Posted on by Shadja

How the Tarot can help with anxiety

If you are anxious, you can be sure that you are not alone.

Anxiety is often caused by stress, and stress is often caused by uncertainty in our lives. If there are things affecting us that we cannot control, or that feel threatening, then we are stressed and anxious.

Right now, the news and the general mood in the world suggests that there is a lot happening, or that might happen, that is frightening and that is beyond our control.

A lot of the fear and doom is exaggerated or just wrong – misery makes money for the people who peddle it – but it creates uncertainty that stresses us and makes us anxious.

It’s likely that you have normalised a level of stress in your body. You are probably not even aware of it. But it comes out from time to time in the form of headaches, tiredness, snappiness and many other forms of discomfort or distress. Often, it can have a more profound impact, causing high blood pressure, heart disease and other so-called lifestyle conditions that are manifestations of the stress and anxiety that seem to define modern life.

A Tarot reading can help you reduce the stress in your body and in your life.

It can give you a new perspective, helping you to step back from the noise and stress of modern life – other people’s stress and anxiety is toxic and infectious – and re-member yourself. That is, bring your scattered and battered Self back into your body so you can reclaim your place in the Universe.

“You are a child of the Universe. No less than the trees and stars. You have a right to be here.”*

A reading can remind you that you do have control over the things that matter in your world. It can shine new light on decisions that you have to make, or questions you are struggling with.

When we are stressed and anxious, it’s very hard to remember who we are and to reclaim control over our lives. If you want to do that, the clarity, insight and guidance that a professional Tarot reading can bring is a great place to start.

*Max Ehrmann, Desiderata, 1927

Posted on by Shadja

Why the Tarot is better than social media

Start your day with a Tarot reading, instead of looking at your phone. Your phone contains all the noise of human ignorance and misery, expressed as righteous indignation. Tarot cards contain the wisdom of centuries and take the ego out of everything. They rely on pure chance.

This morning, I have drawn the Star, the Empress and Judgement. Let’s say light or enlightenment; motherhood and feminine earthly power; and, the ultimate reckoning: ourselves.

It’s not about predicting the future, but it is about what my day might hold, in the sense that it gives me a perspective on the events that might unfold. It’s a reminder that nothing that happens will be unique to me or unprecedented. It’s also a reminder that I am part of the entire narrative of human existence, from the time when we were first able to express ideas in ways other than sound or gesture.

If you’re presented with a problem, whether it’s interesting or annoying, you can run it through the filter of today’s cards.

Let’s say you’ve got a job to do and you haven’t got the information you need. The people you need to clarify it are not around.

The habitual human response – the kind of response you see in comment threads and posted on platforms like Instagram and X – might be to get angry or hurt. “They’ve done it AGAIN, why doesn’t someone do something to stop this happening?” Or, “I can’t do this, what if I get into trouble for failing to do the job? Am I missing something, is it my fault?”

If you reflect on the cards and use them to filter your response to the problem, you might follow a different process.

For example, there’s a lot of light and power in these three cards. There’s something about judgement, which might mean that you’re worried about what others will think of you. Or, it might mean that you can trust your own judgement.

There’s also a lot of feminine energy, and a lot about birth (on some cards the Empress is pregnant and some say the Judgement card is about awakening or rebirth). Feminine energy is often about flow and fluidity, as well as compassion. On the Star card, the woman is pouring water into what could be a flowing stream.

With this guidance, your response to the problem might be to look at the job again and see what you can take from what you have, bearing in mind that you do have the power to bring your own judgement to solving the problem. You can move your response from, “This is wrong, I can’t do this,” to “My colleagues have done their best to help me. What can I do with what I have, drawing on my own experience and talent?”

In other words, you take the ego out of the issue and look at it objectively. You find your own power, instead of giving it away and feeling undermined by the situation.

Reading social media posts, or watching the news, you might think that everything is broken and the world is in a bad place. It’s true that there are some terrible things going on, but the Tarot reminds us that there always have been. We do not need to live our lives feeling overwhelmed and powerless.

Instead, we can recognise that we are the inheritors of a timeless wisdom and compassion, one that can guide us and that we can share with everyone around us.

Maybe we can’t change the world, but we can make our part of it a nicer place to be.

Posted on by Shadja

Yelling. And laughing.

Cut it up yourself, it’s always been cut up. Now you know, it’s all cut up. Mos Def and Rawkus cut it up.
Disposable Heroes cut it up.
Life is memories. No time. Just experiences pieced together.
Everyone knows now, everyone is a writer, a musician, a painter. When everyone knows, no one knows.
S h a d j a. The one, the eternal, the nothing, the everything, the whole, the emptiness, the void. What can you do with notes? It is done. There is only between the notes now.
Between the words.
Between the strokes of the brush.
Between the flashes of light.
Let it sing, the one, that contains the whole, everything, there is nowhere else, only the one, the source, the sound, the vibration.
Let it speak to you. Drown in the drone, the one.
All ideas are wicked.
Sit, lie, or stand.
Open.
Let it wash through you.
There is nowhere else to go except within it and without it.
Leap from here into the void where there is nothing and all is there in the void without limits or ideas there is no void
What a lark.

Posted on by Shadja

I Don’t Know

I don’t know who
I don’t know how
I don’t know then
I don’t know now
I don’t know if
I don’t know but
I don’t know where
I don’t know what
I don’t know why
I don’t know when
I leave my knowing
To other men

I don’t know me
I don’t know you
I don’t think
And I don’t do
I don’t hear
And I don’t say
I don’t preach
‘Cos I don’t pray
I don’t come
And I don’t go
I don’t wonder, ‘cos I don’t know
I don’t know

I don’t seek
I don’t find
I don’t question
I don’t mind
I don’t miss
I don’t hit
I don’t fight
And I don’t fit
I don’t reap
‘Cos I don’t sow
I don’t nothing
‘Cos I don’t know
I don’t know
I don’t know

I know the sun comes up in the morning
I know the moon comes out at night
Ask me anything you want, I’ll always tell you the truth
And the truth is
I don’t know
I don’t know
I don’t know
I don’t know

Posted on by Shadja

SAY YES

Say Yes
To Yes
Say No
To No
Accept
Acceptance
Reject
Rejection
Say Come In
To Come In
Say Get Out
To Get Out
Support
Support
Deny
Denial
Be True
To Truth
Give the Lie
To Lies
Love
Love
Meet Hate
With Love
Say Yes
Say Yes
SAY YES
SAY YES
YES
YES
YES
YES
YES
YES
YES
YES…
(ad infinitum)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© Yes – this copyright belongs to Shadja 2015 :-)
Posted on by Shadja

Sir George Trevelyan: will you wake?

The human heart can go the lengths of God.
Dark and cold we may be, but this
Is no winter now. The frozen misery
Of centuries cracks, breaks, begins to move;
The thunder is the thunder of the floes,
The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.

Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take
The longest stride of soul men ever took.

Affairs are now soul size.
The enterprise is exploration into God.
Where are you making for? It takes
So many thousand years to wake
But will you wake, for pity’s sake?

From ‘The Sleep Of Prisoners’ by Christopher Fry. It was a favourite and much quoted passage of Sir George Trevelyan.
Posted on by Shadja

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be critical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.

© Max Ehrmann 1927

Posted on by Shadja

Harmony

Wisdom before knowledge

This is a page inspired by the book by HRH Prince Charles, The Prince of Wales. I’ve probably got his title wrong.

To quote the Harmony movie website (www.theharmonymovie.com):

HARMONY IS….
Creating excitement, urgency and action, Harmony reaches out to various and diverse communities, organizations, NGOs and individuals who can help promote the values and ideas of the film through their work.  Harmony aims to unite the global community in an effort to transform the world, address the global environmental crisis and find ways toward a more sustainable, spiritual and harmonious relationship with the planet.

I hope everyone has the sense to listen. It feels like common sense to me, but it seems that only statistics count these days.

People often accuse green types of craving some lost rural idyll. As HRH says, nothing could be further from the Truth. What I would say is, we managed pretty well without statistics, narrow science and industrialisation for a good few thousand years. We must have known something.

I have huge respect for science, but it’s not what it used to be and, as Ben Goldacre brilliantly demonstrates in Bad Science, we’ve got it all out of  proportion. The press mess with it constantly.

What I think Harmony is saying is that science is not our only hope. It’s part of the solution, but cannot provide everything we need.

I worry that our obsessive “rationalism”, where we believe nothing we can’t prove, is preventing us from getting faster to the solutions we need. It seems crazy to look for answers using only the tools that caused the problems in the first place. We are like the big computer companies, launching more and more patches and repairs as if they are breakthroughs, when in fact they are just fixing things that should never have gone wrong in the first place.

Of course, we’ve always had science. Druids, hunter gatherers, Celts, whoever, were scientists – they tried things and if they worked they tried them again. If they worked consistently, they passed the knowledge on.

But they applied the process to everything, not just narrow fields of research. They saw the world whole and did not try to break it down or work against it. They had the wisdom to recognise the connectedness of things.

I think today we privilege knowledge above wisdom. The more we know, the less we understand, because the way we gather knowledge separates and categorises each piece. Look, for example, at what we have done to music – iTunes is riddled with “Genres”, as if every piece of music must fit some known definition. It’s no surprise that the music business is in disarray; there are so many genres reaching so many tiny markets that no-one can command a broad and sustainable fan base.

So let’s stop for a moment. Step back, listen to our instincts – or our right brains, if you insist on being scientific about it.

Perhaps if we just stop and listen, we’ll hear the Harmony.