6/7/13—Setting Your Own Personal Default

Today's Draw Classic*: Seeker of Fire (Page of Swords) from the Shapeshifter Tarot by Lisa Hunt. Would you generally call yourself a diplomatic person? Do you tend to be diplomatic in your actions and words, but not in your thoughts? If diplomacy and discretion are society's defaults, what are your personal defaults?

The book for this deck speaks of messages and diplomacy when you get the Seeker of Fire. 

Recently I've been thinking a lot about things like diplomacy and discretion. I think if you look around your life, you might not realize all the times in a day or week you are limited in what you can say or do for the sake of diplomacy or discretion. 

In writing this blog, I frequently subject myself to that. Certainly I don't want to use peoples' names in a public place without their permission. Then there are situations where I'll talk about something, but hold back a lot of details so the situation or person can't be easily identified. Then there are the times you just can't discuss an issue at all, whether it's because you know someone involved will read it or because it's just too hot button to be diplomatic about.

Then there's work. How many times a day do you keep yourself from saying or doing something too personal or too crass at work....or from telling someone off? You stop in the store on the way home and run into a neighbor and the niceties come out, even though their dog is always peeing on your grass. You go home and keep from saying something because your partner has had a hard day.

Then there are those situations where you find yourself between friends, both sides wanting you to take up their cause. One side thinks the diplomatic thing for you to do would be to choose their side. Because they're in the right. The other side thinks the same. So you can't win. And if you choose both sides...or if you choose Switzerland...you're really screwed. So you choose whatever you feel is right, because you can't win for losing. 

After a while with all this jockeying around to be diplomatic and whatnot, we lose touch with what's genuine to us, though. We become socially trained automatons. Even outspoken people with no filter will find themselves saying or doing the socially acceptable thing from time to time. And there's good reason for a lot of it. It's how we get by in a civil society. 

I think it's worth considering what's really beneath your choices, though. Because when we're in those situations where diplomacy isn't going to do us any favors, we should be able to know what's really driving our decisions—a socially trained desire to not create waves or something that is truly genuine to ourselves. It sounds very simple. but if you really explore, you may find that it's really hard to separate the programmed part of you from the "you" part of you. One way to tell the difference is, do your thoughts mirror your words and actions? If not, it may not be genuine to you.

But what about those situations that weren't in the guidebook? Or the ones we're not prepared to encounter? Like the time I was briefly stuck in an elevator with a dude with Tourettes who was trying to chat me up about the "n-word people" he worked with. Or when the neighborhood meth addicts stopped by to borrow my phone and ask if they could siphon a gallon of gas from my car. That's when having a personal default comes in handy.

In the past year or so, I've been using a personal default of kindness, drama avoidance and quietly walking away from situations that don't serve me. I find this covers most situations and it's not always the diplomatic or popular thing to do. Especially in the midst of a drama, because it doesn't preclude saying no and detaching from the situation. It's not always easy to follow, and my thoughts are still catching up to my words and actions. I'm still limiting what I might say or do, but I'm doing it for my own personal growth and aligning with the spiritual path I'm on, not because of any societal agenda. I'm not 100%, but I'm doing pretty well, considering my old personal default was loudly telling people off and using the "f" word a lot. That covered most situations, too. :D

So what's your default? You could consider it a personal code or philosophy of dealing with others. Have you ever considered this before? And if you have, how consistent are you with it? Is is something you just say or use when it's convenient? Or is something you stick to, even if it pisses other people off?

*Taken from a post on 2/15/12.

7/14/12-7/15/12—Finding What You Can Control

Weekend Reading: Five of Swords from the Ghosts & Spirits Tarot by Lisa Hunt. Things may feel a little frantic and out of control this weekend, but keep in mind you always have control over something. You may not be able to control the chaos around you or how things turn out, but you can control how you respond to it. No need for drama or desperate measures. Sometimes we drive ourselves batty trying to orchestrate situations or put out the fires around us. But it's possible that if we let some fires continue to blaze on their own, they may just become one less fire we have to put out in the future. And if we let things come their natural conclusion, they may lead to something better for us. So this weekend take a beat to figure out what you're in control of and what you're really not. See where you have options you may not have considered before. If chaos is an unwelcome constant in your life, consider where you may actually be causing it—or at the very least enabling it. You have more control over things than you know. The problem is you've just been focusing on controlling the wrong things.

5/23/12—Visiting Rainbow Bridge

Today's Draw: Rainbow Bridge by Lisa Hunt. Do you believe your deceased pets still look out for you from above? Do you have connection to someone in your life that you just can't understand...one you feel might be based on a past-life experience? What, if anything, do you believe about past lives and soul groups?

Today's draw is an actual drawing, not a tarot card. As part of a limited edition offering of her latest tarot deck, Ghosts & Spirits, Lisa Hunt signed a card, put together a special print and offered a custom drawing for any keyword of your choosing. My keyword was "rainbow bridge" and this drawing is her interpretation of it. 

If you don't know about the Rainbow Bridge, it comes from a poem about the place your four legged friends go to wait for you until you join them again. My dog Passion died a few years ago and on our last night together, we talked and snuggled all night and I told her what a great girl she had been. I also told her the story about Rainbow Bridge and about how one day I'd meet her there. 

A few months after she died, I pulled out my Tarot of Transformation deck to ask if Passion had any messages for me. I chose the deck because it's always gentle and contemplative in its answers. What I suppose I didn't consciously realize is that it's probably the only deck in my collection that has a Rainbow Bridge card—tarot decks don't normally have Rainbow Bridge cards. And that's the first of two cards I chose at random.  Choosing that card of all the 78 in the deck brought me to tears. Because it felt like she was saying she had found Rainbow Bridge and was waiting for me. 

The incredibly beautiful Passion the dog.

The second card I chose showed a spirit bear keeping watch over a mommy bear and two cubs while they slept. Passion's nickname was Pashie Bear. So this card was showing me that she was watching over me and Kizzie and Magick Moonbeam. I mean, what are the odds? I felt that Passion's spirit guided me to that deck so she could communicate precisely what she wanted. And I have no doubt of that, because I've never met a dog with a larger human vocabulary than her. If you could measure dog IQ, she would be considered a genius...not because she was trainable, but because she had communication, discernment and reasoning skills far beyond other dogs and beyond many humans as well. Anyway, that's her in the picture Lisa Hunt drew.

This past weekend I had an aura photograph taken and a reading. I'm not sure what I believe of all of that. And the lady doing it was a little out there. But one of the things she said was that there were 144,000 individuals in my soul group. A soul group can be considered the group of people you encounter over and over, lifetime after lifetime. This lifetime's favorite grocery clerk might be next lifetime's childhood chum. 

While Rainbow Bridge is a place where you reunite with pets, I imagine there's a place where you reunite with members of your soul group and come to know and understand the roles they played in your various lifetimes. Sometimes it's fun to think about someone you know and assess what role they might have played in another lifetime. Like my sister who calls me by her daughter's name....maybe there's a past-life reason for that. Or my real-life faux boyfriend...maybe he wasn't so faux in another lifetime. And my girl, Passion...I'm pretty sure she wasn't always a dog. I think she came back as one to teach me the valuable lesson of how to love. 

So what do you think of all of this? Can you figure out who some of the important people in your life might have been in another life?

5/19/12-5/20/12—Following Your Gut

Weekend Reading: Ace of Wands from the Ghosts & Spirits Tarot by Lisa Hunt. This card speaks about "Will o' the Wisp" or "fool's fire", a mirage of flickering light that is sometimes seen in remote marshy areas. Unsuspecting explorers may be pulled into the marshlands by these flickers, which many believe to be spirit energies who provide clarity and illumination on the one hand, and fear and misdirection on the other...depending on the energies driving the spirits. So this weekend, pause and do a gut check before you become drawn to shiny things. They could very well bear the insights you seek to move your life forward. But they could also lead you astray. Follow your own intuition. And if your intuition leads you toward inspiration that then begins to feel "off", don't be afraid to change directions. Your gut will tell you all you need to know. Follow it first this weekend.

3/29/12—Setting Your Own Personal Default

Today's Draw Classic*: Seeker of Fire (Page of Swords) from the Shapeshifter Tarot by Lisa Hunt. Would you generally call yourself a diplomatic person? Do you tend to be diplomatic in your actions and words, but not in your thoughts? If diplomacy and discretion are society's defaults, what are your personal defaults?

The book for this deck speaks of messages and diplomacy when you get the Seeker of Fire. 

Recently I've been thinking a lot about things like diplomacy and discretion. I think if you look around your life, you might not realize all the times in a day or week you are limited in what you can say or do for the sake of diplomacy or discretion. 

In writing this blog, I frequently subject myself to that. Certainly I don't want to use peoples' names in a public place without their permission. Then there are situations where I'll talk about something, but hold back a lot of details so the situation or person can't be easily identified. Then there are the times you just can't discuss an issue at all, whether it's because you know someone involved will read it or because it's just too hot button to be diplomatic about.

Then there's work. How many times a day do you keep yourself from saying or doing something too personal or too crass at work....or from telling someone off? You stop in the store on the way home and run into a neighbor and the niceties come out, even though their dog is always peeing on your grass. You go home and keep from saying something because your partner has had a hard day.

Then there are those situations where you find yourself between friends, both sides wanting you to take up their cause. One side thinks the diplomatic thing for you to do would be to choose their side. Because they're in the right. The other side thinks the same. So you can't win. And if you choose both sides...or if you choose Switzerland...you're really screwed. So you choose whatever you feel is right, because you can't win for losing. 

After a while with all this jockeying around to be diplomatic and whatnot, we lose touch with what's genuine to us, though. We become socially trained automatons. Even outspoken people with no filter will find themselves saying or doing the socially acceptable thing from time to time. And there's good reason for a lot of it. It's how we get by in a civil society. 

I think it's worth considering what's really beneath your choices, though. Because when we're in those situations where diplomacy isn't going to do us any favors, we should be able to know what's really driving our decisions—a socially trained desire to not create waves or something that is truly genuine to ourselves. It sounds very simple. but if you really explore, you may find that it's really hard to separate the programmed part of you from the "you" part of you. One way to tell the difference is, do your thoughts mirror your words and actions? If not, it may not be genuine to you.

But what about those situations that weren't in the guidebook? Or the ones we're not prepared to encounter? Like the time I was briefly stuck in an elevator with a dude with Tourettes who was trying to chat me up about the "n-word people" he worked with. Or when the neighborhood meth addicts stopped by to borrow my phone and ask if they could siphon a gallon of gas from my car. That's when having a personal default comes in handy.

In the past year or so, I've been using a personal default of kindness, drama avoidance and quietly walking away from situations that don't serve me. I find this covers most situations and it's not always the diplomatic or popular thing to do. Especially in the midst of a drama, because it doesn't preclude saying no and detaching from the situation. It's not always easy to follow, and my thoughts are still catching up to my words and actions. I'm still limiting what I might say or do, but I'm doing it for my own personal growth and aligning with the spiritual path I'm on, not because of any societal agenda. I'm not 100%, but I'm doing pretty well, considering my old personal default was loudly telling people off and using the "f" word a lot. That covered most situations, too. :D

So what's your default? You could consider it a personal code or philosophy of dealing with others. Have you ever considered this before? And if you have, how consistent are you with it? Is is something you just say or use when it's convenient? Or is something you stick to, even if it pisses other people off?

*Today's entry is a reprise of the one posted on 2/15/12.  In the context of this week's readings, not speaking your mind is another way of resisting the natural flow, limiting the expression of your divine self. It bears comment, however, to say that, if we're going to express ourselves, to do so in the way we would like the same message delivered to us.

2/15/12—Setting Your Own Personal Default

Today's Draw: Seeker of Fire (Page of Swords) from the Shapeshifter Tarot by Lisa Hunt. Would you generally call yourself a diplomatic person? Do you tend to be diplomatic in your actions and words, but not in your thoughts? If diplomacy and discretion are society's defaults, what are your personal defaults?

The book for this deck speaks of messages and diplomacy when you get the Seeker of Fire. 

Recently I've been thinking a lot about things like diplomacy and discretion. I think if you look around your life, you might not realize all the times in a day or week you are limited in what you can say or do for the sake of diplomacy or discretion. 

In writing this blog, I frequently subject myself to that. Certainly I don't want to use peoples' names in a public place without their permission. Then there are situations where I'll talk about something, but hold back a lot of details so the situation or person can't be easily identified. Then there are the times you just can't discuss an issue at all, whether it's because you know someone involved will read it or because it's just too hot button to be diplomatic about.

Then there's work. How many times a day do you keep yourself from saying or doing something too personal or too crass at work....or from telling someone off? You stop in the store on the way home and run into a neighbor and the niceties come out, even though their dog is always peeing on your grass. You go home and keep from saying something because your partner has had a hard day.

Then there are those situations where you find yourself between friends, both sides wanting you to take up their cause. One side thinks the diplomatic thing for you to do would be to choose their side. Because they're in the right. The other side thinks the same. So you can't win. And if you choose both sides...or if you choose Switzerland...you're really screwed. So you choose whatever you feel is right, because you can't win for losing. 

After a while with all this jockeying around to be diplomatic and whatnot, we lose touch with what's genuine to us, though. We become socially trained automatons. Even outspoken people with no filter will find themselves saying or doing the socially acceptable thing from time to time. And there's good reason for a lot of it. It's how we get by in a civil society. 

I think it's worth considering what's really beneath your choices, though. Because when we're in those situations where diplomacy isn't going to do us any favors, we should be able to know what's really driving our decisions—a socially trained desire to not create waves or something that is truly genuine to ourselves. It sounds very simple. but if you really explore, you may find that it's really hard to separate the programmed part of you from the "you" part of you. One way to tell the difference is, do your thoughts mirror your words and actions? If not, it may not be genuine to you.

But what about those situations that weren't in the guidebook? Or the ones we're not prepared to encounter? Like the time I was briefly stuck in an elevator with a dude with Tourettes who was trying to chat me up about the "n-word people" he worked with. Or when the neighborhood meth addicts stopped by to borrow my phone and ask if they could siphon a gallon of gas from my car. That's when having a personal default comes in handy.

In the past year or so, I've been using a personal default of kindness, drama avoidance and quietly walking away from situations that don't serve me. I find this covers most situations and it's not always the diplomatic or popular thing to do. Especially in the midst of a drama, because it doesn't preclude saying no and detaching from the situation. It's not always easy to follow, and my thoughts are still catching up to my words and actions. I'm still limiting what I might say or do, but I'm doing it for my own personal growth and aligning with the spiritual path I'm on, not because of any societal agenda. I'm not 100%, but I'm doing pretty well, considering my old personal default was loudly telling people off and using the "f" word a lot. That covered most situations, too. :D

So what's your default? You could consider it a personal code or philosophy of dealing with others. Have you ever considered this before? And if you have, how consistent are you with it? Is is something you just say or use when it's convenient? Or is something you stick to, even if it pisses other people off?