2/21/12—Honoring Struggle and Strife

Today's Draw: Five of Wands from the Rosetta Tarot. Do you see struggle and strife as necessary things? What gifts have these moments given you? What have they taken away?

This card depicts Sekhmet, an Egyptian warrior goddess and goddess of healing, standing with hands clenched. Behind her are a scythe and a phoenix headed wand, then two lotus wands. The phoenix symbolizes renewal through fire and the lotus wands speak of healing through destabilization. 

What it comes down to is that sometimes you've just got to go through unpleasantness in order for change and healing to happen. Sucks, but it's true. When I look back through my life and look at the worst stuff that's happened to me, all those moments of conflict, struggle and discord have given me the biggest opportunity for growth and evolution. And—this is the important part—the amount to which I've clenched my fists against the strife or opened myself to experiencing the fullness of it was key to what kind of a net impact those circumstances would have in my life.

From those moments I've become less needy in my relationships. I've become more able to stand in my own sense of accomplishment and capability. I define myself more by what I feel to be true of myself than what others project upon me. I've become less gullible. More honest with myself. Stronger. More forgiving. More compassionate. And, through struggle, I found a set of beliefs that define my character and spirituality, regardless of circumstance. 

On the flip side, I would say those same instances have made me less trusting, more jaded, less "available" in the romantic sense, less likely to trust in the American justice system and, while these times may not have built any new walls within me, they certainly didn't do anything to chip away at the ones that were there. And I also have to admit to losing years of progress in one case in particular, due my inability to just let the experience flow. I clenched my fists. I got stuck.

For me, the thing I mourn the most from my own most difficult moments, though, is the loss of innocence. And I mean that in the sense that "ignorance is bliss". Struggle and conflict often begin with the lifting of eyelids...and often end with eyes wide open. You gain a new vision of the world that is less Utopian—and more realistic—than the one you had before. The reality makes you more capable of dealing with the slings and arrows of the world. But the loss of innocence leaves callouses where there was softness before. I'm glad to be who I am today as the result of the struggles in my life. But I'm also sad for the bits of fairy dust that were shed in its wake. 

A new chapter of struggle and strife has begun for my family over the past couple of months, as one of my siblings is seriously ill. I have a good idea of what I'm losing in terms of innocence and human loss, but not quite sure of what gifts will come in its wake. My greatest wish is that, once the focus moves from the pain of our loss, the opportunity for healing and growth that this phase brings will be used to its fullest...that everyone involved will approach this new phase of our lives not with clenched fists, but with open arms.

2/20/12—Being the Cat

Today's Draw: The Three of WTF—Human Centipede Cat Toy—from the Regretsy Tarot. Do you use your energetic tools consciously to shape your life? Or do just do the best with whatever comes along? When it comes to commanding your own life, do you live more like the cat or the cat toy?

We've featured the Regretsy Tarot before. For those of you not there at the time, this deck mocks some of the more ill-fated creative decisions made on popular crafting website, etsy. Don't even bother worrying about which tarot suit the WTF suit corresponds to. It doesn't correspond to any suit other than, perhaps, a hand-crafted, Swarovski crystal-studded business suit for your pet iguana to wear to important meetings.

In all its horrific wisdom, though, the Three of WTF poses a good question for you to consider today. The card shows two cats, both bearing the intuitive third eye and a tail for each eye. But that's not the WTF the card refers to. Because the cats are playing with what appears to be entrails, possibly from the Human Centipede cat toy at their feet.

While there were no such cat toys on etsy today, a search returned 17 Human Centipede items, from clothing to MacBook stickers. For its decorative use of ric rac, I like this one. But what's more likely to go into MY household is this.

But I digress. The question the card poses is this—are you the cat or the cat toy in this lifetime? And while I can hear all the feet shuffling to vote in the "cat" line, really consider the question. Because here's the thing...

We're given these gifts in life...the intuitive awareness that comes with the third eye, the ability to attract and spread energy that comes with the triple tails and an interconnectedness that doesn't require surgical attachment. But do we use those gifts to command our own lives? Or do we just let it lie there like toy entrails on the ground for the universe to play with? 

Do you really know your power?

This card dovetails nicely with this week's nature-inspired reading about the impact we have on the universe every day. Because, along with the ability to disrupt and shape the universe, comes the ability to reshape your life. Those ripples send and receive information every millisecond of the day. We can attract the energies we want, and move out of the direct influence of the energies we don't. We can connect with others in meaningful (again, non-surgical) ways. And we can move and redirect energies in healing ways. 

So if your thoughts and actions send out waves to create things in your life, are you watching your thoughts and actions? Are you re-molding your life from one of chaos to one of consciousness? Are you using your energies in a healing way? Are you consciously sending and receiving? Or are just kinda doing that stuff when you think about it?

Although we're all born to be the cats, it takes work and focus and practice to claim your birthright. It takes thinking of what you want as if you have it, rather than thinking about what you don't have. It takes being conscious of the ripples you send out to others...healing or not? It takes a willingness to drop hate, resentment, vengeance, bitterness and distrust from your emotional vocabulary. It takes gratitude. It takes grace. In other words, it takes an open heart, one not constricted by the thought that you're like some and unlike others. It takes a consciousness of being one with everything. It takes a whole new level of maturity and work. 

It's ok if you're not 100% on all of that. No one will be at first...or possibly even ever. And it doesn't matter one bit what the person next to you is doing. This isn't about them. It's about you. Their dislike of you has nothing to do with how open your heart can be to them. You don't need their cooperation to make this work in your life. 

And it also doesn't matter whether you believe in Jesus, Buddha or Salty the Pretzel Man. It's all about stepping into the light, wherever it comes from, and cooperating with it, rather than fighting it. Acting like someone who's worthy of it. And making it brighter, rather than diminishing it. It may seem like a lot of less work to just be the cat toy and be done with it. But when you look at your options in light of the illustration in the Three of WTFs, you'll probably agree, it's far more...palatable...to be the cat.

The Week of 2/19/12—Raising Your Vibration

The other day I saw something I've seen a million times. Only this time, I saw it in a completely different way...

My dogs and I took a trip to the park and my boy, Kizzie, decided to go in the river for a dip (nevermind that it's the middle of winter). Anyway, as I saw him standing there, I noticed all the ripples issuing out with him at the center. Each time he moved, a new set of ripples would form. And the ripple effect of each motion would continue out into the river, despite the current. Despite anything. Indefinitely.

His presence was recorded throughout the river that day—through the ripples in the water, the displacement of the air around his ripples, by his ripples meeting the shore and bouncing back. In the same way, his presence was recorded throughout the universe.

Beyond that, on land, the wag of his tail, his body temperature and the sound of his breath had a similar effect in the environment around him, sending forth kinetic, sonic and heat waves from his body.

According to Wikipedia, a wave is a "disturbance (an oscillation) that travels through space and time, accompanied by the transfer of energy." Einstein's famous equation, E=MC2, posits that everything in the universe is energy. So what we see in the water above is Kizzie's energetic body having an effect on the water's energetic body. And since energy is never created or destroyed—only transferred—the effect he has is eternal. Pervasive. Ubiquitous.

Taking this further into metaphysical realms, everything about you is energy, including your thoughts, as different synapses in your brain fire. Everything you do, everything you say, everything you think—everything—interacts with the universe. There's no place to run, no place to hide. 

I suppose one way to see this is to say the universe is like a highly sophisticated lie detector. In a lie detector test, your body physiologically responds if you tell a lie. Your heartbeat quickens, your temperature rises, etc. And that piece of equipment captures those measurements. 

Lie detectors can be beat, though. The universe can't. It detects the most subtle shifts in your energy—shifts your brain may not even be able to consciously record. And every shift creates a "disturbance that travels through space and time, accompanied by the transfer of energy." 

Everything we do and are is recorded in the universe. And everything we do and are creates a disturbance in the universe. And everything we do and are is detected by the energy in the universe, including other people, animals and things. When we're sad, the trees know it. When we lie, our dogs know it. When we crave, the wind knows it. The "knowing" may not be conscious, but it melds with the energies of all that is. It creates a "disturbance" in all that is. 

I'm constantly amazed at how small and insignificant, yet how powerful, we are in the universe. Through just our thoughts alone, we can create beauty or pain. I'm not a parent, but I hear parents say all the time "our kids have no idea we're arguing" or "the kids are too young to realize what's going on." And then there are single people like me who think, because we have no kids or partners, that our thoughts and actions have no impact on the world around us. 

Even if you're entirely alone, locked in a lead box, you're fooling yourself. The energy of your being is transferred out into the universe and is recorded by every other living on either a profound or subtle level, depending on how relevant it is to the being. Even alone in a lead box, the lead knows. And the disturbance you create in the lead echoes forth, transferring itself to everything else, forever reshaping the environment around you.

When people say "we create our own reality", we really do. Even if you don't believe in that 100%, you shape it with every bit of energy you put out. And you ARE energy, a perpetually vibrating wave, the amplitude and frequency of which shift subtly every millisecond of the day, reaching out to all of creation. 

Heavy, I know. But essential to everything from your own spiritual development to the fate of everything that has ever existed or ever will..."a disturbance that travels through space and time."

So as you move through your week, consider these thoughts: 

• What effect are you having on the universe in this moment? 
• What net effect will you have this week? 
• How will you shape your own reality with your next thought?
• What type of "disturbance" do you want to create in your environment moving forward?
• What kind of "disturbances" are you creating in your own body with the thoughts you have?

People in the woo-woo world often refer to their self-development and spiritual work as "raising their vibration" or "walking in the light". If you've heard these phrases and thought they were BS or didn't know what to think, now you know what we're talking about. At some point in a spiritual journey you will ask yourself what effect you have on others and how you can change the world...questions like that. The answer is, literally, never more than a thought away.

2/17/12-2/19/12—Celebrating Your Abundance

Weekend Reading: Ten of Pentacles from the Victorian Romantic Tarot. The Ten of Pentacles is all about abundance. And if the 1% can teach us anything, it's that abundance breeds abundance. So this weekend, focus on what you have. Better yet, give gratitude for what you have. And while you're at it, give gratitude for what you want as if you already have it! The couple may not have bought anything from the produce vendor, but he knows someone will want apples today. And if someone doesn't want apples, he's got beets and cauliflower and cabbage—all the staples of life. So he's happy as a clam knowing that opportunity is just another passerby away. Chances are, you've got all the staples of life, too. Celebrate that and the opportunity that's on its way. And otherwise rest easy this weekend knowing the universe provides!

2/16/12—Channeling Your Inner Doofus

NOTE: I have changed words and images in this entry from the original posting because it was getting countless hits a day from people looking for a certain cartoon character that was mentioned here. It occurred to me that many may be children and, since many serious religious and spiritual topics are discussed here, I thought it best if I removed all mentions of the cartoon character.

Today's Draw: The Nine of Wands from the Simply Deep Tarot. What's the last really stupid or clumsy thing you've done? When did it happen? And did you see it coming and did it anyway?

For some reason, this image amused me. It reminds me of those "d'oh" moments where you do something really stupid—something you should know better than to do—but you don't realize how stupid it was until the consequences come. Maybe this guy happened upon this fire innocently, but today it's looking to me like he thought it was a good idea to light the big log on fire and, once the blaze got really going, realized it would also consume the two bendy straw logs and probably all the others in its wake.

It's possible I may do something like that at least once every day...haha. Today I had my dogs on their leashes when I remembered to get my phone out of the charger. So my living room is kind of narrow and I have a long coffee table and the phone is at the far end of the coffee table and there's a vase of flowers at the near end. So there I am with the dogs on their leashes and they go down one side of the coffee table and I go down the other and, of course, the flowers get toppled and water goes everywhere. I saw it coming and did it anyway.

I had another incident on the way home from our trip to the park where I almost hit another car that either came out of nowhere or I didn't see it because I had a rear view mirror full of dogs. When I finally saw the car, the lady inside was making kissy faces at my dogs and waving at them, oblivious to the fact that I almost plowed right into her without seeing her. Or maybe she was waving at me to stop and had her lips pursed in fear. Either way, she almost died waving.

Which gets me wondering...how many stupid things do I do in a day that I don't even register? I mean, stuff like this is forgotten as quickly as it happens. How many doofus moments do we have in a day anyway? In my insular little freelance world I'm not even exposed to general society on a regular basis. And I had two incidents I can remember today. When you think about it, it's a wonder life is as safe as it is with as many "near misses" as we have in a day.

So just for fun, make yourself conscious of this and see what happens. See how many times you do something clumsy, narrowly escape serious injury or otherwise create an unintentional nuisance. And for bonus fun, come back here and share your stories with the rest of 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?

2/14/12—Leaving Beauty in Your Wake

Today's Draw: The Three of Wands from the Victorian Romantic. What are your gifts? How do you use those gifts to bring beauty into your everyday life? And if you don't see your daily obligations as a opportunity to bring beauty to the world, wouldn't today be a good day to start?

I always get a good feeling from this particular card. I get a sense of daydreaming, confidence and planning for a new journey. And I like the added touch of the lyre in his hand, because he's creative, visionary and out of the box. Plus, he's got a really nice arse. 

I also never miss sight of the swans gliding along the glassy river, their images reflecting back at them. Our loosely robed musician can't see them yet. But they're about to come into his view and perhaps even color the plans he's creating in his head. What will they spark in him? To move forward with grace? To bring along a partner? To proceed slowly and surely and enjoy the scenery?

Today they're saying to me to move forward with that which reflects beauty to you. For this guy, it's music. For you it may be something different. There are people out there who say they're not creative. But they are. "Creative" just means that you're capable of making something. It doesn't have to "art". But it's actually art within the context of your gifts. It's the beauty you're able to make in this world.

So the question is, what beauty do you make? The beauty a personal assistant may make might be to make life easy for their boss so they can glide effortlessly through their day. A lawyer may make beauty in the way they architect their case. And now and then, I'll turn a phrase in a way that makes a client squeal with delight.

Chances are, no matter what you do, you're pretty good at it. And that, in and of itself, is a beautiful thing. You may not see it that way, but today could be the day to start seeing the beauty you reflect in this world.