know thyself, explore the cause

Something is afoot which is bound to touch all our lives. There is a growing collective realization that much of the suffering found in life is not a necessary aspect of the human condition, but that it derives from a primal wounding to the core of our deepest humanity.

We may feel this wound as a sense of anxiety or impending doom underlying all we do; or as a sense of estrangement, falseness, and lack of meaning in our lives; or perhaps as a fear of intimacy and commitment in relationships. Although we may only dimly glimpse this hidden wound, perhaps in the grips of a sleepless night, depressive mood, or personal crisis, this specter incessantly haunts us. Fleeing this wound, we desperately throw ourselves into addictions of all sorts - from sex, romance, and drugs to wealth, power and violence - building inauthentic lives that we know in our hearts are destined to crumble.

This primal wound is the result of a violation we all suffer in various ways. In this violation we are treated not as individual, unique human beings, but as objects. Our supportive milieu - whether early caregivers, peers, institutions, or society at large - does not see us as we truly are, and instead forces us to become the objects of its own purposes. In Martin Buber's terms, we are treated is "It's" rather than "Thou's." Here we are wrenched away from experiencing ourselves as feeling, thinking subjects and thrust toward experiencing ourselves as soulless objects. Our intrinsic, authentic sense of self is plunged into the experience of annihilation and non-being. Child abuse and neglect, sexist and racist culture, and bonding to wounded caregivers are just some of the very many ways we receive the primal wounding.

However this wounding is inflicted, it is a break in the intricate web of relationships to which we live, move, and have our being. A fundamental trust and connection to the universe is betrayed, and we become strangers to ourselves and others, struggling for survival in a seemingly alien world. In psychological terms, it is our connection to our deeper Self that is wounded. In religious and philosophical terms, it is our connection to Ultimate Reality, the Ground of Being, or the Divine that is broken. No matter how we elect to describe it, the fact remains that this wounding cuts us off from the deeper roots of our existence.

There are those who say that this alienation from self and other is intrinsic to human life, that this is fundamental to the human condition or a necessary evil in the course of evolution. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that this anxious estrangement is not integral to human life at all. Again, it is caused by unnatural experiences in which our fundamental relationship to other people, the world, and the Ground of Being that has been violated.

From this point of view, the evils of the world may not then derive from powerful inner drives of sex, power, and survival; nor from a fundamentally "sinful" human nature; not from collective archetypes or the narcissistic attachment to self; nor from the laws of spiritual involution, karma, or God. Rather, the pain and chaos of human existence may flow largely from this primal wounding to our essential selves. It is this wounded sense of self, this sense of emptiness and isolation, which underlies the violence, addiction, and greed disrupting our lives.

- John Firman and Ann Gila, "The Primal Wound, A Transpersonal View of Trauma, Addiction, and Growth."