Sakura Tree: Reflections on Fallen Warrior Archetypes and My 21st Century Life

Sakura Tree

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sakura tree
slain, I lay in your shadow
bathed in your blossom rain

Mini Self-Reflection

In the best kind of imagined past-life memory, I once lived as a masterless samurai (ronin) or wandering knight-errant, possessing incredible martial arts skills like the Yihua Jade Palm Attack. It’s the kind of beautiful, false memory that feels triumphant because I deeply wish for it to be true, resplendent in its warrior fantasy. But, if I’m being honest with myself, today’s 21st century version of me would likely be terrified if this was real and indeed travelled back in time to re-live this past life.

After all, I’d enjoy the warriors, wonder, magic and martial arts. But there’d likely be a whole lot of terror, horror and silliness along the way. Likely, I’d be encountering random bandits with rotting teeth looking to rob me of my silver, fending off the local chef’s revenge against me because I foolishly ridiculed their pork belly dish for its insufficiently crunchy crust, or avoiding certain death from duel invitations with blood-stained swords that I’d much prefer to display sparkling clean, ornamentally, and admired from a distance. So it’s obvious to me that there’s a clear distinction between fantasies and wishes made during moments of despair, loneliness or boredom, and the realities of what it really means to be slain under a pretty sakura tree and showered by those cherry blossom petals.

Nonetheless, if I was slain in battle (honourably but not too painfully), I’d like to think that I’d be a warrior who fell elegantly, majestically, under a sakura (cherry blossom) tree, ritualistically bathed and buried in blossom petals and perhaps a film grain overlay.

I’m definitely ranting a bit melodramatically today, but that’s partly because I’ve been a) binging some Chinese martial arts costume dramas lately and b) reminding myself to let myself indulge more in the ronin, Jin Sakai’s journey in the Ghosts of Tsushima (PS4).

The Warrior archetype is one that I’m reminding myself to focus on more deeply during my self-reflections and personal areas of growth. After completing some exercises from Carol Pearson’s brilliant book on archetypes, The Hero Within, I was shocked to discover that I’d somehow, perhaps unconsciously, had been repressing my Warrior archetype.

In all my efforts these past 4 years to power my way through self-healing and grief recovery after the divorce, I’m pretty sure I managed to absolutely exhaust myself these last couple of years. I’m feeling this exhaustion this year, in particular, more than before. It resembles or imitates a number of symptoms related to burnout, I think, but I didn’t expect it to last so long.

I’ve always had a mild low-grade persistent depression, but I’m feeling like this burnout is really becoming entangled with that depression. The terrible levels of energy, the fading motivation, the persistent self-criticism; all of this has been really sabotaging my deep dreams, desires and wishes.

Whether it’s waking up feeling equally as exhausted as the moments before going to bed the night before, confronting the inner critical voices that make my mind run wild, or reverting to my defence mechanism of utterly isolating myself from others, I can find some comfort in the fact that I’m bravely enduring through my own battle in the arena of my own personal demons.

And still, I can also be proud of myself for continuing to do the smallest, practical 1% in helping myself through this. That includes a) hand-writing 3 pages of stream-of-consciousness in my “Morning Pages” (see The Artist’s Way by Julia Camera) b) engaging in once-a-week (or more) lectio divina (a meditative practice in the Christian contemplative tradition) in order to really dive into my deepest emotions and listen for divine guidance, and c) daring myself to “show up” a little bit more, as I am finally (re)starting to here on blogs such as this in the simplest and easiest ways possible.

Importantly, I’ve realized today that it’s also important to add one or two more small practical things that can help develop or “free” my Warrior archetype and its voice within me.

Whether that be doing some Tai Chi or Qi Gong in the morning (it’s brilliant stuff), actually using my new dip bars to do 10 inverted pull-ups a day to start (whoo), or listening to Junkie XL’s soundtrack to Zack Snyder’s Justice League every morning to help me shift my morning blues with a “state shift” (towards an epic, inspired feeling through the music), then even just one of those would be a great start.

And indeed, this moment of writing such reflections to the world (or at least, to my own eyes in this obscure corner of the blog), is also a bold small step of bravery.

P.S. Whoo for me!

Nathan
www.thecounterstory.com