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Tham Zhiwa's avatar

Thank you two so much for this heartfelt convo. I've been thinking a lot lately about the Fisher King myth, which I conclude with in my most recent paper: "The symbolic significance of the Holy Grail in this story has to do with a sickness that is on the land. Camelot is an impoverished place, as captured eloquently in the “broken images” of T.S. Elliot’s “Wasteland” (where he poignantly poses the question: “That corpse you planted last year in your garden, / Has it begun to sprout?”). In his first visit to the palace, Perceval fails in his quest to obtain the grail. It is years before he gets a chance at redemption, and wiser this time he succeeds. The sickness is lifted from the land. How? Simply by asking the Fisher King the right question: 'What ails thee?'

In a very real sense, this question marks an evolutionary leap in human intelligence when the

word “trauma” ceases to refer solely to physical injury, as it originally meant in Greek, and

instead takes on a new dimension of psychological injury - the way we understand trauma today.

The King is unable to heal because the psychological wound that he carries, masked by the

physical wound, has yet to be acknowledged, let alone addressed. Once it is brought into the

light of awareness by Perceval, and perhaps for the first time acknowledged by the King himself,

healing becomes possible, and almost magically commences. The wasteland itself is regenerated

- thus recognizing the direct connection that exists between human trauma and environmental

injury." https://www.academia.edu/125461505/Gaia_Psychology_A_Positive_Psychology_Reset_for_an_Ecological_Future

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Anna's avatar

I need more time to think about this —- and

These quotes from interview stick out:

“My favourite phrase here is that ‘we are all walking around with trauma’ — and it’s like traumatized bodies with layers of makeup — and then make money in this hyper-individualistic, capitalist world to try to cover our layers of grief with more cars, bigger houses, more consumption.

“So that trauma and that shame, that inadequacy, that comes from not having taken care of each other’s pain, is driving us to embrace a system that is killing our Mother Earth. So this trauma healing work is essential.”

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

— Walking around with trauma (often in dissociated state)

— Focus on making money and consuming (flight response)

— Ignoring the pain of others because ‘feeling’ others pain can cause us to have to feel our own pain and suffering which might perceive as unbearable or too immense to face (Michael Brown makes that point in the Presence Process).

— Supporting system that destroys the planet which is utterly unsustainable.

Thanks for presenting the basic bullet points and how trauma and health of planet is connected.

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