Cultivating basic trust and supporting deep healing

Session 4 Part 3 - Discussion

Guests: Gabor Mate and Hameed Ali

Disclaimer: The contents of this interview are for informational purposes only and are not intended to be a substitute for
professional psychological advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This interview does not provide psychological advice, diagnosis, or
treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a
medical or psychological condition.

[00:00:05] Gabor Mate

Let me tell you about somebody else that I know. You may have heard of this woman. Her name is
Anita Moorjani. She wrote a book called, Dying to Be Me. And I interviewed Anita, and she's not the
only one, but she is literally in hospital, every organ in her body shutting down, and she hears the
physicians telling her husband to get ready for the worst. And then she has this near death direct
experience of unity and oneness. And she's looking at herself from the outside, just like looking at
yourself from the outside. And she knows she's going to be okay. And she heals from this terminal,
literally terminal, experience. And it's not the only case like that that I know. So there's something
about... She really had a moment of spiritual awakening which completely reconfigured her immune
system and enabled it to defeat this terminal cancer that the doctors were completely helpless in the
face of.

Hameed Ali
Yeah. So what we're talking about, Gabor, is that we're showing that having an experience that for
many people, for most people, would be very traumatizing and will limit their life, they'll feel
suppressed, for some people, it doesn't. It either doesn't make them traumatized, or sometimes it
does the opposite, it opens them up to something greater. So it's important for everybody to know
that just by having different experiences doesn't mean you're going to be traumatized.

And that is one point I wanted to bring up, which is in my work with the trauma and the spiritual work,
as you know, Gabor, most spiritual teachings don't work with trauma, right? They don't know about it.
They don't understand it. They don't have the method to deal with it. And when it appears they don't
know what it is.

In my work, I noticed that many of my students tend not to have trauma, right? Not all of them, many
of them. I work with them. They seem to move and learn whatever. And because whatever happened
to them, whether they had difficult experiences or not, it's not like they don't have pain. They have
pain, they have hurt, they have wounding, they have emptiness, but they go through it okay, some
with my help.

But for some people, it's like, whatever I do doesn't work. And at some point, me or them realize there
is a trauma someplace, something that they don't want to go near. And some of the traumas, if it is
mild trauma, I can work with it. But if it is a severe trauma, I will usually refer them to a good
specialized trauma therapist while I'm working with them. I don't discontinue. And what I noticed
when some of these people I send them, they do biodynamics, somatic therapy, whatever it is. And
within a few months, a few years, it really changes things. They become much more open spiritually.

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So trauma work is very, really important to open up people for spiritual work. That's what I find in my
work.

[00:03:39]

But the important distinction I'm making is that many of my students, they're not traumatized,
although they have pain. So having pain in one's life, having abandonment, doesn't mean one's
traumatized. Trauma is when we have something not only painful, but we don't want to go near it. It's
too much for us to do.

Gabor Mate
I agree. Trauma is not pain, trauma is a constriction that happens as a result of pain.

Hameed Ali
Yeah, it's not only a restriction, it's a specific restriction because all pain brings in repression. But the
trauma has a kind of frozenness or some kind of dissociation or specific terror about it that makes a
person not even remember it, completely forget that.

I had one student, for instance, who was actually open spiritually, whatever, was able to feel love and
all that. At some point, something happened. There was some odd thing. I noticed some kind of fear
that I didn't understand that comes up. It turned out she was sexually abused by her father and she
didn't know about it at all. And she went to work with a therapist to deal with it, which I was glad that it
came out.

Sometimes spiritual work can bring up trauma because you go deep, you see, and you don't know
about it. You're not aware of it. The spiritual work, because it goes deep, it goes closer to those areas
because they are deep, and it might bring up trauma. So spiritual work doesn't mean you're not going
to encounter trauma.

Gabor Mate
No, I agree. I think this is where another one of your teachings that I've found helpful over the years
comes in where you say that when a problem or a pain arises, and I'm paraphrasing here, we can
have a personality orientation to it or an essential orientation to it. And from the point of view of the
personality, problems are just there to get rid of, which is really the medical approach to things. Or we
can have an essential orientation, which is how can we grow and learn from this experience? And just
by reframing like that, a lot of people can move forward rather than become more restricted.

Hameed Ali
Yeah. So I have a question for you, Gabor, which is, you recommend the spiritual work to help with
trauma, like you think trauma work, it requires some kind of spiritual work. How do you see spiritual
work helping trauma work?

Gabor Mate
The essence of trauma is this rigid belief, which is implicit, not necessarily conscious, that I'm a
separate little ego in a hostile world, needing to protect myself all the time. That's the impact of
trauma. So spiritual work, at the very least, means that one recognizes, or moves towards the
recognition, that one is a part of something much greater, that one is not alone, separated, not
discreet, that belonging, that one unity, that love really is not just something out there that we can
move towards, but is actually our essential nature. And the closer you move to that recognition, the
more it dissolves the armor that trauma has erected around us. So to me, the two are not really
separable.

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[00:07:43] Hameed Ali
I share that perspective. I can add to it a few other specific things from my work since I do spiritual
work with people. My orientation, I'm a spiritual teacher, I'm not a therapist, really, let alone a trauma
therapist, which is a subset. Which is what I see is that trauma work requires a person to have some
support, to be able to deal with trauma, and the support frequently is the therapist or some person
they trust.

But I remember talking with Peter Levine when he was first developing his somatic therapy. He was a
neighbor to us in the 70s. And he keeps saying that the person needs some kind of support,
something to rely on to be able to deal with trauma. And spiritual presence, when somebody
experiences it, that is the greatest support there is.

Gabor Mate
Of course.

Hameed Ali
If somebody is in touch with their spiritual presence, especially that the spiritual presence appears in
qualities that are very helpful to deal with difficulties, like it has compassion in it, and kindness, which
we cannot deal with pain without compassion, kindness. Without kindness, nobody wants to go near
pain, because kindness, in my understanding, is the main importance of kindness, it makes it possible
for us to handle pain, to feel pain and heal it. But also it gives us strength, gives a sense of inner
solidity and support, gives us a sense of love, trust, as you mentioned, that there is something good,
goodness there is in us and in reality in general. All of that is very important.

But there's something very important about spirituality that doesn't exist in therapy as a whole,
psychology, not just in trauma work, which I noticed with many people who've done long trauma
work and really been over their trauma, and their life is going fine, and they're aware, they're
remembering their trauma and they've spent years on it, working with it, whether it's sexual abuse or
physical abuse or a traumatic event of one kind or another, or a big accident that left them scarred or
terrified or not trusting. It's that, regardless of how one has worked on their trauma, they're not
completely free from their trauma until they change their identity.

Gabor Mate
Absolutely.

Hameed Ali
Because what I noticed, even for somebody who has done a lot of work with trauma, they still have
the identity of a traumatized person. Even though they're free from their trauma, but, "I'm the one who
was traumatized." A spiritual presence, to recognize myself as a spiritual presence, I'm not the person
who was traumatized. I was somebody else. So a shift of identity is needed that does not exist in
therapy. In therapy, you don't say your identity shifts from being a psychological, historical context to
something timeless. And that is really needed to be totally free from trauma, because when you are
the spiritual presence, spiritual presence doesn't have history. It's not just pain and divorces and
abandonment, or even good things. All that's gone. You're just here in the now, in the timeless now,
and you are indestructible, and you are pure goodness. So there's no fear. So that's what we call...
That is an important thing. You can be open to spirituality or you can recognize yourself as a spirit.
That's called realization.

Realization means a shift of identity from a psychological self that has spiritual experience to being
spiritual. And that shift of identity, I think, is something most trauma therapists need to recognize,
because I know that many of them, you talk about the importance of spirituality, I know some people,
and others, they talk about using yoga and mindfulness and all of that, which I think is all useful and
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all of that, it doesn't do the job of shift of identity, none of those. A shift of identity needs a deep
recognition that we are the spirit. That is real freedom.

[00:13:04] Gabor Mate

Okay. So I'm just within a few days of finishing my next book, before which I interviewed with you, and
I looked at the question of healing. Occasionally, and this has been documented by others, there are
people who are facing terminal illness where the doctors have totally given up on them, I mentioned
one case already, but I know many such cases, or they're facing physical illness that their doctors say
you're going to have to be on medication for the rest of your life and you're going to be disabled for
the rest of your life. Then they get better. And this supposed terminal illness goes away, and they live
decades afterwards. Or the supposedly progressive illness just stops progressing and even goes into
remission. And I've spoken to other colleagues who have documented such cases. These are not just
stories. This is where we've looked at the medical histories, and we know the stories are valid
medically.

And the key factor in that transformation from terminal or hopeless illness to health is a
transformation of identity. All of a sudden they stopped identifying with their victim self. They're no
longer passive. They actually gain agency. And they see themselves as part of something much
larger than they are. This is the key, and I can't describe it. I can't just say here's a prescription, do it.
And I don't know if in their position, if I could do it or not. But I've seen it and the impacts are
remarkable. Now I want to ask you a couple of questions.

Hameed Ali
I agree with you. I've seen it too. But also we should not take the view that if you are spiritually
realized you won't get sick.

Gabor Mate
No, I'm not saying that.

Hameed Ali
Some of the great masters died of it.

Gabor Mate
Ramana Maharshi died of cancer, right?

Hameed Ali
Yeah. The 16th Karmapa, for instance, died of stomach cancer. And his story, I don't know if you know
about it. He didn't know he had cancer, nor none of his people around him. He's one of the great
masters of Tibetan Buddhism. He was the Black Hat Lama, they called him. And he's enlightened,
considered a Buddha. And he wasn't feeling pain or anything until he started throwing up blood, and
then they took him to the doctor. Turned out he had stomach cancer.

And so I think they took him to some hospital in Chicago. And the doctor said, "You don't have pain?"
He said, "No." He said, "No? Stomach cancer is one of the most painful things. How can you not have
pain?" He said, "I don't experience any pain. I'm fine." But when they checked him, he said, no, he's
dying of stomach cancer. They couldn't get it why.

And they wanted to give him morphine. He said, "No, I don't want morphine. I'm fine." He wasn't
experiencing anything. The interesting thing, they said at some point, they said, "Should we just
experiment to give you morphine, see what happens?" He said, "Okay, as an experiment." They gave

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him morphine. He started feeling pain, and then they stopped the morphine. The pain is gone. And he
did die of... Stomach cancer killed him. Although he wasn't feeling pain.

[00:16:50]

Nisargadatta Maharaj, that many people know, the Indian Advaita master, died of throat cancer
because he smoked.

Gabor Mate
And as I mentioned, Ramana Maharshi, the great teacher died...

Hameed Ali
So spirituality doesn't prevent you because we still have a physical body. Even though its nature is
consciousness, it's still different from other expressions of consciousness. It's physical, and physicality,
you know, the body degrades. It's under the law of entropy. It's bound to... Something will happen at
one time or another.

But I agree with you. Like I feel healthy, I feel much younger than what I am. And I live my life like that.
And many of my students actually look younger than what they are. And many people comment and
they say, "Really, that's old?" They're all surprised, because you're radiant, you're happy. Your system
gets better, everything. But still, some of them do get illness. Some of them get various kinds of
immune system things, whatever. It still happens because some of it is genetic, and you can't change
the genes that easily with spiritual work.

Gabor Mate
I would give you an argument on that one, but I won't right now.

Hameed Ali
Let's say the question of illness is complex. It's definitely, trauma is a big part of it. And I think it's been
known that stress can lead to illness, right? It's one of the big factors. All kinds of illnesses. And
trauma is a stress, an intense stress, so that definitely can help illness. But I don't think that... We
cannot say just because somebody gets sick, there must have been trauma, because there have to
be other factors.

Gabor Mate
Well, you know what? So that's a great discussion we could have. But this is probably not the venue,
but this is something I've researched. It's my life's work. I've written a book about it. My next book talks
about it a lot. I think in chronic illness, I've yet to see the example where stress and trauma didn't play
a significant role, but I'm not going to go there because I want to ask you a couple of questions.

Hameed Ali
Okay.

Gabor Mate
Where I have some difficulty with your teachings. Okay?

Hameed Ali
Yeah.

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