I use tarot and oracle cards as tools for reflection and contemplation. Rather than divining the future, they are a way for me to look more deeply at the "now."
"The goal isn't to arrive, but to meander, to saunter, to make your life a holy wandering." ~ Rami Shapiro

Sunday, September 8, 2019

Owning What's Mine

This week I'll be using the Urban Tarot, a deck and book set created and self-published by Robin Scott (now published by U.S. Games). I'll be pairing it with an oracle I created called "Principles to Live By." Today's draws are the Five of Cups and Honesty:

          This scene eerily replays one when I was six created by my stepfather (though we didn't have nice china or a cabinet). We were poor, maggots were found in our food, and he went ballistic. We lived in a shithole at the time, so such disgusting discoveries were par for the course. Scott assigns this card the keyword 'disappointment,' which she rightly describes as a raw mixture of anger, grief, and fear. The Honesty tile suggests being genuine and truthful, which includes telling ourselves the truth as well. Like the lotus bud that has opened up completely to the sunlight, I must stop compartmentalizing my thoughts and actions and look at all of them as a whole. As Bhikkhu Analayo stated, "the first step to developing accurate self-awareness is honest acknowledgment of the existence of hidden emotions, motives and tendencies in the mind without immediately suppressing them." Whatever the situation, if I don't own my own stuff, I won't move forward and I'll be unable to see that not everything is broken.

4 comments:

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    1. While recognizing my anger and resentment could be hurting me a lot more than it hurts anyone else.

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  2. we cling to those devilbits sometimes, and sometimes they are just clear markers of how much we've evolved from what we were given. Like handmedowns. They can't possibly make or break us unless we allow it.

    Speaking of maggots though, and I'm sure I've mentioned it somewhere, the PBS programs like 1880 Frontier House and 1628 Colonial House and similar really brought home how 'clean' was nearly impossible.

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    Replies
    1. Using past experiences wisely, rather than stabbing oneself with them over and over...

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