Overcoming the 8 and 9 of Swords

[qos]

The Robin Wood deck calls the 9 of Swords "Night Terrors." It represents the fears that rise to prey on us when we're vulnerable and tired. Very often they don't represent real threats or issues. They cause needless pain and suffering.

The 9 of Swords is closely related to the 8 of Swords. It represents being limited and confined by one's own thoughts and beliefs rather than the oppression of others.





The first instance was the meditations on my sexuality and spirituality that I shared here a week or two ago. I had been feeling a lot of stress and frustration and pain because I had a particular self-image but my daily life and my forseeable future were not matching that self-image. I had been feeling like something of a failure, and stressing about how I could get myself into situations where I could allow my supposed true nature express itself -- but not feeling at all comfortable with what those situations would actually ask of me.

Finally, in the course of a journey, I realized that I had been clinging to a self image that no longer fit. When I released that sense of self, all the stress and frustration and sadness I'd been feeling about not being "who I should be" also went away.

My experience confronting the Void, mentioned in my previous entry, was successfully resolved when I realized that my fear and pain were not the consequence of actual knowledge. They were the side-effects of my limited psyche trying to comprehend something infinitely vast and ultimately incomprehensible from a mortal perspective. I did not bury or deny the fear, or try to ignore it, I went after it at the roots and eliminated it.

For those not on my original/personal journal, yesterday was the second anniversary of LM's death. I've done a lot of healing around his passing, and in the last few weeks that healing has allowed other griefs of that time to surface: in particularly my grief around the end of my romantic relationship with Michael, the loss of the three-way partnership we shared, and -- perhaps most acutely -- my grief at the loss of the future with both of them that I had come to believe in.

Michael was also deeply impacted by LM's death. Our break-up was civil and kind, but very painful for both of us, and our grief about LM's death made it even harder to cope. He went through some drastic changes that year, and there was enough going in on my then-present relationship with him to keep me involved in new and immediate pain and grief, rather than deal with my grief over our break-up. Besides, we broke up largely because I had not been able to maintain the dynamic balance between him and LM during the last few months we were together; I'd started to minimize Michael, and it hurt him badly. I held myself responsible, and told myself fiercely that I had no right to grieve, since it was my own damn fault.

Saturday night and Sunday morning I invested several hours in writing an email to Michael. (It was ultimately much shorter than the original document, thank goodness!) In it, I let him know about what I had been going through, and that finally being able to truly face and experience the grief of losing him and losing our three-way future had enabled me to finally release a lot of unresolved feelings about him. I told him I was sorry for the times when I had acted in a way that was inappropriate or uncomfortable. I had always tried to behave with honor and with respect for both of us, but it had been difficult to appropriately manage emotions that I was denying existed in the first place.

Now that I've finally acknowledged the grief and pain, it's stopped hurting as much. I've also been able to release my old feelings of romantic love toward Michael -- which were causing me even more pain because of the difficulty of our post-LM relationship. I expect this to make our present friendship less complicated as well.

Those were the three things I'd been thinking of when I started this post, but I also think that my resistance to doing my practices can also be fit into this category of "swords work." I've been letting shadowy resistance and discomfort get in the way of important work that I need to do. When LM helped me actually face my excuses head-on, it diminished their power over me.



The interesting thing about this kind of work -- for me, at least -- is that overcoming the challenges of Swords cards requires the use of a Sword. The phantoms of the mind, the self-defeating patterns of the mind, are best met and conquered by the use of the mature, rational, perceptive mind.

Comments

[nicanthiel.livejournal.com]

-hugs- I'm glad you worked out what the Void was about, and that time has softened the edges for LM and Michael.

I can honestly say that, even in this short time that I've known you, that you've become one of my role models for not only healthy self-awareness, but also spirituality and relationships and intimacy. Thank you for being you :)

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

*hugs back

Thank you very much for the affirmations. I'm truly honored.

[sekhmetkare.livejournal.com]

Wow... {{{{{{{{HUGS}}}}}}}}

The last two posts finally cued me in on the situation with Michael. You have dealt with some astounding griefs and difficult situations with a LOT of grace and acceptance of self-responsibility. If more people had the courage to learn to know themselves and act on that knowledge as you have done, this world would be a MUCH better place.

I am honored to be on your friends list.