3 January 2021
If you were wondering whether things were looking up on how I post stuff on the site, they are. I learnt how to remove the duplicate headings I was encountering on Days one and two. Fortunately, I was able to update them without deleting the page – which is a bonus. Also, things are looking a little less scary around the website today.
Now into the cards!
The first card, in the Now, is the card of Ice-olation. Osho typically identifies this as a card where one feels alone due to pushing others away and not accepting help.
At other times, it had appeared to me when I had felt no one amongst family, friends or co-workers could understand what I am going through. In part because I didn’t want to burden them, and in certain circumstances, I chose to suffer alone.
Today, I started with feeling like I didn’t want to burden people with my website. Little did I know that things were ticking away happily and sorting themselves out in the back of my mind. This processing of ideas in the background, I would attribute to the Silence I was feeling around how to progress a situation that I thought was a dead end.
So, I set about my day and accompanied my husband to buy a new pair of work shoes. Buying shoes is what the Ordinariness card symbolised in the Goal or crowning position. It was something ordinary that I enjoyed. Although I dreaded the thought of shopping around for hours to find the right shoes, it turned into something swift, with the shoes also being on a massive discount as a result of the January sales.
I also decided to purchase a COVID-19 mask to have on hand for those times I might wind up in circumstances where social distancing is a bit more challenging to maintain.
The No-thingness card, which sits blankly in black, represents potential. Like an empty glass awaiting fulfilment, a blank canvas awaiting the artist’s creativity, it’s the ebb-tide or the moment between the in-breath and the out-breath. Where the in-breath has finished, but the out-breath hasn’t quite started yet. It’s just that moment of waiting – potential.
It is pretty beautiful, and as I type about No–thingness and thinking back on what I wrote above about my dead-end, it was probably No-thingness at work.
The position of the Recent Past has the card of Totality. The Totality card is about that moment when you completely surrender. It is the moment when the tide begins to turn, and the out-breath starts; it’s the moment of letting go completely.
There is no progress without risk, and then letting go is the risk. The out-breath is a risk that there might not be another in-breath, but we surrender because we cannot stay in a moment forever (even if we can forever live in the moment!). After we returned from shoe shopping, I sat and experimented continually on my website and risked losing everything.
Stupidly, I hadn’t backed it up beforehand mainly because I didn’t think I would experiment too much; but like pulling on a thread of an idea, everything started to unravel – in a good way. The notion upon idea was triggering solution after solution; what’s more, it was working. I didn’t want to stop working on learning something else because I would get distracted and lose my train of thought. Erh… you mean like backups. They’re tomorrow’s problem :).
From the Recent Past, we move to Future Energy sitting to the left-hand side of the question. Today’s card is the card of Completion. This card nicely completes the metaphor of the out-breath. The out-breath reaches its maximum point. The card shows a person’s face made up of jigsaw pieces, with the final item put in place. It’s the moment of exhalation when you’ve been waiting to exhale.
The next card starts with what I usually perceive as the inner strip. In my view, it deals less with the physical and more with the emotional aspects of the situation. This strip begins with position seven on how the questioner feels about the question.
Sitting above the seven is position eight and seeks to identify how others view the questioner or the questioner’s situation about the questioner.
The ninth card, positioned above the eighth, aims to surface the questioner’s hopes and fears on the question. Finally, directly above position nine is the tenth card, which is possible, given the other elements make sense.
Today’s position seven has the card of Compromise. Compromise in the Osho deck means a half-half situation. It’s when the final score of a game-ending in a draw. It’s a non-plus or stalemate situation. It’s better than a loss, but it’s not a proper win because each party has lost something in the deal.
Indeed, although I made progress concerning the website and the creative activities in the background, there are elements that I’ve sacrificed to keep momentum. There’s also a little bit of sleep surrendered – but with improvement comes rest. So, yes. I do feel that my isolation has triggered some personal sacrifices. Talking about my life on the internet also feels a little scary.
Position eight has the card of Sorrow seems to indicate that my sacrifice isn’t going unnoticed. The card shows Buddha’s trusted companion Ananda crying on the first day of the year. It is the only day Ananda allows himself to weep for the people who haven’t reached enlightenment yet.
Perhaps my husband, who has witnessed my rants around the house, has noticed sorrow – maybe he’s feeling like Ananda because I hadn’t reached enlightenment yet.
Moving to position nine and the card of We are the World. I hope everything would come together just like I wanted. That’s pretty much what the Completion card shows with the last piece put into place. With the final element in place, addressing the next hurdle can be tackled. I’ve been working on developing a dynamic stats page, a media library and getting the All Posts page up, not to mention the layout and instruction PowerPoints. Oh… one step at a time!
That leaves the final position, position ten, located directly above position nine. Most times, I’ll be able to identify whether things have panned out, given that the photo of the layout happens at the beginning of the day, and I write about my day and the cards at the end of the day.
The Outcome position has Possibilities. Based on today’s progress, I feel things have indeed fallen into place – not everything, but more than I thought possible a mere fifteen hours ago.
Layout Summary:
Grounded in the Distant Past, No-thingness spurned a self-imposed Ice-olation blanketed by Silence. In reaching for and embracing Ordinariness, Totality arises and builds the foundation for Completion.
Completion with Compromise that others felt as Sorrow not realising the inner hopes and fears were about harmonising in We are the World. Without the Compromise, Completion of Possibilities would not be possible.