Jim Cogley’s Reflections: Tues 9 September – Mon 15 Sept 2025
HEALING AND AWARENESS, A SPIRITUALITY OF INTEGRATION AND WHOLENESS. This will be the theme for the Resurrexit retreat in Ballyvalloo Conference Centre, Co. Wexford, which will be led by Fr. Jim Cogley and Luba Rodzhuk. Beginning 6pm Tues 30th Sept to Friday Oct 3rd. This is open to all who wish to do some serious inner work and there may be a few places still available.
Contact Breda Costello, 34 Melitta Park, Kildare Town, R51YV48 , or email her at bredacostello04@gmail.com or ring her on 087- 6128253
My website for ordering Wood You Believe books is: jimcogley.com
Tues 9th Sept 25 – A Traumatic Smell
For a few weeks during August, and even still, the area around Lady’s Island has had an infestation of small flies that are like ants with wings. There were zillions of them that created cloud formations much like a bird murmuration. At night they almost blotted out a light that is situated at the front of the Parish House overlooking a carpark. On a windowsill beneath one morning so many had died as to be several inches deep. A few days later I noticed the obnoxious odour of decaying flesh and found a veritable dung heap of decaying flies piled on the path beneath. I had never seen anything remotely close to this before. I got a spade and began to dispose of the mess but after nearly twenty or more shovelfuls my stomach was churning with the revolting smell, and I had to leave the final clean-up to nature and Jeyes Fluid. Late that night after going to bed it was as if I was still smelling what belonged to earlier. It was a residual trauma where an event that belonged to the past was still being experienced in the present. Such is the nature of trauma.
Wed 10th Sept – Trauma of the Body
Trauma is carried in our bodies but so can our body itself be traumatized. In earlier times, someone undergoing surgery was given at least a day in hospital in preparation, whereas today there are no operations but just ‘procedures’. Neither is there much time given in preparation before, or time later in hospital, for recuperation. A very useful exercise before a procedure is to lay hands on that part that is going to be directly affected by the surgery and to offer it reassurance that all is going to be okay. Explain what is going to happen and why it is necessary. Should a part need to be removed, give thanks for it and let it go before its actually taken. Ask the body to co-operate with the process and that there is no need for it to react with alarm. From people who have used this technique, including myself, the results are dramatic. The subsequent pain levels greatly reduce, to the point where painkillers are often not necessary, and the journey to recovery is also greatly speeded up.
Thurs 11th Sept – Parkinson’s Disease
What I am going to share is purely based on clinical practice and personal observation. I have noticed that many who suffer from Parkinson’s Disease have known a serious trauma either in their own lives or in their immediate ancestry. In some cases, it would appear to have been triggered by a tragic death and especially if there was someone else involved who was never held responsible. Could this disease be the body expressing what has never dealt with in the way it needed to be expressed? When trauma happens the body initially shakes but then goes into freeze mode. As it thaws out a lot more shaking is needed before the body can self-regulate. Rarely does this happen and so a functioning freeze mode is adopted where the person operates as if everything is okay but deep down knowing that something is seriously amiss. Very often there is a sense of a light having gone out, rigidity in the body, irritability, a disturbed sleep pattern and being hypervigilant.
Fri 12th Sept – Functioning Freeze Mode
The evidence suggests that no amount of purely talk therapy can cure PTSD. This is because trauma is not in the mind but held in the body and from there it must be released. The victim is usually in functioning freeze mode, perhaps with some slight tremors, for years before the onset of Parkinson’s. The nature of the disease is involuntary shaking and this would suggest that at an earlier stage a lot of voluntary shaking had never taken place. In other words, the body had never released what it was carrying. Working with several who were just diagnosed with the condition, and in the early stages, the effect of releasing body trauma is spectacular to the extent of the disease no longer progressing. This is where instead of trying to stop the body’s response of shaking the person is encouraged to actively engage with and even accentuate the movements.
Sat 13th Sept – Origins of Trauma
Trauma can happen in a myriad of ways even in the womb. A man I met recently told of his mother’s pregnancy results getting mixed up and she being treated for having a tumour. He was the tumour and was given electric shocks. Yet he survived and having now dealt with his lifelong trauma has used it to good effect and is a wonderful therapist. How many women and men suffer and carry trauma as a result of domestic violence? Some have been seriously beaten, accused of making their assailant treat then this way, backed into a corner and made feel less than worthless. Those who are lucky enough to break free still carry the baggage of the past that they need to release. In Gaza there are over 40,000 children who have been disabled as a result of the war. Whatever the horror of their physical wounds the suffering of their emotional wounds will be so much more difficult to bear.
Sun 14th September – Love
God so loved the world that he gave his own Son so that through him the world might be saved. I like to change that well known scripture verse to, God so loved me that he gave his son so that I might not be lost but that I would have eternal live
Love is the one thing we all want, it’s the very energy of the universe and if it’s not what makes the world go round it’s what keeps it from stopping! Yet it’s the most bandied about and misused word in the English language and its meaning can range from the sordid to the sublime. A seven-year-old was asked in school what was love and she replied, ‘It’s the first feeling that you feel before the bad stuff gets in the way’. There are very few people who would disagree with that.
Children and adults tend to understand love in very different ways. For a child love is time, the amount of time we have for them is experienced as how much we love them. A very busy father who worked his back off for his children got a shock when his little son said, ‘Dad, when I get my First Communion money could I buy some time with you?’ On the other hand, adults experience love as freedom. How free I am in a relationship is the real measure of how much I am loved. I heard a man say one time how much he loved and absolutely adored his wife. When I asked her if she felt loved, she laughed and said, ‘I surely don’t, I feel trapped by his neediness. I only thought that I was marrying him when in fact I was fostering him’.
We all want to be loved in life and the amount of love is something that we all want to increase. How can we do so? One of the ways we deprive ourselves of love is quite confusing because it would appear to be the way of increasing it. We tend to equate love with being more and more attached to another person.
Notice God so loved that he GAVE. Love and attachment are just not the same thing. Two birds can fly together only when they are free of each other but tie them together and their attachment means that even though they now have four wings they can no longer fly. That is why there is such truth in that beautiful saying, ‘If you truly love something you will set it free and if it comes back its yours forever and if it doesn’t it never was.’
It seems a paradox but for relationships to work the more freedom people give each other the more love they will experience. In saying that I don’t mean being detached because that would be like not caring or indifference. The proper word is more like non-attachment where I allow the other person to be who they really are and in so doing I show tremendous respect and care for their well-being. Needless to say, love and attachment are so often confused so how can we work out one from the other?
Love allows the other person to be different, to be their own unique person with their own gifts talents goals and dreams. It doesn’t expect the other to be an extension of myself. Attachment doesn’t like the other to be unlike us at all. It expects them to think and act like us. It just can’t appreciate another person’s uniqueness without feeling threatened.
Then Love doesn’t make demands while attachment places huge expectations on the other to make me happy and make me feel whole. A woman who was very needy deeply resented the fact that her husband was away from home so much and not there for her as she wanted him to be. At the same time, he resented the fact that she was so needy that he choose to be away all the more because he felt suffocated. It was her wanting more attachment that was destroying the love that she so desperately needed.
An infallible way of checking whether a relationship is healthy and growing or whether it is actually toxic is to ask if it’s becoming more exclusive or inclusive of others. If it’s becoming more centred on the parties involved, then it’s not good and very likely one of the parties is a controller and the other is allowing it to happen. There are so many relationships like this, and they really should carry a government health warning because like cigarettes they can seriously damage your health.
On the other hand, a truly healthy relationship is never just focused on the couple involved but looks outwards and invites others to share in the love that is there.
Finally, if we are inclined to control someone its usually based on our fear and insecurity. Control takes away another person’s power and sooner or later we pay the price even if he or she goes along with it for a while. There is no one to be feared more than the person whose power we have taken. Ultimately control has the potential to destroy what we treasure most, and we never have to look too far to see the truth of that. Learning to allow and give freedom is much more in line with what true love is all about.
Mon 15th Sept – Trauma in the Animal World
Even during WW1 PTSD was not even recognized and soldiers returning from the horrors of war were classed as being shell-shocked. There was no understanding of the condition and for so many the worst of their nightmare was not behind but still ahead as they became rejects and homeless. It’s a true saying that no soldier returns from war, they are never the same. As humans we have much to learn from the animal kingdom and how they deal with trauma. An antelope is chased by a lion and manages to escape. Under the shade of a tree he shakes for ages and then returns to grazing as if nothing has happened. Two ducks go down a stream and have a fight with feathers flying. They float apart, then shake off the dust and swim away unscathed. Both the antelope and the duck know something that it has taken the human a long time to learn – they know the importance of shaking loose.