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Beyond Atonement: The Gift of Self-Forgiveness

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The Roman Catholic Church, William Shakespeare, Carl Jung and the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous all made it clear: We humans have a dark side.  The art world has run with that.  Novelist Ian McEwan, for example, published "Atonement" which was made into a film. There  has been the recent streamer on Paramount "The Whale." The central characters in both had done acts they deeply regretted. All that eats at them. Charlie in "The Whale," who ditched his family for a male lover, literally eats himself to death.  Of course, this deep shame about behavior comes up during Tarot readings. That includes a resistance against self-forgiveness. That wrench in the works is the assumption that what they did is so awful that they don't "deserve" forgiveness. Yet that's reverse narcissism: the total preoccupation with the self, the shutting out of the realities of what it means to be human.  A central Zen belief is that to be a human is to be prof

Processing Grief - Yes, Mediums Can Help (even if they're a scam)

" ... 35 percent of parents who had lost a child found mediums 'very helpful' in relieving grief, versus 26 percent of those who visited mental health practitioners." -  Elle, October 2024 In psychic services demand is growing, both for consulting with a medium and for workshops teaching mediumship. What's driving that is the buzz in communities about how even one session with a medium helped those with loss process their grief. In addition, it has become irrelevant to those who experienced the healing if folks on their network tell them that the particular medium is a "scam."  In my own tarot reading practice clients tell me that connecting them with those who have passed over - be it a human or an animal companion - has provided relief. I feel blessed that my gifts have lessened pain. In some situations, the sufferers can let go of that relationship, such as a husband who has died years ago, and begin opening up to flirting.  Unfortunately, because me

Of Course "It" Hurts - The Brutal New Realities about Earning a Good Living

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In tarot readings I have been hearing more and more about the "pain" of no one seeming to give a damn about you on the job.  Well 1) Expect more of this kind of emotional upheaval and 2) It's totally up to you to keep ensuring you can make a good living.   Don't depend on standard "protections." The emerging realities of getting, holding and moving on to better work are increasingly brutal. At the top of list is the trust in collective action.  But, now a darkening cloud is hovering over the promises of unionizing. It engenerated such  hope in the 1930s.  Recently that seems naive.  For example, it doesn't appear that collective bargaining at Boeing will bring back pensions.  Starbucks front-line workers who put their hopes in even supporting unionizing haven't seemed to have gotten much in terms of improved conditions. At  VW in Germany , a nation in which job protections have historically been strong, there have been announced: Closure of three pla

You Can't Handle It Right Now - Manifesting The Pause

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  In the tarot one of the most important cards is the Four of Swords - sometimes called the "Pause." Swords symbolize cognitive processes and the human being in the card is putting all that rumination on-hold, for the present time. So many clients, especially during these volatile times, need to shut down the energy-sucking focus on the whatever. And, yes, pause. Either the time is not right or they are not ready to move toward a solution. In readings I provide this manifesting exercise: Lift your arms and place the situation on the highest shelf in your residence. Reach. Reach. Reach. Close the door. Lower your arms, turn your back to the shelfing and walk away briskly. You can return to the shelf at any time but you don't have to put an angst-filled deadline on that.  Then I add the reality: Some things solve themselves. The offspring seemingly is a failure to launch. Then they hit upon a hobby which can be turned into a well-paying career. They move out of your house t

The Charm Offensive - So Yesterday

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There's a wrong question on  Reddit Big Law : How to be more charming?  It's wrong because it is so out-of-date in this visual era when the "tells" of a self are totally out there. Instead, as we experience in the new kinds of sales approaches and the ethos of influencers, decoding the tells is about the search for authenticity. That opens relationships. That's what we seek out. In contrast, charm sucks up all the oxygen.  Kamala Harris is faulted for charm w/o authenticity. Some contend it has been a persona shaped by her handlers. The chatter is that the all-important voter category - Black men - "see through it." A boomer white woman I can't connect with Harris.  In addition, the rise and the fall of the Murdaugh Southern legal dynasty provide real-life evidence of the toxic nature of charm. The new book about that -  "The Devil At His Elbow"  by Valerie Bauerlein - chronicles how Alex Murdaugh glad-handed his way to everything from cor

The Election - What's in the Cards

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  Not yet. No bigwig has contacted me about how the election will go. But they still could. After all, the stakes are high. For example, so much money has been invested in the messaging. Law firm Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp predicted this would be the most expensive political fight ever. What I tell Everyman and Everywoman who contact me for a prediction of outcomes is this: I explain a projection isn't possible to deliver. There is no "destiny" in the sense of what's set in the universe. There never is. That's the purpose of a tarot reading. You find out there is a possibility you could be fired. So you change your behavior and seek out advocates who could save your job. The only thing I pick up is the energy surrounding a situation at a specific point in time. Then I interpret it. As time passes, what's in the cards could also change - radically. Most recently what I am reading about the election is "no sure thing." The media and the polls are usual

Laid Off - Don't Get Trapped in Feeling

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Many of the white-collar sectors are downsizing. They may never return to the earlier demand patterns. Especially hit hard are the erudite niches such as management consulting. Daily on professional anonymous networks - and in my tarot-reading practice - there are soul-wrencing laments about layoffs. In this one on Fishbowl Consulting  there is this wisdom: " ...limit yourself to 24 hours of 'grieving.'” Despite all that our economy has gone through since the dot.com bust, post-9/11 downturn, world financial implosion, COVID and the current souring prospects for knowledge workers, those negatively impacted tend to continue to withdraw into feeling. That's a carryover from the 1960s era of romanticism: Let the emotions rip. That's where your truth is. Sure, take of pause to process the shock and the new burden to put together a solution for how to earn a good living. In the tarot that is symbolized by the Four of Swords. But that should be a temporary state of being