BooBoo - Thanks for an unusual question - it is good to get something I have to really think about.
As to what trauma is I tend to leave a lot of ideas behind and look at any life form - and I believe that trauma is anything that interferes with the development of that life form.
I often use the analogy of a seed, and watching what can interfere with how the seed can express its potential is, in my view, a trauma.
I believe that all life has sentience, and I see that as basic. I would like to call it consciousness, but people mix that with self consciousness. The word ‘sentient’ is defined as ‘having awareness through the senses’. But it also means or implies much more. If we have awareness we can respond to what is going on around us. Plant’s, for instance, respond to light. Their shape may radically change if the source of light is moved. Plants also react to pain or subtle changes in the atmosphere – they close the petals of their flowers for instance. Therefore we can say the plant is sentient. Generally we may feel that the ability to respond ends with plants or bacteria. But the quantum experiments, where a photon of light is one thing when observed, and something else when not observed, suggest that the fundamental particles of the material world can also respond. We can therefore think of them as being sentient. It is because of this that I suggest we float in an ocean of sentience, one part of which knows, and perhaps responds, to what is happening to another part, even at a great distance.
I also believe or see from experiments that sentience is linked with another quality - potential. I am not suggesting that it is potential with a fixed aim - but raw open door potential. I see the countless life forms on our world as an example of this - the potential could have been anything - and it has from bacteria living in super hot underwater vents, to the wonder of flying, the power and majesty of predators, to the unusual phenomena of human existence.
All this was to make plain that I see all life forms have almost unlimited potential - but there are things in the way - various forms of trauma.
But before I go any further I would like you to read
http://dreamhawk.com/interesting-people/animal-children/#Program It is the end of a feature that may be about the archetypal human trauma. If so, trauma is a part of nature's way of putting obstacles in our way to overcome, and is there for ever living thing.
To explain that in term of everyday events, I quote from The Tree -
I can’t remember it not being there –
On the cliff edge overlooking the sea.
I don’t even know how old it is.
There’s no way of knowing.
Perhaps an ancient oak tree
Yet barely to my waist.
Shaped and stunted
By harsh onshore winds,
By the salt and the rock.
It is clinging and growing
To the very shape of the wind,
Perfectly reflecting its environment,
And stunted, as you or I might be,
By circumstances of our birth,
Or events -
Yet still a magnificent oak tree.
Just as you or I, at our core,
Are magnificent human beings.
(See picture of the tree by clicking on -
http://dreamhawk.com/poems/the-tree/)
The point being made is that the tree had in it the potential to be a magnificent tall oak. It was its environment that stunted it, and environment is another cause of trauma. As is birth, education, diet, parental influence and a thousand other factors that can stand in the way of infinite potential.
A thought that is very real to me and I have realised that all the massive rocks and landslides that blocked the road I was travelling in my life were not ‘bad’. All were necessary for me to learn things or to develop strength to shift the road blocks. I have heard from others who have travelled the road of growth that they too say there is nothing bad in our life. I mean that also about things like having my stroke that took away my ability to speak and move my right side of my body. I honestly do not think Life plays with us.
As for reading - I suggest
http://dreamhawk.com/poems/the-tree-2/ -
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/what-we-need-to-remember-about-us-3/#DualBeing and the continued text beyond it -
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/what-we-need-to-remember-about-us-3/#Levels -
http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/lifes-little-secrets/Also Wilhelm Reich's
http://www.amazon.com/Function-Orgasm-Sex-Economic-Biological-Discovery/dp/0374502048/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1432110631&sr=1-9&keywords=wilhelm+reich And another view entirely
http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Freedom-Erich-Fromm/dp/0805031499/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1432110742&sr=1-1&keywords=fear+of+freedomI admire your questioning mind - and also your chosen direction - but trying to recreate a conversation I had with my son, I said, "Obviously anyone with any sight could see that because we know nothing, because to know truth you would have to know everything in the universe, and the universe is constantly changing - so to believe or stand proudly and say they KNOW or be so intellectually clever is a laugh. In another 150 years new beliefs and 'knowledge' will spring up - and that is why I say I am a silly old sod."
Tony