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The Four Faced God is Brahma, the Creator God.

(Not to be confused with Bhraman)

Brahma is the Monad, the One before the Two. Brahma creates the manifest reality that we experience. Brahma creates the Universe through the Law of Karma (cause and effect) which means delivering the lessons we need in order to turn us inward to our Heart so that we can remember who we Truly are. From an egoic perspective the Creator God can seem fearful because we often don't like the life lessons Brahma creates for us, but once you come to understand the nature of Brahma's Creation, then you see that Life is being created full of lessons to help us deepen our connection to Source and find our Way back Home.

The Upanishads are a really beautiful text that speaks a lot about the nature of Brahma. (I really like the Juan Cole translation.)

The Creator God is represented in all Ancient Spiritualities. In Egypt, Thoth is the Creator God.. In Greece it was Hermes. In the old testament it is Enoch and Archangel Metatron. The Lord of the Old Testament is also the Creator God. The Holy Spirit is the Creator God. Also Apollo, Mercury, and the Dove that preceded Jesus when he was baptized.

The Emerald Tablets of Thoth would be a really beautiful text for this stage of your Journey as it is a really powerful and concise teaching about the nature of the Creator God.

Being gifted a vision of the Creator God means that you are moving beyond duality to the substrate of Creation. Investigation into Sacred Geometry can be helpful for this phase. Consider drawing Metatron's Cube and learning how the Platonic Solids emerge from within the Shape. The Torus would be a really powerful shape to ponder as well.

Wishing you peace and love on your Journey 💜

Edit:

Here is an Alex Grey visionary art painting of the Four Faced God.

And here is a Temple to the Four Faced God in the ancient ruins near Angkor Wat in Cambodia

> Would you say that the purging helps you spiritually/emotionally? Also, do you feel nauseated and 'hungover' afterwards?

It helps you to release trauma, so yes it helps emotionally. Usually you do not feel nauseated afterwards. You feel that beforehand but purging releases the cause and typically you will feel much lighter and better afterwards. It is an unpleasant but cathartic experience and so often once you come out the other side of it you feel really good. There is a feeling of having put down a weight you've been carrying for a long time so you feel lighter and sometimes even joyful. There have been times that after a purge I just sat there for a while with a big grin on my face.

> I have a difficult time shutting my mind off. Perhaps this is something I really need to work on before I decide whether this is the right choice for me. I wouldn't want to go into it feeling anxious and fearful only to have these emotions ruin the experience for me.

A busy mind might keep you from maximizing the experience but that by itself is not a problem. I had that a lot for quite a while. I'd be stuck in my head thinking about stuff most of the night or even all of it. I'd still get benefit.

> I read some stories on this subreddit which scared me a bit. Would it be possible that these people took too high a dose?

Maybe but not necessarily. A higher dose will generally be more intense, which can be overwhelming for the inexperienced. From there it's easy to start getting really scared and start a downward spiral. Someone more experienced or who takes to it more naturally can ride the experience from a higher dose.

> I'm assuming that you are given a dose based on what you are comfortable with, your body weight, emotional readiness, etc. Am I right in this?

It depends on the shaman. I've had some who gave the same amount to everyone and others who tried to read each person and tailor it to them, and still others who left it up to the individual. Every one I've worked with has accepted input from the participant, so if you want to start out lighter you can say so and it should be honored. Many people I've worked with always start out first-timers light.

> Did you hallucinate while trying to fight the medicine?

In the early days when I was fighting it but was not aware of this, my subjective experience was that the medicine wasn't working. I didn't feel it. It seemed like I was mostly sober. Visions and visuals tend to come when you relax and open to the medicine, not when you fight it.

> I have a lot of childhood stuff I can't remember. I know it is blocking me and causing my anxiety/depression to become worse but I fear bringing it to the forefront and remembering these traumatic events.

One thing that's important to know about Ayahuasca is that it doesn't necessarily bring up the actual experience or any related memories. It can do this if it is somehow necessary, but often times your experience will be of a more generalized discomfort. You are processing raw emotion not consciously related to any specific event or memory. So in this way it is possible to heal trauma without having to relive it. My impression is that this is the more common case.

As for me I have a lot of strong indicators that there was some severe sexual abuse in my past, but I don't remember most of my childhood, so I have no memory of it. During all of my work with plant medicines I processed a lot of difficult stuff, but those memories never surfaced. I used to be afraid of them and wonder if I would be able to handle them if they came up. Then eventually I got to a point where I kind of wanted to face them, and know what happened. But they never came up. I'm in a much better place these days and I don't feel like I'm carrying any of that stuff around anymore, but I still don't know what happened.

> I'm not sure if I'm ready for it, honestly.

Well I think it's important to honor yourself if that is your conclusion. Unfortunately no one else can tell you, and without experiencing it, it's hard for you to know either. It's often a very difficult choice for people. For me I was in such a bad place and so desperate for help that I didn't care, I was all in. If you are not in such a desperate place that's good, you can take your time if you need to.

Speaking of which, there is a wonderful tool I'd like to recommend which can prepare you to work effectively with Ayahuasca, but is also a wonderful and powerful healing modality on its own. The Presence Process by Michael Brown. I highly recommend that you have a look and give it a try if it appeals to you. It is the most powerful non-medicine tool I've come across. It is also a bit slower and gentler, which may suit you more at this point in your journey.

One of the really great things about it for people doing medicine work is that the tools that are imparted as a result of engaging in the process work so wonderfully with medicine as well. So if something difficult comes up in an Ayahuasca ceremony, you have tools to work through it instead of feeling overwhelmed and maybe even assaulted. They also work great for integrating medicine experiences so that you can integrate more consciously. They go together like chocolate and peanut butter.

So my recommendation is to have a go at the book. The process is 10 weeks long, so you could easily do it twice with a long break in between before your one year deadline comes up. Then you would presumably be much better prepared to step up your healing journey to the next level by engaging with the medicine if that felt right for you at that time.

> I've read endless books, I've seen a psychotherapist, I've read loads into the workings of the mind, psychology, positivity, habits etc but nothing changes. I have fleeting states, periods where I'll get into a better rhythm in life and feel okay (but still not great and feel very lacking etc) and then I return to baseline, where I feel lost, helpless, lacking direction etc.

Hi, just a thought -- you mention you've done a lot of reading, but let me ask, what have you been doing?

I'm curious if you've read -- and actually done -- [The Presence Process: A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness: Michael Brown](https://www.amazon.com/Presence-Process-Journey-Present-Awareness/dp/1897238460 "The Presence Process: A Journey Into Present Moment Awareness: Michael Brown")?

My recommendation is complete The Presence Process (or any other mindfulness practice that speaks to you) and then go do an ayahuasca retreat. Also focus on your physical health, exercise, diet, sleep. Starting a mindfulness and health routine will make you more fertile ground for ayahuasca to treat.

I do believe that ayahuasca can be good for you. I've described ayahuasca as Drano for a clogged psyche that you can't see to clear out by gentler means. (FYI Drano is a chemical product in the US that you can pour into a clogged sink or bath tub drain.)

It was for me. So many psyche issues I had, for literally decades, that I couldn't seem to move on my own, despite doing many of the things you mention, ayahuasca just flushed out in one night.

So I think you should go. Good luck, and I hope you'll write back before, after, and then a few months later to share your progress.

I would recommend reading as many books on Law of Attraction as you can. There's a mentality shift there that you will experience in doing so and start reprogramming your thoughts/perceptions to change the reality of your physical health. There's of course the popular movie on netflix called "The Secret" that you could watch now too. I believe there's a full version of it for free on YouTube. I really like this book: https://www.amazon.com/Money-Law-Attraction-Learning-Happiness/dp/1401918816

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I have seen no real examples myself that weed conflicts with ayahuasca. I was off of weed for a while and did a 2 day ceremony at the end of may and a few days after I started using cannabis again. It actually helped me further develop and tap into my ayahuasca experience. I quit again now as I'm doing another 2 day ceremony in august and would like to be as clean as possible. But if you can go 2 weeks without before hand it's still recommended. If you can't then I'm sure you would still receive a lot from the ceremonies.

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The place I've gone to so far does retreats in the US. They just did 2 retreats in New York last month. I don't know when they will be back there, but there's a possibility they could be back this year, and if not, most likely next year. Website is here: https://origensagrada.com so you can contact them and ask them.

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If I was able I'd still pick to go down to columbia/peru, but that hasn't been an option for me yet. I live an hour away from where origen sagrada do the ceremonies in colorado and they do a split payment for the retreat. So you pay like 300-400 online, then you bring 200ish in cash to the retreat. For me last time it was $350 online and $200 cash when i went. I did the same thing for their retreat in august. I paid the chunk of it online last month in June, and then that has given me a month and a half before I have to bring the $200. So I'm very grateful for that.
The main thing is just to get in contact with whatever place you feel drawn to do the ceremonies and share what you shared here with them. Ask them if it will be alright and just make sure they have a heads up. Then see what they say.

I think it can help if it's taken regularly. Regular drinkers of ayahuasca have an upregulated amount of serotonin receptors in their brains, which would allow someone to feel more pleasure from less.

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What is your exercise regime like? Are you lifting weights? Lifting weights is one of the best natural anti-depressants I have ever found. Look up the Body by Science workouts, they are intense weight workouts that are done in 15 minutes, I love them and they have changed my life and body.

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Also, if you need a jumpstart, one known secret is to meagdose vitamin D for a period of time. I assume you're getting enough sun down there, but high doses can completely remove inflammation from the body which allows it to heal itself - https://www.amazon.com/Miraculous-Results-Extremely-Sunshine-Experiment/dp/1491243821/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=vitamin+d+miraculous&qid=1555006036&s=gateway&sr=8-3

Just read the reviews there.

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The other thing I can recommend is cold showers and the Wim hof method, which can and will boost dopamine by a not shy 300%+. Most depression comes from low dopamine. But you must do the breathing exercises first then the cold shower for it to work properly.

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Additionally, Look into heart-brain coherence breathing and practice that for a week or two. Gregg Braden has a bunch of good stuff on that.

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Also if you can get into the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza, he actually gives you the formula backed up by neuroscience, eipigentics, quantum physics and the placebo effect, for how to heal yourself from anything, including depression - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ereahWKwNV8

Since you have time, try watching one video of his per day.

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To me, all these things together combined with meditation which it sounds like you're already doing, are even more effective than ayahuasca because one can actually sustain these practices and they are nearly free.

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Please let me know your thoughts.

Hey. It is not cool to downvote people for trying to have a discussion and for offering valid counter-points. Tom921992 raised an interesting and relevant question. If that makes you feel bad, perhaps examine why you felt that way? No need to be insecure. With, or without a definition of spirit, Aya is still Aya. Also, Happy Cake-Day, OP!

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I think it depends on what you define a 'spirit' as. Westerners love to anthropomorphize things. We want our spirits to be visible, coherent, and lucid -- like meeting another human being, only as spirit. If you detach from your axis and explore this school of thought, you realize how many pre-conceived filters and biases you have running on-top of your experience.

While aiding Ayahuasca ceremonies in Peru, many people pose these questions. It is often phrased as: "Is this really happening to me, or is this just my imagination?" The imagination is the container where these experiences take place. You are imagining what you are seeing. That does not invalidate or reduce your experience.

A spirit is a different being. A practitioner or an explorer might abstract these sensations into a form that is understandable and communicable. It is always a reductive process. But, if you want to meet a plant spirit, the imagination is the membrane in which a non-human entity converses with a human entity. Its form, approach, and discourse is going to be unique to the observer.

As a takeaway, I think it is important to realize that the best anyone can understand about Ayahuasca is Ayahuasca plus them. In no way can we explore and understand the medicine and the experiences without our own spirits present. In this way, a true objective scientific analysis is a major challenge. The debate will become epistemological in short order.

If you are interested in some deep reading, I would recommend The Antipodes of the Mind by Benny Shannon. This is a hard-science book. It is an rigorous phenomenological analysis of Ayahuasca experiences over many years, in many different contexts. Another way to philosophically approach Ayahuasca and its experiences is through that of Platonic epistomology.

Enjoy your journey!

Like Terence McKenna, I prefer Alan Watts' speaking to his writing. His lecture series Out of Your Mind had an extremely powerful impact on me (transcript available in book form).

Read this book because I only have done Ayahuasca once and it was an amazing experience, especially with all the knowledge that I've learned with this book https://www.amazon.com/Ayahuasca-Test-Pilots-Handbook-Journeying/dp/1583947914

what you re saying is interesting and is aligned with the school of toughs of CBT: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Fundamentally, this method teaches you to challenge your negative thoughts, rationalize them and replacing them by new thoughts that are not distorted and are closer to reality. What you re doing is identifying you negative thought patterns (internal dialogue), rip them from your brain and create new and more rational brain paths. This requires consistent and persistent work. The good news is: if you work hard at it, you can rewire your brain thanks to neuroplasticity. Here's a book that can help you guys a lot: Mind over Mood. https://www.amazon.ca/Mind-Over-Mood-Second-Changing/dp/1462520421

The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge

A MUST read for anyone who has ever partaken :)

I scanned a bunch & have then here if you click the tab healthy vegan recipes

https://twobirdschurch.com/la-dieta/

Alot of then are scans from this book Cooking with la madre

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cooking-Madre-Fiona-Johnson/dp/1542751403

Levine - Waking the Tiger

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Waking-Tiger-Transform-Overwhelming-Experiences/dp/155643233X

https://www.amazon.de/Living-Himalayan-Masters-Swami-Rama/dp/0893891568

That's why I said something about it, so you would be aware that some people use the term differently. A book of the same name was published by McKenna in the late 80s.

https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Mushroom-Cross-Christianity-fertility/dp/0982556276

If you find it you can read Benny Shannon’s The Antipodes of the Mind: charting the phenomenology of the ayahuasca experience

It deals exclusively with what you describe your post

Nihue Rao + https://www.amazon.com/Fellowship-River-Exploration-Traditional-Amazonian/dp/0998609501

> Sure, but animals have a consciousness that enables them to suffer. Plants, by and large, have evolved to spread their seeds by being eaten, and as far as we are aware do not suffer at all.

Plants suffer, and feel pain. They're also sentient. Mentally, they're not so far away from animals, it seems, as they recognize kin, make friends, can sense when they're in danger, etc. Physically, their body language is a real mystery for us.

http://forums.ayahuasca.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=13575

https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Life-Plants-Fascinating-Emotional/dp/0060915870

https://www.amazon.com/Primary-Perception-Biocommunication-Plants-Living/dp/0966435435

> Unfortunately your gratitude means nothing to the animals who die for you.

Which is why tribal cultures honour the souls of the animals who die for them, so that the tribe may survive. Tribes can't be choosy with their food. Westerners can. But that doesn't mean a plant-only diet is healthy.

> The good news is that you can be grateful without causing suffering by avoiding eating animals.

Now you just sound like a brigading Vegan. Seen a few too many of you around Reddit. "The good news" ~ just like a religious person telling someone they've sinned, and can absolve their sins by doing a bunch of bullshit.

> While this may be true while they are alive, we know it is no longer true when they are being slaughtered. An apple, on the other hand, for all we know may rejoice when it has been eaten and had its seeds replanted.

This logic makes no sense. A dead animal is an animal that no longer feels pain, as their soul is at peace and is thus happy. Whether they died painlessly by a humane farmer wishing them no suffering, or died at the claws of predators looking for a meal, caring not about their well-being.

>but I'm not certain that it changes everything. For one, privation views for the badness of death are not immediately made irrelevant by the fact that there's yet a life to come. Killing someone deprives us of goals, aspirations, and desires we have that give meaning to us in this life.

So?

>Depending on the details of the afterlife, if we lose much of what constitutes our personal identity here, i. e. memories, psychological continuity,

We don't. Studying the reports, it seems that the personality we go through and develop here becomes a tiny part of a much larger personality we have in the spirit realm, that is a combination of every physical life and character we've ever been and explored.

We do not just incarnate into a body and a physical environment. I.e., not only do we choose the parameters of our existence as in being ugly/good-looking, tall/short, black/white, rich/poor, healthy/sick/handicapped, etc. We also choose the personality we're going to explore, as in terrible/great, smart/stupid, loving/manipulative, fun/boring, etc. Judging from reports of the afterlife, we are, in every sense of the expression, exploring what it's like to live as a certain character with certain predefined parameters. If there's a sane afterlife and reincarnation occurring from time to time is a fact, it follows that life here is a role-playing exercise.

>our desires have been frustrated here, and there's a powerful prima facie case to be made that it is this frustration that grounds the badness of death.

Again, so? From a meta-perspective, what we wanted to experience here was maybe to have our desires frustrated. And imagine this - if you have a dream where your desires are being frustrated, is it a bad dream, or an interesting one?

Clearly, being here isn't about getting everything we want all of the time. I want to eat rainbow-pancakes right now that taste like the cuteness of kittens, but that desire is surely being frustrated. Getting everything we want is what Heaven is for, indulging in never-ending enjoyment. Being here is all about experiencing limits in a structured reality. And if we choose to come here in general, then our meta-desire is never frustrated, no matter what happens here, because we were aware of all the possibilities that could come to pass once we were here.

Additionally, most people's frustration of dying stems from their lack of perspective. No one who knew what death was like would have a problem with it, as is evidenced by NDErs approach to their own death. The person being murdered only has a problem with it because they don't know just how much more wonderful the afterlife is than this experience here could ever be, even on our best of days. As one NDEr put it,

"If I lived a billion years more, in my body or yours, there's not a single experience on Earth that could ever be as good as being dead. Nothing."

>Sure you can. Christians don't kill each other just because they believe there's an good afterlife.

But they don't believe that everyone gets to heaven no matter what either, so their stance on the matter is irrelevant.

>like the commandments of an omnibenevolent deity

How could an omnibenevolent deity even have commandments? Unconditional love and acceptance implies by necessity that anything goes.

>Kant's categorical imperative demonstrating that killing is morally prohibited, regardless of the possibility of an afterlife, because killing is not universally endorsable action from the rational point of view.

Sorry, not everyone buys deontology. If anything, I think virtue ethics is forced to be concluded as the case, given what we're learning from NDEs. Indeed, consequentialism is explicitly refuted by the life review. What matters is never the outcome, since it is out of our control, but rather our intentions.

Anyway, how is killing irrational if death implies a wonderful afterlife? Is it irrational to send someone from this very hard and challenging existence to a realm of indescribable happiness, ease and wonder?

"Damn you for upgrading my quality of existence roughly 10^10000000 times!!"

>the goals of a reincarnated agent or spiritual agent might be very different from the goals of a biological agent, and depriving the biological agent of his goals is wrong, regardless of whether his spiritual self will come to possess new goals in the afterlife.

Why shouldn't a meta-desire trump a mere desire?

>You don't know how much I've read, so your comment that I'm ignorant about the state of the evidence is in bad faith.

On the contrary, your last comment gave away that you hadn't studied it all, when you wrote

"Nevermind the fact that you are in no position at all to suppose that there is in fact an afterlife,"

This is not what someone who was aware of the totality of the evidence for an afterlife would say. I've encountered an innumerable amount of people who are of the a priori assumption that there's no evidence for an afterlife, and they have the exact same attitude that you've displayed in this conversation. Do I know for certain that you haven't studied the evidence for an afterlife? Of course not. But are you displaying all of the signs of someone who hasn't? Yes.

>The evidence hasn't been "refuted", but it doesn't have to be. A Bayesian approach to the evidence will yield that the best explanation for the data is a naturalistic explanation.

Ah, you're one of those people who use the term 'naturalism' instead of 'materialism'. I'm guessing you've studied philosophy? As an aside, can you define naturalism in a meaningful way, and explain why materialism isn't a sufficient term?

>There are competing hypotheses that attempt to make sense of the data, and I think the naturalistic hypothesis, not survival, best explains that data. It doesn't refute it, it best accounts for it.

Yeah, you think so, but again, if you're not familiar with the data, i.e. work of Bruce Greyson, Ian Stevenson, Jeffrey Long, Sam Parnia, Peter Fenwick, Gary Schwartz, Michael Sabom, Keith Augustine, Susan Blackmore, Kenneth Ring, Pim van Lommel, Penny Sartori, etc, then your opinion is irrelevant. Have you read the works of all of these people? Have you read this book, that presents the best case for survival there is, and takes all the counter-arguments from the skeptics of this idea into account? If so, what's your critique of it?

The reality is that you have no idea how strong the evidence is. You are just stating your belief and try to portray it as justified even though it's not. The data actually has falsified materialism over and over again, thousands of times. There's no way to explain even just the NDE in a materialistic framework. And people have certainly been trying, which is why there are over 20 different proposed explanations that are compatible with materialism, such as lack of oxygen, excess of CO2, DMT-dump at the moment of death, wishful thinking, REM-sleep brain patterns, birth canal memory, etc. And yet, none of them fit the actual data.

>Well, here we simply disagree. And I'm not interested in having this conversation blow up into the much bigger issue of life after death and the evidence for it

I can respect that, but I want to stress that not being interested in the evidence for an afterlife is in itself an irrational stance for any philosopher. Because whether there's life after death or not changes the fundamental assumptions of at least half of all philosophical inquiries. In other words, it completely revolutionizes the fields of philosophy of mind, metaphysics, ontology, ethics, philosophy of religion, etc (although it has no impact whatsoever on the philosophy of language, logic, etc).

>so I'll just here counter assert that a survey of the relevant lines of evidence reveals that naturalism best accounts for the data, not the survival hypothesis.

You are free to state the opposing case.

>Yeah, I understand, I simply assumed you knew what this ritual killing involved

So what does it involve? Was there a lot of prolonged torture before they were killed off, or not? Because our entire conversation hinges on that detail.

Why would there be a beginning to it? Nature's natural state, as opposed to our artificial separation today (although we are not really separate), is not nice. Nature is indifferent and brutal. "Trauma" could be construed as protective generational/cultural memory. I do not think that explanation is adequate, but it is an useful consideration to begin with:

In a prehistoric environment, you can imagine a member of your tribe beating you half-to-death for daring to encroach on a space deemed impassable. It doesn't make sense to you, but before you were born, perhaps a human who traveled in that area was stalked by a warring tribe who used to live there. They followed that human back and nearly wiped out your tribe. There is no time (and possibly no clear way, pre-advanced-linguistics) to explain to you why that transgression is so bad. Your attacker may not even know why. It may not even be relevant today; perhaps the warring tribe is long gone. But the individual is not the primary concern, the species is.

Humans do not need to be traumatized to commit horrific acts. Every one of us is a monster. Watch some footage of soldiers talking about their combat experiences. As often as someone comes home with PTSD from something that happened to them, they come home with PTSD from something they did. They cannot grapple with the horrors they watched themselves commit, not only for immediate survival, but in unnecessarily vengeful brutality. Rise Against has a beautiful and haunting song about this.

Similarly, concentration camp guards, spanish conquistadors, jihadists, conquerers of other sorts - they are not psychopaths. They are not (all) damaged individuals. They're regular people just like you and I. There is literally nothing separating you from being one of them, at least without the integration of that knowledge (the integration of the shadow). I think this is part of why people who believe so strongly in the "love and light" theory of the universe and seek "healing" from psychedelics commonly encounter traumatic hellish experiences instead of getting what they were looking for. The healing experience actually comes from acknowledging and marrying your darkness, not from banishing it. Objectively, love and light does not cut it. Welcome to Earth; it's a hostile alien planet in a completely indifferent universe. Compassion, love, and trust are miraculous and should be supported and protected. Focusing only on them, however, is a path to destruction and powerlessness. It can pave the way for evil. There are left and right paths to totalitarianism.

We are sheltered and naive in our culture. Problems that have been temporarily solved are quickly forgotten, collectively. For this reason only is it easy to protest and criticize the restrictive laws of our society; we are more-or-less completely ignorant of the chaos they protect us from. You would break to see the things you would do to preserve your own life. "Civilization" is a very thin veneer atop our natural proclivity for violence. This is the major problem with frustration with democratic capitalism, patriarchy, technological primacy, the widespread influence of Christian values, and the other "oppressive structures" which organize modern life.

They didn't come from nowhere, suddenly. They evolved. We will only see what they have saved us from when they are destroyed, and by then it will be too late. Some of those problems, like the warring human tribe from my example, no longer exist. But the majority of them do still exist, as they concern precisely this problem (the human proclivity for evil), and only have fallen from view. Education is the alternative, but not too many of us are interested in considering the fact that we are all capable of practically unspeakable monstrosities. Few want to actively confront their biases. The dialogue between conservatism and progressivism is increasingly polarized as a resultant function of our ignorance. We need effective dialogue to continue to adapt without ripping the floor up from under our feet. This is why history repeats itself, despite the widespread dissemination of information.

In Jungian psychology, this aspect of ourselves which we usually ignore is called the shadow. It's Freudian counterpart is component to the id, but the concept of the id is more general than the concept of the shadow.

As for your personal experience with trauma, I highly recommend the book It Didn't Start With You: How Inhereted Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle. It's available as an audiobook too. Helped me with forgiveness.