When we are in deep trauma, we lie to ourselves. It’s a survival tactic. Similar to how children are always in their imaginations. They’re not sitting in front of you. They’re on Mars flying a rocket.
In normal times, our imaginations interpret and enhance our experiences. In traumatic times, our imaginations invert.. in order to help us to get from moment to moment without self-destructing.
Remember the movie American Sniper? Well, it turns out that Chris Kyle often told tales as some soldiers tend to do. To him, the lie was truer than the truth.
When you are going through severe trauma, that rock could be a grenade. You don’t know if that rock or that woman or that child… is holding a grenade or holding a puppy. You simply don’t know. If you acknowledged the truth or tried to see the facts, you’d go nuts. There is no way you would be able to make sense of your environment. You’d be confused. Is it a rock? Is it a grenade? Or is it… a child?
So your mind creates a pattern similar to a map, that simplifies everything. Your mind imagines that everything is a threat. But instead of calling it a rock or a child or a woman, your mind just calls it a “savage.” And that way, things are way easier. This is a savage. It is evil. Shoot it. Go back to base.
This pattern is easier to follow than to question and second-guess everything coming your way. In times of extreme chaos, like war… you’re a cool cucumber. You know who you are. What you’re doing. What needs to be done and how to do it. You might be wound up inside— but you have purpose and your have meaning. You’re not going to go crazy like some other folks second guessing all their decisions.
What happens in peace time when you’re no longer in trauma and war…. is now your consciousness is a field of land mines where you have buried all the truth. And each land mine is a truth or a fact that your imagination turned into something else in order to survive. And you have to live your life side stepping over and around these land mines…. because the truth or that land mine will destroy you.
“Sir, was that a child you shot out in there in battle?”
“No, sir. That was a savage. It was a threat to a group of Marines, sir.”
“It was not a child?”
“No, sir.”
Clearly, it was a child. But it was also a threat. But your mind cannot see your reality back there in battle as you killing a child. It can only see you killing savages. Your brain has already created a map of your reality. And in that map, there were no children— there were only savages.
Someone could say to you, “Sir, we have video footage. There was a child.”
You’d say, “I was there. It wasn’t a child.”
So the map of your mind…. which maps your reality cannot account for children. Therefore, for you, there were no children.
So what happens is that most people are going to call you a liar. Are you a liar? If there really were children, would you be the country’s most lethal sniper? Would you even be a hero? Hell no. If there were children in that war, being killed… there is no way you’d be out there shooting savages. No! The truth is, there were no kids out there. No, just savages and future savages.
So either America dumps their “legend” and their hero… or we all start acknowledging there were kids out there getting killed.
Your truth trumphs everyone else’s truth and so you get to keep your lie and when you keep your lie, you keep your life.
Chris Kyle said that one of his comrades, Marc Lee died because he wrote a letter that caused him to step on his own land mines. In that letter, Marc writes to his mother from battle, he says, “when does glory fade away and become the wrongful crusade or an unjustified means which consumes one completely. I’ve seen war and I’ve seen death. the sorrow that encompasses your entire being as a man breathes his last.”
What happens is your mind has already created a map of your reality filled with buried land mines. When Chris’s friend goes back to that field of consciousness and he starts stepping on his land mines, they explode.
That is why they say that you can’t handle the truth or the truth hurts. The truth will actually destroy the map of reality you have in your brain and that is called PTSD.
So the truth is deadly to someone who has undergone such trauma. So if you’ve undergone trauma, abuse or scandal… and you haven’t dealt with the truth for 20, 30 or 40 years— that’s probably why you’re alive. It was your imagination trying to keep you from stepping on land mines that were going to kill you.
If you are just now going back through your life and trying to recover the truth so that you can heal, the easiest way to do it is to map out the land mines first…. before you go walking through the battle field of your mind and start stepping on them. I call that a vision map. It’s pretty easy to do and very quick. Maybe it takes an hour. And then you can go ahead and start detonating the land mines… without being destroyed.
If you want to know how to do that, just go to my website and sign up for the video course called “How to find your true life purpose” or give me a call.
Thanks.
