Limitations are frustrating and painful. But it is these things that provide the structure, the frame, within which the story unfolds. If every possibility in the mind of the creator were made permanent by the sustainer, life would become overloaded and unlivable. The destroyer stands over the elements of water and earth, establishing the fixed forms of the practical world and the feelings through which we become related to those forms. The spiritual forces give us a deeper understanding of the material elements.
Earth springs from the destroyer, fire from the creator.
Thus, earth is a pure expression of inanimate structure, and fire is a pure expression of uninhibited impulse. Water is an offspring of the destroyer and sustainer, receiving bodily grounding from the former and fluid perception from the latter. Likewise, air is a mixture of the creative spirit with the balancing influence of the sustainer. On this level of the spread, the underlying causes emerge, along with a unifying sense of story or meaning. The sustainer in the center represents one's maturity, the capacity to work productively with all aspects of life.