Dementia is typically viewed as mental decline—the irrevocable disintegration of cognitive capacities that terminates with death. From our cultural vantage point, this makes perfect sense, and I am not here to deny or refute it. Rather, I would like to present an alternative reality: Dementia is the final healing journey, where the person becomes demented, i.e. enters trance, in order to free his essence of trauma memories. In this way, he lightens and purifies himself for the next step of his journey, his passing over.
The dementia journeyer is the consummate shaman: fully empowered and innately knowledgeable of the process. To enter the demented state, he passes through the same three stages as do others engaged in Trance Trauma Release:
Stage I Memory Loss.
With contemporary somatic based approaches to trauma therapy, the first step is to shed the story that is attached to the trauma memory. When a trigger brings our trauma memory to surface, we generally experience PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). This activates the story of our traumatizing experience that we have consciously attached to our trauma memory. The story tells the who, what, when, where, and why. It typically contains elements based on the actual experience and elements that are constructed from imagination, the power of suggestion, and cultural elements. The story needs to be shed in order to progress with trauma release. For the dementia trancer, this is accomplished through memory loss.
Stage II Losing the Self.
How we define ourselves is a combination of how others perceive us, how we wish to be perceived by others, and what we have constructed around ourselves in order to subsist. Some of this is functional and useful, and some of it is dysfunctional and hurtful, both to self and others. But none of it is truly us. We are constructs, braided together from these elements by our egos, to give us semblance of sentient beings. This “self” must disintegrate, and all the remnants need to be shed, in order for our authentic self to emerge. After the shedding, our naked self appears as though materializing from the mists. He is typically kind, generous, and sociable. Longstanding feuds are forgotten, and the boundaries of established relationships are dissolved. He is himself—nothing more and nothing less. And to him, everyone else is the same.
Stage III Dancing out the Poison.
Deep in trance, with no memory and no sense of self to deny, suppress, or distort the bare-boned trauma memory, the person in dementia trance, enacts the final release—the ultimate cleansing. He may come across as violent, bitter, and/or antisocial, but it is not him. It is the poison. He is dancing it out, cleansing his soul to make it unburdened and nimble for whatever is to come.
I red this and appreciate it.