Dr. Mog
PhD in moggerology
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2022
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Hyper-independence was not a character trait I chose. It was a conclusion my nervous system reached about safety.
At some point I learned that needing people produced more pain than not needing them. And so I became capable. Resourceful. Someone who figures things out alone. I was admired for it. And the admiration reinforced the conclusion.
A man described building a successful practice, a rich creative life, deep self-knowledge, and a persistent unnamed loneliness that his independence kept perfectly in place. He had people around him. He was unreachable inside the connection.
The alchemical tradition called this solve without coagula.
Solve et coagula is the central alchemical operation: dissolve and re-form. The complete cycle. Hyper-independence completes only half. It dissolves the need, the vulnerability, the reaching toward another. But the coagula, the allowing something external to enter and change the interior shape, never occurs.
The Principle of Gender, one of the seven Hermetic laws, taught that all creation requires both the active and the receptive principle. Pure outward force with no capacity to receive produces no living thing.
In the Kabbalistic tradition, the sphere of Chesed, the fourth Sephirah and the sphere of loving reception, cannot be reached by will alone. It requires the willingness to be affected. To be changed by contact with another.
The strength that kept me safe is real. The tradition does not ask me to dismantle it. It asks me to notice when the protection has outlived the threat it was built for.
What would it cost me, specifically, to let one person in further than my independence currently permits?
