We can’t learn to see if we can’t keep our eyes open. In just this way, staying open to the unexpected expands the openness of our heart.
Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk
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: the value of strategy, patterns + higher order connections
Theme for the week beginning 19 March
The theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards – #19 Design from patterns to details.
This week is about strategy, patterns and seeing higher order connections. We can get so lost in detail especially when times are tough, not seeing the forest for all of the trees. There is a higher form of pattern and strategy there if we step back for a minute to see it. It might be new ideas, seeking solutions to problems, being more counterintuitive, putting the pieces together in a different way. Whichever, we are encouraged to see from the perspective of recurring patterns, images and signs, to notice synchronicity. We are reminded to see the geometry of our experiences: the spiralling as we revisit old habits to see anew or recognising the higher architecture of our experiences.
Advice from the Guidebook is:
Are you concentrating too much on the details whilst missing the bigger picture, or vice versa?…Aim to find unique solutions where possible.
There is guidance in there too about avoiding making assumptions or having preconceptions, remaining open and seeing links and connections in new ways.
So the guidance this week is around making space for new strategy and design in our thinking.
Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 19 March
Tarot Narrative:
Look for strategy, patterns, the higher order of connection now. See what you’re missing, the geometric shape that can hold the unfolding patterns, events and designs. Perceive what is real and what is fear. Work with the counterintuitive, have courage and be creative in finding solutions.
Reading notes:
Cards: Queen of Air (Swords) and Five of Fire (Wands) from The Good Tarot and #36 Come to the Edge in protection (reversed position) from Wisdom of the Oracle.
Book notes:
When we assume that we author everything we experience, we snuff the possibility of being touched by the more numinous dimensions of reality.
Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk (p116)
This reading reminds us of the higher order of the strategy of the spirit and opening ourselves to answers beyond the obvious. As Mark Nepo reminds us in ‘The Exquisite Risk’, our ego can have a strong role to play in how we see circumstances; sometimes this means we miss other things like signs, patterns, signals, connections and counterintuitive ways of looking at the situation.
Recent experiences have encouraged me to open up to energy connections and ways of working on more spiritual planes. We can get so preoccupied with the here and now, we forget to breathe deeply, seek answers from our higher guidance and work with energy healing that can help us on another level.
Strategy can sound like a cold word but as an INTJ Jung/Myers-Briggs personality type, it’s second nature to me to see higher patterns. Or at least to attempt to. Like everyone, I can get bogged down in detail and confounded; or conversely, so high in the sky, I miss the real connections.
The Queen of Air (Swords), who links with the INTJ/Mastermind personality type, reminds us to wield our swordy clarity in a real way. As The Good Tarot Guidebook prompts us, this might include: setting healthy boundaries, seeing the underpinning whole, having a clear purpose, and being more honest with ourselves about what is happening.
The Five of Fire (Wands) suggests that freedom to explore ideas and be open is a powerful way to move at this time. Just as Mark Nepo reminds us, it’s not just a mind thing either, it involves openness of heart:
We can’t learn to see if we can’t keep our eyes open. In just this way, staying open to the unexpected expands the openness of our heart.
Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk
The gifts of strategy
I’ve worked in strategy in many areas of my life including leadership of strategic policy in government. The gifts of strategy are many and they include:
- stepping back to see connections
- seeing the whole
- allowing the framework to emerge
- letting go of false assumptions and unreal fears
- searching beyond easy solutions
- putting steps into place to reach higher order solutions
- being clear in purpose
- seeing patterns and connections
- looking for ‘out of the box’ answers, unfamiliar or counterintuitive options
- doing the research to know the facts
- brain-storming to open up the possibilities
Applying strategic skills to our lives and looking for patterns and solutions in more holistic ways is encouraged now. This might involve creative work: collage, poetry, brainstorming, mind-mapping, Sacred geometry might be a way of doing this, as Lynn Hanford-Day has found: mandalas, recurring patterns and seeing the whole in a creative and spiritual way.
Sometimes we have to step away and do things differently to see the patterns, connections and emerging solutions. I know working with visual imagery can help me. I am a person who works with words a lot, so working another way such as through visual collage can help me to break through to new ways of seeing things.
The above is a visual collage in my journal as part of the Softly Wild ecourse by Victoria Smith. This is a kind of paper altar at the start of the journal, a snapshot in time of what I was trying to make sense of then. Once I saw it all together, I understood the message perfectly. But I would have had trouble coming at it in more logical ways. Just taking a few hours with some magazines, a glue stick, a pair of scissors and an open blank page can be the way to work out the critical strategy for the next steps. It’s a way of accessing the unconscious directly, just as tarot is.
We are encouraged to do work counterintuitively now, so lean into what is not so natural for you to open up new possibilities. If you always work with visuals, try writing. Conversely, if you are a word person, take photographs, colour in or make a visual collage to free up different senses and cognitive functions. If you are a logical step by step person, try mind-mapping. Perhaps breaking things up into steps would be helpful if you can get stuck in the big picture and not take action.
What we are attracting and noticing
The law of attraction also has a place in all of this as we work with more spiritual and intuitive dimensions of energy. Thinking about questions like these can help:
- What are we fearing and how much energy are we putting into that?
- Are we envisioning the positive of what we desire rather than the negative of what we don’t want?
- What is leading your thinking – fear or positive desires?
- Are we taking time to notice signs, symbols and synchronicity or have we dulled our intuition?
- How are we flexing our intuitive skills in the everyday to find higher wisdom?
We are encouraged to open our eyes to the higher order of connections and symbols and to their magic now. As Carl Jung reminds us:
Life is a luminous pause between two mysteries that are yet one.
Strategy work in action
It’s important to remember what practices help you in your own strategy work and making connections at this time. What helps you in making sense of things? Which activities open up options and solutions?
Here are some ideas and options for tapping into your strategic side:
- mind-mapping
- brainstorming
- making lists
- colouring in
- drawing and painting
- taking photographs
- making collages
- journalling
- poetry
- gathering facts
- envisioning
- creating mandalas
- researching ideas
Write your own list of activities for developing strategy, identifying patterns and making connections this week.
This is a great week for uncovering more strategic and connected approaches to life!
Love to hear your thoughts!
I’d love to hear if you are feeling these energies around the need for strategy, seeing patterns and deeper connections.
All best wishes for this week of making new connections, being open, seeing patterns and using all this to progress in our creativity and in life challenges.
May the Queen of Air guide you to clarity and openness in matters of ideas and of the heart. 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 in March + April for a May coaching start 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.
You can download my free 95-page ebook on the 36 Books that Shaped my Story – just sign up with your email address in the box to the right or below. You will also receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions. This includes personality type, coaching, creativity, writing, tarot and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.
Quiet Writing is on Facebook and Instagram – keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community.
If you enjoyed this post, please share via your preferred social media channel – links are below.
You might also enjoy:
Seeking wisdom in water and elsewhere
Grief and pain can be our most important teachers
Alchemy and conducting magic with spirit and heart
Exploring magic as the heart of creative inspiration
Your body of work – the greatest gift for transition to a bright new life
Joy – 18 inspiring quotes on enjoying what you do and love
