the gene is cited as the cause of PTSD or an increased risk of it.

It is possible that a variant gene does not CAUSE PTSD or an increased risk of it.

It is possible that the variant gene is CAUSED BY PTSD.

History repeats itself. We all know that fighting, racial hatred, greed, victimisation, cruelty, tyranny, etc. is bad, wars are bad. It doesn’t stop them happening. PTSD isn’t new – it’s as old as mankind. Maybe we are just learning to recognise the symptoms, acknowledging their existence as something we can help and change for the better, and finally seeing that Man does indeed hurt man. But he can also help man, heal man and be kind and love man.

If there is a variant gene for PTSD, or an increased risk of suffering from it in some people, there must also be a variant gene for learning, changing, heroism, healers, kindness, and unconditional love.

By Wendy Salter, 16^th April, 2008

Hermes was a handsome Greek god and Aphrodites was a beautiful Greek goddess and they were so perfectly matched, reflected each other so perfectly, that their union in love gave birth to Hermaphroditus. A picture of him/her can be seen on the last card in the Major Acana of the Greek Mythic Tarot - ‘The World’. The teaching of this card in the Tarot is one of balance, unity, perfection and being whole. The four elements of earth, water, fire and air come together as a perfection of creation through the evolution of all the human aspects: the physical being, the intellect, the imagination and the emotions. Beauty, the imaginative and logical mind working creatively together and unconditional love as the expression of the enlightened spiritual being through the earthly human being.

Let us imagine for one moment a simple possibilty. If the ‘Whole’ is all the aspects of life between the poles of gender existence, from one extreme, masculinity, to the other, femininity, together in Oneness, and the separation of these two polarities is for the purpose of evolution, experience, knowledge and Self-consciousness, the journey away from and back to the ‘Whole’ is ‘Life’. From the beginning of Time, back to the end of Time, we can explore ‘Life’. The polymorphic reproduction of life is what life on earth is all about, and this is the source of our anxieties about genetic interference, modification and cloning.

Somewhere on this journey, we, as human beings, will experience being male or being female, with the potential to be the other in recession. The moment we become conscious of the opposite state hidden within us, we find ourselves in a position of choice. We can be one or the other, or both, to any degree at any one time. Picture the Managing Director of a Global Conglomerate wearing high heels and lipstick. The two aspects wouldn’t normally go together, in our view of a male and female world, but it has already happened. Imagine a six foot muscular, hairy truck driver feeding the baby. Again, another strange situation to imagine, yet I am sure there are some nurturing truckies out there. But why? Does a woman have to lose her femininity to rule in a ‘man’s world’; and does a man have to lose his masculinity to participate in a ‘woman’s world’? We allocate these roles to each gender purely because the traits of the gender lend themselves more easily to the role. But should that rule out the choice to swap roles?

Likewise, in a less extreme situation, can boys and girls both learn to cook and play football? Of course they can. But can men wear women’s clothes? Can women wear men’s clothes? Absolutely! In fact many men find women in dungerees and a hard hat very attractive and I have to admit the long dark locks and silk shirt of a Regency dandy quite appeals to me! Why? Because the sexuality/gender of the person is not only about what we wear. I have seen many strong, non-high-heels-and-lipstick feminine women become mothers, go about their career, choice of life-style or activity without any criticism. And there are many non-hairy, non-muscular men who are beautiful and soft and still very male and good fathers.

Since the very early beginnings of theatre, men and women have changed roles. The Greek Mythologies are full of men being women and women being men. Pantomimes still play with this form of entertainment. Angels are seen as being neither male nor female and both together. They are perceived as tall and strong, wise beyond our knowing, gentle and kind and beautiful, handsome and graceful. They are pure Light. [Actually I see them as vibrating webs of golden thread, patterns of conscious intelligence and not human in form but that's another story].

There are, however, areas of modern life where men and women who act out-of-role, or feel differently and wish to live honestly with that, incite the wrath of public opinion; they upset the proverbial apple cart and seem to present some gender blurring, or morality questions we should be finding a solution for. It is just a matter of being open-minded, thinking outside-the-box for a moment. If a person’s appearance upsets us then we are living in the wrong century! Surely, by now, we have enough diversity in personal taste, physicality, fashion, culture and national differences to be tolerant to anything new and different. In the world of art, there is a direct intention to re-create what we already know into new concepts. In the world of fashion, the haute-couture designers push out and destroy the boundaries of conventionalism every day. So it is not so much about what we look like. There seems to be something else more subtle and hidden that will make us feel a gender difference is uncomfortable, or wrong in some way.

This week has seen a first in the world of the internet: the online debut of the works of Charles Darwin.

Chapter I ‘The Descent of Man’, Charles Darwin

‘HE who wishes to decide whether man is the modified descendant of some pre-existing form, would probably first inquire whether man varies, however slightly, in bodily structure and in mental faculties’.

If nothing else, Darwin set out, over a life-time, to study the effect of time on living things. He observed so much diversity that he suspected a natural law at work which aroused his curiosity. How did living creatures become so different? The more he looked the more diversity he found. His conclusion was that we are evolving, changing all the time, according to the influences of living in this world and with each other. He concluded that it was inevitable that we would change. I wonder if he ever thought that what he was observing on his travels was a prototype, a work in progress, or an end result?

The human embryo in its first stage of gestation is neither gender; it is an androgen [although some say the cells are actually female, probably because they are being created within the female body], but at around 8 weeks, one gender is favoured. This primary stage is a living replica of the primary stage in the evolution of life on Earth and each stage of development of the young embryo, foetus, baby and child replicates the evolution of man, through all the animal forms. The toddler is demonstrating the time when we, humans, stood up and became erect. We are continuing this evolution now. It may just be, hypothetically, that the end result will be a hermaphrodite, the male and female in one body, able to reproduce asexually.

Do we as humans have an arrogance about us being an end result, the top of the class, perfection? I don’t honestly think the majority of human beings think that. But some seem to think that their opinion is correct and final.

If religion has any positive role to play I shall expound my theories on it another day. One development of religion is that it gives some folk the right to judge others. If they are not matching the model of their religion, all others must be faulty. Enough said.

In the urge to criticise and judge, we humans show a lack of understanding about how we perceive another. We don’t like to feel uncomfortable and if we have to witness someone very different to ourselves, we feel threatened in some way and the first line of defense is attack. This is a primal reflex to a stranger, something unknown and different - not a member or our clan or tribe. But when we judge it to be wrong, we are not recognising the possibility that that trait is in us too.

What I would like everyone to think about is this: If there is going to be diversity in this world, and that diversity has a purpose, then we should not be criticising any form of life. Whatever gender, male or female, male/female, female/male, colour, shape, size or height we happen to be we may be perfection-in-the-making. Whatever gift, talent, style, view, expression we happen to have we may be perfection-in-the-making. But if anyone of us is having a bad day, suffering, in pain, lost, lonely or sad, we may have forgotten that we are perfection-in-the-making and may need a little help and a little tolerance and understanding from others.

If you are feeling good about yourself, smile and let the world know that you are seeing your perfection-in-the-making today and if you are struggling, just remember these words, and ask for help.

Have you found the right place?

Yes - if you are looking for an inspirational novel to read online - see ‘Her Stories’, the Book

Yes - if you are interested in Past Life work, exploration, - see ‘Her Stories’, the Book, and ‘Practitioner Profile’

Yes - if you are looking for something interesting to read on esoterics, spirituality, natural health, human nature, environmental things, global issues, - see ‘Wisdom and Insights’

Yes - if you would like to learn more about me, WENDY SALTER, Holistic Practitioner - see ‘Practitioner Profile’ and ‘About me’

Yes - If you are looking for serious help with a personal, physical, emotional, mental or spiritual problem, or PTSD, or writing, or photography, or shamanic practice,- see ‘Practitioner Profile’ and ‘Friends’

Yes - If you are writing a book, or would like to - see ‘The Bookwright’ and ‘Friends’

Yes - If you have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and are looking for relief - see ‘Quantum Performance/Synergie’ on Blogroll, and ‘Practitioner Profile’ and ‘Friends’

Yes - If you are looking for some education and training in being a ‘Lightworker’ - see ‘Psycademy’ and ‘Friends’

[No - if you are looking for a cheap Ferrari]