12/27/12—Preparing For The New Cycle

Today's Draw: The Silverware Drawer (Judgment) from the Kitchen Tarot. How do you use the energies of year end and year beginning to re-create yourself? Or do you see December 31 and January 1 as no more significant than other dates when it comes to that? Do you review the previous year and set intentions for the new year?

I got this fabulous majors-only deck for a steal on the Hay House site recently and I'm glad I got it. I love decks with writing on them and this deck is created with visible and too-small-to-be-visible writing all over it. In fact, the artwork is made out of lines of writing. 

I feel like this week's entries are all about things we should consider as we head into the new year. Today's card is, in many ways, another iteration of the one we had on Christmas Day. It asks us to sort out the old year and make a fresh start in the new. It asks to look at the criticisms we've received as a conduit for our own growth. To step away from petty thoughts and make choices based on the greater good. To look through all aspects of our lives and raise our game. 

The Silverware Drawer is a tool box full of items to help us cut things out of our lives, move them around some, spoon things carefully and whisk toward our desires. We all have these tools, but are we using them effectively?

This card is asking us to really take a good, honest look at ourselves. Not to be righteous. Not to insist the problem belongs to anyone else. But to really take sober stock of where we are and what our intentions are. To acknowledge what we have control over. In essence, to grow up and stop playing games, stop living in denial and take responsibility for who, what and where we are in our lives. 

It's a process that really never ends. It seems like each "self correction" shows you where you're out of alignment elsewhere. 

Years ago I tried folding some origami and the lesson I got from it was pretty profound...each new fold depends on the precise execution of the previous fold. If you're off just a hair, the next fold will be off and the next until you're left with a hinky swan with one wing shorter and a different color than the other. 

So sometimes we have to go back and fix our folds. Which means we have to find the first hinky fold and re-work our swan from there. Some will prefer to float along with mis-matched, poorly operational wings because it's easier than accepting that something's broken. It takes a lot of courage and humility to fess up to our lazy, rushed or misinformed handiwork. And sometimes it's really hard to make a new fold right alongside the old one. But in the end you'll have something that's better equipped to swim surely to wherever it wants to go.