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OF COURSE: A VETERAN’S JOURNEY FROM NUMBNESS TO SACRED AWAKENING

Of Course: A Journey from Numbness to Sacred Awakening

Opening Reflection

My breathwork experiences gave me an invaluable gift: the grace to speak with humility and compassion about death, trauma, suffering, and the ineffable mysteries of the Sacred. But even before I stepped foot into the world of Holotropic Breathwork®, I’d known there was more to life than the narrow reality we are expected to accept. Hints at a deeper and richer level of consciousness popped up occasionally until the doors were flung wide open during my healing journey. So when many have quietly whispered a deep ache: “There must be more to life than this,” I knew in my bones that there was.

What’s often missed is that finding the “more” begins not with seeking—but with stopping. We must halt the chatter, the scrolling, the numbing cycles of doing and judging and yearning. Only then, in stillness, do we hear something ancient begin to stir.

Introducing Linden

Linden  was one such soul on the edge of awakening. A Vietnam combat veteran and former law enforcement officer, he lived wrapped in armor forged by war and forged earlier still, by the violence of his childhood. He had raised a family, loved his wife and sons, but lived with constricted emotions that made connection feel less complete. He knew something was missing—and had known it for years. No medication or conventional therapy could touch the dull ache at the core of his being.

He wasn’t broken. He was simply frozen—his inner life locked away for safekeeping in the long shadows of trauma and the subsequent rage bridled by emotional armor.  To keep the armor in place it required him to avoid stillness, so he was busy and always on the move.

The Turn Inward

When Linden  began working with me, he was searching—initially for a medication that might help. But the truth became clear quickly: there was no chemical remedy for the soul’s longing. So we pivoted. We moved toward trauma-informed psychotherapy, and further still—into the quiet territory of inner exploration.

Informed by my own healing through non-ordinary states of consciousness, I understood something many clinicians don’t voice: that deep, spiritual reconnection is often a necessary ingredient in true recovery. Not religion—but direct relationship to something vast, and Sacred. For Linden , a New England agnostic shaped by pain and betrayal, the idea of a loving God felt absurd. He needed to discover his own path.

So we began where all journeys begin—with a question: When do you feel a bit freer, able to let your guard down a notch? Is there a place you feel calmer, less frazzled? For Linden , the answer was definitive. Alone, in the woods, beside a brook, when he could stop moving and simply sat, something inside him shifted. Anxiety ebbed. Self-loathing stilled. Depression waned.

This was his version of “centering.” Later he identified that centering himself in nature was also his connecting to a Higher Power, an insight that had taken a while to unfold.

Develop a Practice

Over time, his centering visits became more frequent.  But he expressed frustration that he “couldn’t meditate like other people.” I suggested he try something different and offered that he could try envisioning a child, specifically his younger, wounded self sitting beside him in the woods—sharing in the stillness, safety and acceptance without judgment. Tears came at just the suggestion of doing this and more came when he eagerly embarked on his “homework assignment.” And eventually he experienced joy—when he felt that boy join him in peace. It was in this way that Linden  developed a rhythm of numinous connection.

Rinse and Repeat

Over the next year or two, however, Linden  would periodically arrive for a session feeling frazzled and anxious. I would gently ask, How often are you visiting the woods?

On one such occasion Linden  began chastising himself, “I know I should be going.” He sighed and asked, “Why haven’t I been going to the woods? I know I’d feel better. What’s wrong with me?”

It was the perfect moment to introduce him to two powerful words—ones my own therapist had offered me during the thick of my trauma work: of course.

“It’s like being your own benevolent guide,” I told him. “You smile inwardly and say, ‘Of course you fell out of practice. Of course you slipped back into misery. Isn’t this the inner emotional landscape you’ve known for most of your life?”

I explained that though it is painful—it’s also familiar.  Trauma etches patterns on our brains. It is how conditioning works and in the case of trauma is even a more potent process.

I went on: “The moment you notice yourself submerged again in depression, anxiety, or a negative sense of yourself—that’s your opportunity. Rather than reject or berate that version of you, take his hand, just the way you did before with your child self and gently escort your anxious, unhappy, misery-laden self back into the woods. That’s where self-acceptance begins. That’s how the cycle starts to shift and undo those trauma engrained patterns.”

Linden  understood. In the past, he had fought himself every step of the way—resisting the magnetism of old patterns, then punishing himself when he inevitably gave in to them. He tried to detach from the wounded part of himself and that brought some fleeting relief—but it also blocked true healing, because it was a form of self-rejection. What he needed, instead, was self-compassion.

He left our session that day committed to return to his sacred, serene spot in the woods—this time, not as an escape, but as a reunion. He would bring his compassionate awareness alongside his suffering self and sit with both.

The Sacred Encounter

Then, one morning, something shattered the ordinary and expanded Linden ’s concept of reality.

He stepped outside, coffee in hand, into his familiar yard. There stood a tree—a tree he had planted decades earlier, when he and his wife had moved onto their land. It was just an ordinary tree. But at the same time special because he considered it, his tree.

Before his eyes,  his tree morphed. The bark and leaves began to glow. The tree pulsed with luminous energy. It felt alive in a new way—translucent, shimmering, flowing with something unseen but undeniably real. He described it as witnessing the life-force energy within the form. The veil between worlds had thinned, and in that space, he understood something wordless: everything is connected. Everything is alive with sacred energy.

He scanned the rest of the yard—unchanged. No hallucination. No stroke. Just one tree transformed, glowing with the Sacred. And then, as quickly as it had arrived, the vision vanished.

But something had changed. Linden  had witnessed it. He was infused with awe as he realized he had just had an incredible spiritual awakening.  It had really happened! It really happened to me! 

Integration and Compassion

It took time to understand what had happened. Session by session, he integrated the experience—how it shifted his sense of self,  arriving at acceptance of the truth that he was indeed connected to something Sacred. One quiet revelation was immediately clear: his emotional numbness was gone. He felt even closer to his family. More present. More real.

But one day, just as he was leaving my office, he turned and asked—gently, almost shyly—why he still didn’t feel he had compassion for others, why he had it only for his family.

I said, “Linden , remember the first thing you did today? You asked how I was doing.”

He nodded.

“And when I gave a quick answer, you said, ‘No, really—how are you?’ You wanted to hear something genuine, not just a platitude, right?”

He blinked. “Yeah. I did.”

“That’s compassion,” I said. “You just didn’t know you had it.”

He opened his mouth to protest—and stopped. For once, he let the truth sink in. He had felt true compassion and now was aware of it.

A Larger Awakening

There’s no way to adequately thank someone for sharing their awakening. All I could offer was quiet gratitude. What Linden  gifted me was confirmation of what I’d long believed: that healing is possible, even when pain runs deep.

Through my own breathwork and spiritual growth, I learned that trauma doesn’t need to own us. Transcendence is real. And when someone chooses to move out of survival into truth, they don’t just heal themselves—they bring Light back into the world.

Linden  took the hand of his most broken self, walked him into the woods, and sat beside him in grace. In doing so, he discovered that the Light had always been there—waiting. His story reminded me that the Divine is not somewhere else. It lives in us. Even when we forget. Even when pain blinds us to it.

We are a species on the edge of awakening. But to rise, we must first turn toward our wounded selves—individually and collectively—and meet them with compassion.

We often ask, Why are we hurting our planet? Why are we crafting policies that oppress, divide, and deplete? The answer may be this: we are still in the phase of seeing our shared trauma and would benefit from invoking the powerful words, of course. Only when we act compassionately, holding our collective hand and leading ourselves, lovingly, into stillness and suspend the chronic trauma behaviors and reactions—only then will we reclaim our true essence and let go of destructive patterns, and allow humanity to expand consciousness thus realizing resonance with the Sacred.

Light is leaking in through our cracks. Linden  saw it. So can we.

[The name Linden  is pseudonym. He has given permission to use his story.]

I thought this painting was of a tree until I arrived how from the hospital after, a life-threatening medical crisis – then I saw what it really was. Hint: PE

(More stories to come.)