Today's Draw: The Hermit from the Pen Tarot in the Action to Take With Your Partner position from the Deck of 1000 Spreads. Does your partner sometimes feel "absent"? Whether single or attached, do you often feel lonely? When was the last time you took as good care of yourself as you do everyone else?
I recently went on an awesome day trip with a couple of my friends. And one of them mentioned something she'd heard about the secret to keeping a relationship going. And it was this:
Learn to be alone when you're together and together when you're alone.
You really have to put some thought into that for it to sink in. Being alone when you're together is about having separate interests and not depending on the other person to fill your time....or fill your life.
I think that's an easy trap people fall into when they get married or coupled. They think "now I'll never have to be alone". They stop pursuing singular interests because they feel being married means you turn your time over to your partner. In some cases, being partnered for some is a way out of ever having to be alone with oneself and look within. The truth is, however, that there's never a circumstance in your life in which you won't have to be alone. Moreover, you may have others gathered all around you and still FEEL alone if you lose your identity and your singularity to a relationship.
Life is a solitary journey. And we can have companions along the way, but we can't push the responsibility of driving our journey off on anyone else. Well, we can, but we won't get far. We came here for a purpose that serves our soul and we need to nurture that relationship, too, in order to fulfill our purpose.
Another thing I see especially women doing is putting everything "me" aside for their children. Of course there's a line you need to walk, but for some it seems like being alone and having alone things to do is a betrayal to the children. They feel like they have to be there and be available to the children at all times. But what they're really doing is teaching their children how to abandon their own needs for the needs of others further on in their lives...that the only time someone's needs are important is when they're children. Either that or they're setting their children up for disappointment in a world that doesn't stop to handle their every need.
In my opinion, being alone—being singular and nurturing an identity that doesn't revolve around anyone else—is a skill we all need to master in our lives, just as being with others is. Neither of those skills should be left to atrophy in a lifetime. Whenever you FEEL lonely in life, it's wise to ask which of those two things you've been neglecting.
The second part of "learn to be alone when you're together and together when you're alone" is the ability to carry another in your heart and consider them even if they're not there. Again, you don't want to be so dependent on someone that you have to be with them physically to feel their love, nor do you want to be so independent that they and their needs cease to exist when you're not together. But you do want to be able to venture out in your aloneness without feeling lonely.
As a person who spends a lot of time alone, being together when you're alone is important in any kind of relationship. When you're navigating life as a single person, it's easy to feel alone when you're not. There are plenty of people out there to reach out to if you let yourself do that.
Ultimately, the words on this Hermit card sum it up, "what is bliss, and which the way?" Bliss can happen in many ways in our lives. It can come through another and it can also come through ourselves. We owe it to ourselves and others to nourish and model both ways. Both are tools essential to life.
Today's Draw: The World in the What to Do Next in Regards to My Goal position from the Tarot of the Sidhe and the Deck of 1000 Spreads. Do you feel you fully celebrate your successes? Or are they just a blip on the radar of your busy life? Do you ever just stop and give yourself a good old pat on the back?
So today I used the same Deck of 1000 Spreads technique of creating custom spread positions that I used yesterday. But I also did something I'm not sure I've done intentionally in the nearly three years I've been writing my daily posts: I drew a card specifically for me to explore what to do next now that my deck is out.
See, the Deck of 1000 Spreads wasn't a destination for me. It was never been intended to be one. The "destination", as many of you know from reading this blog, is to be a spiritual/self-help type of writer, dispensing the kind of insights I deliver here each day. While on that road I got this phenomenal idea for a product serving the tarot world and I HAD to do it. And doing it was divinely inspired, not only because it has been such a gift for me so far, what with all the positive feedback and the things people are doing with it. But also because of something that became clearer to me just the other day.
OK. I'm going to brag. Facebook people are probably sick of hearing this...haha. But I haven't told the people who just know me from my blog. For the past week or so, the Deck of 1000 Spreads has been a best seller in the Fortune Telling category on Amazon. It's been anywhere from #1 to #7 when I've checked. It moves around a lot. At the time of this writing, I'm #1 in Fortune Telling, #4 in Tarot, #15 in Divination and I'm really nowhere near the Top 100 in the New Age category (the next level up). Yet. Haha. But I'll tell you this much—none of this was on my radar a month ago. These rankings never occurred to me.
Now that I've seen them and the little outline that goes along with the photo here, it occurs to me that I'm already writing in the category I want to: Religion & Spirituality. I'm a few levels deep into it, but I'm already in it. And this fills me with hope that I will be able to achieve my dream of being a mainstream spiritual author and helping and healing people with my words. I think I do that now here and feel very blessed by it.
Do you know I've been operating this site for more than two years and this summer will mark three years of daily posts I've been making and I've never once heard a negative word about what I do? I mean, there are critics everywhere in life, but I've been so blessed to hear only words of support from you. I'm getting all emotional just writing this. But this has been such a gift because I get such great feedback. AND I share some stuff that makes me uncomfortable admitting from time to time, and it's such a safe place. On my blog and on Facebook, this post has been a safe place for anyone who has ventured in.
Anyway, to get to the actual reading we're doing today, the rest of my week is slow in my actual job. So I have a couple of days of lull before I get busy again next week. And I want to continue this momentum that seems to be building over my deck and ride it into my next project, which I'm thinking right now might be a few ebooks adapted from this blog. Over the years people have asked me to put it in ebook form, but I can't take the tarot with me in ebook form, primarily for copyright purposes...I can't print cards from all these different decks in a money-making venture without getting permission.
So anyway, that's what today's draw is all about. What should I do next to reach my goal? And The World is telling me to tie up loose ends first. To integrate the experience I've been having. My deck has been out in the world for, like, two weeks...haha. I can keep enjoying this fun for a little while longer. Like, I haven't even drunk a toast to this release or had a "me" day to celebrate. And that's so typical of me. I'll wallow for weeks in my failures...haha...but I feel bad bathing in my successes. And, when you think of it, that's just not the way to live. We should forgive our failures and celebrate our successes, instead if the other way around. So I think The World is telling me to do just that...to do something to synthesize this moment it before I take the next step.
And the next step is? Well the next step is The Fool. I begin the cycle again. I make the leap into the unknown and start out on another journey. But for now...for maybe another week or so...I get to stand atop the World...or atop the Fool's cliff...and enjoy the view. :)
