Micro-Cataclysms

Continued from ‘Enervation’.

When we get caught up in the negative and unhealthy cycles that can come to rule us, it can feel like an impossible task to derail ourselves. Like a highway with no exits, it becomes a wait for that pre-built path that leads us away from perdition. We wait and we wait as we continue driving in the blackness of night, going forever on the highway with no street signs.

But the fact that we wait is nonsensical in the first place. This highway may lead us to a place that many others have gone before, but the road we ride is one that we build ourselves. A psychic journey to our own personal misery, the trail we take is always one created from our own choices and decisions. If we can’t see an exit as we drive, it’s because we didn't build one for ourselves. There is no exit because we didn't give ourselves one.

And so the wait becomes increasingly illogical the longer that we take this highway. But that doesn't mean we’re doomed, it just means that we have to find a way to get off-road on our own. If you hate the one-way road you’re on with no exit you’re on, sometimes you have to steer into the sidelines and pray the vehicle survives.

I like to think of this action as a sort of ‘micro-cataclysm’. It’s a bumpy, tumultuous event that shakes up pieces of our world into uncertainty and moves us far into the unknown. It’s a scary process and at times can be extremely painful, but the movements that we take are sometimes necessary to lead us away from the land of misery that we dread entering so much yet have lost any idea of how to avoid.

A micro-cataclysm can be finding a new social circle to surround ourselves with in order to get away from friends who hold us back. It may be moving to a new city or changing jobs. It could be ending an unhealthy relationship with a significant other. The strange thing is that we can often see the shackles that hold us in bondage.

In tarot, there is a card called ‘The Devil’ in the cycle of the Major Arcana. It is a frightening image of a great demon that has apparently enslaved two naked humans.

The Devil card as shown in Tarot [Source: Wikipedia]

What is interesting about this card and what it represents is that the bondage is often willful on part of the humans. Whether or not they walked into the demons grasp willfully, the idea is that the shackles around their necks are loose- they could be removed if the two slaves made the choice to take the chains off. It depicts an image of fear and fright for those who are unable to leave behind that which is unhealthy and damaging in our lives.

So even if it is shocking and difficult to leave behind our demons, even if it means that we have to experience a mini-cataclysm, sometimes that’s the only way to shake ourselves out of the negative cycles and habits that we’ve allowed ourselves to continue living with.

Instead of living in such negativity, why don’t we take those steps? Like the slaves on the card, let’s throw off these shackles and move towards a greater future of health and positivity.