Restriction

I think most of you know that I start each week by turning 3 Tarot cards, and I use these 3 cards as a focus for my meditations for the week. I interpret each card with the other and use them as a kind of spiritual life coaching. It's a way that I am used to opening to Deity and through them I feel Deity speaks right into the heart of me. It's something I've done for some time now, it's even got to the stage where I am wondering whether I should begin to tweak and alter the way I spend time with Them before each day truly begins. It's something I've pondered for some time, but, for the moment at least, this is how I have been working.

This week the cards have been tough, and have challenged me to the core. I know that I've been growing of late, I have a real sense of spiritual development and I am aware of growing stronger, and closer to Source. However, this week there has been a strong word from the Lord and Lady of how I need to move forward if I am to continue this path and grow ever closer to Them.

These words are timely, as they have come with the arrival of Autumn Equinox. A time of growing introspection, a time of taking stock, gathering in, not retreating, but recognising growth and also doing some final husbandry. The cards this week have all been about this.

To be honest, and honesty and transparency is one the aims of my blog, I don't seek to present myself as something I am not, when I looked at them I groaned! I so wanted something lovely and fluffy, but no, not this time! I spoke of Air on my last entry, and Air can cut like a knife, a chilling blast that can separate flesh from the bone, and something of that blast has hit me with the cards this week.

Restriction has come up a lot for me this past year, and this week the cards have spoken of this once again. Restriction, but combined with self limiting, negative thought patterns, so the restriction comes not from external sources, but from within. There is something here around developing a keener, more attuned concentration, and a learning to filter out the negative rubbish that my chattering mind can bombard me with at times, and really see myself as I truly am. I've embraced so much of my True Self in recent months, and this is the truth about me that I need to invest in and feed - if that makes sense. Not in some kind of blind denial, but in a real and genuine intention to allow the light of my Higher Self to pervade all of me.

My trust and confidence in myself as a spiritual and magickal being has really grown in recent months, but the Lord and Lady have caused me to pause this week and check out, once again, just where that confidence is placed - is it in what I see as a growing ability, or is it in my relationship with Them. Relationship is part of the core of my spiritual path, and there has been something of a gentle reminder this week.

But then I turned the Tower, and to be honest, that floored me somewhat, as it's a card that has often spoken to me of destruction of something that I have been building, perhaps due to going off course. It momentarily confused me. As I paused and listened to the voice of the Lord and Lady I began to hear what it was they were saying, especially as I read the cards together, as they should be read. The message here was simple - don't underestimate my own intrinsic power. There was something here of taking up my own personal responsibility, but in way that recognises my own ability to create, and destroy, to build up, or to knock down - and this includes myself. As a spiritual and magickal being I create my own reality, I forge my own way ahead, so I cannot always point the finger when things go wrong, rather I have to examine myself, and see what it was about me, within me or of me that allowed that to happen - how did I leave myself open to that attack? If attack indeed it was. If something is not the way I want it or the way I think it should be, if it's causing an internal conflict or causing me to behave in a way or a manner that is not of my own true self, then something isn't right and I need to make it right, but I make it right not from some kind of brutal force, or effort, but from stepping into my rightful place on the web, and from operating from my true will - stepping into who I am.

So my restriction, my internal conflicts, my mind games, my mental conflicts come from me and my responses. It's a further and deeper call to see Source in and of all things and to respond accordingly, not from this body, this ego, but from my own true self.

This is a real challenge, a tough call, but it's part of the call to the deeper things of spirit.

From Reactive To Proactive

This whole sense of 'being' is a fascinating thing. Today I have been so aware of when I get 'hooked' into things, usually an angry response over something really silly. This morning it was due to the driver in front of me doing something really daft, and I could feel my hackles starting to rise. Then I was stuck behind a huge line of traffic behind a tractor, and I was worried about being late for work. As this happened, my mind was taken right back to this mornings meditation, where I was seeing just this - how I can be so reactive, and respond according to the heat of the moment, and not from this deeper place within, this place of tranquility.

I react, get hooked in, and then I am trapped in this physical response. Obviously, it's okay to get angry, one needs to show a bit of passion about things, at times, but again it's about limitation. If I do this, if I get hooked in, then I am simply reacting in a physiological sense and in a way, trapping myself into this type of 'bodily' reaction, as it were. Where I want to be is in a place beyond that, in a place where my sense of self, my sense of 'being' and my sense of 'Now' takes me beyond the need for petty reaction, where these things no longer have the power or strength to hook and draw me in, because I don't allow them that power. As soon as take the hook, it's like I've relinquished my personal power and given it away - I give power to the bait. I don't want to do that. I don't want to be reactive all the time, firing off about this, that and the other, I want to be proactive, in control, shaping my own destiny, aware of circumstances and situations and making things happen - not allowing myself to get caught up in all these things that simply don't matter.

Living in the Now is such a powerful thing, and it's a place where I want to be. It's so wonderful when I actually step into this place, it's like someone has adjusted the contrast on an old TV and the picture becomes so much clearer, much more focused, and everything looks amazing. Living in the Now is like that, everything comes into perspective, things are sharper and I'm aware of my place and connection with everything. It's moving into an entirely new realm and place of being.

I long to be able to achieve this on a more regular basis. I don't want the hassle and stress of the day to shut out the voice of the Lord and Lady and my Guides, but I am aware that I allow this to happen all too often. I get wound up and caught up in the work of the day, reacting to the emergency phone calls, the staffing issues, deadlines, budgets, targets, all that stuff, that I lose touch with my inner landscape. I am not comfortable that this happens, I want to remain in tune, to react less, to be proactive more of the time and assume the place I should be in: forming and creating my own reality, not jumping to everyone elses!