4/19/12—Getting to the Truth

Today's Draw Classic*: Justice (Major Arcana VIII) from Tarot of the Sidhe. Do you know what is true? Can you attest to anything with absolute and universal certainty? What does it annoy you that people are always getting wrong?

Justice is a card of balance...of weighing options and finding that sweet spot in the center that is the sum of all things good and bad. Emily Carding, the creator of this deck, sees it as the all-seeing karmic law that none can escape. It is cosmic law and universal truth, balancing on the all-seeing, dispassionate eye of God.

As ego-driven humans we are certain we hold that truth. We know when someone is wrong. We see injustice. We're certain we know the truth. But do we? Do we ever?

We're constantly making judgments of right and wrong, as though our keen eye knows all. When we're with our partner, we know we love them. But after the relationship dissolves, we wonder if we ever really did. Was that love? 

When someone zooms into our spot in a parking lot, we know the bitch saw us and willfully stole our space. But how do we know she was even paying attention? How do we know she wasn't on automatic or in that zone we all go into where the outside world doesn't exist?

We say the sky is blue. To a color blind man, who knows? We say it's 4pm. Someone else's watch says 3:58. We're certain it's 2011, but what does that even mean? Tell a Buddhist it's 2011 years after Christ and it means nothing. We say our arm hurts and someone comes along and tells us we don't know pain. Pain is having your eyes gouged out by a crow...haha. So where is the truth in all that?

Emily Carding wrote a certain truth about this card she created. And I have my own...haha. That is the way of tarot. It can be perfectly spelled out by the creator of the deck, but each reader will always see what they want to want to see. And when I see this card tomorrow, I will see something different. The dancer balances perfectly between her conscious (the sun) and her subconscious (the moon). But she must constantly adjust that balance. And when we're talking the conscious, we can count on more stable "truths". But when the unconscious comes into play, all bets are off. So the truth is constantly shifting and is very unique to the individual...and may even be comprised of things the individual isn't aware of.

What I see in this card that wasn't intended (or at least didn't appear in the artist's notes) is that the eyes of sun and moon and the sharpness of the entire balancing image in the center, form the face of an owl. The face of wisdom. And wisdom is knowing that the "truth" is an individual and constantly shifting thing. It exists not in black and white, but in shades of gray. The only thing I can think of that defies this dynamic nature is unconditional love...truly unconditional love. 

It is the ego mind that thinks it knows the truth. But the only seer of the truth is the higher power. That's the only "one" with the omniscience to get the entire picture. For every truth you have, there is an individual who thinks and sees otherwise. And every time we press our truth with insistence, or vengeance or some other form of "certainty", we bear the karma of that false belief. So consider this as you go through your day and make your arguments and take your stands. Truth is one of the great illusions of life...a fleeting snapshot of the human inside us and not representative of the god within.

*Today's draw was adapted from an entry made on 4/25/11.