MUST READ IF YOU WANT TO DEFEAT TMS

There’s only ONE THING that you need to understand if you want to get better and it’s not what you think it is.


It is simply this: Your goal cannot be to be healed of TMS. Your goal must be to awaken to the fundamental nature of who you are.


Once you have truly awakened and find yourself on the road to healing, you’re going to realize a few universal things that probably all people who have been down this road have realized.

1. You are far more than your physical body and this existence is a collective hallucination and delusion. You won’t just have faith that this is true, you will know it on a deep level.
2. You will literally begin to see the story of your life as if it was a play being acted out in front of you.
3. If you were formerly an atheist, you probably aren’t anymore. Conversely, you also probably aren’t a fervent follower of any one religion, either.
4. You can easily switch between states of consciousness and unconsciousness as if you were flipping a light switch.
5. You will become more forgiving as you realize that others’ bad behavior is a result of their unconsciousness (“forgive them father for they know not what they do”)
6. You may find yourself going inward and not discussing your experience with anyone who doesn’t already understand what path you’re on. You will find that there is no point to discussing it with most people because the act of discussion is probably ego-based. No need to discuss, just *be*
7. You will understand your true nature as a spiritual being having a physical experience.
8. The meaning of life will no longer be a mystery.

There are way bigger things at work here than merely reconditioning the pain pathways in your brain and body. That is a narrow-minded and body-focused view and if you subscribe to such a view you will likely have trouble recovering.


My awakening happened as a result of seeking knowledge over my short lifetime of 30 years. The straw that broke the camels back? I was given an illness earlier this year that was big enough and scary enough to hit me over the head with the truth and now that I see it I cannot unsee it.


Journaling will not cure you. SEP will not cure you. Reading every book in the universe on this subject will not cure you. Spending countless hours on this forum will certainly not cure you. These things very well may be the stepping stones you use to lead you to awakening but none of them will be the “cure” because they are keeping you focused on a delusion. That is a body-focused, material world-focused view. You are not your body.


Stop DOING, and start LIVING


It CAN happen to you. I never thought I’d be telling any of you this but trust me, it can and will happen for you BUT you need to become consciously aware of your ego. Your ego has a stranglehold on you and you may not realize it yet.


When you awaken to the truth you will look upon your ego as if it was a bully in the schoolyard who you THOUGHT was bigger and badder than you but it was really just a hologram the whole time and if only you had the courage to fight back, you would have seen that your hand passed right through him like a mirage (Think the wizard of oz)


I’m posting this because I want to dispel the myth that there is a system to defeating this. No. This is not true. Thinking this will keep you on the treadmill.


If there was any practical advice I could give you, it’s this. The trick is to peel away the layers of your life that don’t jive with your authentic self. The non expression of your authentic self is what is making you sick. You need to hear this again. THE NON EXPRESSION OF YOUR AUTHENTIC SELF IS KEEPING YOU SICK.


Every time you don’t speak up in a crowd of people for fear of what they’ll think, you put another layer on the mask. Every time you put your shoes on and walk out the door in the morning to go to a job you hate, you put another layer on the mask. Every time you act out of fear, you put another layer, and another layer, and another layer.... until you have no idea who you are anymore. And considering most of us have been doing this since childhood it’s a pretty damn safe bet that none of us know who we are before we awaken. That may sound arrogant but I stand by it.


I believe in all of you, I know you will get there. I know that because YOU ARE ALREADY THERE and you just don’t know it yet!


Please reach out to me with any questions. It is my sincere desire to help. This is my life’s mission.

 

Amen sister savasana !! You took it to a deeper level and you're right...this is soooo much more than a healing journey...it's an emotional and spiritual journey. You must literally change you're state of being in order to heal. The journey never ends of course and we are always learning but if one thinks that this is just about being pain free, they are missing the much deeper significance of TMS and the healing process. Every time we look outside of ourselves for answers (doctors, the internet, other peoples' opinions, alternative quackery, waiting for a miracle or Santa Claus... every time we have unrealistic expectations of therapists and/or TMS coaches, every time we focus on the external), we are missing an opportunity and wasting time on this earth. The journey is an inwards one. The only person who can get you better is you. My mantra was often "I created this and I can uncreate it." People always think,"If my pain went away, my life would be peachy." It's the opposite. If you were actually living your life on your terms, as your authentic self, the pain would cease to have a purpose! "To thine own self be true." Awesome post!!

 

Love it!

 

So nice to connect with you

For many years, I was still bothered by the fact that the pain remained and wondered what I was doing wrong. In fact sometimes I wonder about some people who have very quick recoveries from back pain, are they really recovered or have their symptoms merely switched to a different malady that they don’t recognize as mindbody-related?

Now I see that the pain/illness really is a red herring. Healing is not perfection. We will all still experience mindbody pain and illness after we awaken, and in fact awakening is just the beginning! This is where the real fun starts. Sometimes I feel like I’m in a video game playing myself. It’s all a big game! As you continue on your journey after awakening, you will experience pain and illness less and less if you continue with presence work.

It’s so great to connect with others who see what I see!

 

Love your post. I wholly embrace the TMS approach but stripping it all down I’ve always thought TMS is simply just being completely burnt out doing/saying things (ego) that you would possibly rather not be doing although you possibly didn’t even consciously know that at the time! Make sense?
The longer you do that the longer it takes to recover.
Everything else around TMS the science theory etc is all good stuff but it’s just being your absolute true self and being completely conscious of what that is as much of the time as you can and hold that in the present moment. That’s a really tough thing to do in every day life but the more I can do it the better I feel.
Your points 4 and 5 are so true for me.

 

Great to connect with you!

I completely agree about the being burnt out thing. I have a full time job (40 hrs a week) and my commute is 3 hrs per day round trip, plus I have been starting two new businesses this past year on the side -- oh, and did I mention I also have been doing small home renovation projects since my husband and I moved into our house last year? Talk about burnt the f*** out.

I'm trying to make the transition to leaving my job to work my businesses full time and I've been too afraid to ask my boss to go part time for various reasons. I had a heart to heart with my husband last night about how I'm afraid my new businesses will fail and I burst into tears saying "I'm afraid of letting you down!" And he replied, "You should be afraid of letting yourself down."

We need to let go of fear and live boldly!

 

@savasana I love your post and I totally get what you're saying. I 100% understand what you mean by life being a delusion, hallucination or game. I care a lot less what other people think now than I did and do not take things so seriously.

However, I really struggle with some of the practical elements of this. I cannot live as authentically as I would like to. Some things that are getting in my way:

1. I have responsibilities to others, whether I like it or not.

2. I am financially stuck and unable to do what I want.

3. My illness limits me a lot. I have tried to get on with things despite it, but it's so hard to do the practical things that I need to do. I don't have a simple pain condition. Not caring only goes so far.

4. My illness is part of a trauma response. Unfortunately a lot of trauma responses are automatic. I can not set appropriate boundaries sometimes as I literally dissociate when in certain fearful situations where I would rather say "no". I actually "let" someone sexually assault me as an adult because I dissociated when they attacked me.

Any thoughts on this? Many thanks.

 

Hi zclesa,

There are practical day to day changes that I had to make, even though there are things I can't change. For instance, my son is severely autistic, but I realized that I had to get help or I was going to either go crazy or collapse. I can't fly to the French Riviera but I can find things to do that I enjoy and are relaxing. With regards to trauma, it's very common for the body to get stuck in the trauma. I highly recommend you find a therapist who works with trauma and better yet TMS and trauma. I had therapy with Alan Gordon's PAin Psychology Center over the phone and it was a big part of my healing. Having a support system is key.

Hope that helps a little!

 

Thanks @miffybunny I have been seeing a counsellor to deal with the trauma, but we only have 10 sessions left. I've been going for over a year already. I have also been doing yoga to help heal the trauma in the body. I have seen progress with that but kinda plateaued right now.

 

Hello there
Let me try to address each concern separately.

1. Every human being on the planet has responsibilities to others whether they like it or not (unless they’re a hermit living alone in the mountains, and even then they have a responsibility to themselves to keep themselves alive, fed, and sheltered). I would be willing to bet that most people if not all are subconsciously angered by this fact. Everyone has an inner child that wants instant gratification and to be waited on hand and foot, so the idea that others need us too is enraging! I would need to know more about your specific arrangement of your relationships to understand the nuance here (though Its not necessary for me to know because it’s all just part of the ego story) but being authentic to yourself isn’t mutually exclusive with getting everything you want. Authenticity is about honoring your feelings and making choices that resonate with your core values. If someone has a disabled child or elderly parents that need their care, they may wish this responsibility hadnt befallen them, but it is honoring their authentic self to care for their child or parents nonetheless. at the same time, it’s imporrant to really feel the emotions of sadness, anger, guilt etc that go along with this. It’s ok to feel hatred and anger and all the yuck emotions.

2. Again I would need to know more about this to understand the nuance but is it possible for you to make a creative plan to get out of your current life satiation even if it takes years? Often times there is a solution available to us that we are unaware of or are blocking for egoic reasons. I know I have been guilty of this.

3. You say that you don’t have a simple pain condition and I believe you. However that doesn’t change the fact that many others have healed of very complex pain conditions as well and if they can do it then so can you. You must ask yourself why you are blocking your own healing.

4. Everything that falls under the umbrella of TMS is automatic, and trauma responses are no different. The definition of the subconscious is basically automatic behavior. Your ego has a stranglehold on you and you are clinging to it unknowingly. Even if you accept this on an intellectual level, you haven’t broken through to really knowing it yet. But this comes with time and an awareness shift.

You are seriously overthinking this.

Do you know what pure awareness feels like? Do you know what it means to simply “be”? Because this is the key. You need to start peeling the layers off. You’re wearing a mask that you’re not aware of due to the conditioning of your entire life. The mask peels off when you enter a state of awareness and being.

Consider beginning a practice of meditation and learn everything you can about mindfulness. Get a mindfulness coach if you have to. It will help you understand what it means to be aware, even if you think you already know. When you are in a state of being, you are connected to your true self.

There is no simple answer to any of this and I wish I could be of more help. Remember that you are not your body. You are a spirit being projected into your body for an earth experience. This pain is a huge part of what you came here to do. Embrace it, accept it, love it, and just be.

 

@savasana Thanks I already know about mindfulness. I've been a Buddhist for about a decade and practised mindfulness long before that. It doesn't seem to help with this.

1. I don't mean here that I just want what I want and to hell with everyone else. I mean that I have to do things which go directly against what I am authentically. I don't have a choice in all of this. For example, I wish I could stop being in contact with my narcissistic mother who made me ill and act authentically around her, but I can't because she would make my life hell, and my dad's life too. So I have to pretend everything is OK even though it's not.

2. I am on welfare due to being off sick for 5 years. I was actually building up my own business and it was going well until I got sick. I loved what I was doing, but I can't do it anymore. I am stuck in a houseshare now at 39 years old and finances are worse than ever. I am not even allowed to save up capital to potentially start something else, because then I'd lose my welfare. Not that you can save much when you've got no money anyway

3. What I mean by that is that I don't have back pain or something like that. I have chronic Vestibular Migraine, which literally affects everything I do. The more I do, the worse I feel. It takes me 3 x as long as it used to just to do something simple like have a shower as I get dizzy, and anything more complex than that takes 10 x as long. Urgh.

4. I know all TMS is automatic, but the difference is you can work on it over time, which I am trying to do. But if I'm in an immediate situation (like someone is attacking me), I go into a "Freeze" response like PTSD and can't stop people or say no.

Perhaps I am overthinking things. It just helps sometimes to get these things out. I do agree with a lot of what you said generally.

 

You may be thinking of mindfulness in a way that is counterproductive. Mindfulness can permeate every aspect of your life to the point that your entire life literally becomes a meditation if you choose.

What I hear in your response is a lot of resistance, which I can relate to. Resistance creates suffering. When we enter a state of awareness, we get to choose whether or not we resist. It is only when awareness is shined upon it that we have the choice.

Have you read Steve ozanich’s book the great pain deception? You will enjoy the book if you haven’t already read it.

 

I agree with savsanas points. Here's my take on yours:

1.) We all have choices. I can't get rid of my son's autism and I will be his caretaker until I die but I can choose not to make my life a monument for autism. I can still enjoy my life and that involves getting help. You could minimize contact people who are toxic. Heck you can even cut them out of your life. That's sometimes the healthiest choice.

2.). Financial constraints are challenging but there are still ways of getting around those.

3.). Your condition is debilitating but so are many other TMS equivalents. I had full blown RSD/CRPS and there were times it went full body or I couldn't walk or was bedridden with bedsores. You could even "see" my condition visually. I still got better as did many others.

4.). Just because you have gone into a "freeze" response (so have I during trauma) does not mean that you are doomed to repeat it for eternity.

There is a reason that Buddhist monks do not get TMS. They know that all their power is in the present moment of the now. They know how to just "be" without thought. People who suffer from TMS are always repeating their past in a chronic daily way and worrying about the future in a chronic daily way....otherwise they would not have TMS lol! You may understand the concepts intellectually but are you living them? That's what I loved so much about the original post by savsana ....it always always always comes back to your life and how you are really living it.

 

@savasana Yeah I liked Steve's book a lot, thanks. I read that and Sarno's Divided Mind. I don't actually do formal meditation at all anymore though I did for years, plus mindfulness of action.

Resistant to what exactly? I'm not sure what you mean. I am sure I am a resistant person in general because I have so many horribly ingrained patterns and I can't always "spot" that I'm doing a pattern at all rather than acting authentically. As you said, a lot of us are inauthentic after early childhood. I had a screwed up childhood anyway so I don't even know how to recognise what is normal and what is me kowtowing to an old pattern of abuse. Plus there must be ego fear of breaking the patterns anyway.

@miffybunny

Thanks for your advice.

Do you mind me asking how you got out the "freeze" response? I have gone into it many times unfortunately due to experiences in my childhood.

 

I think as Savsana pointed out, the "freeze' response is subconscious and sort of a default, autopilot pattern. The way to break the pattern is to become conscious and aware. Aware in a moment to moment way of what you are feeling and thinking. This is why mindfulness is so powerful. You can't fall back into unconsciousness and the freeze response when you are living in the moment. This is something that takes practice and persistence. It is gradual for most people and a trained therapist could probably give you better techniques than I can. For me it was just a constant shifting of focus form the physical to the emotional. I started catching myself in these chronic thought patterns and I would stop myself until they faded out over time. The brain is neuroplastic after all. Another book that really helped me with this was Monte Hueftle's "Master Practice"....There should be info on him on the wiki.....I just found his techniques helpful but everyone is different.

 

@miffybunny Yeah it's difficult because it's like PTSD. It's not a thought pattern. I actually dissociate, float out of my body. Urgh. I'll ask my counsellor about it. Thanks for the book shout. Ill have a look.

 

I don't really agree with the first few points, and I had a dramatic healing from TMS - almost two years pain-free now.

 

What did you do to recover?

 

I don't agree that

"this existence is a collective hallucination and delusion" (unless that means most people are walking around in a delusions because they don't believe in the mind-body connection - that I agree with. But TMS is the path to the truth)

"If you were formerly an atheist, you probably aren’t anymore. Conversely, you also probably aren’t a fervent follower of any one religion, either."

My healing experience actually strengthened my Christian convictions that God made the body very good as he said, and that the dualistic approach to the body of medicine today actually descends from gnosticism, an ancient religious heresy.... This is the main reason that people who turn to Buddhism (which is a form of gnosticism) after healing from Sarno have me scratching my head. In gnosticism and buddhism the goal is to transcend the body, thereby implying an inherent inferiority to the body. In Christianity, however, the body was originally created good (although it became corrupted), and the goodness of matter was affirmed by Christ's incarnation, where he took on the body and did not shed it when he returned to sit at the right hand of the Father.... To heal from TMS, you need to learn to love and accept your body and unite the mind and body into one, rather than continue a fragmented, schizophrenic existence.... You do not treat the body as something to escape, but something to embrace. But I digress....

My full story is here:

https://christianvictorianliterature.com/2019/01/18/my-story-a-victorian-healing/ (My Story: A Victorian Healing)

 

I agree with you that faith and spirituality is a personal journey and I would also agree that my TMS journey only reinforced my pre existing beliefs. The paradigm shift for me was a psychological one...not a spiritual one. I do think you can incorporate your faith in God into TMS 'work" and it only reinforces the healing journey imo. With regards to the OP's post, I think the 8 bullet points were personal to her but what I resonated with was what she wrote after those 8 points. It really comes down to living your life authentically. I think she gets to the heart of TMS healing in the second part.