Don’t Let Your Past Dictate You Future!

Here’s a conversation that seems to happen a great deal.

You: “I am sure I will never meet someone to have a relationship with.
Me: “What makes you sure about that?”
You: “I haven’t met anyone yet.”

There are other versions of that conversation, too, including the one that goes like this.

You: “I know I will never have a good love relationship.”
Me: “How do you know that?”
Client: “Because I never have.”

It’s true that sometimes when we want different results, we have to do different things. Nonetheless, it feels dangerous to assume that whatever has been true about our past will also be true about our future.

The dichotomy is this. It’s human nature to fear change. So if we want something different in the future than we had in the past, we have to be open to change, and willing to make change.

We can learn from the past. We can allow the past to create a foundation for the future. We can make changes, so we don’t repeat the past.

We don’t have to let our past dictate, or predict, our future.

The Purpose of Suffering

Everyone suffers in life at some point. Eventually, illness, disappointment and grief come to us all.

In those dark moments, many people wonder about the purpose of life, and the purpose of suffering.

Sometimes, in a tarot reading, I can see a specific purpose, or task, for a specific individual.
Often, in addition to those specific messages, there are messages that are more universal. That is, sometimes I receive messages that share a common theme.

After more than two decades of seeing and delivering these messages, the wisdom inherent in them is clear to me.

Forget what you read in the Old Testament.

I am convinced that Higher Power (God, Goddess, angels, Spirit, Source, Universe, etc.) does not ever makes us suffer as a way of punishing us.

This is hard for some people to believe. It’s true that sometimes our chickens come home to roost. That’s not God punishing us; that’s cause and effect.

When random terrible things happen in our lives, it’s easy to think that we have been singled out for punishment.

When we are frustrated in our inability to find that one elusive thing, the wonderful relationship or the dream job, we may become angry, believing that the Universe is withholding from us something we deserve.

Years ago, I took a Zen meditation class. The topic of the class was “Distractions.” The incense, I discovered, was not to enhance the meditation. The incense was there to provide a distraction; to make meditation more difficult. The more difficult the meditation, the more effective it would ultimately be.

Sometimes, our suffering is simply a distraction.

Higher Power’s goal is that we should enjoy creation. There is so much to experience and enjoy in a lifetime on the planet.

Sometimes our purpose is simply to find ways to enjoy and appreciate the gift of life, despite our suffering.

Once a person is able to be in that place of joy, more blessings are often added to that person’s life quite quickly.

Joy begets joy, especially in the face of suffering.

Origin Stories

I love superhero comics and movies. I still go to the Marvel Universe movies even though my kids don’t need me to take them anymore. One thing that all superheroes have in common is a great origin story.

Regular people have origin stories, too.

Sometimes we design our origin stories to cast ourselves as the victim, and avoid responsibility for our own failures.

Sometimes we design our origin stories to be so full of sunshine and rainbows that we are never able to acknowledge or heal from our childhood hurts.

I often say that most of us spend the majority of our adult lives healing from our first twenty years. Every parent gives their kids something to tell their therapist.

Other things have origin stories as well. Often origin stories don’ts hold up well to actual research.

Tarot, for instance, has numerous origin stories, all historically inaccurate. What is thought to be the historical truth is a much less fantastic story than the myths that grown around tarot.

My new favorite exercise form, Chinese Wand, has a fabulous origin story that began in 1977, and is apparently completely false.

Most of the history we learned in school was inaccurate. The origin stories of countries seem to be just as inaccurate as every other origin story.

As the world wages war over religions that are thousands of years old, I am convinced that the stories that support these heinous acts are just as inaccurate as every other origin story.

Maybe it’s time we leave the origin stories to the comics, and get better at separating fact from fiction in our lives.

Tarot is a wonderful tool to help us understand truth and release fiction.

How might you use tarot to find a true and helpful origin story for yourself?

Find Yourself with Divination

Who are you, at your core?

This is a topic I often speak about, and write about, because it comes up so often in readings.

One of the reason that divination is so helpful is that divination is a way to help us discover our true identity – our core.

Sometimes we get stuck trying to be the person other people want us to be.

Sometimes we get stuck trying to become the person we think we should be.

Sometimes our self-perception is marred by low self-esteem or over-inflated ego.

Tarot, astrology and numerology are ways for us to look into a cosmic mirror, and discover things that are true about the self.

The more we are able to understand the core self, the more at peace we will be.

There are some people who misuse tools of divination, like tarot. They use the tool only to make predictions in an effort to assuage anxiety about the future. They never use the cards, nor any psychic tool, to actually question their own behaviors and discover more about the self.

The irony is, this very practice works to dispel anxiety, because once we feel solid in who we are, it is very hard to feel anxious about anything. Anxiety is most often born of a misunderstanding of self.

The significator card in a tarot spread is helpful in discerning “Who am I at the present moment?” Significator cards that we chose to represent ourselves help us discern “Who am I at core?”

If you want to learn about yourself, learn about your birth number, your sun, moon and rising sun, and the tarot cards associated with them.

This information should paint a clear picture of your motivations, your path and your sense of self.

There are those who say that we should not read tarot, or use other tools, for ourselves. They people may think we will come from the perspective of the anxious person using tarot to relieve her fear of the future.

But when we use our tools to understand who we are, we become strong, self-aware and healed.

I will be teaching a webinar on self-reading on July 24. Join us!

(This post is cross-posted on my Tarot Topics Community Blog.)

Tarot, Psychic Addiction and Emotional Illness: The Balance Between Free Will and Fate

Recently in my “Answers to your Questions about Tarot” YouTube video series I have fielded two questions that each touch on emotional illness and tarot.  One was about “Tarot Slavery,” or psychic addiction. The other was about reading for “Eeyore,” that is, people who are so negative about their lives they do not believe they have any power to make it better.

I’m also finally reading the book “Psychic Junkie: A Memoir” by Sarah Lassez. It’s been sitting on my bookshelf for years. It’s the story, told in the first person, of a struggling actress with a monster psychic addiction. One of the things I like about the way she presents her story so far is that she holds herself accountable for her psychic addiction, rather than blaming her tarot cards or her readers.

What she, and other recovering psychic junkies, may not realize, is that some psychic professionals are very concerned about psychic addiction. Sure, there are some psychic professionals who encourage psychic addiction. Many of us do our best to identify those clients who are likely to misuse our services and encourage them to find other ways of dealing with their anxieties.

It is true that any tarot student could become “addicted” to the cards, turning to them to try to assuage anxiety rather than to find spiritual insight.

People who don’t understand tarot have lots of negative things to say about tarot. Most of those things are based on misinformation, misunderstanding and superstition. Sadly, there are some tarotists who perpetrate misinformation about tarot, either for their own gain or because they really want to believe that their future can always be both secure and predictable.

These are people who, like Sarah Lassez, have studied tarot and utilize professional psychics and have found the experience to be disempowering, rather than empowering.

How does this happen?

It happens when people have an unhealthy insecurity about their future, and about themselves. They come to the cards, and to psychic work, with one express purpose. They want to know what will happen in the future. It’s not curiosity, or the opportunity to be proactive, that drives them. They are driven, perhaps solely, by fear.

It may be laziness, misinformation or low self-esteem that causes them to believe that their future is something that awaits them, rather than something they could have a hand in creating.

Part of the problem is the reality that sometimes the future is set, and therefore predictable, and sometimes it’s not, and therefore changeable according to the choices and actions of self and others. It’s about the balance between free will and fate.

Many tarotists, including me, believe that it is sometimes better to focus on the areas where we can be proactive. Future predictions can be very accurate, and can also be fun, interesting and helpful. But it is not often in predicting the future where the healing nature of psychic work is realized.

There is zero introspection required when we believe the future is already set, and zero personal responsibility. Introspection and personal responsibility can be found in the wisdom of tarot, and are key components in healing from anxiety and depression.

Anxious people who fear their future, and depressed people who have no hope or faith in themselves, often lack the motivation to use a tool like tarot in the way that would actually be helpful.

It is so much easier to wait for a future that has been predicted than it is to work proactively at creating one’s life.

Future predictions can entertain us. Future predictions can give us hope. Future predictions can help us prepare for, and maximize, our potential. Tarot, and psychic work in general, can help us do that, not only by making the predictions, but by helping us choose our goals and stick to them.

Psychic addicts are looking for easy answers and quick fixes. Like all addicts, they want to make the pain go away but they don’t want to do the hard work to make change in their lives.

Often a good reading can help such a person change their perspective, get help for their emotional disorders, and realize that they are in charge of their life. A good reading should put the client in the driver’s seat as much as possible. Of course, this can only happen if the client is ready and willing to heal, and to take responsibility for their own decisions and goals.

Tarot can be incredibly helpful to people who are anxious and depressed, but only if they are willing to use the cards to heal.

Tarot, and psychic work in general, won’t turn an emotionally healthy person into a psychic addict. Potential psychic addicts are damaged before they get to us. As readers and teachers, we need to be ready to identify those who are likely to misuse our services to their detriment. Gentle redirection and referrals to psychological professionals are often appropriate.

Why is it easier for some people to believe that 78 pieces of cardboard could unfailingly predict their future than it is for them to believe that they have the personal power to create the future they want?

The sad thing is, if they could only adjust their thinking a little, they would discover that tarot can be the perfect tool to help us set our goals, make our plans and create the life we desire.