If This Card Chooses You – A project of yours is nearing completion. Harvest is approaching. Do you dream of fruit, perfectly ripe? Do you love to cook and entertain? Are you attracted by movies with long family dinner scenes, everyone celebrating outdoors beneath an arbor? Is touring wine country a popular fantasy of yours? You are a person who is propelled forward by imagining smiles on the faces of others as the work of community and you believe that family harmony is to be celebrated and enjoyed. This vision can keep us going through bitter hardships.
Harvest Comes Because Warriors Prepare You became a warrior because you resisted others’ negativity, hopelessness and learned helplessness. Instead you turned your eyes to the inevitable rituals of seed care, the health promotion of living things, which grants you a front-row seat at the celebration of their flourishing.
Warrior Challenge – Keeping these visions alive during the training phase is hard, because the growth cycle is long and can be boring and uneventful. That’s why planting occurs in stages, so all your psychic eggs aren’t resting in the same basket. Learn to enjoy all the seasons, without hungering for a single season. This is a good time to contrast group versus individual gratifications and ask ourselves, “What’s that about?”
Warrior Danger – Even Warriors can become thirsty for gratification until it takes more and more to satisfy us. “Winning” is a shallow goal if nothing comes after. Warriors seek harmony, blending of community resources to make the whole family stronger. The worst outcome is to be locked in an addiction cycle and spiraling downwards; no longer part of growth, training or spiritual renewal.
Warriors Rest By Dreaming Forward – Sitting around the fire telling stories, modeling “success” as peaceful sharing rather than as an endless party. Luckily sleep and dreams are the best model of fruitful dormancy. We require those periods and we need to look forward to their relief and imaginative nourishment.
Warrior Opportunity – Every group celebration of the success and nourishment cycle is different. Are there leftover behaviors that no longer serve you? What fresh, exciting new ideas might you add? Is everyone in the family/community being well-served or are there grumpy holdouts? It’s fruitful to listen to the grumpy holdouts occasionally. How might they do things differently? If all they want is to harsh everyone else’s buzz, maybe they should no longer expect an automatic invitation to the feast.
Models & Mentors – “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you will get but by the seeds you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
“In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter, enjoy” – William Blake
“Every deed sows a seed, though the harvest you may not see” – Ella Wheeler Wilcox
“We are each other’s harvest, we are each other’s business, we are each other’s magnitude and bond” – Gwendolyn Brooks
If This Card Chooses You – You Express All Genders Are you an empath? Do you identify easily with multiple avatars? Are you happiest with fluid roles in a relationship? Do you dream of the fetish trophies of gender; makeup, wigs, shoes, sports equipment? Do you have frequent “freedom” dreams: flying, swimming? Waking up damp, pulses pounding?
Love Opens Warriors – Empathy Enobles Warriors – IS there an “opposite” sex? Deep empathy makes us worthy to be our own romantic partners, the subject of our lifelong pursuit. This is nothing but the honorable, deepest desire to truly know oneself AND others, to master selfhood and compassion before leaving the planet. C.S. Lewis says we are not a body with a soul, we are Souls with a body.
Warrior Strategy Requires “Becoming” the Other – Strengthening our imagination, we see through the barriers raised by the fearful and the pugnacious. What is “winning”? Empaths double – triple – multiply our vision, our power, and therefore our souls.
Don’t Fear Gender – Warriors who perform “gender specifics” are limiting themselves. Warriors who look for opportunities to expand their reach encompass the powers, the delights, the ecstasies of all humans. What we absorb, we reflect.
Warriors Don’t Fear Physicality – We express ourselves with this gloriously gifted, given body, coming through this gloriously gifted, given world. Woody Allen says bisexuality doubles your chances to get a date on Saturday night. Anything wrong with that? Warriors never “force” themselves to perform sexually; that is subjugation.
Warriors Move Slowly to Absorb, Interpret, Comprehend – We desire to see, to know, to experience everything. Always move as slowly as you feel comfortable with, keeping all options and emotions alive. The “sexual revolution” was a lot of fun, but it was spoiled for many by a witless prejudice against “reserve.” Revulsion, instinctive distaste and doubt tell us plenty. We are on this earth to hone our “gut” instinct as well as our sensitivities. Gavin de Becker, danger specialist, reminds us that fear is an insight, an intuition, a God-given “gift.” Honor it.
Warriors Educate Themselves on Risk – Dangerous “bad sex” stories start with substance abuse, usually undertaken with a nervous desire to get into a more relaxed or even transcendental state; but all it actually does is skip over the “informed consent” that is such an important feature of identity and will. Predators with a need for speed drug their prey! Afterwards the complex feelings of violation and shame can take a lifetime to deal with. These facts mean we must study “trust” BEFORE we study sex. What is trust? Safety? Honor? Let’s work on those issues while we develop a free space to evolve, experiment and grow.
Warriors Seize Opportunity – Fresh interpretations of “gender“ make this a glorious time to be alive. I can recall when gender was a prison sentence of compulsion and rigidity! Now it is an invitation to live more fully, to experience oneself and others more richly, to participate in that fruitful, heavenly life for which we all yearn.
Models & Mentors – “The great gift of human beings is we all have empathy. We can sense a mysterious connection to each other” – Meryl Streep
“Leadership is about empathy. It is about relating to people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives” – Oprah Winfrey
“The capacity for empathy leads to a genuine encounter I which heart speaks to heart”
– Pope Francis
“I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization” – Roger Ebert
“Empathy has no script…there is no right way or wrong way…there is only listening, emotionally connecting, communicating the incredibly healing message ‘You’re not alone” – Brene Brown
#Haiku: Ambisextrous
Fresh birthed – Splash Into you Drenched, Once Halved, now Wholed – Doubling multiplies Us
If This Card Chooses You – Uh Oh. Do you dream of masked balls? Betrayals? Loved and known faces inexplicably turning demonic? People becoming animals? Mazes and puzzles that melt and change? The Firefly is not the only creature using illusion for the purposes of seduction, and seduction is not the only advantage offered by False Love. The Target is virtually disabled by relying on something that isn’t real. The False Lover lives in a shifting Potemkin Village of mirrors. Often, we feel in our gut that “something isn’t right.”
Warriors Stay Alert – You’ve been catfished. You’ve been gaslit. “All’s fair in love and war” means the warrior must always be on game. Pretenders want to drag you into their web of deception by making it seem alluring. You’ll get so many benefits if you just step inside! But once inside it turns out they want you to feel complicit; you can’t escape, you can’t let anyone know, it’s too too too humiliating. You are fated, now, only to deceive others in your turn. Reject this. Resistance is never futile.
Warriors Know When to Cut Losses – Just as the deceptive catfish forces the lazy cod to keep moving (and improving!) when they would rather lie sluggishly on the bottom, the False Lover actually IMPROVES our game. Time to realize we are part of a complex universe where wings disguise themselves as eyes and flowers are chameleons. Conserve your energy. Others wish to capture your power and use it for their own fuel. Get smart.
Warriors Are Careful With Deception – Conserve your facts, reserve your strategy. You are entitled to privacy and security but be careful with deception. Deceivers restrict everyone’s options.
Warriors battle for the universe itself, not momentary gain. Humans are more than energy. Love is more than fuel, it is living water as well as unquenchable fire. It is more than worth your while to hold out for the Real Thing. Real Love stands the test of Time. We are playing this game to get to the next level, and you can’t do that with such a narrow view of existence, where all of Creation is means to an end – the end being You, slick and fat, lying sluggish at the bottom of the Universe. Warriors are commanded to Rise, and so we will.
Warriors Seek Ultimate Reality – Expand your inner and outer vision. We are multidimensional beings and our emotions – our very orgasms – can become multidimensional as well when we appreciate the historic, the inter-generational, the cosmic ramifications of everything we do and think and are. The marriage service talks about hanging in there through sickness and poverty, and it is a proven fact that people who have been through terrible experiences have a deeper connection. It becomes a secret language others just don’t “understand”. When you have children, you gain the ability to live through them – this is a multi-player, multi-avatar game! Life itself can be a terrible (as well as wonderful) experience. So buckle up! Those who are not alert will be eaten.
Models & Mentors – “Remember sometimes not getting what you want can be a wonderful stroke of luck” – Dalai Lama
“Let it hurt. Let it bleed. Let it heal. Let it go.” – Nikita Gill
“Don’t waste your love on someone who doesn’t value it” – William Shakespeare
“Temporary people teach permanent lessons” – Alysse Aallyn
“Love dies of wounds, errors and betrayals” – Anais Nin
“Attitude toward gratitude defines a person” – Eli Wiesel
#Haiku: Explore vs Exploit
How long should you stay At the casino? Until they cheat – Or you do
If This Card Chooses You – All suffering comes to an end. Your depression will lift. The future awaits.
Warriors Know “ This too must pass” – We serve the future. Every dream is followed by an awakening which is followed by another dream. In the moment of relief from the fear and the tension that preceded it we are still shaking from the experience we went through. We are in no condition to make decisions. We are just so grateful that it is over. What is required of us, however, is appreciation of the cycle. We are surfing, whether we like it or not. Another wave will come. Warriors learn how to ride it.
Warrior Challenge – To rise above the cycle, take an honest look at it. This is hard to do when we are quivering and feeling victimized but it is necessary. What pattern do you see? The surfing analogy is a good one because the tides are not rhythmic nor perfectly predictable, and they are CERTAINLY not “personal” plus we know another wave will be coming along soon.
Warrior Strategy – Sometimes there’s a way out; we can change jobs, switch professions, get a divorce. Figure out where the pressure is coming from. Assess your abilities. What parts are you good at? Where do you suck? Can you enjoy any of this? How can your performance be improved? Most of us take pleasure in things we are good at. Can your enjoyment be deepened?
We’re Never Helpless – Learned helplessness is real. People give up, stop trying to game or even understand the system. They lie down under the shocks, no longer even trying to escape, waiting for death. Never believe “Resistance is futile.” Don’t succumb.
Warriors Win –This game is bigger than our mortal understanding. Nevertheless, you can comprehend the majesty of what we are up against and appreciate it as a knife appreciates the whetstone. We learn through analogy, we remember through stories. Warriors can always improve, becoming a graceful, competent athletes of this mortal existence until we graduate into the next sphere.
Warriors Roll With the Punches – You can change and affect your fate. But you must roll with the punches. When Jesus says, “Resist not evil” he means, allow evil to roll over you and smash itself against your non-resistance. Martial arts increases our knowledge of how to manage, subvert and overcome Superior Force.
Buddy Power – Friends, allies, buddies, sensei, even dead or fictional characters can be summoned to your aid. People choose such different characters as St. Francis, Sherlock Holmes, Mother Theresa, Joan of Arc, Mulan, Buddha and Jesus to be their “Dream buddies.” Some are more comfortable with an animal – your personal power creature; the jaguar, wolf, eagle or wolverine. You can change Dream Buddies based on the problem confronting you. Ask their help before you go to sleep, solicit them to come to you in dreams to shed light upon your difficulty. Then the next morning, start writing and remembering the moment you wake up. Some key dreams take a lifetime to decipher.
Models & Mentors – “Worry is like a rocking chair – it gives you something to do but you never get anywhere” – Erma Bombeck
“For fast acting relief, try slowing down” – Lily Tomlin
“Happiness is the relief after extreme tension” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Laughter is the tonic, the release, the surcease of pain” – Charlie Chaplin
#Haiku: Blameless
What could you accomplish If you blamed no one Ever – Self included
If This Card Chooses You – Something in you is out of whack. Balance is a key law of nature to help us avoid the dreaded stagnancy that is experienced as a living death. Once our conscious is in harmony with our subconscious, our dreams begin to balance our waking life. Even the worst nightmare can be looked at objectively in the light of day, as a story with potency and significance.
Warriors Seek Balance – Unfortunately contemporary life has become a competitive pursuit of “highs”. A good life well-lived provides natural highs – learning a skill, reveling in physical gifts, falling in love, listening to music, sharing with children, enjoying the grandeurs of nature. Our intellect teaches us that every “high” is dramatically enriched by thinking about it! That’s why we are called “homo sapiens.”
Balance is a law of nature – The pursuit of competitive highs without the thinking and enshrining stages always leads to excess and grief. Highs for their own sake inevitably disappoint, leading to a pursuit of more and more dangerous highs, which, if we are not thinking about them, sharing them with others and incorporating them into our beings, damages our ability to experience joy. Understanding and managing our “emotional highs” is the key to joy.
Warriors Live On Four Levels At Once – Warriors learn to give thanks for and pay tribute to the Past, to enjoy and understand the Present, to anticipate and strategize for the Future and to revel and be comforted by the promise of Eternity.
Balancing the Four Levels – Joy that is held in the mind is joy endlessly re-experienced. It will be yours forever, and you will be able to share it with all the people you love for the rest of your life. Each of us briefly experience heaven during our lifetimes; prolonged, immortalized and enriched by experiencing and re-experiencing with each other.
Warrior Challenge – We need to personally set up our brain’s “reward system” to handle pleasure and suffering or we will be prescribed drugs in an attempt to achieve the same effect chemically. Drugs can be useful as training wheels; ideally we want to teach our systems to achieve the same effect naturally. Calm is the first step to balance, so we must learn to calm ourselves. Meditation, sleep and yoga offer the best methods for reliable self-soothing. First we assert calm over our breath, then our bodies, lastly our thoughts. It’s not that difficult! Reminder: this occurred naturally every night of our lives before we started stressing about it!
Night Is the Leveler – Our species needs sleep to connect to the Universal Mind, and to the minds of all Dreamers, human and animal. Conscious dreaming (often called lucid dreaming) provides a trusted avenue to filter daily discoveries down to your subconscious level. Always have a joy to think about just as you are going to sleep, and another for when you are waking up. This will sharpen your connection with emotional ecstasy and deepen your life. Once our conscious is in harmony with our subconscious, our dreams will balance our waking life. Even the worst nightmare can be looked at objectively, as a story with potential significance.
Models & Mentors – “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule but to schedule your priorities” – Stephen Covey
“Don’t get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life” – Dolly Parton
“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. 2 A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. 3 A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build up. 4 A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance. 5 A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to turn away. 6 A time to search and a time to quit searching. A time to keep and a time to throw away. 7 A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be quiet and a time to speak. 8 A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace.- Ecclesiastes 3
“Moderation in All Things” – Hesiod
#Haiku: Stability
Assert balance; Employ wealth of eternity Universal mind
If This Card Chooses You – Time to make up your mind – Good morning – or bad? Do you wake up fearful, fretful and exhausted? You’re too much of a worrier. Worry borrows trouble and erases pleasure. It’s OK to plan but it’s destructive to worry. “Rumination” is endlessly thinking over a problem in a circular way – it isn’t going anywhere. If you dream only about your problems, you are at risk of wasting your valuable dreaming time.
Warriors Build Routines – Then Explode Them We construct lists and calendars in our training Journals that are very much Works In Progress. Every effort’s an experiment. If you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems, we have to build good systems. As Zig Ziglar reminds us, there’s no elevator to success. We have to take the stairs, one step at a time. We build ourselves so strong that ultimately we can trust our subconscious, even our unconscious, to do the work for us. Warriors create independent selves to transcend their selves.
Taming Wild Mind to Focus productively – Buddhists are fabulous at training the brain to calmness. This is a physical discipline and it does take practice. But as in any practice, we start out needing both effort and commitment. You will have to “forgive” yourself over and over – “I suck at this.” Learning to enjoy the process is key. Meditation teaches us how to live in the present moment. You are your own toddler, so mother yourself. Be delighted by the effort and moved by the commitment. You don’t yell at a toddler for falling down. Study the work of Pema Chodron (libraries everywhere) for assistance.
Your Toddler Self is scared of everything. As we meditate and the fears boil up, we talk to ourselves calmingly. Focus on small, pleasurable things, the green grass, the blue sky. Give thanks for the green grass and the blue sky. Focus on the breath – out with the worry, in with the fresh day of joy and discovery. Now close your eyes. Are you still seeing the green grass and the blue sky? Isn’t that wonderful? Now they are yours forever. Tonight you will dream about them. Cherish them in your heart.
How strong is your negative voice? This is the first enemy we must defeat. We all have at least one – some of us have many. Banish them firmly. Your negative voice is belittling, angry and demeaning. It doesn’t think you can accomplish anything. It is not a helper, in fact it is toxic and we are going to tell it goodbye. Read Viktor Frankl’s wonderful Man’s Search for Meaning and Pinkola Estes’ Women Who Run With the Wolves for advice on how to pluck the lotus of joy from the mud of despair.
Warrior Opportunity – Learning to focus at our advanced age is nothing to be ashamed of. It is a daily practice of mindfulness and joy in the classroom of creation. Be proud of your effort, your commitment and the confidence you are modeling for all future generations that life itself is a dazzling gift. You are alive at this perfect moment for some perfect reason. Let us find it.
Models & Mentors – “Your habits will determine your future” – Jack Canfield
“You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of success is found in your daily routine.” – John Maxwell
‘Practice isn’t something you do when you’re good. It’s what makes you good.”
– Malcolm Gladwell
“It’s easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.” – Benjamin Franklin
#Haiku: Focus
Energy Resurgent Depowers dread Repowers health- Dare – Aim – Fire
If This Card Chooses You – You are depressed or facing depression. In your dreams you hurt. You feel such shuddering emptiness and loss it’s a physical relief to wake up and find your dream wasn’t real. Lots of people fear such sadness is some kind of prophecy. It’s enough to make a person fear going to sleep.
The Detachment Card – warns you are too “involved.” Check out life’s professional warriors – such as cops, firemen, paramedics – all will tell you to “forget’ the personal just to get the job done. Focus on the “healable” crisis– even though all that suffering reminds you of your Special People and the dangers they face unwittingly, every day.
People Die. People Even Lose Their Personalities BEFORE They Die – Think your worldview through BEFORE the crisis happens. If death ends everything, surely you will fear it. But remember, what a caterpillar calls “the end”, Nature calls ”a butterfly.”
We All Need to Mourn – Warriors mourn, too. Warriors’ powerful forward drive sometimes fools them into thinking that moving backward in the dance is a sign of weakness, when ebb and flow are laws of life.
Sadness is not allowed in a society where perfect strangers feel comfortable demanding you “smile.” Look at all these Instagram feeds with everybody grinning away because they’re having so much FUN and their lives are so PERFECT they never wake up shuddering with sadness. Except they are human too, so we know that they risk their very humanity by trying to pretend ”everything’s fine” when the red lights are flashing.
They’re just better at covering it up than we seem to be. And some people, admittedly are just plain shallower. They’ve worked hard to feel less deeply! And narcissists convince themselves that they can transfer their pain to others and “free” themselves by enjoying the suffering they’ve created. This inevitably means we all have lots of work to do.
First, we have to sort out “real” from “transferred” suffering. Whose misery has been foisted on you? If you’re in that position you are literally a “scapegoat” and will need all your warrior skills to get out of it. Do not accept transferred suffering. Pain is inevitable but suffering is voluntary. We feel compassion for some, we pity others their willful darkness but we do not accept their world scheme of punishment and torment.
We’ve all got plenty of legitimate, necessary mourning to catch up on. If you skate over “bargaining” and “acceptance” all that’s left to you is denial and depression. Sometimes, the “causes” of your lost mourning seem inconsequential to our “adult” selves. “So your pet died when you were five,” everybody says. “Your parents got a divorce. You moved five times. Get over it, already!” But we say, Now is always the perfect time to accept the power and significance of your own feelings.
Warriors Feel Compassion for Everyone – Themselves Included. Begin with yourself. Why feel these things now, right before you set off on your next great, consequential adventure? Sometimes it is joy that brings to the surface those past unhealed hurts. That’s necessary, part of the ebb and flow. Because we are strong enough to feel it now.
Warriors Are the Heroes of the Collective Unconscious – Warriors do battle for and honor centuries of collective suffering. (Inter-generational trauma.) It’s OK to think about that sadness, especially if it makes us feel closer to other people. Everyone has these lost, wrecked treasures submerged in their lives.
Warriors Feel Deeply – Your power frees the greatness of your emotion even as it protects your feelings and other people’s. Celebrate the fact that you are able to feel so deeply in a world where others feel forced to abuse themselves, taking risks and drugs in order to “feel something.”
The Art of Detachment allows warriors to rise above the fray, strategize, plan. Even on the eve of battle they enjoy their lives. Let go – finally – of the toxic elements in your life. Time to go “no-contact” on the toxic people who waste your energy. Read up on sadism, the better to understand the people out there who are revel in your suffering. Buddhists recommend surveying your thoughts and feelings from a distance, as in hypnotherapy, then setting them free.
Detachment is Not Dissociation – Dissociation is more like floating through life with all our systems repressed, feeling numb. Dissociation is not good. You can use that quivering pool of tears to respond more intensely to life, to art, to music, and to each other.
Resilience is the Warrior’s Most Powerful Survival Trait. This means that even after blight, we can flourish more strongly, just the way pruned plants will. It’s not necessary to explore all the caverns of your being, but it will make you stronger. Once again, choose a buddy and a guide. Think about the “hero’s journey” story you respond to most deeply. How would you explain your hero’s journey to someone else? Feel free to use metaphors, after all, when we were children we did feel our world to be populated by monsters and the supernatural.
Models & Mentors – “Detachment is power. Release all things that no longer work for you” – Shane Steele
“To be detached means to dive so fully into the experience you dropout the other side… with full understanding you can say, “Now that I know, I can let go” – Teal Swan
“In detachment lies the wisdom of uncertainty…freedom from our prison of past conditioning…willingness to step into the unknown surrenders us to the creative mind that orchestrates the dance of the universe…” – Deepak Chopra
“I release the subjective thoughts, energy and emotions I am holding about people, places and things that kept me trapped in dis-ease…I can step back and allow the feelings & thoughts & energy to dissipate…I am then free to act with compassion, love & acceptance” – Angela James
“Attachment is the fabricator of illusions – reality can be attained only by one who is detached” – Simone Weil
“Detachment is having your life be about you, not about other people” – Karen Casey
#Haiku: Detachment
last phase of grief blesses wrestling angel – flourishes scar tissue wings
If This Card Chooses You – There Will Be Paperwork! – Do you dream of paths diverging in a yellow wood? Checklists? Maps? Are you talking to yourself as you follow your routine? What IS your routine? How has your routine evolved? What efforts have you made to change it to newly perceived needs and discoveries? Or is your routine formed outside you, for the benefit of others?
Warriors Dream of Maps. If you talking to yourself throughout your routine that self-talk needs to be positive. Become an encouraging coach. Don’t hold yourself hostage or you can’t complete your steps.
If You Have No Goal, Any Path Will Take You There – But you won’t like where you end up. Warriors are Goal-oriented. As you become more adept at change, you realize that dividing effort into “steps” to achieve a goal is critical. It won’t happen fast. Your conscious, subconscious, unconscious and collective unconscious (not to mention your pre-conscious!) are going to kick up a helluva fuss. But that’s the interesting part! Change is guaranteed.
Warriors Are Sore-muscled Athletes. Day 2, thinking, I CAN’T DO THIS. Guess what? EVERYBODY THINKS THAT! Expect it! You treat yourself with loving compassion and cold compresses, hot baths and massage. In other words, there is an established map, a way to GET THROUGH THIS. The challenge is to CUSTOMIZE your map.
Being is Movement. As we shape the Path, it shapes us. Even the most anti-social creatures are constantly making paths for others to follow. Such delight when we uncover a ready-made Path because path-making is exhausting! A ready-made path is a mysterious invitation. All paths lead Somewhere. Every Path, Visible or not, speaks of the existence of The Other.
Paths speak of Destination, Intention, Design, History. Paths are our Robinson Crusoe footprint. They represent Hope: this Path worked not just once, but many times. We are proud of being Pathmakers in our turn, leading the weary, frightened traveler of the future toward confidence and reliability.
Warriors Use Models. We need a constantly evolving pit crew of helpers. A side effect of routine remodeling is “crazy thinking.” We all need somebody to talk us off the ledge, somebody who is familiar with not just our goals but what we are going through. Your id is holding the rest of you hostage, and you need an experienced hostage negotiator.
Waves of “fears” from your collective unconscious require symbolic release and expression in art, dance, love-making, sport or theatre.
Disowned longings from your subconscious threaten your secure sense of self and may require therapeutic intervention.
Unconscious drives from depths you’ve never plumbed can’t be faced without the courage of a Friend or Soulmate. So, don’t try making it through this crisis without a buddy AND a coach. AA has a useful acronym – HALT – representing: Hungry Angry Lonely Tired
These are the Emotion States of Bad Decisions. So, when you see these conditions developing – Halt. Call your hostage negotiator immediately.
Models & Mentors – “Setting goals is the first step into turning the invisible into the visible” – Tony Robbins
“If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not people or things” – Albert Einstein
“A goal without a plan is just a wish” – Antoine St. Exupery
“Always remember your focus determines your reality” – George Lucas
#Haiku: Facing the Boogeyman
Mimics dread Mocks goals Derails Ambition; Seize him and Laugh In his face
If This Card Chooses You – Eternity requires your constantly evolving self. Do you dream of astronomy? Vast deserts, steep, empty mountains, person-less vistas? These are eternity dreams, where change has slowed or stopped. You are struggling not with questions of death or afterlife, but the “ongoing everythingness” of reality itself. What is “time”? How long can “time” continue when nothing is “alive”?
Warriors Train to be Immortal – Immortality is never guaranteed. When you imagine “life forever” – what is the “you” in that context? Matter is already transmutably immortal – Your body is currently composed from the atoms of exploded stars. We all tremble at transitions; but do we really want certain phases of our existence to continue “indefinitely’? Seems not only impossible but repugnant. Change is life – changelessness is stagnation. Without any human life, planets and stars continue to evolve. Eternity, like God, must exist outside of time. Fiercely we insist on the continuation of consciousness. But do we want to know the terrible things God knows, or do you really desire a return to an infancy safe inside the arms of a most loving mother?
Warrior Challenge – Some people feel so threatened, angry and violated by life that they want to harm the future itself. They don’t want anyone to be happy or gratified, ever. While admitting that life on earth can be very unfair and terrible, you don’t ever want to be one of those people. They have “eternalized” their own misery. That is the very definition of hell; they themselves have sent their own selves there. Warriors can eternalize our finest moments, when we brimmed with love, ecstasy poured over us and generosity and joy poured out.
Warrior Danger – Ultimate judgment is not up to us. We don’t know everything, our empathy and compassion are not boundless, we cannot “see” in all directions and dimensions. Warriors are forced to make snap judgments on the ground, battlefield decisions and quick-time changes; but we must leave finality to God. Arrogance and solipsism are serious blinders that harm our spirit as they harm others and even the planet itself.
Warrior Opportunity – We are offered repeated opportunities for growth, for humility, for insight. We need to take advantage of these, all the while admitting that since life is a see-saw process, it is usually two steps forward and one step back. Warriors recognize and enhance growth; ideal growth conditions lead to health, while harm plunges everyone into darkness. Mentally we can wish others to avoid suffering and the roots of suffering even when we don’t understand what those are even for ourselves. When warriors connect meaningfully with others all spirits lighten.
Models & Mentors – “Trust in dreams – they are the hidden gate to eternity” – Khalil Gibran
“Launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment” – Henry David Thoreau
“What we do in life echoes in eternity” – Marcus Aurelius
‘Love is the emblem of eternity, effacing memory of its beginning and all fear of its end”
– Mme. De Stael
#Haiku: Beginners’ Mind
I never Graduate; Freshened by Eternally Discovering.
If This Card Chooses You – You are about to undergo a major transition. Are you a SciFi fan? Do you dream of bionic humans? Robots? Cryogenics? How about caterpillars becoming moths and butterflies? Acorns don’t look like oak trees, pollywogs don’t resemble frogs. It is quite common in nature to evolve into some unexpected form. What a metaphor for us, as Ovid’s Metamorphoses postulated centuries ago. We speculate about humans becoming invisible, disguising themselves as bats or wolves; Greek gods “became” swans and bulls to further their purposes. Our imagination is rich with all these possibilities, as is our literature, theatre and film. At a funeral, we look at a bird invading the church is a whole new light. Is it a message? An incarnation?
Your Possibilities are Infinite – Every time you buy a bottle with an animal on the label you are calling on the powers of that creature just as your ancestors did. We suspect consuming even the “idea” of a creature might confer their powers. We also heard the legend that when a human husk breathes its last, the soul escapes and may reincarnate in heaven or even in another life as something entirely different, perhaps without blemish, wholly beautiful for once and for all.
Warrior Power – Who’s your power animal? What supernatural gifts do you desire? Give yourself the freedom to think about the talents you yearn for and the purposes you’d put them to. You can define yourself this way, experiment and play. You might not wish to be a dragon every day of the week, but once in a while it could be fun. How can you cultivate these gifts, desires and yearnings in your present-day life? Don’t these dreams make you a bigger, more important warrior, even if nobody knows? What if they did know? How might you tell them and who would you tell?
Warrior Danger – We don’t want to jump off buildings pretending we can fly. We’re expanding our psychic repertoire, not trying to escape into fantasy. The most commonly yearned for gift is omnipotence. But think how terrible life would be – not just for others but for YOU if your whims and fantasies were never checked? Often our wish is that we be spared the pain of growing up. But who wants to remain a toddler forever? As we get older we are REALLY coming into our own and knowing and sharing our true self. A joy not to be missed. Pity the toddler who prays to fly through the air so he doesn’t have to learn to walk and risk falling down.
Models & Mentors – “Nothing gets transformed in your life until your mind is transformed” – Ifeanyl Enoch Onuoha
“Every success story is a tale or adaptation, constant revision, and change” – Richard Branson
“Perfection is constant transformation” – Nia Peeples
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not fighting the old but building the new” – Socrates
#Haiku: Being Is Relationship
Electric seeks Charge; Transformer – You’re my lock on Immortality
Alysse Aallyn 