94stranger
70. Pain / Twainsong: group – communication (7 blue)
http://www.rainring.co.uk/Cards/Pain/70.aspx
The Image
This is a split card, with two separate images. In the main one, that of Pain, we see a young man and a young woman who are clearly in the middle of a quarrel; they look both angry and upset; their expressions and body language imply both the tie between them, and at the same time the sense of alienation and estrangement which they both feel at this moment. There is no suggestion that one, rather than the other, might be at the source of their quarrel.
The second image, that of Twainsong, shows two snow leopard cubs play-fighting. We know this to be an activity which is both joyful, but also has the underlying purpose of helping them to develop the skills needed to survive in later life.
The meaning
Pain / Twainsong: in the interaction of male and female in the psyche, joy and pain between them compose the arena – pain is dissonance, twainsong is harmony.
In what follows, we will be dealing essentially with emotional, rather than physical pain.
A General
The Love Ways card belonging to the (blue) communication group is unique in the grid, in that the north mention is not a variation or development of the principal one at south. This card represents the two faces or aspects of the pilgrimage of male and female towards Union
and beyond. This means that Twainsong is an alternative to Pain, and vice versa. This psychific journey will, in reality, comprise both of the elements on the card. The source of Pain is not simply the emotions brought to the surface by discord, but the context: the need of these two people to reach harmony, because of their commitment to the relationship: otherwise, they would simply walk away feeling somewhat bruised. This enduring investment in the couple means that when, by contrast, there is harmony, powerful feelings of joy are experienced.
B Specific
1) Pain: In the conjugation relationship, you are in continual oscillation – you move towards, then away from the other. Pain is characterised by the movement away, or retreat into your shell.
Psychological pain works identically to physical pain in this respect: it produces an involuntary withdrawal response. Psychological or psychific pain has its roots in the past. Your anger when I ask you to repeat what you just said, for example, is not proportional to the present hurt, but is the result of a resonating effect where all the accumulated pain / rage of an entire childhood in which no-one ever cared enough to listen to you is re-activated by this present incident. The rule is that whatever is not felt is stored, and it remains below the surface indefinitely, waiting for the chance for release. In order to reach the point at which my inattention today does not bother you, you would need to release all the old emotional charge accumulated (unexpressed) around this issue.
The source of pain could also be thought of as your inability to be flexible. Relationship requires a great deal of plasticity – you do not know in advance what to expect, how the other may react. This is deeply disturbing, because it carries the threat that you may at any moment be hurt, just as you were in the past, without warning or being able to avoid the pain. This is one reason why in an established couple you fall into repetitive routines of behaviour – in order to try to minimise the unexpected and unforeseen. This whole scenario carries with it the serious consequence of not being open to the new. In your couple, your partner ends up playing the role of the mother or father of your childhood.
It has been said that you come into the world as a blank tape and that within five years this tape is all used up – there is no further room to record new impressions. For this reason, you react always from the past, not being able to receive new impressions. If not 100% true, this is undoubtedly the approximate scenario. Making room on the tape is thus a huge challenge for every adult.
2) Twainsong: If Pain is characterised by a response of closing off from the other, Twainsong is the opposite. Openness is going to mean exposure to your pain, so there has to be a reason for undertaking this, and this is your desire to progress as a human being.
In one sense, we should think of such progress as being more a question of repairing earlier damage. It is only in the last few decades that there has been the first unequivocal understanding of the imperative need to clear the weight of unexpressed feelings accumulated since the dawn of the psyche. It is this process – dealing with will denial – that is capable of producing the ‘new age’, and none other.
This position imperatively requires you to have inner balance: if you are awash in feelings because your defences do not work effectively – for example, because of drug misuse – you cannot work on yourself effectively. Rainring has been designed to help you to be aware of where you are at – and if you are in heavy spirit denial, unable or even unwilling to use your spirit side to counteract emotional overload, you will not be able to cope with the demands of Twainsong. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Twainsong is the movement involved. If you evolve, you will pass from periods in which you and your partner get on well, to periods in which discord and strife seem to be the overwhelming feature of your relationship. Twainsong requires many virtues, not least a deep commitment to the process of working on oneself.
3) Pain / Twainsong: Finally, what can be said about this whole arena, in which you and your partner strive to broaden, deepen and intensify your relationship? First, the sexual component of such a relationship is not an optional add-on. You may, in the process of working on yourself, go through periods in which this component functions poorly; even not at all. But there has to be a powerful basic attraction, expressed through an equality in the self vibration between you (Radiance), because physical closeness is both a cementing force which at times may have a crucial role to play in your couple, and the catalyst for the union of souls. Secondly, Procreation (card 68) is an indispensable ingredient in this endeavour. This is high-octane interaction, in which you will experience not only moments of great joy and fulfilment, but others of dramatic loss of confidence, self-doubt, despair and longing for isolation in selfhood. You need, to handle this, a willingness to throw yourself off emotional cliffs, risk everything on the throw of a dice (emotionally-speaking).
To summarise, this is the one and only genuine arena for ‘spiritual’ development. You are not going to achieve fulfilment by sitting under a tree experiencing the non-duality between you and the world, the non-reality of the self. It is not that such experiences are fake; just that they do not deal with the fundamental issue of the estrangement between spirit and will. It is through Conjugation that humanity has a chance to heal itself and the psyche.
Divination summary
PAIN: feelings of hurt, distress, upset; alienation, being misunderstood; aloneness, despair, separateness; desire to withdraw from contact with partner; TWAINSONG: commitment to relationship; roller-coaster of emotions; personal growth with one’s partner; joy, happiness, fulfilment; experiences of not-two through sensual abandon; emotional risk-taking, use of insight and awareness in relationship
http://www.rainring.co.uk/Cards/Pain/70.aspx
The Image
This is a split card, with two separate images. In the main one, that of Pain, we see a young man and a young woman who are clearly in the middle of a quarrel; they look both angry and upset; their expressions and body language imply both the tie between them, and at the same time the sense of alienation and estrangement which they both feel at this moment. There is no suggestion that one, rather than the other, might be at the source of their quarrel.
The second image, that of Twainsong, shows two snow leopard cubs play-fighting. We know this to be an activity which is both joyful, but also has the underlying purpose of helping them to develop the skills needed to survive in later life.
The meaning
Pain / Twainsong: in the interaction of male and female in the psyche, joy and pain between them compose the arena – pain is dissonance, twainsong is harmony.
In what follows, we will be dealing essentially with emotional, rather than physical pain.
A General
The Love Ways card belonging to the (blue) communication group is unique in the grid, in that the north mention is not a variation or development of the principal one at south. This card represents the two faces or aspects of the pilgrimage of male and female towards Union
and beyond. This means that Twainsong is an alternative to Pain, and vice versa. This psychific journey will, in reality, comprise both of the elements on the card. The source of Pain is not simply the emotions brought to the surface by discord, but the context: the need of these two people to reach harmony, because of their commitment to the relationship: otherwise, they would simply walk away feeling somewhat bruised. This enduring investment in the couple means that when, by contrast, there is harmony, powerful feelings of joy are experienced.
B Specific
1) Pain: In the conjugation relationship, you are in continual oscillation – you move towards, then away from the other. Pain is characterised by the movement away, or retreat into your shell.
Psychological pain works identically to physical pain in this respect: it produces an involuntary withdrawal response. Psychological or psychific pain has its roots in the past. Your anger when I ask you to repeat what you just said, for example, is not proportional to the present hurt, but is the result of a resonating effect where all the accumulated pain / rage of an entire childhood in which no-one ever cared enough to listen to you is re-activated by this present incident. The rule is that whatever is not felt is stored, and it remains below the surface indefinitely, waiting for the chance for release. In order to reach the point at which my inattention today does not bother you, you would need to release all the old emotional charge accumulated (unexpressed) around this issue.
The source of pain could also be thought of as your inability to be flexible. Relationship requires a great deal of plasticity – you do not know in advance what to expect, how the other may react. This is deeply disturbing, because it carries the threat that you may at any moment be hurt, just as you were in the past, without warning or being able to avoid the pain. This is one reason why in an established couple you fall into repetitive routines of behaviour – in order to try to minimise the unexpected and unforeseen. This whole scenario carries with it the serious consequence of not being open to the new. In your couple, your partner ends up playing the role of the mother or father of your childhood.
It has been said that you come into the world as a blank tape and that within five years this tape is all used up – there is no further room to record new impressions. For this reason, you react always from the past, not being able to receive new impressions. If not 100% true, this is undoubtedly the approximate scenario. Making room on the tape is thus a huge challenge for every adult.
2) Twainsong: If Pain is characterised by a response of closing off from the other, Twainsong is the opposite. Openness is going to mean exposure to your pain, so there has to be a reason for undertaking this, and this is your desire to progress as a human being.
In one sense, we should think of such progress as being more a question of repairing earlier damage. It is only in the last few decades that there has been the first unequivocal understanding of the imperative need to clear the weight of unexpressed feelings accumulated since the dawn of the psyche. It is this process – dealing with will denial – that is capable of producing the ‘new age’, and none other.
This position imperatively requires you to have inner balance: if you are awash in feelings because your defences do not work effectively – for example, because of drug misuse – you cannot work on yourself effectively. Rainring has been designed to help you to be aware of where you are at – and if you are in heavy spirit denial, unable or even unwilling to use your spirit side to counteract emotional overload, you will not be able to cope with the demands of Twainsong. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Twainsong is the movement involved. If you evolve, you will pass from periods in which you and your partner get on well, to periods in which discord and strife seem to be the overwhelming feature of your relationship. Twainsong requires many virtues, not least a deep commitment to the process of working on oneself.
3) Pain / Twainsong: Finally, what can be said about this whole arena, in which you and your partner strive to broaden, deepen and intensify your relationship? First, the sexual component of such a relationship is not an optional add-on. You may, in the process of working on yourself, go through periods in which this component functions poorly; even not at all. But there has to be a powerful basic attraction, expressed through an equality in the self vibration between you (Radiance), because physical closeness is both a cementing force which at times may have a crucial role to play in your couple, and the catalyst for the union of souls. Secondly, Procreation (card 68) is an indispensable ingredient in this endeavour. This is high-octane interaction, in which you will experience not only moments of great joy and fulfilment, but others of dramatic loss of confidence, self-doubt, despair and longing for isolation in selfhood. You need, to handle this, a willingness to throw yourself off emotional cliffs, risk everything on the throw of a dice (emotionally-speaking).
To summarise, this is the one and only genuine arena for ‘spiritual’ development. You are not going to achieve fulfilment by sitting under a tree experiencing the non-duality between you and the world, the non-reality of the self. It is not that such experiences are fake; just that they do not deal with the fundamental issue of the estrangement between spirit and will. It is through Conjugation that humanity has a chance to heal itself and the psyche.
Divination summary
PAIN: feelings of hurt, distress, upset; alienation, being misunderstood; aloneness, despair, separateness; desire to withdraw from contact with partner; TWAINSONG: commitment to relationship; roller-coaster of emotions; personal growth with one’s partner; joy, happiness, fulfilment; experiences of not-two through sensual abandon; emotional risk-taking, use of insight and awareness in relationship
