‘What is sadness, but anger incomplete’
When we work on ourselves we encounter a wide range of emotions, and meet many forms of resistance to progressing in those areas.
It came to my attention in a meditation that I was suffering from depression. I could feel the familiar shape and form of it – like a clouded, solid greyness pressing the emotions into a nothingness. It had arisen from external stresses, but when the causes were analysed, my mind was drawn to issues deep in the past – the current situation wasn’t to blame, but the deeper scars that lie as dormant traps, waiting to be activated through some associated blame-seeking damaged inner child.
Further in the meditation, it became apparent that the immovable depression wasn’t a ‘nothingness’, but anger itself rendered immobile due to incomplete childhood developmental experiences. Anger would normally be associated with frenetic activity, vivid retribution on memories animating them in grotesque ways. Sadness seems to be another form, a worn out and powerless soul resigned to defeat.
How can we manage this in a healthy manner? We should avoid animating the sadness into action directed at the causes. Why?, because it’s the past – no amount of anything can change that. We should also avoid inaction and ignorance, and seek to only realise the connection between the weight of the sadness with its true form of unexpressed emotion – be it anger, loss, grief, etc.
This concept makes a great lens for the 5 of swords & cups. The whole energy of the person is reversed. The pressure of the inverted suppressed thoughts on a weakened emotional state causes the inactivity of internal direction, a life ‘apathy’
The process in Qabalah is one of shattering into 78 pieces, understanding the compartmentalized part of the self in relation to our own understanding of the tree of life, transformation of those parts we don’t understand or refuse to relate to, and then a final reintegration of those points of knowledge to be expressed through life in every part of our being. This isn’t a purely esoteric process, it affects all strata during our life – and a process that could be called ‘the great work’. It’s important to use a tool like the tarot to ‘pin’ our related experiences in the right places on the tree that makes sense to us – this eventually creates a system of association and reference that the mind can communicate back to us with in time.