LIVING TRUST
What if you actually believed you are a capable and worthwhile person? How would building and aligning with greater mental, emotional and physical power within impact all facets of your life and relationships? What would life be like if you really opened a new pathway that helps you live, lead and succeed in your purpose, in your essential nature? What is blocking you?
Mary Esther Harding, a Jungian therapist, writes on the value and meaning of depression, describing it as a lack of libido, where energy vanishes into the unconscious because its outward flow has been frustrated. She indicates two major reasons for depression: setbacks in life, or major blocks such as the death of loved ones, serious illness, etc. Depressive states are often creative attempts by the Self to drive us into deeper states.
When old defenses no longer work, you must develop new coping skills for developmental challenges. But this initiatory way includes many deaths and rebirths. Nigredo, the blackening, isn’t always the first stage, but may be one of relapse, eclipse or another incubation stage.
Nigredo is a recurrent cycle of desire and frustration with no real beginning. Your energies are sucked from the outer world and turned in on themselves. Normal life is radically disrupted. When you are paralyzed by life there is nothing to do but let go of your control fantasies. An eclipse of the ego offers a way into the deeper energies of the unconscious.
"Every significant loss creates a vacuum condition and at the same time can open a creative, reflective and generative process; a discontinuity arises. In this space of the soul lives the wound as a germinal source of a renewed awareness and welcoming of the pain that, crossed in its completeness, rehabilitates and gives tenderness and compassion back to its vital stigmates. The soul is renewed right through this pain transformed into an ever new and ancient meaning." --Eldo Stellucci
What if you actually believed you are a capable and worthwhile person? How would building and aligning with greater mental, emotional and physical power within impact all facets of your life and relationships? What would life be like if you really opened a new pathway that helps you live, lead and succeed in your purpose, in your essential nature? What is blocking you?
Mary Esther Harding, a Jungian therapist, writes on the value and meaning of depression, describing it as a lack of libido, where energy vanishes into the unconscious because its outward flow has been frustrated. She indicates two major reasons for depression: setbacks in life, or major blocks such as the death of loved ones, serious illness, etc. Depressive states are often creative attempts by the Self to drive us into deeper states.
When old defenses no longer work, you must develop new coping skills for developmental challenges. But this initiatory way includes many deaths and rebirths. Nigredo, the blackening, isn’t always the first stage, but may be one of relapse, eclipse or another incubation stage.
Nigredo is a recurrent cycle of desire and frustration with no real beginning. Your energies are sucked from the outer world and turned in on themselves. Normal life is radically disrupted. When you are paralyzed by life there is nothing to do but let go of your control fantasies. An eclipse of the ego offers a way into the deeper energies of the unconscious.
"Every significant loss creates a vacuum condition and at the same time can open a creative, reflective and generative process; a discontinuity arises. In this space of the soul lives the wound as a germinal source of a renewed awareness and welcoming of the pain that, crossed in its completeness, rehabilitates and gives tenderness and compassion back to its vital stigmates. The soul is renewed right through this pain transformed into an ever new and ancient meaning." --Eldo Stellucci
Practically, like metaphysics, depression can mean several things to our self-awareness and help us understand the greater stories played out in our lives.
· Understanding the value and meaning of suffering and depression. This is the alchemical Nigredo or blackness, being stuck in your own shit, so you figure out the chakra. In kabbalah it is Malkuth: “merde to merde”.
· Learning to objectively admit and dialogue with our shadow. Could also be linked to Malkuth ~ our personal portion of darkness to which we are often blind, but also our unlived potential we let others carry for us because we are lazy.
· Understanding the nature of projections in relationships and belief systems. In kabbalah, Yesod the sphere of the Moon; in alchemy the albedo or whitening through solutio - liquification, becoming emotional enough to process your “stuckness”.
· Having some kind of validation for meaningfulness in dreamlife. More moon connection with the feminine side of life and the unconscious.
· Honoring the imaginal (Anima Mundi) as the primary, phenomenological form of Reality. Recognizing the Goddess and being THAT, on the Tree of Life via the middle path Art.
· Learning to hold the tension of the opposites and embrace many viewpoints as simultaneously valid, like being the axle of a wheel, as Tiphareth (Self) is on the Tree of Life, mediating the forces of the Left and Right Pillars. In alchemy the Royal Marriage or Coniunctio.
· Understanding the value and meaning of suffering and depression. This is the alchemical Nigredo or blackness, being stuck in your own shit, so you figure out the chakra. In kabbalah it is Malkuth: “merde to merde”.
· Learning to objectively admit and dialogue with our shadow. Could also be linked to Malkuth ~ our personal portion of darkness to which we are often blind, but also our unlived potential we let others carry for us because we are lazy.
· Understanding the nature of projections in relationships and belief systems. In kabbalah, Yesod the sphere of the Moon; in alchemy the albedo or whitening through solutio - liquification, becoming emotional enough to process your “stuckness”.
· Having some kind of validation for meaningfulness in dreamlife. More moon connection with the feminine side of life and the unconscious.
· Honoring the imaginal (Anima Mundi) as the primary, phenomenological form of Reality. Recognizing the Goddess and being THAT, on the Tree of Life via the middle path Art.
· Learning to hold the tension of the opposites and embrace many viewpoints as simultaneously valid, like being the axle of a wheel, as Tiphareth (Self) is on the Tree of Life, mediating the forces of the Left and Right Pillars. In alchemy the Royal Marriage or Coniunctio.
DEPRESSION
Alchemy itself is a prescription for the Nigredo depression, the modern malaise of dark futures and consumer conformity. It defines a perennial frontier where eccentricity elbows out enough room to thrive in unconventional ways of thinking, acting and being, from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Alchemy leads us to experiment, break boundaries and transcend categories, including those of science, art and belief. Intuitively knowing more than we know we know, some navigational part of ourselves functions as Mercurial guide.
Alchemy leads us to experiment, break boundaries and transcend categories, including those of science, art and belief. Intuitively knowing more than we know we know, some navigational part of ourselves functions as Mercurial guide.