Psychologists Gay & Kathlyn Hendricks speak of something they call the Upper Limits Problem: when we experience a breakthrough to a new level of energy or realization, love or success and then do something to sabotage it and bring ourselves back to our familiar level of misery.
So here we are at the end of a week in which we experience Divine Love in a number of manifestations, and in the 10 of Wands we see someone who is experiencing all this as a burden. It's become too much to bear all this love, all this creative energy.
Looking again at this card, and thinking of the celebration in the 4 of Wands, I can also see this card as a man bringing the gifts of loving kindness for everyone to share at the celebration. He is the one who has taken the responsibility to gather the sparks of the shattered vessels. And in fact, you can see the 10 card as the moment when the vessels begin to shatter -- in the first week, when the sefirot are not yet in full relationship, the energy that descends becomes to much to hold.
So the question for today is can we allow our hearts to break in the reality of the world as it presents itself to us in all its suffering day after day, and then can we do the work to gather the shards of our broken hearts, the sparks of the broken vessels? Or to ask the question as Mark Epstein titled his classic book on Buddhism and psychology: How do we go to pieces without falling apart?
All of this is part of the work that will continue every day moving forward on this path.
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