52 Mountain or Bound is a very powerful image or symbol (a xiang or imaginal operation) of Stopping or bringing things to a still place. It the strongest possible injunction against "acting anything out." Rather, it is a crucial time when we have to "act it in" or become the victim of our own negative emotions. Jesus said "when someone strikes you, turn the other cheek" and "love your enemies" not to make us into doormats or robots, but to break us out of the endless cycle of wounding and retribution.
52 Bound shows not just a mountain full of peace and calm, but a mountain where a bloody sacrifice is being enacted - and we are the "victim" in that sacrifice, the "body of our past". All our literal attachments to the past, our compulsive identifications and our pain-and-desire circuits are "cut into" one by one. The mettas, enacted in stillness, are a great challenge here. What does it mean to wish George Bush, Osama bin Laden and our own oppressive parents "happiness, health, safety and security, and freedom"? The basic lesson is that anyone who possess these things will not and cannot act in a compulsive or negative way. The secondary lesson is that any of these terrible encounters with fate actually might be a gift, releasing us from our compulsive identifications and freeing us to walk the "axis of the universe - Love". For the sacrifice of the literal in 52 Bound "opens the subtle body." It makes our response to any situation a matter of imagination and ritual rather than literal activity and affirms that this imaginal or ritual activity is the most efficacious thing we can possibly do in the situation we are confronted with.
Stephen