Friday, September 6, 2013
9/6/13-9/7/13—Inhaling the Breath of Nature
Thursday, September 5, 2013
9/6/13—Waving With Leonardo
Today's Draw: Three of Pentacles from the 1969 Tarot in the What is Hidden position from the Deck of 1000 Spreads. Does it seem like your life has gone to crap? Has the fairy of unfairness sprinkled its...dust...upon you? And what does any of this have to do with The Last Supper?
I keep being pulled back to this 1969 Tarot a lot these days. We're very simpatico. (Simpatico is my new favorite word of the month. It's Spanish. It means "of like mind".) When I use that word in conjunction with this deck, I mean that this deck speaks a certain and clear language to me, regardless of the book meaning or traditional meaning.
So the traditional meaning for this card is hard work or cooperation. And the book meaning for this card in this deck is that work and play are opposing parts of the same wave. So if you think of water and waves, a life of all work creates zero motion. A life of all play creates zero motion. The only way to keep things moving is some of both. One thing without the other is a flatline.
However, the reason I feel so simpatico with this deck is that it also immediately cried out to me "structure"...that there is a hidden structure beneath everything. See Leonardo da Vinci (the dude in the pic) was a master of structure. In addition to being an artist, he was an architect, inventor and engineer. His Vitruvian Man drawing (shown at his third eye in this card) was all about the geometry and proportion of the human body. His painting of the Last Supper is, at most, an enigmatic web of hidden messages and, at least, as mysterious as the smile he painted on the Mona Lisa.
Da Vinci was a man of unquestionable genius. He demystified the effects of fluvial systems (moving water), the reason why the sky is blue and why you can see the outline of the entire moon when only the thinnest sliver of a crescent moon is in the sky—all for the first time. As work and play are two parts of the same wave (actually creating the wave) as the author notes in the book that comes with the deck, he saw art and science in the same way. Beneath everything lies a hidden structure. Perhaps his profound understanding of that is why, 600 years later, his creations are still among the most famous and enduring of all time.
What all of this is getting to is this...it may not always seem this way, but there is a hidden innate wisdom (or structure or science) running beneath everything going on in your life. There is a logic to it. And the logic is neither good, nor bad. Unfortunately, it usually has to do with something we caused, something we need, something we requested or something we deserve. In that way, it always serves us.
Your situation and the structure beneath it create a wave. One without the other is a flatline. We need both to continue forward motion. So whatever is going on, trust that there's an innate wisdom beneath it that has come expressly to move you forward.
So the traditional meaning for this card is hard work or cooperation. And the book meaning for this card in this deck is that work and play are opposing parts of the same wave. So if you think of water and waves, a life of all work creates zero motion. A life of all play creates zero motion. The only way to keep things moving is some of both. One thing without the other is a flatline.
However, the reason I feel so simpatico with this deck is that it also immediately cried out to me "structure"...that there is a hidden structure beneath everything. See Leonardo da Vinci (the dude in the pic) was a master of structure. In addition to being an artist, he was an architect, inventor and engineer. His Vitruvian Man drawing (shown at his third eye in this card) was all about the geometry and proportion of the human body. His painting of the Last Supper is, at most, an enigmatic web of hidden messages and, at least, as mysterious as the smile he painted on the Mona Lisa.
Da Vinci was a man of unquestionable genius. He demystified the effects of fluvial systems (moving water), the reason why the sky is blue and why you can see the outline of the entire moon when only the thinnest sliver of a crescent moon is in the sky—all for the first time. As work and play are two parts of the same wave (actually creating the wave) as the author notes in the book that comes with the deck, he saw art and science in the same way. Beneath everything lies a hidden structure. Perhaps his profound understanding of that is why, 600 years later, his creations are still among the most famous and enduring of all time.
What all of this is getting to is this...it may not always seem this way, but there is a hidden innate wisdom (or structure or science) running beneath everything going on in your life. There is a logic to it. And the logic is neither good, nor bad. Unfortunately, it usually has to do with something we caused, something we need, something we requested or something we deserve. In that way, it always serves us.
Your situation and the structure beneath it create a wave. One without the other is a flatline. We need both to continue forward motion. So whatever is going on, trust that there's an innate wisdom beneath it that has come expressly to move you forward.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
9/5/13—Feeling the Vibe
Today's Draw Classic*: Shaman from the Vision Tarot by Dirk Gillabel. Can you sense the energy of those around you? Do you sometimes walk into a room full of people and feel overwhelmed for some reason you can't explain? Is there a person who, even though they're nice, you just don't like to be around?
You've probably experienced it before...when someone is angry, you can feel it. They emit the energy of anger. No words have to be said. The person's face doesn't have to be contorted in an angry look. In fact, you've probably even felt someone's anger when they were doing their best to look normal and deny their anger.
You can sense someone staring at you. You know when someone is lying to you. You may have felt that someone died before you knew it to be fact. Or maybe you felt creeped out by something you couldn't see, like a ghostly energy. Or you entered a room and it somehow felt peaceful. Some of this can be explained by visual or verbal cues. But some of it can't. Some of it you might call intuition or even instinct. But what really are instinct and intuition if it doesn't involve tuning into the energies around you?
Every day we're interacting with energies you can see and not see. A person is an energy you can see, for example. But there's a whole other energy body within them and around them that you can't see. There are the electrical systems that run our heart and our every thought. There's the caloric energy that fuels our body. The kinetic energy of motion. And, many believe, an energy body made up of chakras. Spiritual energy that's transmitted between us and God. And energy that transmits between us and everything in the universe.
A shaman is a mediator of those energies. Each day we make countless energetic exchanges with other seen and unseen energies around us. We understand the energy exchange of food, for example. You eat it and use its energy to power your body. But what about all the energy exchanges you make with unseen and unacknowledged energies around you? Just because you're not conscious of them, doesn't mean you're not interacting with them. Wouldn't you like to be more aware of those exchanges?
That's what the shaman has come to us about today. To prompt us to start noticing energies around us. As you interact with people today, take a moment to note the kind of energy or vibe they put forth. Is Joe's energy laid-back and mellow or is he a quivering nerve all the time? How does his energy affect yours? If you walk into his cubicle when he's not there, can you feel his energy there?
Likewise, if you walk into a store or a room or someone's office today, connect with how the room feels...the energy it emits. Or hold an item, preferably of someone else's and see what kind of energy it has attached to it. You may not feel anything the first time try, but keep trying.
Before you can interact with energy, you first have to know it's there. And before you can shield yourself from unwanted energies, you have to understand how you interact with them.
Energy exchange is a language all its own and it's something that was critical to the survival of early man. The tribe shaman was the go-to guy for everything from physical and spiritual healing to energetically ensuring a successful hunt through his interaction with the spirit world. He was the most venerated person in the clan. That's how important this skill once was to us. My own instinct tells me we can't let this ability slip away. It's a part of us we can't afford to lose to evolution. And it's a part of us we'd be remiss not to explore in this lifetime.
So play around with it today. Nobody else even has to know. And see what you can tune into. At the very least, the more tuned in you are, the more information you have to guide you toward success.
*From 8/20/12
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
9/4/13—Keeping Secrets
Today's Draw: Book in the House of Ring from the Whimsy Lenormand by Pepi Valderrama and the Deck of Lenormand Houses by the beautiful and talented ME. How good are you at keeping secrets? When you promise not to tell, does that include your husband and/or best friend? Is there ever any kind of secret that you feel you just HAVE to tell or you'll burst?
Before we begin, I endorse Pepi's Whimsy Lenormand. It's adorable. And it comes with a little card that says it's made just for you. And it's adorable.
Now that that's out of the way, Lenormand is read in pairs, at a minimum. And what you do with Lenormand that's different from tarot is that you string the keywords from the cards together to create a phrase or sentence or compound word. So rather than have entire long stories that you tell with, say, five tarot cards, with Lenormand, you'd end up with a short sentence. Straightforward and to the point.
So the keywords for Book, include secrets, knowledge, information, investigation, mysteries, education or an actual book. For Ring, the words include commitment, promise, contract, obligation, guarantee. So for Book in the House of Ring, you might say "secret promise", "an investigation into a contract" or "learning about contracts." For today, though, I'm using "sworn to secrecy."
From what I understand, among married couples, there's an implied "if you tell a married person a secret, they get a free pass to tell their spouse." If you tell one member of the couple, it's the same as telling the entire couple. I've heard this from many couples, so I assume it's a pretty universal thing. If I tell a married woman a secret, she gets to tell her husband without violating the bounds of the sacred secret trust.
Now this doesn't mean she WILL tell the secret. But she does have the option. And I get it. This is their partner. Maybe they've promised not to have any secrets between them. But more likely it's that pretty much anyone holding a certain type of secret eventually feels like they're going to explode if they don't tell someone. I think this is more common among women, because we're such sharers. Many men also enjoy sharing secrets, but most that I've met are bottomless holes into which you can throw your secrets and never hear from them again. I admire men like that. They serve a very important purpose.
Anyway, when I heard about this phenomena many years ago, I created my own rule. I mean, just because I'm single doesn't mean I have to explode. If married women get to spill their guts, then I should get to spill mine, too. Like with married women, my rule is optional. I only put it into action if I feel like I will burst without telling someone. I rarely have a bottomless secret pit of a male around me, so instead I'll tell someone you don't know, will never meet and who really doesn't give a crap. Since that's my rule, I rarely enact it. It's no fun telling someone who doesn't care. But I'm human. I need an out. Some secrets are too good.
All of this goes into the category of "things people never talk about." Nobody will ever come out and tell you that they may tell your secret to someone. They always swear they won't. But, call me cynical, I never believe that. Since most of my friends are married, I assume their husbands know crap about me that I wouldn't tell them myself.
So here's what I'm asking you today...how good are you at telling secrets? I would estimate I keep way more than half the secrets I'm told because, frankly, they're lame secrets. I mean, they're important to the person telling them, but nobody else would care. In that sense, I'm very much like the bottomless man I described earlier. Ask me a week from now and I won't even be able to remember the conversation, much less the secret. So I give myself a roughly 85% secret-keeping rate. The rate is probably higher for "sworn secrets" and right in the pocket for "assumed secrets" or secrets that come out in private discussions, but haven't specifically been labeled a secret.
Honestly, where do you think you land in all of that? And what about your own secrets? Are you any good at keeping those? I'm nervous even writing about this myself, but I know I'm a vault compared to many people I know so I'm not ashamed. And then, of course, I know people who are a vault compared to me. But let's keep it real...do you ever tell?
Now that that's out of the way, Lenormand is read in pairs, at a minimum. And what you do with Lenormand that's different from tarot is that you string the keywords from the cards together to create a phrase or sentence or compound word. So rather than have entire long stories that you tell with, say, five tarot cards, with Lenormand, you'd end up with a short sentence. Straightforward and to the point.
So the keywords for Book, include secrets, knowledge, information, investigation, mysteries, education or an actual book. For Ring, the words include commitment, promise, contract, obligation, guarantee. So for Book in the House of Ring, you might say "secret promise", "an investigation into a contract" or "learning about contracts." For today, though, I'm using "sworn to secrecy."
From what I understand, among married couples, there's an implied "if you tell a married person a secret, they get a free pass to tell their spouse." If you tell one member of the couple, it's the same as telling the entire couple. I've heard this from many couples, so I assume it's a pretty universal thing. If I tell a married woman a secret, she gets to tell her husband without violating the bounds of the sacred secret trust.
Now this doesn't mean she WILL tell the secret. But she does have the option. And I get it. This is their partner. Maybe they've promised not to have any secrets between them. But more likely it's that pretty much anyone holding a certain type of secret eventually feels like they're going to explode if they don't tell someone. I think this is more common among women, because we're such sharers. Many men also enjoy sharing secrets, but most that I've met are bottomless holes into which you can throw your secrets and never hear from them again. I admire men like that. They serve a very important purpose.
Anyway, when I heard about this phenomena many years ago, I created my own rule. I mean, just because I'm single doesn't mean I have to explode. If married women get to spill their guts, then I should get to spill mine, too. Like with married women, my rule is optional. I only put it into action if I feel like I will burst without telling someone. I rarely have a bottomless secret pit of a male around me, so instead I'll tell someone you don't know, will never meet and who really doesn't give a crap. Since that's my rule, I rarely enact it. It's no fun telling someone who doesn't care. But I'm human. I need an out. Some secrets are too good.
All of this goes into the category of "things people never talk about." Nobody will ever come out and tell you that they may tell your secret to someone. They always swear they won't. But, call me cynical, I never believe that. Since most of my friends are married, I assume their husbands know crap about me that I wouldn't tell them myself.
So here's what I'm asking you today...how good are you at telling secrets? I would estimate I keep way more than half the secrets I'm told because, frankly, they're lame secrets. I mean, they're important to the person telling them, but nobody else would care. In that sense, I'm very much like the bottomless man I described earlier. Ask me a week from now and I won't even be able to remember the conversation, much less the secret. So I give myself a roughly 85% secret-keeping rate. The rate is probably higher for "sworn secrets" and right in the pocket for "assumed secrets" or secrets that come out in private discussions, but haven't specifically been labeled a secret.
Honestly, where do you think you land in all of that? And what about your own secrets? Are you any good at keeping those? I'm nervous even writing about this myself, but I know I'm a vault compared to many people I know so I'm not ashamed. And then, of course, I know people who are a vault compared to me. But let's keep it real...do you ever tell?
Monday, September 2, 2013
9/3/13—Making Beautiful Memories
Today's Draw Classic*: Six of Cups from the Art of Life Tarot. What are your three most treasured memories? How often do you indulge in thinking about them? What do you suppose those memories say about you?
Today's card features a portrait of Mrs. Monet and is called The Red Kerchief by Claude Monet. The quote on the card is from Sir JM Barrie and it reads, "God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December."
This got me thinking...if everything were stripped of you except three memories—you got no possessions, no pictures, nothing else—what would those memories be?
Off the top of my head, one would involve a fist full of doggie fur, possibly Kizzie's thick mane. Holding him in my arms can always bring me to peace and balance. He is a born healer.
Another memory for me would be about my mother. My mom was an avid reader and she would lay on her bed at night and read for hours. Sometimes I would crawl between her and her book and just lay there and think. She would hold her book in one hand and stroke my hair or hold me with the other, pausing only to turn pages. I always felt safe in her arms.
Those two are for sure. The third one is hard. It would probably have to do with sex and that would probably have to do with Jack. Jack and I were bad for each other socially and emotionally, but our bodies fit together perfectly. Even when our relationship was bad, sex was good. And he wasn't bad to look at, either. So that might be my third.
I have to say I don't think of those memories very often. I thought of that with my mother recently because it was Mother's Day*. She's been gone more than half my life, so memories are all I have of her. I do think of her often, but not daily. I rarely ever think of Jack, and even more rarely in a positive way. It was a very damaging relationship that happened a long time ago.
It's germinal to note that none of my favorite memories were of times when I was indulging in memories...haha. They all happened in times when I was fully present and experiencing the moment. So beautiful memories might be a fabulous place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. Roses in December are only special when they're rare. Besides, how would I ever make another beautiful memory again?
*From 5/17/12
Friday, August 30, 2013
8/31/13—9/2/13—Keeping Your Eye On Your Wonderland
I'm taking Monday off, so I'll see you all next with Tuesday's reading! Have a nice holiday weekend (in the US)!
Thursday, August 29, 2013
8/30/13—Understanding That It's All Good
Today's Draw Classic*: Ten of Swords—Ruin—from the Rohrig Tarot, Part 2. Is there something about yourself that you've always wanted to change but can't? Is there someone really annoying in your life you can't get rid of? And is there some group of people—Republicans? Democrats? Jehovah's Witnesses?—that just really chaps your ass?
The 10 of Swords is a card about how our minds defeat us. And one way our minds defeat us is through negative thinking.
I know what you're thinking..."I'm a very positive thinker, Tierney, so today's entry isn't for me, thank you!" Well, that may be. Or it may not be. Really, just closing yourself off to the possibility of discovering how you might become more positive is sort of a negative attitude to take, isn't it? Thinking you're "all that" is just as toxic as thinking you'll never be that. So, whatever, positive peeps. Stop reading! See if I care!!! :D
Thing is, even positive people (and I'm one of them) probably have something we're less than kind to ourselves about—a problem spot on our bodies or some bad habit we can't shake. Or maybe we have a pet peeve about others that sets us off when we see it. Or maybe there's someone in particular that raises our ire. Anything short of a pure, heartfelt "it's all good" is unproductive thinking that is counter to creating peace.
By means of illustration, one thing I hear people say all the time is "if so-and-so loves Jesus so much, why don't they act like it?" or "we're supposed to be a spiritual community, yet some of the people are acting less than spiritual". We've all heard stuff like this before and agreed with it. But have you ever considered how toxic it is?
First of all, it's a judgment. Second, the saying of it separates you from others, conveniently making you the morally superior one. And, third, if you're really so spiritual, why aren't you acting that way? :D
One of the most negative things we do is to not respect those on other paths. That drama queen you can't stand? She's on a different path. That narcissist who keeps annoying you? Different path. That careless man who never picks up his dog's poo? Different path. (Thank god!)
Not only are these people on a different path, their path intersects with yours for a reason, smartypants. Their brokenness is there to show you where your brokenness is. And it brings with it an opportunity for you to understand that, while you're commenting on their toxicity, you're being toxic yourself.
You might say, "I really don't spend too much time thinking about it" or "it's really just this one person." But you can't create more peace or spiritual balance in your life when you're looking over the fence and making commentary (or even just thinking) about someone's actions, no matter how annoying they are. You're also not doing it when you focus all that judgment on yourself.
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Traditional Ten of Swords image.
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The Ten of Swords is a card about how the mind defeats us, and it's also about how our separateness defeats us. In the traditional card, a fighter lays dead/dying with ten swords in his back, turned toward the sun, just rising on the horizon. In his last moments of surrender, we presume he is finally able to drink in the beauty that is all around him after a life spent fighting all the darkness and ugliness he perceived in the world. It was always "you vs. me" for this guy. Until his final moment, he literally didn't see the light. His arms are lifelessly positioned in the "as above, so below" position, suggesting that the perfection that exists everywhere in heaven, also exists here on earth.
We're all perfectly who we need to be for our appointed journey down here. And that's an intimate agreement we made with our god—it's no one else's business what that agreement is. The stories we tell ourselves about what is right and what is wrong are just that...stories. We have a system for keeping those who harm others out of the mainstream, but even they are on the path they came here to walk. And I know you know that intellectually. But until we can take that belief out of our heads and put it into our hearts, we will be keeping lasting peace forever on the horizon.
*From 6/28/12
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