There is the processing of trauma, and we can see shadows here and identify them. However, there is a layer beneath trauma where the darkest truth lies. To confront this layer, you must be prepared to have your identity completely destabilized, hold the current without collapse, and feel the most forbidden feeling known to man. It is a truth almost never spoken, because it is completely forbidden to utter.
Allow me.
When we are born, we are pure pre-verbal consciousness in our most vulnerable state. We are in the position of complete and total need, our very existence entirely dependent upon the person who is our absolute everything: our mother. In this state, we are imprinted on the deepest possible layer, and no matter what happens going forward, no amount of harm done to us by our mothers can erase this core layer.
In reality, the integration of the light and dark mother is as follows:
It is true that upon birth, we loved our mothers with a totality that we can never erase, nor forget. Later in life, to the degree that she harmed us, we split the image in our psyche. We cannot reconcile at that time that “the woman who hurt me, and the woman I adored, were the same person.” This is difficult to integrate because this initial imprint of love in totality meets a fracture when her real human side is seen. Her own absorbed traumas, circumstances, temperament, and violence are revealed, and this is what creates the split between “mother as god” and “mother as evil.”
In order to fix the fracture, it is necessary to go to the level beneath trauma and admit the forbidden truth: “I loved my mother with a totality that eclipses anything I can fathom, more than anything I have ever known.” It is a non-verbal, complete immersion in the sea of peace and security. This itself is in the darkest shadow. From here, the deepest love is remembered before the pain that caused the fracture. The trauma is the second layer; the absolute totality of love is the first, and far more destabilizing. In fact, if you actually touch it with your memory and heart, you would lose emotional control immediately and weep. It can temporarily collapse the adult ego-structure and evoke archaic modes of emotional organization. This is where people can regress into merging, panic, and defensive shields. We do not have words to convey the intensity of these experiences, and so they become represented as symbols. They become “avatars of the divine” that we interact with so as not to touch the current directly and destabilize our psyches.
If you ever conveyed this in words to your mother, she would likely become uncomfortable because there is a corresponding shadow inside her that mirrors yours. She might see the articulation of that first pre-verbal love as a mirror not only to that, but also to where she failed to preserve it. This integration and mutual recognition of these corresponding shadows form the basis upon which we struggle to attain sovereignty. The original infant love is stronger than the later trauma, and therefore more destabilizing to feel, which is why the psyche buries it under rage, worship, or denial.
The purpose here is shadow integration, not reflexive worship of the feminine, putting her back on the throne as “God who can do no wrong.” She is the human being, the light and dark, together as one. In some ways, we had no choice but to view her as god. This was a natural result of her being “everything” and “total safety” to our pre-verbal selves. This created a standard that no human could ever live up to, and this standard was placed on her by the dynamics of the human experience itself.
This is the integration. In order to reconstruct the psyche as one unit, we must go beneath the loop of trauma, into the darkest place where love in totality was felt as completely immersive with no denial and no escape, and be honest with ourselves about what we see there. This is the primal layer—before self, before trauma. From here, it is no longer necessary to see her as God or Devil. She is, as the human being is, all of those in potentiality.
Ewan Dobson – Initiation Complete
People assume the darkest layer of the psyche is trauma itself — the wounds, shadows, and painful memories. But that is not the true depth.
Beneath trauma lies a defensive barrier made of terror imagery: nightmares, panic attacks, demonic symbolism, ego‑annihilation fantasies, and occult or monstrous forms. This layer appears to be the abyss, but it is actually the psyche’s protective perimeter.
Its function is simple:
Prevent the conscious self from approaching a truth that would destabilize identity more than trauma ever could.
The core beneath that barrier is not darkness at all.
It is the pre-verbal, total, overwhelming love felt by the infant toward the mother — the original state of complete immersion and dependence.
This is the paradox:
Because this early love is too destabilizing for the adult psyche to integrate, the mind shrouds it in horror.
The monsters are not the truth — they are the guardians of the truth.
Thus, the “darkest place” is not trauma, nor the symbolic terrors that surround it.
The darkest place — the most forbidden and identity-threatening — is the innocent, overwhelming, pre-verbal love buried underneath.
This is the structure:
The horror is the disguise.
The love is the truth.
And accessing it is the real initiation.
The pre-verbal, limitless infant love is the single most dangerous force in the human psyche. It is the only current powerful enough to dissolve even the most fortified, monstrous ego-construct (serial killer, torturer, war criminal, cult leader) without violence.