THE HIDDEN HEART

Emotional baggage was making my shoulders hurt. “Why on earth,” I thought, “am I carrying this stuff around?” It was time to release hurts of the past, the sorrows from losing lovers, old friends, and even associates from old jobs. The process of release was familiar ground, but tonight the imperative to purge seemed particularly strong. When I walked up the stairs to go to bed, I saw the moon surrounded by stars through the window. It was a 3^rd quarter moon, a half-full goblet surrounded by a soft, white nimbus of light. The 3d quarter moon is an active, conscious lunar phase that carries through on the form of awareness realized at the full phase.

The problem with emotional baggage disposal is that the conscious mind struggles to gauge just how much rubbish is tucked away in the unconscious mind. Looking at the moon, I had a sense that there was plenty of refuse in my mental basement that could stand to be bagged and moved to the curb. After a moment of thought, and now in my favorite flannel pajamas, the inspiration to release hurts hidden in my unconscious mind took root. But just how was I to dig in that dirt? I needed to find a basement door and stairs to access that area of my mind.

There is always a tarot deck (or two) sitting next to my bed. I looked for a card that best reflected my emotions and feelings in that moment. I chose the 8 of Cups as being most related to emotional losses and the deep unconscious. I carefully examined the card, a lovely tapestry-like rendering from the “Enchanted Tarot” by artist Amy Zerner. It depicts a woman’s face emerging from the top of a large heart. Within the large heart are eight dark hearts floating downward toward water, with trees along the side. At the base of the card are three fishes swimming in deep blue waters.

I prepared to use a tarot meditation technique invented by Nina Lee Braden, and surrounded myself with a silver-grey aura. To reach an initial state of mental relaxation, I quietly chanted a mantra. When I felt completely relaxed, I imagined the card growing in size, and moved myself inside of it. When I “landed” in the card’s environment, I was submerged in the water with fish swimming around me. The waters were swishing and gurgling. Turning, I saw the heavy, leaden hearts sinking through the water to the bottom of the lake, and coming to rest in the sand of the lake’s bed. “The sinking hearts are your losses: from death, broken relationships, exits, and changes,” said a voice (Holy Gaia, who would have thought I’d get a tour guide!).

Then I looked up, and saw roots from the trees at the surface growing and reaching down toward the blackened hearts. The tree roots wrapped around the hearts, and started decomposing them for nutrients. “Doesn’t the sorrow from these hearts poison the tree?” I asked. “No,” said the voice, “even though these buried hearts represent hurts and losses, they also represent love. Look at how many hearts there are – you’ve loved many people. They are a source of strength. You could think of it as love manure.”

Love manure – what a concept! It took a few moments for the implications to sink into my mind. Emotions are recycled, not lost or gone to waste, but converted into new energy. After this settled into my awareness, I floated to the surface of the water to view one of the trees. Small, mean flowers were growing from the lowest branches of the tree. “These don’t look very good to me,” I said. The voice replied, “This part of the tree is closest to the surface, and it is like your lower self, doing things because of bitterness and past hurts, reacting with low and mean thoughts and actions. Don’t worry about them too much – most soul trees have these on them. But look toward the topmost branches.”

There, closest to the air and light, were magnificent blooms of opalescent hues, glowing with exquisite radiance. “These are the flowers of your higher self,” said the voice. “This is what you produce when the love manure helps you grow and create. Each flower shows where God energy beaming down from the sky merges with the tree, and encourages the budding flowers to open with grace and beauty.”

Above the tree’s branches, I saw an angel, the woman at the top of the card, flying off to the west. The sky she was leaving behind was red and pink and passionate, and her flight was toward a sky of blues and whites. She was flying away from turbulent emotions into a space of calm intellect, leaving the fury of past anger and moving toward understanding.

Then I wondered how a tree could grow on the surface of the water. The voice answered, “By entwining their roots with other trees.” And I could see my tree was in a swamp-like area, and the roots of many trees were woven together to remain afloat. “You would think,” the voice continued, “that roots would be inflexible and permanent. But that’s not so – they’re actually quite active and alive. Sometimes it becomes necessary to become disentangled from another soul tree’s roots – if they die, or perhaps if a relationship ends. New roots reach in other directions, and new relationships grow. Some roots reach deep into the lake’s bed where they tap into the mind of the world. Others are like tentacles searching for something new to grasp. And all that is touched by the roots becomes food for the tree.”

I returned to the surface to look up at the tree’s flowers, and down at the tree’s roots. It was time to leave. I returned to calm and exited the meditation, and released the silver-grey aura shield.

The next morning I checked my planetary ephemeris to determine exactly what was going on with the moon during my meditation. The moon was in Leo, the sign of love, friendship and creativity. Leo is very loyal, and can grow quite attached to loved ones and the memory of loved ones. But because of this depth of attachment, it tends to brood about love lost. Well, I was definitely in the clutches of leonine brooding! The moon was in opposition to Uranus in Aquarius as I’d gone to bed, and this energy was expressed in the scene of the trees in the swamp. The Leo-Aquarius axis relates the individual to the collective, shown through the image of each tree’s roots entwined with the roots of others as well as the deepest part of the lake bed.

The planet Uranus is legendary in astrological circles for its ability to catalyze fresh modes of thinking and understanding. This meditation gave me an entirely new way of looking at personal losses and hurts that was surprising and enlightening. I gained two great ideas from this experience. The first was the concept of a personal soul tree with various kinds of flowers at different levels, nourished by the substances absorbed through the roots. The second idea was the concept of love manure - emotional losses composted into nutrients for the soul tree. It is possible, not only to process the sorrow for lost loved ones, but recognize loss as a source of vitality and hope. And perhaps the most lasting gain – I’d found the basement door and a stairway leading down into my unconscious junk room. When it is time for another good cleaning, the door will be open.