Today's Draw: Ten of Swords—Ruin—from the Rohrig Tarot, Part
1. Do setbacks have a tendency to really set you back? On the flip side, do you
bounce back from things so quickly that you don't even take the time to honor
their passing? Have you ever spent way too long mourning the loss of something
in your life?
Day three of our weeklong reading on how to find more peace
is the card "Ruin", a card of negative and unproductive thinking. So
don't do that! OK? :) Actually, this card holds so much input into the matter
of creating peace in our worlds that I'm going to address it in two parts, with
the second part happening tomorrow.
Listen, not one of us is going scrape through life without
something bad happening. We may be the victim of violence. Someone we love will
die. Our marriage might end. Whatever it is, suddenly the life we knew is no
longer. And we have no control over this. It's over.
Regardless, we will lose our sense of peace and balance over
this. We need to feel. We need to mourn the old. But the key here is how long.
And how we see the event in the overall context of our lives.
Some people will live for years telling themselves "my
life is over" or "everything I cared about is gone". Some people
will slip into depression or turn to drugs, numbing themselves to the pain. And
some people will feel what they feel, take their lessons, then bounce back.
This last quality has been cited on lists of things in common with both
successful people and unusually old people. Your ability to bounce back
contributes to both your success and longevity.
The faster you bounce back, the more peace you'll have, too.
Buddhists teach that much of our suffering comes from attachment to
things...non-acceptance of reality...wishing things were different. I also
refer to it as pushing back against what is. Again, things need to be mourned.
But things also need to be accepted and integrated.
Your marriage failed? Your life isn't over. Some might say
it's really just beginning.
Someone you love died? You can love again. Dr. Phil once
said something very good on this topic...the length and depth of your mourning
has no relation to the length and depth of your love. They are two separate
things. Being happy is not a betrayal of that love. In fact, anyone who loved
you would want to see you happy, so it honors that love.
You were the victim of a crime? There's a lot to heal there.
There's also a lot to learn and triumph over.
Most of the negative thoughts we think after a trauma are
not true. They reflect our fears and feelings at the time. But there is a whole
school of thought that can bring you back to peace. One thought is that there
are no mistakes, only learning experiences. Another is that nothing is ever
lost, it's just transformed. These two perspectives alone can bring you more
peace, learning and healing than wallowing ever could.
There simply is no such thing as "ruin". Ruin
happens when the foundation upon which you've built something is not
substantial enough to hold what you've built. So ruin happens to show you where
you need to build stronger foundations in your life. If someone died or a
relationship ended and you "simply cannot go on", then your
foundation of self-confidence, self-reliance and self-identity wasn't strong
enough to support the relationship in the first place.
Nobody *is* your life. No state of being *is* your life.
Nothing is permanent beyond your soul. And when you view life from the
perspective of the soul, then you'll see "ruin" does not exist. And a
world in which ruin does not exist is a more peaceful one, indeed.
Amen!
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