Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.
Marcus Aurelius via The Art of Life Tarot – The Hermit
A Quiet Writing deep-dive Tarot Narrative each Monday to share intuitive guidance, wisdom and insights from aligned books – for the week and anytime…
This week: retreat within to find approval with yourself as the best guide for creativity + life
Theme for the week beginning 14 May
The underlying theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards deck – #46 Find approval with yourself before turning your eyes to the world.
This week we are reminded to retreat within and look inside to find approval. We can so often measure ourselves against arbitrary external measures. It might be someone else’s website, career, latest offering, lifestyle, Instagram feed, family, friends, writing – anything really! There are limitless ways we can measure ourselves against the metric of another’s life. This week, it time to halt that and go within for approval and wisdom. A little personal retreat is a wise way to proceed with this week’s energies.
Advice from the Life Design Cards Guidebook is:
Don’t get hooked upon social approval. Let integrity and personal essence guide your way. Get to know who you really are by spending time alone.
Today’s narrative, led by this theme card, encourages us to retreat to channel our creative and personal energy wisely. Listening to our inner wisdom is only possible when we quiet the external noise. Then we can hear the small still voice of our intuition in a much clearer way.
This is what Quiet Writing is all about! Self-leadership through listening to yourself and letting your wisdom guide you. Prepare to retreat this week – a little or a lot – to access that inner wisdom to guide you on a clearer path.
Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 14 May
Tarot Narrative:
Are you feeling scattered because of unfinished business and all that you want to achieve? You might be feeling restless as you strive to do all the things. Taking some time to retreat within for clarity is advisable now. Setting your own pace, knowing your own best priorities, discerning procrastination from the need to gather yourself, can all be sourced from listening within. Moving ahead is just a matter of pausing to listen to ourselves and our own wisdom sometimes.
Cards: Knight of Rods (Wands) and The Hermit from the Morgan-Greer Tarot and #10 Unfinished Symphony in protection (reversed) position from Wisdom of the Oracle.
Book notes:
To engage in disciplined action first requires disciplined thought, and disciplined thought requires people who have the discipline to create quiet time for reflection.
Raymond M.Kethledge & Michael S.Erwin, Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude (p. xiv). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Today’s theme is all about taking time to retreat for solitude and reflection. Through this, we can create disciplined thought. We might go about this in creative ways, opening up our options first to distil them down. But it’s all about pausing and taking a kind of personal retreat to review and be still so we can hear our inner guides.
This fabulous book, Lead Yourself First, is all about how self-leadership through solitude and retreat can be a source of wisdom and insight. The book has numerous case-studies of how leaders have used this form of retreat to guide wise and disciplined action.
Wholehearted self-leadership
I have written extensively about the book in a guest post for Worksearch: How to become the heart of successful leadership: this is what you need to know so you can read more there. Also in this post on Quiet Writing. Here are a few thoughts from the latter explaining how wholehearted self-leadership is key to Quiet Writing:
Two key threads underlie Quiet Writing: one is being wholehearted and how we create our stories; the other is self-leadership and how we work towards being wholehearted through taking personal action. The key to taking action and knowing which actions to take are:
- knowing ourselves and what we value and desire
- learning to listen to our inner knowing
- understanding our innate personality, including its strengths and what is challenging for us
- seeking out, incorporating and acting on influence and inspiration from others.
Pursuing passion and creativity
The Knight of Rods (Wands) focuses our attention on pursuing our passions and creative projects. But the energy of the Knight of Rods can be a bit restless and impulsive. On the positive side, this type of energy can help us break through barriers and be more creative. On the flipside, we can also be trying to do all the things and all at once. It’s a great energy to work with though if we can harness it. The Robin Wood Tarot describes it as “practical action in spite of distractions.” The trick is to find a way to channel that energy in a sustainable and disciplined way. And to find a way to negotiate the insistence of multiple of ideas and the noise of numerous distractions.
Retreat and going within to find clarity
The Hermit comes along to beautifully remind us of the value of retreat to find approval with ourselves. This card symbolises that it’s time to value the need to retreat for clarity and inner listening. As The Fountain Tarot guidebook reminds us for The Hermit, “Silence leading to clarity” is key here.
Quiet Writing is all about this process of retreat to find wisdom and self-discipline. We can get so caught up in comparisonitis, measuring ourselves against others. Or it might be some pace or goal we have set ourselves which has no real rationale. With the energy of the Knight of Rods being ignited, we might be trying to achieve too many things at once.
We are encouraged to go within, to retreat into our own inner knowing so we can access the discipline of thought and intuition to proceed. It can all get so complex and multifaceted, especially as creatives, as we have one idea and then another. Stopping to gather our thoughts, make lists, mind-map, distil, make a plan, unravel, walk or free write can all be valuable ways to use this time of retreat.
Sometimes we might just need to nap or rest altogether, freeing our mind of all the thoughts running. A few days of mental rest however that manifests can mean we can see afresh and listen anew to ourselves. In ‘Lead Yourself First’, we can see a variety of ways leaders access solitude for self-knowledge including running, walking, flying, laying bricks and writing. Leaders intentionally and systematically “build pockets of solitude” into their lives. An example is Bill Gates who:
during the rise of Microsoft, set aside entire weeks to just go away and read and reflect, what he called “think week.”
Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude (p. xv).
Through this process we can work out what matters, however we might choose to do this individually.
Unfinished business
The Wisdom of the Oracle card Unfinished Symphony steps in with wisdom around working out what is procrastination and what is real work. Our unfinished business can be a key to where we might be operating out of fear or putting things off. Being clearer about this can come through retreat and stepping back to listen within.
But we are encouraged not to stall:
Don’t overthink things or let yourself get distracted – just tie up any loose ends and deliver the results. (p39)
I am in a Coffeeshop Writers’ Group coaching program with Caroline Donahue to support reaching my writing goals. In a group call, I shared my thoughts about feeling stuck with so many projects not going anywhere or as fast as I want them to. It’s very Knight of Rods with so many projects on this ‘To Do List’ next to me. Taking some time out this week for clarity along with a little mental rest will help me reorient. It’s ironic that sometimes we need to stop to move forward more productively.
Part of us wants to run on and get out there with all of the ideas racing through our minds. Another part of us realises the wisdom of retreat to reorder and assess our ways of working. Stopping to listen within to work out priorities and in that, addressing any unfinished business, is valuable work now.
Honouring the need for retreat
How good does that image of a comfy bed, blanket and a book look to you right now?
It looks perfectly dreamy to me and I can hear my soul saying, “Well do that then if that is what you need.” With an eye to working out what is procrastination versus a real need to rest, retreat and rejuvenate, it’s time to seek a little quiet now. It’s time to listen to our soul and our creative longings and how they want to be expressed.
How might you do this? You will know your own ways to do this but here are a few ideas:
- work with tarot and oracle for intuitive guidance and free write about what comes up
- walk along the beach or in the city or on a quiet country road and see what surfaces
- make a list of unfinished business that is troubling you so you can reprioritise
- rest in bed with a good comfort read and empty your mind a little
- make a visual collage to see what messages emerge
- journal about what’s important to see what comes through
- go on a self-guided writing retreat
- practice yoga, meditate, swim or do whatever works to clear your head
- declare a few days of retreat to concentrate on planning the next six months ahead
- take a few days to clear your head with good food, yoga and walking to reset a new way of living
- think about all the reasons to go on a writer’s retreat and then plan one!
- sign up for a retreat like this one later this year in Vietnam, led by my friend Kerstin Pilz, to carve out times of retreat in your life more generally
- identify the self-leadership practices in your creative tool-kit
Honouring the place of retreat in our lives is key to moving ahead productively. Take some time to journal to quell the noise and listen to your quiet inner voice this week.
Love to hear your thoughts!
I’d love to how this message of retreat to listen, check in and find approval with yourself resonates with you this week.
All best wishes for a week of untroubled retreat, embracing your hermit and connecting with your soul’s voice.
May you find inspiration in listening to your inner wisdom and knowing what matters. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!
Keep in touch & free ebook on the ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’
You can work with me to help tap into that inner wisdom and magic guidance. Free 30-45 minute coaching consults chats are available so please get in touch at terri@quietwriting.com to talk further. I’d love to be a guide alongside to help you conduct creativity and magic with spirit and heart in your own unique way.
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You might also enjoy:
Shining a quiet light – working the gifts of introversion
Finishing on a high note – closure, letting go and moving on
How to make the best of introverted strengths in an extraverted world
Being a vessel – or working with Introverted Intuition
