A Life Path Exercise

People have often heard me say that the tarot can be a self teaching tool, rather than a fortune telling tool. I often suggest pulling one card a day, then meditating on it and journaling about it and what it could mean to you.

Here is another personally enlightening way to use a deck for self development and evolution.

Think of an event or situation in your life that might be represented by each card. Start with the major arcana. After you have finished that, then go to the minor arcana. As you make your list of correlations, what is revealed about your life path?

Making Peace After the Elections

So now is the when we make peace in a democracy. Sad to see the sore losers expressing such bitterness. When I voted and Bush became president, I was disappointed. But I voted the other side won. Then we all had to get along and do what we had to do. 

So now Obama won, and you don't have to like it any more than I liked the Bush presidency. But this is what happens when we vote. So now you are the losers and you just need to be civil and try and get along, and you will live through the Obama years same as I lived through the Bush years. So set the campaign stuff aside and do what needs to be done. Life goes on after the vote. We each speak our piece, we each cast our vote, then we continue on. This is the American way.

We all cast our votes and we live with the results. In a civilized society, we have our disagreements, and sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. We return to being cordial to each other after the elections because that is the way we know that we are still the same people and we still need to do what we need to do, no matter who won the election.

A funny thing happened on here tonight. Facebook suggested I friend someone on here who I knew in real life and who died recently. I guess that means that some of these Facebook characters on our pages are really channeled entities. Isn't that a trip to realize that some of those friends we sent notes to might never respond. If you send someone like this a friend request and they don't respond, what does that mean? If they do respond, what does it mean? Or they will find ways to send us messages without using Facebook? Does the fact that Facebook just suggested this mean that I should become a medium? Or are they just suggesting that we keep in touch anyway? This is like being in a story by Philip K. Dick (Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck, The Adjustment Bureau.)

Finding Our Way

Spirit often helps us find our way to things it would be useful for us to know about. For example, I discovered the music of Gabrielle Roth while I was looking through the music section at a used bookstore. I had never heard of her before but the jacket caught my attention and so I decided to try it. The notes on the jacket mentioned that she had also written a book, so I went out and got that after spending hours entranced by her music.

I have heard other people tell similar stories about how they were looking in a bookstore and a book fell off the shelf, and after they picked it up they decided to read it and it revealed something significant for them.

Or stories about how they were curious and went to hear someone give a free talk and that sparked their interest in a new topic.

Or when someone was simply scanning the Netflix downloads available and came across a documentary video that really opened their eyes.

I have heard stories about people who were curious to know more about a subject, and then somehow, it turns out that someone they work with knows about that subject and they just happen to mention it and they get introduced to a whole new world.

And then there are those moments when someone is visiting a health food store and gets a taste of a few different things they have never tried before and suddenly their food choices begin to change.

Years ago I worked for a corporation that moved me around the country for various assignments. When I got transferred to cities where I didn't know anyone, I looked for things to do. In one place, I started going to Sierra Club meetings and hiking with them and made a lot of new friends. In another city, on a day when I had no plans and knew no one, I saw an ad for a psychic fair, and so I went and got introduced to a whole new world.

Spirit finds all kinds of ways to help us find our way. Especially the things that look accidental or coincidental.

Dancing

 


The first time I heard one of Gabrielle's recordings, Waves, I just kept playing it over and over. The trances induced by her music, on both that recording and others of hers, has fed my spirit and my visions for years. 

I had the pleasure of meeting her, interviewing her and dancing in one of her workshops. Her work taps into powerful streams of energy and consciousness. I am grateful to have discovered Gabrielle and her work and know that her journey into the next world will be blessed.

Listening to her music inspired me to get more interested in drumming and dancing. Reading her books was a fresh burst of inspiration.

Rhythm underlies all of our communications. It is present in our voice, our writing, our connections with other people. Dance is one obvious way we connect with others. There is an altered space we get to when we dance.

There was also an altered space I get to when listening to Gabrielle's music. That altered space creates all kinds of inspired thoughts and feelings. Her work was magical, visceral and profound. Her recordings still work for me even all these years later and after more listenings than I can count.

Its amazing how things we discover when we weren't looking for them can turn out over time to be of lasting value to us.

There is this dance that we do, sweetening the air between us with anticipation. We flow with the music and then one of us whispers in the other's ear "I didn't know you could dance like this."

Some of the things we may learn about another person may or may not matter. How they dance tells us a lot. It is in those moments when we are close and moving together that words do not matter.

Love & Fear in Action

Here are a few more examples of how choosing from love or fear works.

We can say that we are being more conscious about what we eat and how we eat because we want to enjoy good health and do the things we love to do.

Or we can say that we need to refrain from eating certain foods and make ourselves get up and exercise because we are afraid of getting a heart attack, diabetes complications or cancer if we don't.

Which form of motivation is more appealing? Which will keep us motivated?

We can say that we will stay in a relationship that is unsatisfactory and unfulfilling because dating, making new friends and developing new relationships can be a challenging experience that pulls us out of our comfort zone.

Or we can say that dating new people, making new friends and developing new relationships is an exciting, invigorating experience.

Which approach will add more joy to our life?