Definition and Meaning of De-Compartmentalise
"De-compartmentalise" means to reverse the process of separating something into distinct, isolated compartments or categories. It implies merging or integrating previously separated elements. In essence, it's the opposite of "compartmentalise".
Here's a more detailed explanation:
Definition:
To de-compartmentalise something is to remove the boundaries or separations that were previously in place.
Usage:
This term is often used in organisational contexts to describe a process where different departments or functions that were previously isolated are brought together to work more collaboratively.
Synonyms:
Merge, integrate, un-segregate.
Compartmentalisation; It’s a layered story. Nowadays, mental health professionals will often advocate for the compartmentalisation of emotions, in order not to be overwhelmed by them. The world of Business advocates for compartmentalisation of functions and roles and processes, in order to increase efficiency. It’s a mechanised view point; ‘mechanical.’
Our world became mechanised long ago; bit by bit the system made ‘a place for everything’ and everything was assigned its place. Systems theory and functions are un-emotional, reliable, stable; functioning at highest optimisation for productivity and the most efficient means of commerce, trade, transportation and the smooth running of world trade. We have manufacturing processes that are mechanised, only needing repair and parts replacements; oil and grease to lubricate the endless and untiring movement. Computer sciences embedded algorithms with numerical patterns. Information became transactional. The architectural landscape is ‘boxed’ for the most part, where creativity has become channelled into spaces, where nothing is connected and forms are squared, lines are straight and precise, and everything is regulated; categorised into health and safety modules of compliance.
Compartmentalised systems have been integrated into society and the world functions most efficiently, seemingly as proof of the intelligence of the theory and the design. Life looks like it works … but does it?
Systems worked to order life, to build homes and roads and bridges, and infrastructures as distinct and separate ‘parts’. I could include many more examples, but I’m sure you get the point. The System took over everything. Everyone stopped paying attention and just got on with living a life that complied with regulations and rules. We were distracted by wars and strife between countries and hemispheres, just as in our families and relationships as individuals. ‘As Within, So Without.’ We can see how it all fell into place. But Pluto in transit, uncovers what we have been too pre-occupied to notice.
The mechanism of compartmentalisation allows for everything to be so separated that one department does not know what another department is doing, or that it even exists at all. All it took was for the seed of corruption to germinate and like a computer virus, the system itself can easily and did become, seduced into hiding secrets … and on it goes and on it went, and here we are.What are the effects of systemic compartmentalisation?
Simply put, I’d say that the effects are all around us. In very human terms, it’s probably best known as ‘loneliness’; feeling cut off from something so essential that this loss of connection has crept into the Heart and the Soul of society and taken up residence without much notice, until the chronic condition itself, is lost in a world of Pharmaceutical Aids, to stop any feeling of the pain of this loss. Better not to feel they encourage. Mental Health fields of delivering treatment for depression, anxieties, heart conditions and the many ‘illness’ and ‘dis-eases’ which express the ‘effects’ of a society that has lost its connection to being ‘whole.’
On another level, generations have ‘adapted,’ and the world of ‘being human’ has become conditioned; grown in an environment where this disconnect is normalised; successive and chronic. While the ‘system’ takes over the functioning of all things, and compartmentalised ‘knowledge’ has allowed for the development of a deep ‘secrecy.’
It is a deeply disturbing view I know, and I also know that not everyone is lonely or unhappy. But there are many who recognise this chronic state as a dysfunction; a lamentable condition and who instinctively know that this dysfunction has become ‘designed’ into the system to cover its flaws, dysfunctions and potential crimes. We could call it a ‘corruption’ of the code, which runs as interference patterns in our systemically corrupted world.
Essentially our world and its systems of control and function, are dissociated, and humanity is ‘contained’ in it. This is the true definition behind the ‘therapeutic idea’ of ‘compartmentalisation’ being a cure for ‘difficult’ feelings. Compartmentalisation is not a long term fix and as we can see with our world, it eventually becomes a dissociative trauma response; compound. It has built compound interest that develops a moral debt, ethical flaws and functions that the system itself protects. A more dystopian nightmare, I cannot imagine. Philip K Dick wrote many best seller novels about this very thing.
Now that we have looked through the glass, darkly …
Let’s turn to the transit of Pluto in Aquarius.
As Above, So Below. As Within, So Without
Pluto is a Dwarf Planet - apparently downgraded to Planetoid. Pluto is the archetype associated with the Soul’s Desires and Intentions. It is symbolic of Power, of Death and Rebirth processes, and these processes take us through transmutation toward transformation and rebirth; This is the power of Pluto.
With its slow and erratic orbit, Pluto is a generational placement in any natal chart, where it turns up in the same Sign for each generation; between 1 - 30 degrees of a Sign as the transit moves through it. In Aquarius, Pluto’s transit will take around 20 years, taking retrograde cycles into account. This means that Pluto will be in Aquarius until around 2044. By the time Pluto has completed its transit through Aquarius, our world will have transformed in many Aquarian ways. The particular way that I am going to address today, is to do with the process of de-compartmentalisation.
Pluto transits work deeply and intensely, yet slowly and thoroughly, and the effects are a deep and powerful transformation of the shadow aspects, or hidden depths of the Sign that it is transiting through.
As it connects to other Signs and Planets, Pluto works through every layer and aspect of what needs to be transformed over the course of their faster transits. In brief, this is the work of Pluto. One of the key associations with Pluto is toward the evolutionary, intended outcomes of the Soul’s incarnation and journey through life. Pluto deals with Karma and Soul Contracts. Pluto is in charge of transforming shadows, secrets, abuses, death and taxes; what we inherit in terms of karmic patterns as well as actual use of Money as an instrument of power.
Pluto de-constructs, digs up, renders what needs to be dismantled. This process reveals what was hidden like an archeological excavation, and the site right now, is Aquarius. The Aquarius landscape, (or Space), will be changed in the same inevitable and relentless purpose of transforming what needs to die and be reborn in a new way. Energy is never destroyed; only transformed. These are alchemical processes in evolution.
Aquarius is Fixed Air, as all those who follow the Moon Feels will already know. Associated with space and the vacuum (fixed air), as well as technology, Aquarius as a Sign is a realm of dissociation. Pluto therefore is going to be de-compartmentalising the dissociated experience, memories, secrets and hidden trauma’s that have been vacuum packed and put away into the filing cabinets of the collective human experience. Let that sink in; it’s profound.
Why Dissociation?
When situations are experienced in childhood that are traumatic, a child may not have the language skills or the safety to express the experience and the emotions around it. There is though, a psychological mechanism that keeps the mind ‘safe’ from fracturing, and allows a child to continue from day to day and perhaps forget the whole thing, over time. Dissociation allows for continued functioning. This mechanism in childhood is called ‘repression.’ As adults this is termed as ‘suppression.’
Repression ‘fixes’ the experience and all its associated feelings, anxieties, fears, worries and the trauma of it, into a ‘compartment’ of the mind, where is stays. The filing cabinet analogy is appropriate. Life can go on without the constant presence of whatever ‘that’ was.
Each subsequent and similar experience or event that ‘triggers’ the original trauma, is shoved into the same compartment. Over a lifetime, we have filing cabinets full of trauma’s, shadows, shameful things, taboo things, things we feel guilty about; anything that is to be kept hidden from conscious awareness, is ‘compartmentalised’ and dealt with through suppressing it. The drawers get shut and sometimes locked. Memory is stored and forgotten, but never lost.
All these things find a way to the surface through the subconscious, and unconsciously, a repeating pattern emerges; shadow is projected onto others; externalised, and onto the world at large (As Within, So Without), and we can become sick as the Body is filled with repressed emotional experience and holds the weight of unresolved trauma etc. Our mind forgets but the body remembers. Triggers happen and repression becomes an automatic function in the face of any situation that resembles the contents of the filing cabinet. The automatic function happens without conscious thought. There is systemic dysfunction. This is Aquarius. Systems Functions is a useful term to describe this Sign.
Eventually we experience a Pluto transit by aspect, to something in our natal chart where our ‘stuff’ is hidden, and we go through dark nights of the soul and periods of exorcising the ghosts; dealing with trauma in some way, or we simply get lost in repeating the patterns. Feelings and emotions are attached to thoughts, and the memories of traumatic experience delivers the contents in a way that is emotionally intense and powerful. It would be useful if humanity had been taught how these psychological functions operate, but that knowledge was of course compartmentalised by a system that was protecting itself and abusing the power it has held. There are many events and periods of our history that have been subject to compartmentalisation and where dissociation is the preferred state; the state of unconsciously repeating conditions of dysfunction. In the picture at the top of this post, it highlights that, “it’s most powerful when it works as One.” That is each of us. We are most powerful when we are whole and not divided; or compartmentalised through dissociation. ‘We are so much more than the sum of our parts.’ The process of Pluto in Aquarius will liberate was has been forgotten and reveal what has been hidden. It is better to know than to live in ignorance of the truth.
This is all very brief and a quick exploration of the fixed patterns that play out through the subconscious mind, where all our ‘programs’ run automatically. It is how it is, as a natural function of the Mind, to keep itself safe from situations that in the past we were unable to deal with. In adulthood however, we are no longer the child and have skills and networks, and access to therapeutic healing processes, that can help to unlock the files, examine and integrate the contents. ‘Integration’ is another aspect of the Pluto process, and with the South Node of the Moon in Virgo, this process is assured.
Why ‘trauma’? Because Aquarius and its fixed air nature is all about dissociation and the compartmentalisation of experiences and trauma’s, and the memories of the past that we hide from ourselves, so that we can efficiently continue to function. But this particular mechanism is not fixed in nature; it is a temporary storage solution, for a Mind that will mature. Soon enough the mechanism breaks down and the emotionally charged psychic material is brought to awareness, in order to do now, what could not be done before.
This can look and feel like a breakdown, and the mental health system is full of the walking wounded, with un-nameable filing cabinets and their open draws spilling a stack of old records. I’m deliberately painting a challenging picture, so that as Pluto de-compartmentalises the ‘contents’ of the Aquarian field, we can as a collective have some understanding of the nature of compartmentalisation and the dissociative mechanism that is now being presented for the collective to ‘deal’ with it. At an individual level, the same understanding is an affirmation that this process will bring liberation through a process of transformation.
Individuals have their personal ‘stuff’ to some degree or another, and each individual has the opportunity to examine, analyse, integrate and to heal and release the past, as things emerge from the psyche. In the world ‘out there’ these contents are truly ‘collective’ in nature; where ‘thoughts have become forms,’ and become the ‘without’ that is a reflection of a collective ‘unconscious;’ the ‘below’ (the hidden secrets) of the ‘above’ (what has been apparent on the surface).
This is a much larger conversation that is not possible in one post, so I am going to stick to the question, of what is likely to emerge, when the de-compartmentalisation of what was in those collective filing cabinets, is rendered and revealed by the Pluto transit in Aquarius.
Transformation is a rolling process; slow but definite. One Sign follows another. Aquarius follows Capricorn, so we just have look at how the world has revealed the corruptions and abuses in the systems; in governments, in politics, in religions etc., over the last 15 years while Pluto made transit through Capricorn, and we can begin to see, and sense and feel the depth and the rendering power of Pluto.
Transformation is a process that begins with deconstruction, which reveals and uncovers what was hidden and secretive, so that something new can be regenerated and reborn from the ashes. This is a collective dark night of the Soul. It’s a natural and creative process that involves a period of flux and of chaos; out of which something new can emerge and the cycle starts brand new.
In the process of compartmentalisation, is written in, the inevitable moment of -de-compartmentalisation. Dissociation only holds for so long. Programming breaks down. These are all attributes of the transforming power of Pluto.
So, what do we think might come out of the collective filing cabinets in Aquarius?
Hidden technologies that suddenly become available as if they are new? Perhaps these are and have, already been developed in compartmentalised, need to know, secret places. Perhaps some are not good; have not been used for good, but have even been used ‘against’ humanity in secret. Pluto reveals abuses of power and manipulation. Make no mistake, with this Pluto transit, we are going to find out. Some of the technological advances will be useful and can be used for the good of humanity, but perhaps have been developed again in secret, for a ‘breakaway society.’ This too is possible, and in this regard there could be an awful LOT to be revealed, including healing technologies and innovations in all manner of ways. Artificial Intelligence coming to the fore is an example of hidden technological advances that have not suddenly come out now, but have already been developed, with the knowledge of them compartmentalised; ‘Need to Know.’
The reality of extra terrestrial civilisations. A can of worms and a Pandora’s Box all by itself (a very Pluto device), of secrets; hidden historical abuses and the like; abductions etc. Our history (‘far memory’ which is Aquarius), is likely to be one of the things that will become de-compartmentalised, and the knowledge of our forgotten past, both recent and far distant, returned to us, for integration collectively.
The hidden and secret workings of governments and all the different agencies involved in maintaining control of global society and how it functions. This would be politics, monarchies, religions, secret societies; all very Aquarius things and another Pandora’s box. We may already see it. The mechanism of society, with ‘need to know’ access to compartmentalised knowledge of secret abuses of power, is likely to get spilled into collective awareness. It’s all unlocking, opening, and its contents being revealed. Nothing stops the Pluto process. Imagine it.
The Trauma’s and abuses, hidden from view in ‘need to know’ compartments. This one I think, could be categorised as having operated ‘Below’ the ground (very Pluto) and contains a ‘dark material.’ Perhaps these will be the taboo things that we don’t like to think about, never mind talk about or see. Pluto will uncover it all.
These are some of the potential revealings. We get the sense don’t we, that transformation and its processes will be a time of healing old wounds, ‘dealing with’ hidden aspects of our world, integrating the experiences and embracing a regeneration process that naturally runs alongside. The antidote is written in to the Pluto process. Think of Scorpio, ruled by Pluto. Fixed water, karmic, intense, emotional depths, fixed emotional patterns. Scorpio has three symbols; the Scorpion (poison), the Phoenix (transmuting the poisons of life), and the Eagle (Rise and Shine).
In this powerful process, there are many healing modalities that can help the with re-integration, healing and recovery from trauma. I’ve included a brief and limited list here of those modalities that I feel are worthy and some of which have helped me over the years.
Psychoanalysis
Hypnosis
EFT (Tapping)
EMDR
Body Work for Somatised Release: Massage, Drama Therapy, Gestalt, Bowen, Chiropractic, Shiatsu, Yoga, Walking in Nature, Swimming, Digestive Cleanses.
Dream Analysis
Astrological Counselling and Chart Analysis
Journalling and Creative Writing
Touch Drawing and Art Therapy
Inner Child Recovery
Shamanism for Soul Retrieval
Psychosynthesis
Sound Therapy
Guided Meditations
Talking things ‘through’ with good Counsellors, whether they are friends or professionals
These are just some recommendations, many of which I have benefited from in my own processes through life.
I also recommend the Book called ‘The Body Keeps The Score’ by Bessel Van der Kalk. It is truly excellent, in particular with reference to conditions of PTSD and Trauma Recovery.
Books by Robert Johnson on the Shadow and Inner Work.
Jungian Perspectives
The Hero’s Journey
This is much more than I intended to say and is a lot to take in, even though it only scratches the surface of the potential revelations that will likely come over the years of Pluto in Aquarius.
Aspects which will feel the activation of this Pluto transit are the same aspects discussed in The Moon Feels regularly, which describe the type of situations, challenges, and collaborations and flows of support, that bring the tensions needed for growth. These include, confrontation and encounters with the shadows, the patterns that are unfixed, and the unlocking of repressed and suppressed knowledge as it comes to light. Relationships are also mirrors of the self and any shadow projections; both good and bad; idealised and co-dependent; in all their forms.
The Nodes of the Moon
The South Node in Virgo is perfect, and a great support in the process that we are moving through now. Virgo knows how to analyse, to know what is what and see everything for what it is. Virgo knows how to heal, integrate and serve the whole self in the evolutionary process. We are releasing the Past.
The North Node in Pisces is also perfect. As we do ‘Virgo’ that process allows for the wide open window of evolution to open in the spiritual realm of consciousness; Pisces. Compassion and forgiveness. Awareness. Dreaming a New Dream based on knowledge of the entirety of experience. Pisces incorporates all other signs in so many ways, and in this sense all experience is known in the field of conscious awakening and spiritual development. We are evolving as a whole. Growing up and taking responsibility for what has been, and what we build for ourselves in new ways. First we deal with the ‘stuff.’
Chiron in Aries is healing individual will and the wounds of existence; the wound of ‘separation’ from Self and from Source. Through this knowledge of compartmentalisation, it is clear to me that Chiron is miraculously placed in Aries.
There’s always more to say, but I shall leave it here. I welcome any comments and sharing of your thoughts, and of course The Moon Feels will continue to observe the rolling process of change and evolution, as the World (the Wheel) turns.
Much Love
Manda