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.

10/30/12—Trusting Yourself First

Today's Draw Classic*: Page of Swords from the Otherworld Tarot. How do you know who you can trust? What have you learned from past betrayals? And can see times where the person who ultimately betrayed you was yourself?

The Page of Swords is a card that can indicate gossip or deception in someone's words. The words on the card, "Think Things Through", tells us to consider the information we're given before making a decision. To not jump to conclusions, because not everything you hear will be true. And to also be careful with your secrets, because not everyone can be trusted. 

Whenever I get cards like this, I start to feel paranoid. We've all been betrayed. In one case, the person I was confiding in—the last person I'd suspect—betrayed me repeatedly over the course of about two years, resulting in all sorts of issues in my life. In another case, betrayal cost the life of someone dear to me. In the first case, I didn't register anything odd in my gut. In the second case, I did, but couldn't put my finger on it. 

So how do we know who and when to trust? Well, of course, one thing is to honor those "odd" feelings you have about someone. If you're suspicious of someone, you may be right or you may be wrong. But honor the suspicion anyway. And another way to trust wisely is to not be so gullible. I'm a pretty smart person, but for a long stretch of my life I had a tendency to trust others' input over what I thought I knew. So if someone said 2+2=5, I might doubt my knowing that the answer is actually 4. So I suppose I would boil that down to say, "trust yourself first". 

Beyond that, consider what the intention of the person is who is giving you information or asking it of you. Everyone in every situation has an intention, imo. Most peoples' intentions are friendly or benign. But always consider where you think the person falls on the continuum between friendly and nefarious. Again, check your gut.

And finally, and this one is key, consider your own intentions. This woman who betrayed me over a couple of years was, imo, a psychopath. She left few clues. Even looking back, I can see how brilliant she was. She never pushed too hard when trying to get me to gossip. She always seemed friendly enough. And only once did she ever lose her game face in my presence. I have no idea what I ever did to her to drive her to launch such a campaign. There was never a time I didn't like her and if I ever said anything about her, it wasn't anything anyone would consider bad. But I learned at that time of my life that truly insecure people can go ballistic over the tiniest of slights. And I have to assume that's what this was. Unless it was sheer sport. 

But here's the thing, the only way she was able to take advantage of me like that was because I was vulnerable. I wanted to be liked. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to "run with a certain crowd". I was weak and needy. And people like that feed on the weak and needy. So consider your own intentions, too. *Why* are you trusting someone. And if, like in my case, you know someone is betraying you, but don't know who, ask yourself who the last person you'd expect is. And even ask who the second to last person you'd expect is...haha. The person who is in your face all the time, giving you information and pretending to be your friend, may not be friendly at all. But people like that can only get to you if you let them. I wanted her friendship. I wanted to hear her gossip. I needed someone to talk to and vent to. Looking back I feel like I was pretty pathetic. 

But before she ever betrayed me, I betrayed myself. And I have to take responsibility for that. I used to be a lot quicker to trust. I used to dive into friendships more quickly. And I used to make myself more vulnerable to people I barely knew...I used to invest too much, too soon. Still do in certain circumstances. But with each of these pains comes a gift...a clue as to how not to let it happen in the future.

So what about you? How do you know when to trust? And what have you learned along the way?

*Reprinted from 5/26/11.

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?

1/26/12—Ranting for My Peeps

Today's Draw: Page of Swords from the Icelandic Tarot. Do you have an imagination? Are you a bit odd? Are you looked down upon by residents of Stepford? Read on!

This cool, black and white image reminds me of some sort of mid-century sculpture that would look great in my home. It also reminds me of the Man of La Mancha logos I've pictured below (FBFs can see them at http://thedailytarotdraw.blogspot.com/). On the card itself, it says, "Person adept at uncovering the unknown. Self control."

Man of La Mancha is about a dreamer who escapes into his imagination to put on a play in order to save his manuscript from other prisoners who want to destroy it during the Spanish Inquisition. This is the musical that made the song, "The Impossible Dream" famous (To dream, the impossible dream...). 

The way I see this connected to "person adept at uncovering the unknown" is this...dreamers and folks who are drawn to the unknown get a bad rap. We're considered silly. Stupid. Crazy. People roll their eyes at us and discount what we have to offer. Creative people get the same crap. We're just a bunch of frivolous Peter Pans in the minds of mainstream, boring America. And to that, I stick out my tongue, insert my thumbs into my ears and wiggle my fingers wildly. 

Nothing ever got discovered by someone who wasn't good at uncovering the unknown. (I mean, duh!)

Nothing ever got invented by someone who wasn't a dreamer or who didn't have an imagination. (Ditto duh!)

And nothing original was ever conceived by someone who wasn't creative. (Booyah! The triple-duh threat! A triumvirate of duhs! Duh cubed!)

Duh Quixote, aka Miguel Duh Cervantes

People who poo-poo imagination and creativity are really good at holding down the fort while we dreamers come up with better forts for them to build. I'll give them that. But I'm tired of my peeps being treated like idiots because we "sit around lost inside our heads all day" while they do all the heavy lifting. I mean, seriously. Who's the REAL idiot in that scenario?

So this is for all the stiff-collared "grown ups" who will never read this post anyway....

By Pablo "Silly Artist Boy" Picasso

Those people you like to call idiot, hippie-freak, head-in-the-clouds, over-imaginative, immature, woo-woo, creative dreamers get to have everything you get to have, only we get to have more fun doing it. And we also get to go down in history alongside names like Albert "the hair" Einstein, Steve "the game-changer" Jobs, Thomas "the imagi-holic" Edison, Leonardo "duh" Vinci and that crazy FREAK who thought the world was round, Christopher Columbus. 

Better yet, that "kick me" sign that's been stuck to your back all day? We put it there. 

So.... *sticking out tongue, inserting thumbs and wiggling fingers*      </rant>