Thresholds
The Ferus Tel Mood Deck is a simple collection of animals designed to evoke emotional fluency.
Consult them with children to honor the feelings (Ferus) that rise and fall each day.
Thresholds is a game expansion designed for adults. By “adults” we mean: those of us ready to accept accountability for the hidden Ferus within. These animal parts of us contain forces that are complex, glorious, and dangerous. They are also tools through which we bring ourselves to the precipice of transformation.
We come to Thresholds to attend to their powers,
to befriend our demons,
and declare ourselves whole.
In these 27 Quests (nine designed by yours truly), we dare to meet these Ferus directly and learn to call them by name. Behold as they conspire among themselves to achieve secret purposes The Seed of Self requires of them, of us.
I will meet you here in Ferus Tel, at our Thresholds of transformation.
Honing the Saber of
Emotional Intelligence
To understand our Seed of Self and the way it arrives in The World, we must first objectify it. We imagine its vastness within the Sanctuary of our mind by listening to its song. So doing, we position ourselves to give us some distance, some time, some dimensionality separate from the flow of experience. We take up the Saber.
As babies, our first Saber quest was to read the cues of our Caretakers. Each and every coo a cue to our own place in an uncertain World. The mind is a Saber that makes The World something each of us alone can fathom.
We objectify the World, as we objectify the Others within it.
Another word for objectifying is Naming.
By naming the feelings we find in others, we learn the mysterious signals of their nature. It’s a way of knowing, taming, and owning them so that we can fathom their power.
Enter the Ferus Tel Menagerie
Level One Saber Quest: Naming Feelings
Imagine a person with whom you are currently experiencing conflict. Ask yourself:
“What remains unnamed in what I see in another?”
Scan the Menagerie and observe the names of the moods you might ascribe to that person.
After selecting two or three, imagine that these FERUS are now having a conversation.. What are they saying to each other?
What conflicts are they experiencing between themselves?
What are the conflicts between them and their world?
What changes might each FERA need to make to resolve their conflicts?
How does this story pertain to the person with whom you are in conflict?
What actions can you offer to help address these conflicts?
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We come to The World equipped to place our most difficult feelings outside of our bodies and into those of Others. This helps us to create the necessary space to see each feeling’s fuller expression. Occasionally we place the best within us in Others as well; easier to watch the best in an Other become betrayed than to experience that same betrayal as our own. This distance created between Self and Other allows us to access the Saber of Emotional Intelligence.
We wield these sabers intuitively … but The World requires we also learn, when ready, to lay our sabers down.
Projecting our worst onto Others continues until finally a false World is made for the playing out of unchecked, relentless aggressors. An opposite but equally false World of idealistic saviors can arise as we project our best on to Others. These false Worlds, populated by the Dopplegangers of our own true selves, are the tragic results of endless saber rattling.