9/14/12—Choosing the Consequence

Today's Draw: Two of Swords from the Victorian Romantic Tarot. Do you tend to hold emotions and frustrations inside until you ultimately burst? Or do you find that you dispense your emotions as they come? What is your emotional style?

So it's the final day of the One Card Challenge. Today's interpretation comes from something I saw in the card as I looked at it again this morning. 

She's got stormy skies, rough water and dangerous rocks behind her. So we can interpret that as meaning that the worst is behind her. But we could also see it the opposite way. To me, she looks like she's about to fall backward, like in one of trust tests they do at corporate retreats...you know, where you fall back into the waiting arms of others? 

I have a love/hate relationship with my emotions. Sometimes it feels good to just feel and let your emotions out. Other times, it can be scary. Emotions can be a gateway to depression and wallowing for me. Ain't pretty, but it's true. 

To me, this card seems to be saying "I've tried everything to release this pain short of letting it wash over me. So I'm just going to fall into it and trust I won't drown." That's what all the experts say to do, right? Feel what you feel. Let it all out. Feel it until you heal it.

I used to be really good at crying and "feeling it". But somewhere along the line, all of that went away. I don't know if it's age or negative reinforcement or numbness or what. I can't do it anymore. Which isn't to say I don't still cry from time to time. But now I cry when the rain barrel is full and can't hold any more emotion. Or when really bad stuff happens, like when my brother was dying. 

Honestly, I spent so many years being either content and "normal" or down and depressed (I've never been manic, which is evident by how little ever gets done around this house) that I don't even know what's healthy or "normal" anymore. Is it healthy to just let emotions wash over you? Or is it healthy to just take them by the jugful when you've got the capacity? With my history of depression, falling back into the waters frightens me. 

The good news is that somewhere between making better choices, building self esteem, meditating, gaining a spiritual purpose and starting on prescribed pharmaceuticals, I feel pretty even most of the time these days. A couple of years ago menopausal mood swings made antidepressants wise, if not necessary, for me. But all those years of resisting them makes my knee-jerk reactions err on the side of not swimming in the deep end if I can help it. 

Pretty much every entry I write comes with an answer. But this one does not. Will this woman have the courage to fall backward? And if she does fall in back in trust, will she get taken by a rip tide? Or will she wash gently back up on shore, weary from the waves, but nonetheless cleansed? I really don't know. 

That's part of the dilemma of the Two of Swords. A choice has to be made and every choice we make in life comes with some sort of gift and some sort of consequence. We usually choose based on the gifts. But we do have to be cognizant that we're also choosing a consequence. 

Perhaps that's what she's really falling back into in this card...a choice. And she just has to trust that whatever consequence she's choosing is one she can live with. 

6/26/12—Surrendering to Your Inner Knowing

Today's Draw: The Moon from Thea's Tarot. Do you have trouble trusting your intuition? Do you even know which voice up there it is? Given the choice between a gut feeling and logic, which would you choose?

So this week's theme is "how do we create more peace in our lives?" This Moon card brings a simple answer—trust yourself. 

Every human comes with a built-in GPS. We call it our instinct, intuition or inner knowing. Before we can learn to trust its turn-by-turn navigation, however, we must first learn how to hear it. It's that whisper that comes without thinking. It's a sudden idea or inspiration. It's the answer you get before you're done thinking the question. That said, it's also that voice we tend to second-guess with "why am I thinking that?" or "is that my intuition or is it just what I want to hear?" or "is that my knowing or my thinking?". So if you're not sure which voice is which in your head, you'll just have to experiment...go with the flow until you're pretty sure you know which is which. Even then there will probably be times you're confused.

The second thing you need to learn about this GPS is something that's critical to experiencing peace—there are no wrong turns. So whichever way our intuition steers us is the place we need to go. 

Think back on your life. Is there any decision you have ever made that didn't lead you to someplace valuable and necessary to your path? Even if you ended up someplace you felt was a bad place at the time, you survived it and came out of it with the kind of information you needed to keep it from happening again. Assuming you're still alive, whatever the situation was, it could have been worse. And the lesson you learned kept you from having to suffer that worst-case scenario. So if this GPS has never failed you, why do you second-guess it?

If you're anything like me, there have been times in your life when you've allowed others to steer you away from your inner knowing. And then, mostly likely, you've found yourself living someone else's version of who you should be. You took the job that didn't feel right because someone talked you into it. You bought a dress that you don't feel comfortable in because someone said it looked nice. Or you ended up lost on a roadtrip because you had more confidence in someone else's GPS than you have in your own. 

This is the worst kind of betrayal. Because its a betrayal of self. You listened to every voice outside of you before listening to the one within. The same is true even when there are no other voices in the mix—when you hear your intuition telling you to turn right and you turn left anyway. Even if the left turn leads you somewhere safe, you didn't honor the one and only voice on this earth that comes without an agenda, can speak faster than your ego and has only your best intentions at heart.

When you placing the voice of your higher self low on your priority scale, you cannot feel peace. There will always be conflict within...a grumbling between your knowing and your thinking...a lack of alignment between the calling of your higher self and the choices you make. So today's path to peace is paved by listening to that voice within and trusting that it cannot steer you wrong, no matter where it leads you.

4/10/12—Getting Intimate With Ourselves and Others

Today's Draw: The Magician from the Victorian Romantic tarot. How often do you talk about your most private and personal thoughts? Who do you feel comfortable discussing embarrassing biological crap with? Are you ready to get intimate right here, right now?

The traditional Magician in the tarot shows a young, powerful man with shiny tools representing all four elements. He has his "as above, so below" stance and a lemniscate (infinity sign) over his head, representing his infinite powers, connection to the heavens, unending energy resources and his ability to get things done. 

Fast forward 50 years and you've got the Victorian Romantic Magician. His tools of the four elements have become innate. He has mysterious supplies. He consults a book with a lifetime full of knowledge he's amassed. And he no longer has to call the heavens to earth, because the glow of spirit energy shines all around him. You get the sense that the magic the other Magician needed a whole case full of tools to perform, can be completed by this guy with just a thought. 

We don't talk too openly about the benefits and drawbacks of aging. Men don't get together and discuss erectile dysfunction, sleep disorders and difficulty with urination. Women don't talk openly about their menopause symptoms, bladder control issues or hair cropping up in unattractive places. We can iron out wrinkles and appear as youthful as ever, but that's only cosmetic. It does nothing for the uncomfortable, depressing, aching, misfiring and slowing down of the machine we've been operating throughout our lives.

Remember when you were a kid and nose pickers were shameful losers? Then, when you were sure no one was watching, you'd dig in and pull out a big ol' booger of your own? We face the same thing when we get older. 

We laugh at Depends when we're with our friends, then find ourselves doing the walk of shame to register to try them out. Or we mock erectile dysfunction commercials as though they have nothing to do with us when, in fact, arranging a "date night" requires precise planning and could still result in embarrassment, whether the evening works out well or not. Our bodies and our minds are no longer in adequate control and, worse, we can't talk about it because of the same shame that came from the surreptitious booger picking of our youth. 

I think about stuff like this all the time and it's part of why I try to be a little more candid than is comfortable for me in some of these posts. Because these things we hold secret, whether in shame or embarrassment, add to the weight and depression and toxicity of life and getting older. I think we do ourselves a disservice with some of our "there are things we just don't talk about in public" attitude. It makes dealing with the indelicacies of being a human even harder. And we end up feeling alone in our issues when, in fact, people around us are all experiencing the same thing.

This wasn't where I was originally going to go with this post...haha. I was going to talk about the power and wisdom of getting older. About how we don't need all the trappings of youth and how freeing and efficient that can be. When you look at the two Magicians (which you can see at http://thedailytarotdraw.blogspot.com/ if you're on Facebook) the young guy begins to look like a total poser compared to the older guy, who is so authentic and comfortable in his power.

Consider all the issues that fester and languish inside of us because of our discomfort of talking about anything that's not politically correct. Honest dialogues about race, sexuality, needs in relationships, innermost fears—the list goes on and on—rarely ever happen. And so each of us is left to feel alone, marginalized, unaccepted, misunderstood, etc. in this world. 

How much time in any given week do spend talking about things that really matter to you? Things that heal you and make you feel more normal? Things that bring you closer to those around you? The word "intimacy" has come to connote sexual matters when it's really about sharing our most private and personal selves. In fact, many times sex is actually used to keep real intimacy at bay. Intimacy is one of the biggest fears mankind holds, and yet it's also the magical elixir that can set us free.

In my older years (haha, I'm only 49) I find that kind of intimacy harder to come by and, honestly, I long for it in my life. I don't have a life partner to explore these things with and I hate to say it, but most of my friends are more guarded than I. I think the search for intimacy is at least as powerful an instinct in humans as our need to protect that which makes us most vulnerable. But the scales are far more weighted in the direction of protection and our ultimate self imprisonment.

When I look at how tired the Magician is in his older years, I think it's because the weight he's had to bear all alone—the weight of a solitary life, of his role as a healer and manifester and of not having some dude to drink absinthe with and discuss the things that really matter. With all the wisdom he's amassed and the amazing things he's been able to manifest in his life, why he can't just manifest someone simpatico to share it with? Of course, I wonder the same thing about myself. It's not a role you can just volunteer for in someone's life. And it's not even something you can marry into. It's an alchemy of its own, something that grows organically and rises from mutual respect and trust. 

As I think of it, I realize it's something I share with you from time to time...the people who read and reveal that they share the same struggles as me, or who reveal other hopes and fears they have. I have no idea how many or who reads these posts on a daily basis, but it is a blessed miracle that I have never felt unsafe or been given reason to think people don't take these topics seriously. Working alone and living alone, sometimes you guys are the only ones I *really* talk to in a day, and some of you have said these posts help you build your own intimate relationship with yourselves. Thank you for that...and for this place safe... and for having the courage to put yourself out there when you do. :)

3/15/12—Letting the Plan Find You

Today's Draw: The Fool from the Tarot of the Animal Lords. Are you the kind of person who likes to have everything planned and predictable? Are you looking for change, but don't where to start? And do you even know where you're going?

So I already know from some of the responses I've gotten this week that a number of people are "welcoming" changes in their lives, either by choice or circumstance. And the Fool comes to tell us how to do that. His message is simple—just start moving.

When I have to go someplace new, the first thing I do is Mapquest it. Then I'll print out a series of maps at various magnifications. Then, after studying the maps, I'll write my chosen set of directions on one of the pieces of paper. I'll staple all items into a packet that then gets placed in my purse, lest I forget. And when all of that is done, I'll enter the address into my GPS...haha. Overkill? Yes. My dad was a navigator in the Air Force, so the obsession is genetic. At least that's what I tell myself so I feel less pathetic. 

But that's not how the Fool operates. In fact, he can't operate that way. He doesn't even know where he's going! But one thing he knows for sure it that he will never get there if he doesn't get started immediately. So he just blindly goes and trusts that where he ends up will be where he's meant to be. And if he doesn't like that place, that's ok too. He doesn't have to stay.

There are times in our lives when we clearly know where we're going. So we devise a plan and start moving in our desired direction. Knowing what you want and having a goal seems to be the most "socially correct" way of getting to Point B. We're taught all our lives to be "goal-oriented" and a "go-getter". 

But the course of life doesn't always work that way. Thank god! Because when we're so focused on a certain goal, we're usually only considering a narrow set of possible outcomes. We've decided what we want our outcome to be and, therefore, work to achieve that and only that. But when we walk the path of The Fool, who knows what miracles might be lurking around the bend?

I've said it before and will say it again—the universe has a much bigger dream for you than you have for yourself. The go-getter will likely achieve the dream they have for themselves and little more. But it takes The Fool to be open enough to achieve the bigger dream that the universe has for them. So if you're currently in a situation where you know you need a change, but just don't know what it is, don't wait until you have a plan before you begin. Set out today, follow the wind and let the plan find you.