manifestation – Just the Tarot

The Four of Cups, The Five of Cups, and Finding Gratitude in Painful Times

There are a lot of people out there right now talking and writing about how to create abundance. One of the things that they all agree upon is the need for gratitude as a part of the process of manifestation.

Whether you’re working with angels and spirit guides or an agnostic trying to get the hang of the Law of Attraction, all of the teachers and financial gurus will tell you to start with a grateful heart. If you’ve only got a few bucks in your pocket, be grateful for them before you try to manifest more. If you want to have stronger, more positive people in your life, start by telling the people who are already in your life how much you appreciate them.

But sometimes we get stuck and it’s really hard to pull up that attitude of gratitude. It could be that we’ve had some sort of a terrible loss. It could be that our lives are going through one of those phases where everything just sucks and we finally have to say, “Jesus, why is this shit happening to me?” Or it could be that it’s just one of those times when we need to feel sorry for ourselves a while.

Gratitude is an emotion, just like love, hatred and anger, so it’s appropriate that the two cards in the Tarot deck that deal with a lack of gratitude are in the suit of emotions – the Cups.

In the Four of Cups we see a man sitting on the ground, arms crossed in defensiveness or rejection, staring at three cups standing on the ground before him. A fourth cup is appearing out of thin air but he doesn’t even see it. The Three of Cups is, of course, a card of celebration and happiness so we can conjecture that the cups he’s staring at represent the loss of some major source of happiness in his life. Perhaps he’s broken up with a lover or he’s been fired from a job that he really liked. In any case, he’s so focused on the past that he’s not perceiving the new opportunity, the cup floating in the air.

Contrast that with the Five of Cups. This is a card of MAJOR, life changing loss and deep, deep grief. He’s dressed in the black cloak of mourning and the wine from the three cups is spilled upon the ground, gone forever. And, again, he’s so focused on his loss that he can’t even see that he has two cups left which are quite full. An example might be a man or woman who can’t focus on their children because they are too deep in grief over a spouse who has died. She has literally turned her back on happiness for the time being.

So, knowing that gratitude can be a major factor in manifesting an abundant, spiritually satisfying life, how do you even GET to it when all you can feel is a sense of loss? Sometimes cognitive and spiritual reframing is the answer.

In the case of the Four of Cups – the loss of a relationship or a job – try to see that cup that’s hanging in the air. Ask yourself WHY it happened. Is it clearing the way for a deeper relationship or a better job? What employment or relationship skills did you learn by going through this? How is this going to make you a better or a stronger person in the future?

You can even take it to a deeper level of analysis if you like. Is this some kind of a script from a childhood trauma that you’re playing over and over again? Are you subconsciously manifesting lovers who will reject you or make you miserable? Are you seeking out jobs or bosses who won’t appreciate you? Can you bring that to full consciousness and turn it around? Can you feel grateful for the growth?

In the case of the Five of Cups, it’s a much rougher road. It’s hard to find anything positive about someone you love dying. True, deep grief is devastating. It can actually make us physically ill and sometimes it drives us to a despair that’s so deep we can’t imagine it will ever end or we’ll ever smile again.

Yet, it can cause a major and ultimately beneficial shift in our perspectives. If we are at all honest with ourselves it will drive us to real and permanent reevaluations of our lives. It causes us to ask what in the hell it’s all about. Is there really life on the other side? Did my loved one survive in some form? Are there spiritual beings? If she was taken and I was left behind, what am I supposed to be doing with my life now? Surely I have some life purpose that’s higher than watching television and eating junk food.

It’s like a ball of yarn that’s come completely unraveled and you have figure out how to roll it back up. Or a jig saw puzzle where you have all of the pieces but you’ve lost the picture of the assembled puzzle. All you can do is start at the edges and try to put life back together in a way that makes sense. Eventually, though, it adds a much greater depth and meaning to life.

Gradually, horribly slowly, we do begin to recover from grief if we choose to go on living. And, yes, it gives us a sense of gratitude for life and for the love we experienced with the person we lost that’s more profound than we could have ever imagined.

Gratitude can always be discovered. Sometimes we just have to look for it a little harder.

Being Your Own Magician: The Magician Tarot Card

“If we do not consciously live our best lives we are destined to unconsciously live our worst.” – Sylvan

I was recently reading about Dorothy Maclean, cofounder of the Findhorn Community and author of, “To Hear the Angels Sing: An Odyssey of Co-Creation with the Devic Kingdoms.” She’s done extensive channeling with the Devas, the beings that oversee the development of forms, for instance of plants. These two quotes really jumped out at me because of messages I’ve been receiving from my guides:

What I would tell you is that as we [the devas] forge ahead, never deviating from our course for one moment’s thought, feeling or action, so could you. Humans generally don’t seem to know where they are going, or why. If they did, what powerhouses they would be! If they were on a straight course, how we could cooperate with them!

Why go around like zombies, following this or that external guide when all the time your only guide is within you?

The Magician Tarot card premises that each person is his or her own Magician. In other words, we all – individually – channel down energy from the Astral and use it to create our lives and our environments. We don’t need to hire anyone to do it, we don’t need to consult with a priest or a shaman to do it, we don’t need to have any secret knowledge to do it. We ALL do it, ALL the time. We are creating our worlds every single day, whether we know it or not.

And for the most part, we don’t know it.

Here’s how therapist Gay Hendricks put it:

. . . one thing I want you to accept about yourself is that you’re already a manifestation genius – I guarantee it. Now all you have to do is hitch your genius to your heart’s desires instead of your default programming.

In other words, we are manifesting our lives and our environments every single day but, because we don’t realize it and don’t realize what we’ve been programmed to believe about ourselves, many of us are manifesting a load of crap. If, for instance, you were raised in a highly critical family and your parents were always telling you that you’d never succeed, guess what? You’ll manifest a whole lot of failure because that’s what you were programmed to do.

So step one in being your own Magician is realizing that you ARE your own Magician. You ARE manifesting your world right now and, as Hendricks said, you’re already a genius at it. You don’t need to practice because you’ve got it down.

Step two is getting really, really straight in your mind and heart about what you WANT to manifest in your life. And, yes, a lot of us have trouble with that. It can go something like this:

What I want more than anything is to be happy. And to get into Debbie’s pants. Of course, Debbie makes fun of me and we’re really not compatible so if we have a relationship I won’t be happy. I could lie to her about wanting a relationship and then I could get into her pants and that would make me happy. Only then I’d have to admit that I was a hypocritical jerk and I hurt her feelings just so I could get into her pants. And that would make me unhappy. On the other hand . . .”

Or as the Devas put it: Humans generally don’t seem to know where they are going, or why.

The trick – the Magic Trick – is to manifest consciously. To take the time to do the self examination and thinking about what you want, where you want to go, and why. Take the time to figure out what you were programmed to be when you were a child and see if that fits with what you really want to be. Take the time to meditate and learn to listen to your heart and your spirit guides. And then make your magic happen. Be your own Magician.

Why go around like zombies, following this or that external guide when all the time your only guide is within you?

“Just the Tarot,“available on Amazon.com

Karmic Re-Set with the Nine of Swords

I remember the last time I pulled the Nine of Swords in one of my personal readings. I had a very spiritual reaction, which was, “Well . . . shit.” Swiftly followed by another, which was, “Why me?”

It probably wasn’t one of my better days.

The Nine of Swords absolutely screams, “karma.” The individual is lying in bed with his head in his hands, a perfect image of someone who has just awakened from a screaming nightmare. The quilt on the bed is covered with astrological symbols showing past incarnations in different signs of the zodiac. The swords behind him seem locked together like the bars in a prison cell.

There can be no doubt that this is someone who has just realized that he’s accumulated some terrible, terrible karma and is going to have to pay a serious price for it.

There’s another way of looking at it, though.

If you’ve spent any substantial time in spiritual exploration then you’ve had that, “Ah HA!” moment when you realize that you are a co-creator of your life. It goes something like this:

I control my thoughts. My thoughts cause my emotions. My emotions cause my energy vibrations. My energy vibrations, through the Law of Attraction, determine what’s going to manifest in my life. Therefore, I control (or create) what’s manifesting in my life.

To put it more succinctly, if I’m broadcasting a lot of negative vibrations I’m going to attract a lot of negative crap into my life. If my vibrations are positive, positive things will flow into my life.

There’s a real rush that goes along with that revelation. We feel very liberated from random circumstances and from people victimizing us. We realize that all of this isn’t being done TO us, we’re making it happen to ourselves, which means that we can change it.

But there are a couple of, “Well . . . shit,” moments that go along with that.

The first one is, “Well . . . shit . . . I made this. This is MY karma. I’m totally responsible for this mess.”

It wasn’t our abusive fathers, or our crazy ex-wife or husband, or the country or culture we grew up in, or the opportunities we did or didn’t have, or anything OUT THERE. We manifested all of it into our lives or we chose to NOT manifest something better. We made it.

Well . . . shit . . .

The second appallingly scary moment happens when we realize that it means that we’re also creating what happens next.

Alcoholics Anonymous and the other 12 Step Programs have a saying: “You can start your day over whenever you want to.” In other words, if you’re having a terrible day you can always take a deep breath, reconnect with your serenity, and change how your day is going.

Tibetan Buddhism embraces the concept that we can start our karma over whenever we want to. No, we can’t escape the unfolding of consequences from our previous actions but we can make those consequences a lot better by starting to live our lives with love and compassion and the creation of good karma.

And when we realize – truly realize – that we are creating our lives right now, right here, with the choices that we’re making, that we’re starting over, that’s a pretty heavy responsibility.

For one thing we have to get really clear on just what we DO want. What are my values? What do I want in my life? Peace? Serenity? Happiness? Family? Sex? Money? What do I want to create in my life? If all of this isn’t just stuff that’s happening to me, if it isn’t just things that people are doing to me, if I’m MAKING my life . . . what do I want it to look like?

And if we’re going to choose to consciously create our own lives – and we don’t have to, we can stay unconscious – then we have to consciously choose, every day, every hour, to control our emotions, our vibrations, and our manifestations.

And that’s not easy.

Well . . . shit . . .