YouandTheTarot

The joy of acceptance. That's after years of insecurities about belonging, or even deserving to take in oxygen on planet earth. And, that's what I found drives human beings to wind up in cults. The odds are that they don't even know they're being controlled, exploited and with no easy exit - Those represent the essence of cult dynamics.  The extremes are the Charles Manson or Jim Jones kind of hold on people. More common is the cult-like. For example, the splendid institution of Big Law.  The routine work, never mind what it takes to get ahead, is so demanding of time and thought that the only way to remain a member in good standing is to do a total buy-in. Yes, the dynamic is a type of brainwashing that this is such a desirable pursuit. Who wouldn't want to be let in! Dissent can get you shunned. Don't question. Fit in perfectly. Otherwise, the power structure won't assign work. If that comes into play you will suffer extreme mental torment. There's a...

  That's what it is, I realized yesterday, when I went to a small city in Ohio to do tarot readings: an economic pall hovering over the whole community.  Of course, that shaped the tone and content of the actual readings. What was needed was highly customized guidance on coping with what was, is and could be. That is, reassurance that they could navigate their way through the darkness. Not a gush of inspirational anythings. That might be the way overall to size up where most humans are around much of the world. CNBC published about a woman who overcomes a rare disease to be able to run the Boston Marathon. So? Instead of being inspired, aren't we annoyed that the media is out of touch. In overwhelm about financial uncertainty most don't welcome that sort of content. No emotional/spiritual uplift here. How can anyone sleep when bills are due? The card that keeps coming up is the Nine of Wands. Symbolized are confusion, lack of direction, loss of confidence. Isn't the b...

  Floating inches, maybe feet off the ground capitalism planted us on. That's "groundlessness." Sometimes it's achieved during deep mediation, as tonight at the Buddhist temple. Or, just in desperation amid so much uncertainty. And that's the magical state of being open to a fresh look at the overwhelm. There's a letting go. In the tarot that's symbolized by The Chariot card. But that's not what "they" hammered into us. We were supposed to keep our feet on the ground. Always have a strategy. Push. Stay with it. Be in charge.  And the majority of suffering human beings coming to me for a tarot reading have been caught up chasing after jobs which no longer exist. Embedded in relationships which they've long ago outgrown. Spending money on a lifestyle which brings stress, not joy. Another way of understanding groundlessness is the "sacred pause."  Caught in a situation which we can't control or not being able to get a handle o...

Prayers Spells Potions Icons. All are for "protection." But those in the loop rarely explain that the entity we humans most need protection from is our very selves. Usually that reality manifests itself after we have been through the wringer. Then, we have those Ah-Ha moments. We unleashed our own destruction. Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous Bill W. and Dr. Bob, who certainly had been through the wringer, recognized how dangerous they were. Part of their mission was to protect the fledging organization from their own foibles. For example, they could have made the simple program complex. They could have imposed control on what was structured to be peer-to-peer healing. In tarot readings I attempt to open the suffering to discern their part in creating, nurturing and escalating the pain. Throughout civilization the great thinkers have steered us to recognize our self-destructive default. They include authors of the Old Testament of the Bible, William Shakespeare, Sigmund Freud...

Even in a simpler time - 1998, before the 21st-century upheavals - a common fantasy was: to be able to have the lifestyle of Unabomber Ted Kacyznski . In the 1970s, along with his brother, he built a 120 square-foot cabin off the grid outside of Lincoln, Montana. He went on to not needing to go to work. He could be lost in thought. Read all he wanted. He hung out at the public library.  Unlike other Harvard graduates Kaczynski wasn't chasing professional success. At that time too many of us were. That was because opportunity was still abundant. Inputs such as investing in a graduate or professional degree generated predictable outcomes such as increased upward mobility.   Obviously, that's not the situation today. Actually, it's cartoonish that  Harvard undergraduates now are balking about a proposed cap on the number of A grades. Smirk, even a few years ago the A grades would have put them on a wonderful linear career path. For example, you could get into a top law ...

The juice is with consciousness.  That applies to everything from communicating with those who have passed over to wondering if chat bots have consciousness. If your ears have been perked you've probably been hearing less and less about energy. Without realizing it, I myself have ditched the term in tarot readings. The latest resource in this exploding focus on consciousness is Michael Pollan's "A World Appears."  On Amazon it ranks 150. Three days ago The New York Times posted a podcast interview with Pollan. Pollan doesn't provide a tidy definition of "consciousness." Instead, he frames it as a subjective experience. That represents the continuum of what it feels like (and the book has a major chapter on feeling) to perceive, to be aware and to regard ourselves as constituting a self. Well after engaging with Pollan's book no one will laugh anymore about those such as King Charles III who commune with plants. In the Sentience chapter there's pl...