These are not the droids you are looking for....
Translation: This is me reacting to, then over-analyzing a tarot reading I got. No comments at the moment. Don't want to talk about it further than I have here. Not even sure I entirely want to share it, but I clearly am. Yeah. But if you happen to venture in here ... Happy New Year! *hugs*
P.S. If I send you the link personally, of course that's an invite to talk about it. Anyone else, send me a PM on LJ, a DM on twitter (@mladyrebecca), or email me if you want. That is all. XO
Higher Self Tarot Reading
Now playing: "Edge of the Earth"
Note to self: Don't plan a virus scan and let iTunes download a movie at the same time you actually want to do anything on the computer. *waits*
8:16 pm
Now Playing: Live version of "The Kill"
Okay, I wasn't nervous until I had to sit and wait for the damn office document to open. Ugg.
Damn computer, you're killing me, killing me.
*mutes*
1. Next Step
2. Obstacles
3. Supports
4. Defeating Attitudes
5. Beneficial Attitudes
I do not ascribe to tell people what their Higher Self is.
The scholar? (x)
Essentially, my belief is that we all kind of know what it is. It’s our id without all the pressures of the superego telling us what to do. Society, our families, work, friends… they all tell us what we should be. Our Higher Self is simply what we are.
"This is who I really am...."
1. Next Step
The first card tells you what to do, today, to start aligning with that Higher Self. The Queen of Wands is all about harnessing your creative energies and your passions to create what you wish to see happen. She is about taking all of your energies and directing them at fixing what is, or appears to be, broken.
Use my creative energy and passion to create what I want to happen. Okay.
Wands are the suite of fire energies, of creation and manifestation, of taking charge over this world and using your strength to make it what you want it to be. Queens are the court cards of water, and this means that the Queen of Wands is in complete control of her emotions, is intuitively creative, and generally grows to have a very strong sense of who she is in this life.
Did this online astrology thing last night that tells you what percentages you have of each of the elements earth, fire, water, and air. (x)
I'm strongly Air. Air is intellectual & Aquarius is an air sign. No surprise there. But I'm 0% water. Water is emotions. I always thought Aquarius, the Water Bearer would be primarily air, but secondarily water.
But no, the symbol for the water bearer is pouring OUT water. Which, according to @veganpope can mean one of two things: 1) Being in control of emotions, rather than emotions controlling you. OR 2) It can also symbolize 'pouring knowledge' into humanity. It's a sign of intellect and thinking outside the box.
The connection to the reading being:
Wands are the suite of fire energies, of creation and manifestation, of taking charge over this world and using your strength to make it what you want it to be.
Jared's a fire energy. (x) (He also has 0% water, like me.) But an Earth sign. (Capricorn)
(And according to that one reading, he has a "Grand trine in the Air Signs: Saturn in Gemini, Venus in Aquarius, Pluto in Libra".) ( x) But I digress....
Queens are the court cards of water, and this means that the Queen of Wands is in complete control of her emotions, is intuitively creative, and generally grows to have a very strong sense of who she is in this life.
Shannon is water energy (x - may be semi-inaccurate due to lack of a birth time) ... and a water sign. (Pisces)
I know you feel like you’ve lost your way, like you aren’t sure which direction to go in, and so that makes things quite difficult when I tell you that your next step is identify who you are.
*snort*
What I’m going to say, though, is that you know who you are. The difference is along the way this person has been beaten, broken, lost by life.
Can't agree more.
Cue: "Birth" ... "Are you lost, can't find yourself? You're North of Heaven, maybe somewhere West of Hell."
Exercise: First, I want you to pick a time when all is quiet, serene. When you’ve been relaxed and comfortable, probably at night as you are a night owl. Put on music that relaxes you, something that makes you content and happy (Mars acoustic works for me). I do writing meditations all the time. I just start typing. I don’t filter. I ramble on and on about a particular topic. That’s literally all it is. I have a hard time silencing my mind with traditional meditations, but this helps me focus. I know you do this anyway (or it seems to be that it’s something you do).
Stream of consciousness writing. Yes, I haven't done enough of that lately. Good so far.
The topic I want you to roll with, though, is who you want to be. Put at the top of the page the line “This Is Who I Really Am” (fitting, no?) Then start to write.
First thought: "I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, I'm a mother, I'm a sinner, I'm a saint, ..." - Meredith Brooks (x)
DO NOT say who you are in terms of physically or demographics.
Ha. Spoil-sport.
If you were unbound by physical limitations, societal expectations, etc who are you? For me, I’d likely own a holistic healing center where I offered counseling and Tarot readings, and there’d probably be a health food store around back along with a head shop. I’d spend most of my time in the mountains, growing herbs and communing with nature. I might have blue hair, 6 piercings, and tats everywhere. I’d also have a really sexy man (no need to go into details here).
This exercise is fun because it lets us bring out the child in us that believed we could get to Narnia if we poke around the closet long enough. And, it helps us get insight into what is us and what is coming from others.
Note to self: Re-read "Chronicles of Narnia"
NOTE: I really do believe that, if we try hard enough, we can create the life that we want. Sure, we do live in a world of expectations from others, but it is not impossible to still be who we truly are. The first step though is to figure out who that person is.
2. Obstacles
I literally guffawed at the next card for you. The Page of Cups is a young fellow is the personification of our inner children. He is the child who believes that stepping on cracks has the power to break backs, that Santa comes on Christmas Eve, that completely understands all of those magicks that are so innate in our universe.
So my inner child is my obstacle?
Becky and Rebecca are at war? (I called myself Becky through college (1993). But with my first real job, Rebecca.)
This page expects to raise his cup for a toast or a drink, and instead is confronted with the ominous appearance of a fish, which even appears to be speaking to him.
Hmmm. Goes to eat - fish interrupts. Babelfish?
Douglas Adam's cow from the Restaurant at the End of the Universe? (Ironically, read that in college.)
The Page of Cups indicates the surprising and unexpected nature of intuition that comes to us from the realm of the unconscious and the Universe. It is unexpected and almost always presented in a way that is not easy to understand.
So what? This is a card of the faith of our childhoods. The magic dies as we get older, and so we have to find ways to keep it alive. You have lost your faith in the possibility of life being what you once dreamed it to be. You have to find something to put faith in. Having faith will motivate you towards direction.
Lost my faith? Yeah, you could say that.
On another wavelength ... Sticking to that 1993 line - obstacles - not getting a real job right out of college? The first "failure".
Taking religion and spiritual practice out completely, you can put faith in your goals too. The more fully you believe in the possibility of achieving them, the more likely they are to occur.
Set small goals for this year that you are certain you can achieve. Get a calendar, mark out goals for every few weeks. Put full faith in those goals. Motivate yourself with yourself, that child who believed in Santa and the Easter bunny. The pre-broken child for whom things seemed possible. Pretend to be her for a little bit. :)
Step 1: Get calendar.
If motivation is coming from The Page of Cups, someone who is desperate for a beginning where he can feel and intuit and appreciate the many anxiety inducing events of life. He’s ok with dealing with being vulnerable. He is ok with it because it’s an experience. And experience is what we have to work with in this life.
*tears* My inner child is bored to death with my sitting at the bottom of the hill looking up. He wants me to do something, do anything.
For this reason, I think regular mindful mediation, that is paying attention to things on purpose, without judgement, could be helpful for you.
Exercise: Sometimes the things that we love the most lose their magic because they become things that we feel we have to do, or because we lose mystification with them. One way to bring back the magic is mindfulness. I’m a big fan of this concept, and use mindful practices with many of my therapy clients and in my own life. It’s not a huge undertaking. There are many small exercises to try to increase your mindful behaviors. I will give you a couple.
First, what does it feel like to take a single breath? Something you do around 10 times a minute, how aware are you of what it feels like when you inhale. What does your nostrils feel like? Your shoulders? Your rib cage? Belly? Try noticing these sensations, and jot them down.
Translation: Take time to slow down, remove distractions and feel what your body is telling you.
A really great exercise to increase mindfulness is to spend 2 minutes eating your favorite piece of candy. Sound easy? It’s not. I usually use baby M&Ms for this exercise. Take a second to feel with your fingers the texture of one. What does it look like? Any interesting memories associated with this food? Now smell it, touch it to your tongue, feel the texture in your mouth. Are there any sounds associated with the candy? Any of this information is likely to be completely lost to you if you have never spent 2 minutes eating an M&M before!
Translation: Savor food, don't devour it.
Creating the life that you want to have comes from knowing yourself, your body. Try mindfully looking at a picture of yourself. Try to take a moment to appreciate your best features.
Translation: Look at yourself and start picking out the positives.
Buddhist techniques? Something from that book written by the author who has an invisible (and undefinable) illness? (x)
Living life mindfully ...
can help you lose weight, feel more content with who you are, your life, and can also help you pick up on what’s not working and how to fix that. This exercise can help you to really tap into your intuitive, creative energies and eliminate all of the cerebral over-thinking and self-doubt. Note, though, that true intuition is probably the most purely logical thing to trust, because it is linked to instinct. An animal who doesn’t follow his instincts doesn’t seem too bright does he? If you don’t believe you are intuitive, I will disagree with you. WHOLEHEARTEDLY. A lot of the time, we tune out intuition when we’ve been disillusioned.
Put on a radio, or put ITunes on shuffle. Listen for a while, get comfortable. You know that brief pause directly between songs? A lot of the time, I start to hear the song that is going to play about half a second before it starts. Has this ever happened to you? Try it. Try to guess what’s going to play next. Another great way to start really tapping into your intuition is to guess who is calling or texting you. I find that in making these little steps toward embracing intuition, I am in fact very reinforced for doing so. When you guess the right song 7/8 times, eventually you get to a point where you start trusting yourself. This is as close to tangible proof for intuition that we have.
Hmmm. I remember doing it back when I listened to albums cover to cover. If I heard the song during random play, I instinctively listened for the next song on the album. Not quite the same thing. *frowns*
3. Supports
The Ace of Pentacles could mean a lot of things. Essentially, the Aces in tarot represent the freebees. These are things handed to us from the Universe unexpectedly that we just needed. As Pentacles are the suite of earth, they represent tangible, worldly things. They can indicate financial gifts (like an unexpected raise in pay) or gifts of health. Two things come to mind.
As you are on disability, it’s a good time to take a new direction if you need to. Sometimes people don’t have the freedom to do a lot of self-exploration because of the demands of a job. I know that might sound weird, or even cold, but in some ways it’s a blessing.
Actually, no, I've thought of ways being disabled is a blessing. But mostly in terms of seeing the world through more compassionate eyes. Seeing pain in others. Seeing those who need a hand up.
I don't know that I've taken advantage of time. Feels like something always gets in the way. Something of the "do this now" variety. *snort* What I hated about work. Fire drills. Fire drills are haunting me everywhere I go.
Stick to the Hitchhiker theme? The philosopher that rules the universe. Him and his cat. No fire drills. Plenty of solitude. Kitty cat. Conversation is always at a high level. Hmmmmm.
Note to self: Re-read "Hitchhiker's".
Also, and this is important, I think it’s a good time to consider looking into weight loss surgery.
*sigh* Haven't had a good butt kicking since Linda (physical therapist). Liz (therapist - LCP) has been letting me slide.
I know it seems hopeless, but that is the voice coming from everyone else. Would that help you achieve a happier life? Would it let you do things you otherwise would not be able to? It is worth it, and it could be the gift of health this card is calling to.
How do you know what is your voice and what is society's voice?
Yes, I'm probably doing myself a disservice (on some level) listening to Reagan (@danceswithfat). She's the voice fighting back against the current of fucked up misinformation, but has she ... tossed the baby out with the bathwater? Disregarded the few true facts that are hidden among the piles of B.S.?
What steps would you need to take for this to happen?
Listen to a talk at St. Agnes?
I know it’s scary; when you’ve spent your entire life overweight, the flip side of the coin is terrifying. I have no idea what my life will be like if I do achieve health. But I owe it to myself to try, and it is NEVER too late.
The frog is so used to being boiled, will being freed kill her?
Hmmm, am I seeing my obstacle (inner child) as a friend and my support (freedom to start over) as an enemy?
4. Defeating Attitudes
Regarding attitudes that hold you back, no card is more fitting than the 9 of Swords. This is often called the nightmare card. It’s that cold sweat that you break out into during a nightmare that forces your body away yet leaves you paralyzed. The 9 of Swords makes me think of all the stuff we let build up in our psyche. It’s all of our doubts, all of our worries, all of the “I can’ts” and “I shouldn’ts.” It represents the point in which we hit rock bottom. But, before we can ever start climbing up our mountain again, we have to do this. We have to hit bottom.
Hitting bottom. Cue "Savior".
Sisyphus.
Listen to Mustn'ts, child, listen to the Don'ts.
Listen to the Shouldn'ts, the Impossibles, the Won'ts.
Listen to the Never Haves, then listen close to me.
Anything can happen, child, Anything can be.
-- Shel Silverstein (x)
I see this as something you have to overcome. Who cares if you fail this time? At the end of the day, a try is worth more than anything (I could quote blue eyes but, no need. You know where I’m going with this).
Never fail to quote blue eyes. It helps.
Let's see, without cheating (but definitely paraphrasing): Never fear failing, fear not trying.
The fear of failure is crippling, so instead of failing, we just become content with how things have become and convince ourselves that that is ok. IT IS NOT OK. We deserve more than that. We deserve to be who we want to be, not who we think we are. The only way to overcome something that we are afraid of is to face it head on.
Existing, not living. Yup. Comfortably Numb.
In psychotherapy, if I were to have a client who was afraid of snakes, that client would have to become acquainted with snakes in a variety of capacities. It isn’t easy. And I’m by no means an expert in overcoming worry and self-doubt. But, I do know what it looks like. And the few times I’ve put it aside have been the most liberating times of my life (and probably 95% have been at Mars shows…. But, anyways). Write about your fears. Release them into the Universe. Fear only has power when we give it power.
LOL. I need to do that rock throw thing with Jared and Tomo. Think Adventure will consider premiere hikes up the mountain to throw stones?
5. Beneficial Attitudes
Finally, you need to embrace moving on as something that’s ok. It’s ok to start over. Hold that within yourself. Make it your mantra. IT IS OK TO GET BACK UP AGAIN.
Cue "Alibi".... "I fell apart and got back up again..."
In the 8 of Cups we see a man who is walking away from a structure he has built from the cups. He’s positioned them all so perfectly, and yet chooses to walk away from them, having not finished the structure completely. It’s like one of two things have happened.
For some reason I keep thinking of that House of Cards movie. (x, y)
*snort* 1993 again.
It is very well possible that he has simple decided that what he was building for himself isn’t what he meant for it to be, or he has decided it is what it was supposed to be and he can’t handle it being finished. So, instead of taking time to reassess what to do differently with the structure he already has, he has decided to simply walk away from it and start over.
Time to set fire to some bridges? Can't cross back anyway.
When we are thwarted or have our feelings hurt, sometimes we cut the source out completely. We say, “Fine, have it your way. I am done.” Although it might sound harsh, does this relate to your job. Were there other opportunities that came up that you convinced yourself you just couldn’t do? We all do this, but eventually we have to stop lest we get stuck in a constant cycle of running away to avoid the pain of falling again.
*sigh* I suppose after loosing my job a second time it was a hell of a lot harder to get back up again. I felt like I was trying, but it was like being in a pit and the slopes are covered by loose gravel.
In some ways I think disability was giving up, giving in. But I had bled through all my resources, financial and otherwise.
I felt like I was not enough in all of the interviews I actually went to. Not smart enough. Not driven enough. And the nice dichotomy of "too much" when it comes to my weight.
In sum.
1. Next Step - Queen of Wands (fire) - fire (drive) & water (emotional control), use creativity and passion, stream of consciousness, who am I?, Narnia, can be anything, no "I'm a bitch", "Birth", "The Kill"
Wands are the suite of fire energies, of creation and manifestation, of taking charge over this world and using your strength to make it what you want it to be. Queens are the court cards of water, and this means that the Queen of Wands is in complete control of her emotions, is intuitively creative, and generally grows to have a very strong sense of who she is in this life.
2. Obstacles - Page of Cups (water) - inner child, Becky vs Rebecca, 1993, no job out of college, loss of faith, Search and Destroy?, EOAD?, mindfulness, Hitchhiker's - babelfish & cow, Buddhism book, calendar - small goals
The Page of Cups is a young fellow is the personification of our inner children. ... This page expects to raise his cup for a toast or a drink, and instead is confronted with the ominous appearance of a fish, which even appears to be speaking to him.
3. Supports - Ace of Pentacles (earth) - freedom to act, freedom to fail, the philosopher in HH, how do you know who's voice?, boiled frogs
The Ace of Pentacles could mean a lot of things. Essentially, the Aces in tarot represent the freebees. These are things handed to us from the Universe unexpectedly that we just needed.
Hmmm, am I seeing my obstacle (inner child) as a friend and my support (freedom to start over) as an enemy?
4. Defeating Attitudes - 9 of Swords (air) - I can'ts, hitting bottom, Savior, Sisyphus, Yoda: do not try, no more comfortably numb, throwing rocks w/ Jared & Tomo
Regarding attitudes that hold you back, no card is more fitting than the 9 of Swords. This is often called the nightmare card. It’s that cold sweat that you break out into during a nightmare that forces your body away yet leaves you paralyzed. The 9 of Swords makes me think of all the stuff we let build up in our psyche. It’s all of our doubts, all of our worries, all of the “I can’ts” and “I shouldn’ts.” It represents the point in which we hit rock bottom. But, before we can ever start climbing up our mountain again, we have to do this. We have to hit bottom.
5. Beneficial Attitudes - 8 of Cups (water) - Alibi, house of cards, 1993 trend, burning bridges, you can't make me - fine I'm done, walk away, Capricorn (the song), walking away
In the 8 of Cups we see a man who is walking away from a structure he has built from the cups. He’s positioned them all so perfectly, and yet chooses to walk away from them, having not finished the structure completely.
Reading list: Narnia, Hitchhiker's, that Buddhism book? + House of Cards movie
Playlist: Birth, The Kill, Search & Destroy, EOAD, Savior, Alibi, Capricorn
Do next: Buy calendar. Who am I post w/o demographics. Practice mindfulness. Weight loss surgery meeting?, ?????????????????
First "save": 11:34 pm
Higher Self Reading: steps toward aligning yourself with your higher self.
(top center) 1. Next Step: Queen of Wands (fire) - use your creativity & passion,
(2nd from left) 2. Obstacles: Page of Cups (water) - inner child, faith of childhood,
(2nd from right) 3. Supports: Ace of Pentacles (earth) - unexpected gift, freedom to act
(far left) 4. Defeating Attitudes: 9 of Swords (air) - nightmare card, I can'ts,
(far right) 5. Beneficial Attitudes: 8 of Cups (water) - walk away from what you built