Meditation and Healing: Returning Soldiersby Curt Remington

Thursday, July 10th, 2008

Thank You For Your Service

This article is for you soldiers returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan. You’ve endured harsh and stressful conditions, risked your life and spent time away from your families. Some or you have seen the trauma of battle, experienced war related crime, come home seriously wounded or having lost friends. I’m sorry for any loss you’ve suffered, and I thank you for what you have done.
Along with saying thanks, I’d like to share some meditation exercises that may help in dealing with the stress and the transition back to life here. These techniques would benefit anyone and might be especially beneficial to those suffering from depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder. This is not intended to be a replacement for professional counseling or therapy, so if you feel that you should have help, please do what you can to get it.

Inspiration for Writing This

I’m a part-time psychic, having taken a clairvoyant training program, performed many readings and received ideas and suggestions from the spirit world. You may want to read my “Psychic Experiences” article. The idea to help returning soldiers first came through a dream. The suggestion to write this article, and some specific techniques, came through helpful spirits, including one of my guardian angels/guides. Why me? First off, because I’m psychic. It would be pretty hard for spirits to give these suggestions to someone that can’t hear them. Second, I have a warrior background, which I learned about performing psychic readings on past lives. Now I do believe in reincarnation. If you don’t, you can still get plenty of benefit out of this articles.

In this life, faulty eyesight resulted in a quick discharge from the navy’s pilot program and a basically peaceful life. In many past lives, I did experience the hardship and trauma of battle, ending my most recent life at Omaha Beach, during during the WW II Normandy Invasion. In other lives I fought in the Civil War, French Revolution, as an indian, three lives in the Roman army, at least one in the Greek, fighting the Mongols during the13th century invasion of Europe and in many others lives that I’m barely aware of. Most of you reading this have undoubtedly spent other lives in battle too. Like me, you’ve probably also spent many peaceful lives farming, baking, fishing, nursing, raising a family, running a business or in countless other occupations.

Broader Spiritual Perspective

By becoming aware of my past lives, I’ve adopted a different perspective that focuses on my whole spiritual existence, not just this one life. In the broader spiritual perspective, I’ve found that horrible experiences seem not quite so intense, when they are a small part of a much bigger picture. A great deal of what we learn on our spiritual path is through hardship, so virtually all souls that are reincarnating on earth have been through some horrible experiences.

In psychically speaking to a murder victim, I better came to understand this. The murder was a number of years earlier, but after hearing the violent details, I expected my encounter with the victim to be emotional and spooky. Upon asking how the murder affected her, she calmly reported that she was upset, just after it happened. Rejoining the spirit world, she came to realize that tragic things happen to everyone, in the course of their lives and learning. As far as I could tell, she had let go of her pain and anger.

Warrior’s Meditation

Meditation can help release your pain, stress, anger or guilt. It can help you relax and can help clear blocks to your health and happiness. Some techniques I’ll describe may be especially beneficial to those that have been through traumatic experiences like combat or witnessing deaths, rape and torture.

Before you start meditating, I suggest reading my “Science and Heaven” article to help make sense of this spiritual and energy stuff. Then please read two articles on meditation. First, one on Grounding, followed by “Running Your Energies.” This may sound like a lot, but they’re all short and fascinating. Yes, I may be biased.

The meditations in those two articles would be beneficial to anyone. The more you practice them, the more sensitive you will become to feeling your own energy flow. While running your energies, try to be aware of any blocks, especially ones related to pain, sorrow or guilt. Imagine energy flow melting those blocks and carrying them down your grounding cord.

Those first exercises may be worth practicing regularly on their own for some time. I suggest doing that, until you get comfortable with reaching a relaxed meditative state, grounding and running your energies. This could take a few weeks or so.

As you feel up to it, you can try adding some more advanced “warrior meditation” techniques. One technique is to take one of your battle memories and see it as if it were in a picture frame in front of you. Connect a grounding cord to the picture, like when you grounded yourself. Let any negative energy drain off and go deep into the ground. This could be the energy from your own grief, fear, guilt or other people’s energy. As much as you comfortably can, look at your worst memories this way, draining the energy from the picture. With less energy, those painful memories won’t be so likely to haunt you.

Another technique you can try is to imagine creating an object in front of you. For some reason, psychics alway seem to use roses. You could probably just as well create a tree, garbage can, phone or you can use your imagination. Once the object’s there, imagine the energy from any negative emotions going from your aura into the object. Once all the energy is there, destroy it. You can just watch the item pop and disappear, you can erase it or you can even blow it up. By doing this, you are actually neutralizing the energy. This is intended as a gentle exercise for releasing negative energy. If you find yourself violently blowing up cars and buildings, please reground yourself, relax and start over.

Spiritual Questions Related to War

You may have spiritual questions related to the war, and things you did there. You may have killed. Maybe you feel that something you did cost a fellow soldier their life. My answers are based on what knowledge I have from books, intuition and my communication with spirits and other psychics. It may be skewed by my opinion, so only believe what rings true for you. You have a right to your opinion too.

Does God, and my spirit guides/angels, still love me? Yes. They are very caring and forgiving, wanting you to learn from mistakes. Here, and in the spirit world, we tend to be our own harshest judges.

Is killing in war the same thing as murder? I believe that the spirit world views it differently, depending on the circumstances and the intention. Looking at world history, there has been an enormous amount of killing in the name of war. Many of those warriors have gone on to do wonderful things in that life or in later lives.

Will there be consequences for what I did? Maybe. There is such a thing as karma, which is viewed as an opportunity to learn from our behavior. If you have been extremely cruel in this life, you may be subjected to similar treatment in the next. Or, you might spend a life as a doctor, or helping people in other ways, to repay battlefield karma. This is part of the learning and growth process for all souls. Maybe writing this article is part of my karma.

Getting On With Life

It will no doubt be a difficult transition, going from the stress of war and active duty to civilian life, with a whole new set of issues. Routines at home have changed. Your children are older and at different place in life. Civilian conversations and situations may seem trivial, unorganized and frustrating. Spouses or partners may have had to move on in making household decisions or new realms of their lives. They may react to situations more independently, and it may be hard to “fit” in and feel like a natural part of your family and friends network and your community at large. Even if you didn’t face combat, the disruption to your life may be enormous. Here are some suggestions, that I hope will help.

Talk to other soldiers. Work things out with your unit and buddies. Rely on each other
Forgive yourself, if you feel you did something wrong. Holding onto guilt does no one good, and it makes it difficult to move on.
Don’t expect to be perfect. No one is. So, if you need help with any problems, do your best to get it.
If you’re not in counseling, find someone to talk to, possibly a friend or family member. God and your spirit guides or guardian angels are always caring and ready to listen.
Use the meditation exercises to help let go of sorrow, guilt, anger, stress or whatever else you may be experiencing. They may also make you more psychic.
Get out and enjoy nature, skiing or snowboarding, hiking, kayaking, fishing or biking. Work on being in the moment, enjoying, and paying attention to, the sights and sounds around you.
Like you did in nature, try to stay in the moment at work and with family and friends.
Exercise will keep you in shape, release stress and get your energy flowing.
Avoid using drugs or alcohol to deal with the pain. They make matters worse in the long run.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading this article. Any comments or experiences you want to post here would be greatly appreciated. You have to sign in, so I can avoid getting spam, but your information is strictly confidential. You don’t even have to use your real name. Feel free to write me directly, if you prefer, at curtremington@comcast.net.

Fight or Flight Response

by Curt Remington

Battling Blacktail Bucks

As an emotion, anger may have been useful for our caveman ancestors, as it triggered our “fight or flight” response, pumping adrenaline into our blood and readying our bodies for action.

In modern society this response is very rarely needed and causes all sorts of troubles. The “fight or flight” response cuts blood flow to our central organs and brain, causing health problems and difficulty thinking clearly. Anger also damages relationships and can lead to terrible, impulsive decisions. These show up in the news all the time. Most of us aren’t going to go on a rampage, but many of us could still use work on reducing anger in our lives. I know I could.

One of the most important steps for reducing anger is changing the thinking that leads to it. If things or people aren’t the way we’d like them to be, we get angry, thinking that somehow that may get them to change. This rarely works, and often it backfires. According to the Law of Attraction, “that which you resist persists.” I have seen this countless times. Getting angry or fighting something just brings more of it into our lives.

Another worthwhile strategy is to try and see the other person’s point of view. Last night, I had a great opportunity to practice this, during the drive into town for a meeting. The host had stressed the importance of arriving on time, so I left the house a few minutes early. Our drive to town is on a winding road along a lake, with not one passing zone the entire distance. People usually drive about 45 mph, most of the way, but the car in front of me drove erratically, hovering around 30 mph, then suddenly hitting their brakes and slowing to less than 20. This happened repeatedly, as more cars backed up behind us and I glanced again at the clock. Years ago, before meditating, I would have been furious. Instead, I practiced some meditation techniques, kept my distance and looked for a reason someone would drive like that, other than to make me mad. It came to me that they must have terrible night vision and were worried about all the deer along our road. Instead of getting angry, I felt some sympathy for them. As soon as we reached town, they pulled onto the first side street, fully in the oncoming lane. I wished them well and still made it to the meeting on time.

More Tips for Managing or Letting Go of Anger

Meditate – Stress is a big block to good relationships. It makes it harder to think, feel and communicate.
Learn to compromise, or to accept things and people the way they are. Getting mad at the weather, the economy, the other driver or your lost keys won’t change them anyway.
Have a sense of humor. It’s hard to be mad when you’re laughing.
Deal with irritations assertively (not aggressively) before anger builds.
Relax, take a few deep breaths and think before saying something you’ll regret. Walking away and coming back later is even better.
Forgive. Holding onto anger just makes you miserable and doesn’t prove anything.
Exercise – This is another great way to release stress.

Meditating on My Own Anger

I confess, I still sometimes hold onto anger, even though I know that I shouldn’t. I’ve been mad at someone that treated me terribly and never showed remorse. My anger is punishing me much more than its punishing them. Last week, I decided to meditate on this and use a technique for releasing some of that anger.

In meditating on it, I saw images that represented me pushing down and holding in all that anger rather than using outwardly forms of expression like yelling, swearing and fighting, which I’ve used in this past. None of those are good choices. Then I saw a better alternative, releasing that anger deep into the earth, using a technique we learned in clairvoyant training. The earth easily neutralizes this anger energy and returns it to where it belongs. This meditation helped my mood improve for days. For a serious issue, you may want to use it repeatedly.

Letting Go of Anger Meditation:

If you’re mad, meditating is more difficult to do. All those angry thoughts keep popping in, making it hard to relax. Instead of fighting the anger, and those thoughts, use this technique to run the anger and flush it out of your body and energy system.

Once your sitting comfortably, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Imagine a grounding cord that extends from the base of your spine (first chakra) to the center of the earth. You can visualize this cord as a rope, fiber-optic cable, tree root or whatever else comes to you. Quantum energy responds to thought, so when you visualize this, you are actually creating a cord of quantum energy. This cord will help your body feel more secure, and it gives you a place to release negative energies, like anger.

With your grounding in place, imagine a big ball of red energy, representing anger, over your head. Let it pour down through the top of your head (seventh chakra) and run through your body. Go ahead and feel some anger while you run this. Visualize the red energy as it moves through your body and out through your grounding cord. The red seems to match anger energy and carries it along and out of you. Let the red energy run until you no longer feel mad, and its job is done. Then, shift from red to another color, like blue or gold. Run this color to renew yourself and to replace that anger energy you let go of. When you’re done, take a few more deep breaths, stretch and get on with your day. After doing this, I find myself to be feeling much better. I hope you will too.

Mountain Lions

Articles tagged with: anger

Meditation for Returning Soldiers