A Cult of Trauma
There is a vision from the supernal light, in which there is no time at all.
The righteous “are” above the concept of time, and therefore they see the end of the act in its beginning, like a person standing on a high mountain who sees the entire path from its start to its finish.
The memory of “what was” is the fuel of the old system of existence. It needs a person to remain identified with the wound in order to maintain control over them. This is why all of society builds ceremonies—memorial days, speeches, and publications whose purpose is to keep the pain alive. Not to heal, but so that nothing will change.
“The dead need the living, not the talk about them.” Most people are not ready to “die” in this sense, so they continue to live in a false world to preserve a counterfeit sense of life. This is the primordial fear that the serpent planted in man: “On the day you eat of it, you will surely die.” If you awaken... you will lose your old identity.
The Ramchal says: “A person is not born anew until his old form is shattered.” Humanity has not yet truly been shattered. It still clings to systems, to beliefs, to power, to money, to nationality.
Rabbi Shimon never saw reality through external eyes.
“Whatever he looked at, he looked at through the Tree of Life.”
In the Zohar, it is told that every time Rashbi saw judgment in the world, he would weep and say, “Woe to the world that does not know and does not look into its heart.” He was not disconnected from human pain; he carried it in the depth of his soul.
But after the weeping, he would say: “Then he saw a light that shines from the end of the world to its end.”
When the pain is truly opened, the light of redemption is revealed within it.
This is how he would act today: He would not close his heart, but would open it all the way. He would teach us to see the Godliness. He would call people not to sink into the memory of “what they did to us,” but to ask: “What is being asked of us now?”
Not a memory of holocaust, but a birth of knowledge (da’at).
That all physicality is a reflection, and this is what we must release.
“Do not mourn for the bodies, but awaken the souls!”
Not out of cruelty, but from the knowledge that the light only returns when we stop feeding the darkness.
He would pray not for the cancellation of evil, but for its rectification.
Instead of asking, “God, punish the wicked,” Rashbi would pray: “May it be Your will that the sparks of holiness within this judgment be clarified,” that the hidden light within the event be rectified and ascend. Because he knew that there is no power separate from the Creator, and even evil is a garment for a light that has fallen. So he would return all forces to their source. This is the true sanctification of the Name.
He would light a fire—a fire of da’at, revealing new secrets of the redemption and awakening...
“Anan b’chavivuta talya milta—For us, the matter depends on love.”
Only the divine love consumes all the lies.
What is happening in the media today, all of this talk, is a torment of the soul and an abuse of the soul. There is nothing in it but a lack of da’at. Humanity is losing its divine knowledge; it is clinging to shadows, to talk, to analysis, to accusations, to performances of pain, without illuminating the root.
This is a distortion of the light.
It is an addiction to the external voice instead of to the inner silence where God is found.
The media talks about reality instead of speaking from reality. And from this is born the torment of the soul. The pain, the images—the heart is ground up again and again without a cure. The correct action is the return of the holy silence. Not a silence of suppression, but of seeing from above.
“Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him,” says King David.
Rabbi Shimon would say: The whole world is talking, and the righteous one is silent. And from his silence, the judgments are transformed into mercy.
The root of all the noise is fear, the spiritual illness of the generation.
The system recreates the terror, not to heal it, but to preserve it.
It feeds the fear, because fear equals control.
The interviews with the children, the pictures, the repeated broadcasts—all of these are a cult of trauma, a modern ritual of sacrificing the soul on the altar of ratings.
This is not commemoration; it is the re-animation of the fracture, time after time, until the soul loses its sense of direction.
Instead of releasing the light that is trapped in the pain, they fix the pain in place and cleanse the national conscience through artificial tears.
This is the drug of the generation—not a chemical substance, but a consciousness drug. A drug that dulls the heart and blurs a person’s divine memory. The world holds a person in a state of half-sleep, half-consciousness—not dead, not alive. So that he will not see, will not feel, will not awaken.
Healing begins when we stop memorializing death in the name of life. When we stop broadcasting the terror and choose to look it in the eye—not to drown in it, but to release it.
Because Mashiach is not another “big story.”
It is the return of divine knowledge (da’at) to the human heart,
in which it will no longer be possible to drug us with fear,
not with media,
and not with the illusion of “the State.”
Reflect:
Where do you participate in the “cult of trauma”—endlessly consuming news, images, and stories of pain, believing it is a form of empathy or remembrance?
What would it mean to follow Rashbi’s example: to open your heart fully to the pain, but then to look for the “light that shines from one end of the world to the other” within that pain?
How can you practice “holy silence” today—not as suppression, but as a way of seeing from above, allowing judgments to be transformed into mercy?
The conversation continues below.