The words "trauma" and "recovery" have become laden with complex and often contradictory layers of meaning. In order to minimise confusion, I have attempted to define all terms used in this book in detail and to clarify which meanings are intended for the words employed. I have often found it necessary in these pages to use the term "traumatic experience" in place of "trauma," since the latter technically refers to serious injury such as a physical wound in particular. Likewise, the term "healing" has been used in place of "recovery" to distinguish the metaphysical ideas explored here from the psychiatric or medical definition of "recovery," a loaded word that implies the existence of purely mythical "diseases" that affect the mind or brain, or which refers to the overcoming of so called "addiction" to substances. Heal the mind, and the body will follow. This principle of mind over matter underlies the entire field of metaphysics, and must be the foundation for any mystical study of healing recovery. Materialistic philosophy and its outgrowths in medical science and popular thought must be deconstructed in our minds before we can find our way to the true recovery that arises out of love and harmony with the universe and spiritual awakening.