Messages of Divine Love (7/18/22): Embracing natural cycles of change.
Here it is, 7 pm on Monday night and I still don’t have this reading posted. I could say, “we’re still settling into all the change in our lives” but I feel like the first card of the reading reflects that well – for even good change is still stressful and disruptive. I could say, “I’ve been dying a thousand little deaths for a year and a half and I forgot how to manage my time,” but the second card says that too.
And yet, am I just making excuses for why I don’t fit neatly into the square-peg goals that were influenced by nameless brands on Instagram and Pinterest. I’m a sucker for a pretty infographic especially if it will help me get my message out. I have a goal of posting these by 4pm every Monday. And some weeks I kick ass at it. And other weeks the time just seems to slip through my fingers. I have spent more of my life apologizing for not being perfect than I’ve spent loving myself for all the ways in which I am just wonderfully perfect. So when I miss deadlines I get really hard on myself. Never mind that these are deadlines that no one else set for me – these are all deadlines I control.
And you know what? Instead of apologizing and making excuses, I could just choose to post this whenever I want, recognizing that the imperfection may not be “professional” by capitalistic, marketing standards, but it is a wonderful quirk of my authenticity of me. I could just assume that you know I don’t have a “team” around me to do any of this work and that I make all the writing, graphics, formatting, and promotion by myself. I don’t really have to beat myself up over something I just want to share with the world.
Last week I wrote: The wind has been shifting and we’re finding ourselves coming back to old dreams as they are finally coming true. Completion is coming for all of us. But, for some, it might feel like we’re spinning in too many directions at once.
The shaming opinions I hear in my head are nothing but my own programmed anxiety from years of legal and nonprofit work where perfection was demanded in ways that only made my psyche suffer more. Likewise, I’ve discussed the ways people pleasing kept me safe. I would transform myself into the version of me others most wanted to see. It was still authentic-ish, but it wasn’t my full power and my full foibles – just a carefully curated version of it. And just like my faith became liberated when I let go of the expectations of a Catholicism I outgrew, I have likewise outgrown many aspects of the legal profession – dying a million little deaths so I can finally let go of what no longer serves me.
Sometimes release comes through the death of one way of life as a new way begins to shed its gentle glow in our life, but we have to be willing to accept that this is the natural process of life. Change is utterly normal, but we have to let go of our need to control and dominate the outcome. Change never arrives the way we expect it will. Stubbornly conforming our lives to the expectations and jealousies of others ensures we’ll never really know our true potential, nor our true freedom.
This week’s reading is with Osho Zen Tarot, the deck I use to mentally reset myself. It’s great about exposing the areas of life where we’re complacent, arrogant, or just woefully ignorant, but it does so in an “I know you’re capable of better” way. It’s a deck I use at the start, middle, and end of every year to keep me on the path that is most authentic to myself. I hope you have the same experience this week.
See more below…
Where we are this week
Change
Last week we had the sensation of being spun up in several different directions all at once. Even great blessings seemed to be disorienting us. But in many ways, this flurry of summer activity is part of the natural ebb and flow of life. Except lately it’s been more like hurricanes and droughts – reflecting the pollution driving climate change on our earth. Embracing our natural cycles of change will help us weather the good nourishing rainstorms and the hot, dry heat waves of our lives. Embrace the natural process of change, and surrender to its current to reap the most significant rewards. Take the seasonality as a clue to get outdoors, to live life out loud a little in this season of positive growth.
Embrace our natural cycles of change
Messages from our Guides
Transformation
Our guides are here to celebrate our deep and lasting transformation happening right now. They acknowledge the death of old beliefs, old relationships, old careers, and old dreams – but they celebrate because even as we process the pain of letting those areas of our life go, it releases us to pursue our highest and most authentic truth. We are able to release the trappings of an old, capitalistic, artificially urgent world, elevate our perspective and gain insight into the bigger picture of our lives and where they intersect with others for the greatest impact. This is the “Climb your own mountain” /#radidcalreflections in my heart-centered leadership practice. We have climbed the mountain, shed all that was holding us back and now we’re able to see a whole new realm open to us.
The death of the old ways to make room for the new world.
Messages from Lady Gaia
Eight of Rainbows – Ordinariness (Reversed)
Ordinarily, I would interpret this card as “put the work in” for our dreams to come true. Here, with mother earth, I get a softened sadness about “why do you keep rejecting me?” Why do we keep resisting the call of Mother Earth to more directly embrace union with her? Why are we looking for the most extreme experiences, the most dramatic of vistas? Are we looking at Earth as just another backdrop for our TikTok videos or can we marvel at her more mundane and reliable qualities? Are we avoiding putting in the work to reach our goals? Do we take our food systems for granted? Are we distracting ourselves from addressing the waste on our plates or the excuses of corporations? I get deep Virgo vibes from this card – pretty sure if there’s any sign that symbolizes the balance of Earth’s beauty and the diligence required to cultivate and honor it – especially for food. The advice is to sit with that energy this week, especially within the context of the “ordinariness” of our food systems and the labor required.
Earth is worth the effort.
Messages from our Ancestors
The Master (Reversed)
I feel such a strong warning in this week’s messages from the ancestors: Beware of “Masters” who seek dominion over others’ lives. They seek power over others and exercise very little power over themselves in attaining it. Those leaders who are fond of putting others down in order to raise themselves up will not be the leaders for a new world, but rather will keep us stuck in a revolving door of patriarchy. These false prophets see us only as profit-generating machines. Our ancestors know how much we want leaders we can believe in, but that means we also have to recognize the leadership qualities in ourselves so we’re less dependent on perpetual teachers and we learn how to master our own selves beyond what we are formally taught. It’s time to start trusting our light more than the flashy, shiny, one-size-fits-my-marketing-funnel of dependence. Address where we might be doing this to others too.
Power over others isn’t mastery, it’s puppetry.
Messages from our Future Selves
Six of Clouds – The Burden (Reversed)
Our future selves assure us that we will no longer be carrying the burdens of others’ expectations on our shoulders. When we look at this card right side up we see a man struggling under the weight of a tyrant telling him where to go – pursuing his own agenda. Here, we’re climbing the mountain on our own – taking our own path, for our own reasons, and on our own terms. Our future selves remind us to detach from the expectations of others in order to reach new heights of our own. We cannot walk anyone else’s path for them, nor should we ever abdicate responsibility for walking our own. Let go of the karmic piggyback rides.
No one else can climb our mountain for us.
Message from Mother Mary
Knight of Fire – Intensity
If Sagitarrius had its energy depicted in one glorious display it would be this – the brilliance of firelight pointed like an arrow in the direction of its goal, of enlightenment, of purpose. Mother Mary this week tells us to not be afraid of our intensity or that of others. The more we engage and channel this energy, the more momentum we gain toward our goals, especially with the collective problem-solving, we need to do. The moment is now – we need to point ourselves in the direction of our dreams, beaming our light like a Care Bear stare with the optimism and hope that my Sagittarian kin has. Some may not welcome your light – shine anyway.
It’s glow time!
Undercurrents & Final advice
Three of water – Celebration
Joy is always there.
Conditioning (Devil)
The hushed whisper of patriarchy.
We have a right to celebrate – we have had blessings bestowed, even if they weren’t packaged the way we wanted. Our inner joy doesn’t have to be impacted by outer circumstances. There is an undercurrent of joy always available to us. But in order to tap into it, we have to let go of a small bit of the chip on our shoulder. We have to stop waiting for and expecting perfection from ourselves, from others, and especially from the rest of the world. Maybe instead of cataloging all that annoys us about others, we can start calling out all the things we love about them in our lives – all the ways they capture our attention, inspire our souls and touch our hearts. We deserve to celebrate the little quirks and moments that make life worth living. In letting go of our addiction to perfection, we begin to live in the present, living and loving all around us, every ridiculous, goofy moment at a time.
One of the biggest themes in the book I am writing is that patriarchy is there in the background whispering all sorts of pernicious lies in our minds. And this card always has a dual meaning for me – first, the lion who was brought up by sheep, his self-image influenced by others. The other focuses on the sheep who are feeding the lion these lies – the “devil” sitting on our shoulders inviting us to indulge our worst impulses.
And yet here, I also see the smug faces of patriarchy’s puppets who love to think of themselves as “alphas” (lions) and “radical feminists” – above all the “woke brainwashing”. They claim to be independent and strong, yet all of them seem heavily influenced by the same kind of disguised group think as what we see in the card – like sleeper agents of patriarchy. They all seem to take their orders from someone else – a centralized message of rejection, not release, of control, not freedom. They all seem to parrot the same concern trolling talking points without ever recognizing the ragey echo in their voice. They aren’t nearly as superior as they want to believe as they fingerprint layers and layers of self-doubting deception. They’re about stable as a tacky dollar store gringa-appropriated pinata under the full force of collective and intergenerational healing.
At some point we have to look at them and ask if these “lions” are so bold and independent, why are they all repeating the same insultingly snide message, like a patriarchy pull-string doll? Why do these lions depend so heavily on distinguishing themselves from “the sheep” without giving us the strength, leadership, or vision that their declarations promise? ? Have they ever bothered to address why in their quest for “freedom” they still rely so heavily on the same old systems of dominance through shame and derision? Are they not capable of choosing differently or do they just really lack that much originality? π€ Just some food for thought (and yes, I’m just as guilty of all of this).
Blessing
As we immerse ourselves in the beauty of our own natural cycles of growth, let us have the collective courage to leave the opinions of others behind. May we have the faith to persevere on our own journey, unburdened by old processes, beliefs and systems that once tethered us to a limited life. May we find joyful celebration as we all shine with the freedom of purpose and the radiant intensity of love.
I am with you always in love π
So may it be.
Come learn how to use tarot as an emotional mirrorπͺa time-traveling companionβ and a loving guide for the present π in this monthly 90 min workshop β¨
βWe can predict the future, when we know how the present moment evolved from the past.β
Carl Jung
What you can expect
We’ll start with analyzing a few cards together to warm up our intuitive muscles ποΈββοΈ before exploring some common themes and practicing interpreting cards through new spreads each month.
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