9 January 2021
Today's Cards
Context
Welcome to day 9!
Today was the first day of lockdown for the Greater Brisbane area. This means that excitement needed to be found around the home. It also meant that my interstate family who usually have trouble catching up with me on a weekend knew exactly where to find me.
The change in weather and our presence at home has meant that the slave drivers (our cats) have their slaves easily to hand. On at least four occasions my masters has me pinned to the seat preventing me from doing any housework. It meant, of course, that left my husband free to bring me food and drink until they deigned to let me off the seat. It didn’t all go my way, the reverse was true when he was pinned down.
You may ask, how did these felines (fiends) manage to get the upper hand on two strong capable human beings? Let me respond with my own question, “have you ever been purred at or on?”. It’s incredibly difficult to resist, just like a puppy that looks up at you with sweet brown eyes wanting a piece of that chicken stuff you have on your plate.
Alternately, we might just be suckers.
Before I go any further, I should categorically state that I love my family and friends and do not mind being contacted by them whatever the time or the cause. Those that know me, know that when I write about “escaping them” it is only because I know they know I’m not serious. In fact, I am honoured to have them in my life.
Now back to the jesting :).
The excuses I proffered were like, washing my hair at 2:00pm, brushing my teeth, filing my fingernails did not pass for suitable “doing things” to avoid a Zoom chat. I did manage to forestall the meeting by claiming that one of our masters, Valentine, was on my lap. Which was apparently plausible – he’s gotten to them too!. Waylaid by master Valentine, hair brushing had to take a backseat. The Zoom chat clearly demonstrated that I had not brushed my hair for days!
On the upside, I got some gardening done even if it was raining.
That said, let’s see how interesting the cards make lockdown sound 🙂
The Cards
First card is Ripeness in the Now position. As the name implies I am ready for the next step and that some degree of maturity has been reached. Indeed, I believe there has been but for most of the day I was stalling on progressing. Fortunately, I had already committed to deliver a document for editing.
Second card in the Influence position is Schizophrenia. Schizophrenia being that rock and hard place decision making or at the very least being in two minds about doing or not doing something is a blocker card. The rock was commitments to my family and the hard place was the commitment to send something through for editing in the morning. Both happened just the timing changed from what was originally planned.
The third position or Goal position has the Friendliness card. This is just having a good feeling of solidarity with my fellow humans being in lockdown together. Or could it be that I would like the website to come across as friendly?
Distant Past card is Celebration. The card of Celebration is moving in a predictable arc. What this technically means is that the moment of Celebration has left an imprint from which future decisions has been built off. This could be that I had some success with asking for help instead of trying to go it alone. The best part about it was that I was humbled and pleased by the positive response.
Recent Past card is Trust. The part of me that was reluctant to ask for help, apart from not wanting to oblige my friends to help, was that I get a bit scared having an editor look at my stuff. This is for two reasons: one is that I’m scared of the judgement on the poor grammar and two is that if the editor finds too much to change that it reinforces that I’m not very good at it.
Okay there’s a third reason, if the editor does their job well, it sounds as if I could have written it and therefore on some part robs the editor a little of their skill – which what I really don’t want to do.
That then brings us to what Trust is all about – letting go and trusting the people and the process without it there’s no growth.
Fittingly, the Future Energy position shows the card of Going with the Flow. The image is of a person floating naked on their back in a relaxed state, letting the water/ river take its body wherever it will.
This is “going with the flow”. It’s not fighting where you’re going. Not fighting the circumstances of what you’re in. It’s simply surrendering and accepting without fear. Note, this is not being blindly led, the figure is not being forced.
Going with the Flow follows on from the Trust and Ripeness cards to demonstrate that it is certainly time to put documentation out there to be tweaked.
My Feelings on the issue card is Silence. As mentioned yesterday when Silence appeared as a Goal of listening to an inner quieted mind. My feelings on being ready (Ripeness) are very closely aligned to Going with the Flow. I am at peace with the actions I have taken and am awaiting feedback, whether that be good or bad from an ego perspective.
The Other People’s Views spot has the Creativity card. The Creativity card is like the card of pregnancy it is something that comes from you but does not belong to you. Creativity can be all absorbing for a while and buoys enthusiasm.
Am guessing that family and friends can see that in me at the moment. Every second paragraph rolls back to my website. I pity them over the next year *smile*.
The Hopes and Fears card is Possibilities and out of nine days it has shown up five times regardless of the shuffle method. The last three days I have been using the “washing machine method”. The method entails laying the cards on a flat surface and then simply swirling the cards around clockwise and counter-clockwise to ensure they are well and truly shuffled.
So Possibilities is what I hope for, in that I would like things to progress and open up for me. At some point, I will need to get the other things that make up a business website happening. Oh, you know little things like, “comments”, “like” and “subscribe” options at the bottom of posts. That will then trigger another learning curve – scary!
The Outcome position has the card of Understanding. Many years ago I had a dream of being jailed. The jail didn’t have doors or a warder to attend it. The jail was like one of those “honesty boxes” you see by the side of the road situation next to random fruits or vegetables.
Unsure of my crime, I sensed in the dream that it couldn’t have been serious if there were no bars, doors or guards. Not even any other inmates. After some time I realised I could leave whenever I wanted. There was no-one there to stop me but me. But I was cautious about leaving nonetheless.
It was such a vivid dream. Analysing my own dream on waking made me understand that sometimes I punish myself for stuff that no-one else would even think was even punishable. It was stuff that if it was someone else I wouldn’t punish them for it.
So, I had to pretend I was someone else and treat myself like I would them. Usually someone I loved and/ or cared about.
This is what the Understanding card is about. It is about realising that constraints that were in place by me on me were really of my own doing. Understanding in the Outcome position might simply mean that I am ripe for this type of realisation or that the indecision found in Schizophrenia and the fears in represented by Possibilities are distorted by an inner unfair and harsher perspective.
With love, Michaela