How do you view trauma in relation to Spiritual Realization?
Any unconscious or partly-conscious trauma or karmic events must be brought to the light of consciousness for conscious digestion. The processing itself is different for different people and for different events.
The digestion could take a one minute bout of weeping or months or psychotherapy. It does not matter. What matters is that if things stay in the dark they will keep pulling our attention there causing unconscious suffering until they are properly processed with clarity, compassion and all the necessary forgiveness.
This applies to both trauma that we suffered and trauma that we caused others.
Guilt and blame are definite obstacles to spiritual realization.
Although it can happen that the very realization of “Who We Are” puts an end to guilt and all emotional accounting on the spot for the simple reason that it is understood that there is no separate “I” who is the author of anyone’s actions. Remove the separate “I” from the equation and the root of all psychological suffering is removed.
If we know we have a sore spot in the back of our minds, it makes no sense sitting and waiting. It is wise to seek methods of becoming conscious of what happened in the past to some degree. And it can be as far back as a previous life, which requires specific techniques by skilled practitioners to access.