4/7/12-4/8/12—Renewing Your Spirit

Weekend Reading: Six of Cups from the Mary-El Tarot. What a perfect weekend to be inspired. Get out there and do something creative, something fun. Even if you're not good at. In fact, give yourself permission to suck. That's part of the fun! The point is not to win an award. The point is to air out your musty parts and. Just. Have. Fun. You are unique and beautiful and joy is your birthright. No matter who you are or what you feel a need to punish yourself for. So open your heart to joy this weekend. Open your heart to yourself. And emerge with a renewed spirit and the confidence of knowing you are so much more than you ever knew you could be!

4/3/12—Respecting Your God

Today's Draw: Page of Wands from the Mary-El Tarot. Do you think having faith in God makes people stronger and more successful? When you look at your daily behavior, do you treat ALL others as you would have them treat you, or is this a practice reserved only for the few, or only for those who return the favor? Do you think Christ's forgiveness makes it OK for people to ignore his teachings and his examples?

Today's card talks about the power of belief and how faith helps people pursue and achieve their divine purpose in life. No doubt most of us would agree with that statement and each of us would identify our own version of the higher power as the one to believe in and the one to have faith in. I know I did when I first read the statement.

But then, just for kicks, I googled "celebrity atheists" and look at what I found. Richard Branson, Lance Armstrong, Bill Gates, Ricky Gervais, Howard Stern, Julianne Moore, Woody Allen and James Cameron are on the list, to name a few. Those aren't "kind of" successful people. They're not people without a view of their "divine purpose". They're people at the very top of their game. They're philanthropists. And they don't believe in God. Any god. 

I saw a blog today by a Catholic woman who felt her child had been possessed by something.  Turns out her massage therapist received a reiki treatment and infected her child with the devil. A reiki treatment. Given to a massage therapist. Who massaged the mother. Possessed the child with the devil. In the blog comments, others chimed in about the witchcraft performed by healers and the devil-worshiping rituals involved in becoming a reiki healer. 

Ignorance is everywhere. And, in my opinion, people shame themselves and their god when they perpetuate lies out of their own fear of the unfamiliar. 

I'm not writing about reiki today, but I will say this. There is no religion in it, there are no devil-worshiping attunements and the only god I've heard mentioned by a reiki practitioner is Christ and Christ's energy. And angels like Michael. And the white light of heaven. Though not all reiki practitioners are Christian, most have a healthy respect for Christ, his teachings and his healing abilities. Most healers I know give very freely of themselves to help people. To see them characterized in such a way is repulsive to me. It comes from ignorance and fear, not from anything Christ ever said about healers. In fact Christ tells us to "heal the sick" and says that those who believe in him, will do greater things than he did.

That said, what I am writing about today, though, is that it's time for the judgment and stereotyping and hating to end. Really, it is. And if your neighbor isn't willing to be the first or even go along with you, do it anyway. We ALL fancy our beliefs to be the right ones. We ALL think our faith and love gets us ahead in life. We ALL have misconceptions. We ALL judge. But only a few of us will be the leaders who will stop the madness and actually follow the teachings and examples of Christ or Buddha. Why not make yourself one of those leaders?

Here's how you do it. If your god is loving, love. If your god is forgiving, forgive. If your god is accepting, accept. If your god is inclusive, stop rejecting. And if your God is humble, stop acting superior. And if you don't have a god, love, forgive, accept, include and be humble anyway, just because it's a gracious, cooperative and loving way to move through this world. Sure, we'll always disagree on things and have opinions and whatnot, but it's time to stop fighting over god in god's name, and using his teachings to justify fear-based, ignorant, hateful, marginalizing, judgmental, nasty and holier-than-thou behavior. That's just disrespectful. 

3/26/12—Loving the One You're With

Today's Draw: Nine of Cups from the Mary-El Tarot. If a friend gave you a gift, would you thank them or complain about how it's the wrong size, wrong color and not what you asked for? How do you receive the gifts the universe bestows on you every day...with gratitude or with frustration, insisting it's not what you asked for? How are you treating the magic that is happening right now in your life?

Traditionally this card is known as the "wish card", a card where all your wishes can or have come true. But Marie White approaches this from a different direction, asking you to accept where and who you are right now with love and gratitude. It's really just two sides of the same coin.

It's kind of like that song, "if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with." You can spend a lifetime hoping for some sort of magic to come into your life when all your wishes will be granted. Or you can see this moment—and all your moments—as magic. You can see how this moment is the one you created, the one you wanted. And if you're not liking it, you can want something different (and think/behave like you want something different). 

I mean, look at this dude. It's like he's connected to the universe by some cosmic umbilical cord. Peace and happiness are his birthright. All he has to do is just trust and receive. But thinking it's all going to be sunshine and unicorns is, frankly, immature. If you ask for a new job and then do little to find one, the universe may have to kick you in the arse and make your current job miserable to motivate you. In that way, misery in your job is exactly what you asked for—and need—to get the thing you want. 

Get it? Sometimes, but not all the times, getting what you want comes with a dose of what you don't in order to screech your momentum to a halt and get you going in a new direction. So that thing that looks like you're not getting what you asked for may be necessary in order to get it. And if you're not grateful for it or ask for it to stop, the universe may think you don't what what you asked for anymore.

I can't count the number of times in a week that my thoughts will spontaneously manifest something for me. The following things all happened on Thursday and Friday last week. I'm driving during morning rush with no coffee in my system thinking morning drivers are insane. Then I nearly sideswipe a poor woman and, a few minutes later, another woman nearly plows into me. I MADE the crazy. On the positive side, I had a Billy Joel song in my head the other day, walked into Starbucks and one of his songs was playing in the store. I was thinking about someone I don't hear from very often and they emailed me. I wondered how I was going to pay for my dog's surgery and the money came. This is just two days last week and only what I remember happening off the top of my head.

This stuff happens ALL the time and we don't notice it or we don't acknowledge it. There are people that this happens to that nonetheless walk through life with their heads down wondering why great stuff never happens to them. For one thing, their belief that great stuff doesn't happen for them makes it so that great stuff doesn't happen to them. And for another thing, the few things they allow to creep in through the cracks aren't acknowledged or given gratitude for. If you wonder why magic doesn't happen in your life, it's because you wonder why magic doesn't happen in your life. It's that simple.

So this moment is magic in motion. Even if you can't see it yet. My world isn't quite an ecstatic dance through a field of wildflowers right now. Looking at the work I know is coming in, I'm going to be very busy at work for a number of weeks. My athletic baby boy dog just had surgery and needs to stay inactive for a couple of months. My brother has a terminal disease. And, disappointingly, some people I considered friends have all but disappeared from my life. 

But magic is all around me. Being busy at work means money is coming in and I'll be feeling productive. My dog's injury happened at a time in his life when he's still young enough to heal effectively and, in a few months, he'll be stronger than ever. I'm not going to claim there's anything good about my brother's illness, but it has improved our relationship. And everything else is lessons that will lead to better things in the future. 

When you feel blessed and trust that everything happens for a divine reason, you are and it does. In that way we literally create our own realities. So think about how you feel about your life right now. What are you creating? And if you don't like it, what can you do to turn it around? Are you ready to start noticing the magic that happens every day in your life?

2/29/12—Bringing Everyday Life Into Harmony

Today's Draw: Four of Disks from the Mary-El Tarot by Marie White. Do you have unfinished details that hang over your head? Is there some issue in your life that everyone else seems to manage beautifully, but you just can't at this time? What are you letting go of—or need to let go of—in order to move forward on your path?

OK. First I have to say how excited I am to finally have this deck in my hot little hands. I've been watching the progress of this deck for years and it's gorgeous beyond gorgeous. Today's card, beautiful as it is, is one of the more plain cards in the deck. If you're viewing this on Facebook, links and additional pictures can be found at http://thedailytarotdraw.blogspot.com/

The Mary-El takes a non-traditional approach to the tarot. The book says it borrows from all three major systems—the Tarot de Marseilles, Rider Waite and Thoth—and incorporates our own inner truths. The few cards I've chosen so far don't seem especially Waite-y or Thoth-y to me. I can't speak for TdM. In Waite, the Four of Disks would signify holding on too tight to resources. In the Thoth it's a card of power and stability. 

In the Mary-El's meaning, stability plays a large role, but with additional nuances to the the Thoth meaning. It speaks of the path of life and how we move through the cliffs of polarity, down into the abyss, through valleys and deserts, lush forests and ancient ruins, then up through the foothills to finally reach the pinnacle of our divinity and redemption. The card calls for us to take care of our physical life—body, home, environment—because settling what is outside will settle what is inside. 

Combining all of that with my own inner truths, I'll say I'm notorious for putting off until tomorrow what I can do today. Case in point: I only filed my 2010 taxes a few weeks ago (totally legally, by the way...haha). I had a shed that was basically a pile of metal that I kept alive for years with layers of tarps so I wouldn't have to fix it. I went without a dishwasher for an entire year because my old one broke. This is the way it goes for me. I'm great with a deadline and my job depends on me meeting them. But I suck at open-ended things that don't have to be done by a certain time. I am a highly capable and intelligent woman, but the stupidest things render me frozen and immobile. 

In the meantime, they hang over my head and eat away at me.  Everything eventually gets done. But even if I'm not thinking about it consciously, it's in there poking at me. When it finally gets done, I feel a great deal of relief. But the thing is, there's always something like that in my life and I should probably do a reading sometime to explore why. Could just be one of those extremely rare ways in which I'm not absolutely perfect. ;)

With me, it's about fixing stuff that's broken—things that don't have to be fixed TODAY. With you it might be paying off an old loan...relaxing your compulsion for being fastidious...dealing with a physical addiction...doing an errand you've been putting off...bringing the car in for inspection...anything where something outside of you is causing repercussions on the inside of you. Distracting your mind. Popping up in your head as you're falling asleep. Causing you to opt for denial. That's what I think about when the card talks about settling the outside to settle the inside. 

The older I get, the more balanced and content I become. And the more balanced and content I become, the more I see how it's not necessary to go down into the abyss and through valleys and deserts to get to a more peaceful and stable place. I still have stumbling blocks I'm working on, as we all do and will. I've still my issues with fixing things, but a lot of my other issues have fallen by the wayside. Today I have a clearer view of what matters in life. With that comes a better idea for the lay of the land. And the more we bring life into perspective, the more we find there are bridges and trams and such that can elevate us from where we are to where we want to be without all the twists and turns in between.