Today's Draw: The High Priestess/Seeker from the Medicine Woman Tarot. What is your current state of being trying to tell you? What do your attitudes and resentments reflect from within? How big an effect do you allow your outside world to have on your inner life?
The High Priestess is usually pictured as a formal spiritual authority and an oracle. But here we see her as an everyday woman, not dressed in robes, but vulnerable to the world. She is not looking out for the answers to her questions and issue, rather she is looking within. She is taking personal responsibility for her situation in life, whatever it might be. There isn't one among us who hasn't said "I did X because so-and-so did Y" or "I'm feeling X because so-and-so said Y". We put our responses and actions in the context of something outside of us. And though nobody likes this word or wants to admit to this word, we play the victim. And we frequently forget that being a victim is a choice...a choice usually made to mask a real issue beneath.
But you say, "what about someone who gets mugged on the street? They're a victim." They're a victim only if they choose to be. Certainly there will be psychological repercussions. Some fear in the wake of the event. But whether or not they become a victim of all of that is their choice. We can see things as an excuse to become emotionally disabled or as an excuse to become further empowered. The choice is ours.
Everything from "my husband had an affair on me" to "I can't lose weight because my kids bring so much junk food into the house" is more an issue of taking personal responsibility for your choices than it is a matter of victimization. If you married a cad, you need to take responsibility for that. If he strayed because he wasn't getting the attention he needed, you need to take responsibility for that. His actions didn't happen in a vacuum. Men cheat for two reasons...because they have a problem with fidelity or because they're seeking some sort of attention they're not getting at home. And people get fat, not because of anything that happens in their environment, but because of things happening within.
Whether it's the idiot supermarket checker that made you late to a meeting or the dog that escapes every time you open the door, the responsibility for your situation starts within. You can't blame anything on your parents, your partner or the guy who dumped you a month ago. Nothing in your life is there because you were bullied as a child or made to dress like a boy when you were actually a girl. Certainly those things influence your responses. But your responses are always your choice. The tools for healing and surpassing are always within your grasp. If you choose not to heal, if you choose to allow anything to take away from you, that is your choice.
It's very easy for us to see the victim inside others, but much harder to see it in ourselves. But it does exist. And once you open your eyes to it, it becomes harder and harder to play the victim unwittingly. I'm someone who, I believe, takes on more personal responsibility than the average bear. But I see myself saying and doing things all the time that are automatic responses to what's going on outside of me, rather than conscious responses that are aligned with my personal integrity and responsibility. I may do it, but am rarely ever blind to it anymore. I've even seen where I've been the victim of my own personal responsibility taking...haha.
Pulling back to the big picture, outside of living in your integrity, taking personal responsibility delivers many gifts. Since our tendencies to blame this and that on others comes from one of the many fears, pains and insecurities within, it gives a big red arrow leading to those things so we can heal them. And many of those things also manifest as physical pain or other physical states, which means we can heal physical issues by excavating emotional ones. So choosing to walk the path of personal responsibility and conscious choice-making delivers many benefits. Even if you don't use it as an opportunity to excavate to the root issues, it at least makes you more aware of the personal power you have in your life. And the less you live as a victim, the more you live as the conscious creator of your own life.
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