Our Crucible – The Transformative Nature of Discomfort

by Aki No Ikiryo

Suffering can feel like the total collapse of our entire world.

But most of the time it is not a torture, and it is definitely not the end of the universe. As much as I personally can resist admitting it, a lot of the time suffering can be good for us. Part of our process of becoming more fully ourselves. Discomfort and pain are both catalysts for transformation.

Two important things have changed in my life since the start of this year. Firstly, Dylan and I have taken a step further into our process of exploring polyamory, and have found a third person to begin the work of forming a triad. Secondly, I have applied myself fully to doing Shadow work, the process of confronting my own dark side and learning to re-integrate it into myself rather than allowing it to fester and rule me. It’s something I’ve been flirting with since Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ excellent ‘Women Who Run With the Wolves‘ drew me towards the myths, legends, and calling inwards of Jungian psychology, however it’s taken until now to feel I have the resources I need to fully devote myself to the process.

Right now, in this moment, I am ready.

That being said, Shadow work is damned hard. It means taking 100% responsibility for everything that happens in my life, instead if externalising the reasons for my hurt, upset, and anger onto whoever has invoked it. It means learning to recognise the sudden spikes of emotion that are a sure sign of my Shadow at work. And, when I have fully accepted responsibility for my temper, my selfishness, and my pettiness, it means learning to love those parts of myself. The parts which I have spent my whole life trying to hide and bury.

I am glad I came to it now. Building a triad is a difficult balancing act, and one that requires equal amounts self-knowledge and constant communication. And the work I am doing means that, first and foremost, I’m learning to recognise the times when I am projecting my own darkness onto my lovers. Acquiring techniques for dealing with it that don’t involve smothering my emotions until they explode outwards in a torrent of hurt and anger.

Bringing a third person into a relationship makes any cracks and flaws in the primary relationship more visible, and in more urgent need of attention. Counter-productive or destructive habits that have been ingrained over many years suddenly need to be weeded out and addressed.

The culmination of both of these things is that, more and more frequently, when I come up against situations that cause me pain or make me angry, instead of digging my heels in and snarling with my Shadow, I take the opportunity to withdraw. Specifically, I shut myself in the bedroom, and begin the work of convincing myself that I want a resolution to the problem more than I want to be hurt and angry. It isn’t easy, but when it is done I’m in a better position to realise what wounded me in the first place, and what thought-processes are lurking underneath. It isn’t about “letting go of my anger”or running away from my darkness. It is about acknowledging it, embracing it, accepting responsibility for it, and moving on.

By the time I come out of that room, I am in a position where I am more equipped to know where my boundaries and limits are, to understand calmly why I have been hurt, and to be more reasoned about negotiating a way for things to go a little better the next time.

As we go about our lives, all of us have times when we are passed through fire. When life is hard, trust is difficult to give, and betrayal it feels like a total violation of ourselves and everything we stand for. When the work that we are doing makes us vulnerable, and opens us up to pain at the very time when we are least able to defend ourselves from it.

But it is worth it. More than that, it is necessary.

One of the things I have started doing when discussing pain and points of friction with my partners is to stop asking them to avoid hitting the issues that are difficult for me. Of course, some issues are more sensitive than others, and there are some that need to be handled with a great degree of care, but if I teach them to avoid hitting the parts of me that are wounded, then I will never gain the experience I need to learn how to be hurt. Those wounds will never be torn open, and I will never have the opportunity to re-heal them. To see that flesh and bone are re-set well. That the poison is scraped out, and the process of regrowth and rebirth can begin.

It has me thinking about alchemy, which fascinated Jung as much as it has fascinated me. He saw the alchemical teachings for transforming lead (or more often: mercury) into gold as symbolic of an inner transformation. A process by which we are transmuted by life itself. He realised how, if we are present and conscious in our suffering, it can become a process of refinement.

In order for base matter to be transformed into the philosopher’s stone–the symbol of perfection and immortality–the alchemists believed that it had to go through four processes, each with its own colour. That the prima materia must pass from black to white to yellow and finally to red, before it was pure and perfect and complete. Likewise, in order to refine and cleanse the base matter of ourselves from a chaotic, unconscious state into a state of consciousness and completion, we must pass through the same four gateways.

Nigredo. Albedo. Citrinitas. Rubedo.



The first of these four stages, the nigredo or ‘blackening’, is suffering.

A dark night of the soul in which we are reduced to ashes and black matter by the fire, and in that darkness we confront the darkness in ourselves.

Sometimes, it doesn’t help to remind myself when I am suffering that I am transforming into something stronger. Something more self-aware, and more capable of being myself. We are all human, and sometimes we fail as much (or even more) than we succeed. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are still there in that alchemical oven, and that we are still trying. That there are still times when I am shut away in my bedroom, twisting and straining in the heat and the pressure of transmutation.

That bedroom is my crucible.

And, when things boiled over earlier this week and I was finally done crying and complaining and feeling terribly sorry for myself, I became conscious of a sound that had been rumbling away in the background while I was too caught up in my own pain to pay any attention to the outside world. Low and steady and rhythmical.

In the field across the road, they were gathering the first crop of the summer hay.



I watched that hay baler trundle up and down the field for almost half an hour–hypnotised by the pulse of internal combustion, the steady up-and-down rhythm of the feeder forks. As I watched, a deep stillness crept out over me, mingled into the dry and smoky, incense-like smell of the hay. I realised that the world hadn’t stopped. That life was still out there, in the dusty summer evening.

That it was still going on, and that it was tugging me along with it like the current of a stream.