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love, loss & longing transcending

Essential matters and feeling your way through pain

April 16, 2018

The cups will fill again and the storm will pass. Feel the pain, and keep one foot on solid ground.

The Fountain Tarot, Five of Cups

essential matters

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: essential matters + feeling your way through pain

Theme for the week beginning 16 April

The underlying theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards deck – #44 Make those essential actions matter.

essential matters

This week is about essential matters of life and of the heart and remembering what really matters. In this, we might be feeling pain and turmoil, but it’s a time of washing away the inessential.

Often the toughest and most painful of circumstances remind us of essential matters to focus on. We need to take the time to breathe through them and learn from them, as hard as this can be.

Advice from the Life Design Cards Guidebook is:

Let nothing be hidden behind walls of fear. Try to feel what you want to do right now. Clarify your priorities as if every minute matters.

Certainly, the more painful the time, the more we realize that indeed every moment does matter. The gift of challenge is to sharpen our awareness and help us identify what is essential and what is not essential.

This week’s guidance is about experiencing the pain and full feelings of challenging situations so we can learn from them. We are reminded to tap into the power of instinct and intuition as we move through difficult times. It’s as if we need to feel our way in the true sense of this phrase, letting feelings be our guide. This might mean going through pain and upheaval to get to the other side. Being grounded and learning as we move through is key.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 16 April

essential matters

Tarot Narrative: 

Change is often painful, it’s true. Spilt cups, falling towers, grey skies, stepping between worlds. It all points to the loss and transformation of something, life becoming different in essential ways. You can lose yourself in this loss, focusing on what is spilt, becoming paralysed. Or you can step into the dark clouds and feel them, know their energy and know too that the blue sky and calmer times will come again. 

Reading notes:

Cards: Five of Cups and The Tower from The Fountain Tarot and #3 Between Worlds from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Book notes:

You are the sky. Everything else—it’s just the weather.

Pema Chödrön

via Rick Hanson’s

Resilient: 12 Tools for transforming everyday experiences into lasting happiness

essential matters

What a fabulous quote from Pema Chodron and what an amazing book ‘Resilient’ is. I have listened to it as an audiobook the past few weeks as I have driven in and out of my little village. I’m facing challenging times yet again after supporting my mother through her terminal illness last year. In the final stages of my mother’s life, as I drove in and out of town to the hospital, I focused on the essential as I listened to Greg McKeown’s Essentialism.

Both books sing of essential matters, moving through the inessential and gaining clarity. Tough and painful times sometimes simply have to be moved through. But feeling the pain and learning from these times gifts us with powerful lessons we can take forward. We develop psychological resources we can gather if from dark clouds, to face difficult times with grace and strength.

Dark clouds and what they teach us

If there’s one thing you notice from each of the three cards for this week’s tarot narrative, it’s the prevalence of dark clouds.

The Five of Cups reminds us that it’s helpful to feel any pain and loss fully as we move through it. If we don’t, we can miss valuable lessons. It is as if we need to feel the pain to move through it. ‘Befriending Grief’, as the Fountain Tarot interpretation puts it, can be a source of moving through any loss.

The Tower can be a fearful card to pull with its top-heavy energy drawing things down. It reminds us of the pain of moving through change. But as the Fountain Tarot reminds us, it can be about ‘The Inessential Destroyed’ and getting through to what matters.

Between Worlds reminds us:

What is essential now is to admit not knowing. There is great freedom and power to be unleashed.

All of these cards especially in the light of our theme card, “Make those essential actions matter”, bring us into the realm of clear, essential, resilient actions.

We can focus on the dark clouds or we can focus on the light coming through.

The photograph above was taken this evening as dark smoke fills the sky from bushfires not so far away. It’s been a sobering time lately in many respects and my thoughts have been with those battling the fires and trying to keep their homes and loved ones safe. The fight is not over. But whatever we are battling, light and optimism will help shine out the dark and keep us focused, even if we must acknowledge the challenges at hand in very real terms.

essential matters

Essential matters and resilient practices

I shared some learnings from my reading of ‘Resilient’ last week in my post, Creative healing in times of sorrow and challenge. This week’s focus on essential matters continues this theme and highlights these practices.

The two practices prompted by reading ‘Resilient’ that have helped me the most these past few weeks have been:

1 Honouring my psychological resources

Sadly, I have been through a lot of pain, challenge and loss in my life. On one side, I can focus on this and let it get me down. Or I can see that I have had the opportunity to build psychological resources to be more resilient and strong.

Everything we go through teaches us if we are open to the lessons. At times, I have had to dig deep and be reflective, talk to special friends and professionals. I’ve learnt to know when to spend time alone, when to practice self-care and how to balance my needs with others. Tough lessons all and with more challenges stretching me, I can dig into my learning and bring all of myself to bear to get through. For example, I am much better at contacting people and talking when I need it now rather than battling on alone.

2 Feeling the beauty in small everyday joys as well as feeling pain

A big learning over time for me has been that it is okay to feel the beauty and joy of everyday things – the full cups – even as we feel immense pain.

We can tend to make it an either/or, saying to ourselves either I feel grief or I feel joy. I cannot feel both. It can feel like a terrible tension or betrayal of the feeling of pain if we feel good in any way.

Rick Hanson reminds us we can take an approach of gratitude:

Thankfulness is not about minimizing or denying hassles, illness, loss, or injustice. It is simply about appreciating what is also true: such as flowers and sunlight, paper clips and fresh water, the kindness of others, easy access to knowledge and wisdom, and light at the flick of a switch.

I have found special joy in swimming, reading, writing, sitting in the sun, cups of tea, coffee and connection with special friends and family at this time. The simple act of getting these tarot narratives out each week is a blessing and wisdom I learn from.

intuition

What are your essential resilient practices?

So take some time to identify your essential matters and resilient practices:

  • Where are you feeling pain and can you acknowledge it for what is?
  • What beautiful and special things have you enjoyed or witnessed lately?
  • How can this light you up even if feeling pain?
  • Where have you felt darkness descend and why?
  • What have you focused on or done to take you there into that darkness?
  • When have you lightened up and what helped you to do that?
  • What psychological resources have you developed over time and how can you honour this and build on them?

Take a moment to list:

  1. Your psychological resources, learning and supports and what helps you get through
  2. The blessings and joys that bring light into your life even if there are still dark clouds and if only for a brief moment.

This is a great week for honouring our psychological strengths, appreciating any pain and blessings and getting to the essential matters of life.

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to hear what is working for you as you reflect on the essential matters of life.

All best wishes for this week of being clear on the essential, removing the inessential and developing resilient practices.

May you find strength and resilience in the clarity and peace of essential matters. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

essential matters

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 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:

Grief and pain can be our most important teachers

Endurance – going the distance with truth, patience and strength

Seeking wisdom in water and elsewhere

Alchemy and conducting magic with spirit and heart

Your body of work – the greatest gift for transition to a bright new life

creativity love, loss & longing

Creative healing in times of sorrow and challenge

April 9, 2018

Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.

C S Lewis

creative healing

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: creative healing in times of sorrow and challenge

Theme for the week beginning 9 April

The underlying theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Marcella Kroll’s Sacred Symbols oracle deck – Medicine Man Eye.

creative healing

This week is about being creative healing especially in times of sorrow and challenge when we can feel so helpless. We are reminded to see higher magical powers, the way of miracles and medicine of different kinds.

Advice from the Sacred Symbols Guidebook is:

Healer – A Healing in its highest form – Prophecy – Natural Magical Abilities

Meditate when wanting healing on the physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual plane.

The Native American Medicine Man Eye symbol reminds us of the “magical powers of spiritual healing and seeing the future. All seeing, all knowing, all uniting.”

This week’s guidance is about tapping into that spiritual, creative healing energy now. Especially when faced with situations where we feel we can do nothing, we are encouraged to reflect on and access higher forms of healing for ourselves and others. As Albert Einstein reminds us:

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

This week we are reminded to tap into the power of miracles, of creative healing, of spiritual energy and higher forms of magic. Call it or make it what you will: prayer, meditation, channelling, energy healing, writing, art therapy, mandala work, tarot, crystals, poetry, chanting. We are encouraged to access and honour our own creative healing forms at this time.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 9 April

creative healing

Tarot Narrative: 

Creative healing in all its forms calls you now as a way of energy or power. You might feel helpless but know that you have creative ways to make miracles. They might be hard to see and even know the effects of, but channel that energy into healing as you know you can. Write, create art, weave, knit, draw deep. Manifesting miracles and creativity out of the deepest resources and from sorrow is called for now as you and others heal.

Reading notes:

Cards: Queen of Water (Cups) and the Nine of Air (Swords) from The Nomad Tarot and #31 Why? in protection (reversed) position from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Book notes:

The waves echo behind me. Patience––Faith––Openness, is what the sea has to teach. Simplicity––Solitude––Intermittency…But there are other beaches to explore. There are more shells to find. This is only a beginning.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea (p120)

creative healing

Today’s card echo together in various ways about creative healing approaches. It might be how we find solace in challenging times to heal our own troubled mind by walking on the beach. Perhaps it’s learning to channel our creative healing energies in different ways such as through reiki, energy healing or intuitive writing.

I know many of the wholehearted stories featured here on Quiet Writing highlight art as a form of creative healing. For example, Jade Herriman writes about embracing a creative life and art as a form of healing that she now extends to others through her practice of art therapy. Lynn Hanford-Day likewise found the creative healing practice of art central in her move from breakdown to breakthrough. Lynn now works with sacred geometry and the divine feminine, crafting a multi-faceted career as artist, coach, facilitator and therapist working with women in transition and organisations going through change.

The beautiful Queen of Water from The Nomad tarot with its single elegant shell reminds us via the guidebook:

The most successful and harmonious of all the Water cards, the Queen shows us the possibilities unleashed by blending imagination and creativity with action and social usefulness….This can speak specifically to artistic endeavours or any creation manifested out of what life has presented us with.

Creative healing from what life presents

The Nine of Air (Swords) represents what life can throw at us especially the darkest sides of life. As The Nomad Tarot guidebook says:

In this moment, we are incapable of seeing the world as anything other than full of endless sorrow.

Life can be challenging and it’s easy in these moments to feel helpless. It’s important that we feel and acknowledge emotions like sorrow, grief and pain as real and as guideposts in life. And it’s what we then do with these emotions that matters.

So here are some questions to reflect on:

  • Do we get bogged down in these dark emotions, Ten of Swords style?
  • Or do we work through them and try to balance them with appreciating the beauty and blessings in our lives?
  • How do we seek to learn from them and heal ourselves and others?
  • What creative healing practices do we engage in to help us work through tough times?
  • How are we upskilling and learning new skills for creative healing and energy channelling?
  • Where can we share this knowledge with others?

Writing has been a creative healing force for me as I have worked through challenges. As described in 36 Books that Shaped my Story, books, blogging and returning to writing poetry have been creative healing arts for me. And in healing and caring for ourselves, as selfish as it might feel at times, we are better able to support others. Shalagh Hogan, in the most recent wholehearted story, shares how she turned darkness into creative projects and gathered lessons that help her and others feel positive and engaged in Creative Soul Living.

The Why? card from the Wisdom of the Oracle deck also reminds us to look at our whys at this time. We are encouraged to look at intentions hidden from awareness. Sometimes when we are made vulnerable by sorrow and pain, we can find new insights. In another form of creative healing, recognising true motivations can be eye-opening and lead to clearer paths.

Resilient creative healing

I’ve been reading a fabulous book, Resilient: 12 Tools for transforming everyday experiences into lasting happiness by Rick Hanson, listening to it as an audiobook. It’s full of rich wisdom on resilient creative healing approaches to life. Hanson doesn’t deny that tough times happen but he encourages us to do the best we can in any situation with the psychological resources we have developed over time.

There are so many positive examples of practical, resilient creative healing to be used day by day. Here are just a few:

Find refuges: 

In the flow of your day, find refuges such as time to yourself in a morning shower, the friendly camaraderie of people at work, listening to music on the way home, or thoughts of gratitude as you get ready for sleep.

Let be, let go, let in

In other words, getting good at coping, healing, and well-being is a matter of getting good at letting be, letting go, and letting in. Mindfulness is necessary for

Be aware of your needs

So try to be aware of needs, or aspects of needs, that have been unmet. Listen to the longings of your heart.

The HEAL process

1. Have a beneficial experience: Notice it or create it.

INSTALLATION

2. Enrich it: Stay with it, feeling it fully.

3. Absorb it: Receive it into yourself.

4. Link it (optional): Use it to soothe and replace painful, harmful psychological material.

See the jewels around you

Each day is like a path strewn with many little jewels: the small ordinary beneficial experiences of life. It’s easy to overlook these and step right over them. But then we get to the end of the day and ask, “Why don’t I feel richer inside? Why does it feel like I’m running on empty?” The jewels are already there. Why not pick some of them up?

I highly recommend this rich and practical book for increasing resilient resources and creative healing in the context of experience. One of the ways of being creative with healing is practising it in the everyday.creative healing

This is a great week for digging deep into miracles and creative healing practices of all kinds. With Mercury retrograde around until April 15, it’s a great time for self-reflection and growth amidst the chaos and anxiety.

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to hear what is working for you as you engage with these energies around self-care and supporting those around you

All best wishes for this week of creative healing and developing resilient practices.

May you express yourself and find healing through the creative arts and your psychological resources developed over time. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

creative healing

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 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:

Endurance – going the distance with truth, patience and strength

Strategy, patterns and the higher order of connections

Seeking wisdom in water and elsewhere

Alchemy and conducting magic with spirit and heart

Your body of work – the greatest gift for transition to a bright new life

inspiration & influence intuition

Endurance – going the distance with truth, patience and strength

March 26, 2018

Remain true to yourself. Your authenticity alone will keep you in alignment with the energy of miracles.

Colette Baron-Reid, Wisdom of the Oracle – #47 Go the Distance

endurance

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: endurance, going the distance with truth, patience + strength

Theme for the week beginning 26 March

The underlying theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards – #47 Resist coercions of your culture.

endurance

This week is about being authentic and true to ourselves and others. It’s about the freedom of standing our ground and working from the truth of our heart.

Advice from the Guidebook is:

With a loyalty to truth, say what you see, regardless of the consequences. Stand firm when your freedom is challenged by direct coercion or insidious persuasion.

This reminds me of Brigit’s message, ‘Don’t Back Down’. Brigit is my guiding goddess for life. She sits on my desk here, as she has for quite a while, with her message of staying strong. “Stand up for what you believe is right.”

endurance

This week’s guidance is about endurance and going the distance. It’s wrapped around a core of strength in truth, authenticity and patiently pursuing our goals. How do we know what’s worth enduring for? This is a key underpinning theme this week. Staying strong for ourselves, for what matters and what we believe in is highlighted. It’s worth persevering and going the distance for what we believe is right. In this, we can resist tendencies to conform, to worry about being different and to give up when under pressure.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 26 March

endurance

Tarot Narrative: 

You can go the distance with whatever is challenging you now. It might feel daunting or endless, but know you have the strength and endurance for the long haul. Whether it’s creative projects, relationships or other life challenges, know that this strength is about authenticity, being true to yourself, receptivity and above all, patience. Open your heart, dance and be in touch with your intuition as you make your path.

Reading notes:

Cards: Strength and Page of Water (Cups) from The Good Tarot and #47 Go the Distance from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Book notes:

Then there are times when we need Strength, which is getting what we want by standing perfectly still, by being open and by daring to be vulnerable. We want the lion to come and sit in our lap, and so we will sit very quietly and wait for it. We can’t overpower it, we can’t force it to do what we want, so we will sit here patiently, calmly until the lion feels safe enough to approach.

Jessa Crispin, The Creative Tarot (p58)

endurance

I’ve written before about the endurance of quiet strength. This sort of strength is not brute strength, it’s a patient, waiting, developing over time kind of strength.

It’s the type of endurance you need to write a book, to parent, to see a much-desired project through and to counter resistance in all of this. Battling things head-on doesn’t always work. Sometimes it’s about being receptive, knowing when to wait and being patient.

The ‘Going the Distance’ card energies were exactly mirrored in the Strength card. Note too that both the Life Design card about resisting coercions of culture and the Wisdom of the Oracle ‘Going the Distance’ card are both number 47. Such synchronicity!

So in this reading, I see connections between going the distance and being true and authentic to ourselves and what we believe in. I see connections too between endurance and a receptive kind of patience. It’s all about staying the course, finding a way through and waiting when the time is not right to move.

In my writing for long-haul projects, I have found that sometimes I just need to wait until more information comes on board. I don’t always realise at the time. But later I can see that I had to wait, go the distance, be receptive rather than act for a while. This can apply to many aspects of life as we wait for the right time.

The gifts of patient endurance

Patient endurance is inspired by the authentic truth of what we believe in. This fortifies us and gives us stamina for the journey. It enables us to sit back and gather ourselves, research, wait for information to come to us, be intuitive.

This is a yin kind of strength just like yin yoga strengthens us through holding poses quietly for a time and breathing into them. We can feel our bodies become more resilient as we stretch gently over time.

Just like this we too can become more resilient as we quietly practice endurance built around the spine of our authenticity and truth.

Keats comes to mind too with his ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, that great poem to stillness and waiting:

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,

       Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

He reminds us at the end of this ode to quiet strength:

  Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

  Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Throughout this reading, the spine of truth, waiting for truth and authenticity and believing in it, breathes through. Whether it be campaigning for what we believe in, writing our truth, trying to get to the bottom of something, waiting for others or having the persistence to carry on.

endurance

Endurance through quiet strength

It’s all about finding our way to endure through patience, receptivity and quiet, resilient strength.

Reflecting on ways to build quiet strength is a valuable practice at this time. This might include:

  • reading and researching more to understand
  • breathing exercises and finding ways to create rhythm in our days
  • yin yoga and other practices that help us with core quiet strength
  • writing, journaling, morning pages – whatever we call it, to help us anchor in quiet moments
  • intuitive work to sharpen our noticing and ability to make connections
  • exercise to enact building endurance over time.
  • allowing others space and time to come to us
  • being playful and opening up to childlike innocence (Page of Water)

We are encouraged to be a bit more playful with it all when we can and dancing helps too. As Vivian Greene reminds us:

Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass. It’s about learning how to dance in the rain.

endurance

This is a great week for uncovering endurance through the authenticity of what makes you come alive and keeps you going! Regardless of what is coming at you, learn to dance in the rain of circumstance.

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to hear if you are feeling these energies around endurance through quiet strength, truth, patience and authenticity.

All best wishes for this week of endurance through realising your truth. And dancing in the rain.

May the lion of quiet strength and Brigit guide you to gentle, receptive endurance whatever the weather. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

endurance

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:

Strategy, patterns and the higher order of connections

Seeking wisdom in water and elsewhere

Alchemy and conducting magic with spirit and heart

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

inspiration & influence intuition

Strategy, patterns and the higher order of connections

March 19, 2018

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

strategy

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.

strategy

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

strategy

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

strategy

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.

strategy

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

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!

strategy

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

inspiration & influence intuition

Seeking wisdom in water and elsewhere

March 12, 2018

It seems that we humans have always been drawn to find ourselves in the life about us.

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

 

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: seeking inner wisdom + messages of water

seeking wisdom

Theme for the week beginning 12 March

The theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards – #34 Seek your inner wisdom.

seek wisdom

I always draw the theme card first to set the key message for the week. At its core, this week is about connecting with our inner wisdom in a variety of ways. This is especially the case when life gets challenging. It’s so easy to get rattled, to link ourselves to other’s emotions and to lose ourselves. We are reminded to seek the stillness of inner wisdom through the elements and especially water this week.

Advice from the Guidebook is:

Go within to communicate with the warmth of your true wisdom. Ask your wise-self what s(he) wants to know. Listen for an answer.

There might be much to work through but a place to start is always seeking the inner wisdom and stillness of our own mind and heart. Whether it be swimming, walking, working with tarot, writing – all favourites of mine – or something of value to you, keep doing it. Again, it’s easy when life gets swirly to let these calming practices slide. In them is a place to find inner wisdom if only we listen, through the rhythm of our footsteps, the flow of words or the anchor of our breathing as we move through water.

So the guidance this week is around making space for our wise inner self to be heard.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 12 March

seeking wisdom

Tarot Narrative: 

Go deep within for wisdom now. There’s much to sort: the gifts of challenging relationships, the love required to reach out, the final stages of work you’ve been progressing for some time, now coming to light. Listening for answers in the spaces, seeing the brightest piece, focusing on completion, even if it’s a struggle, are all ways to move ahead now.

Reading notes

Cards: Messenger of Water (Page of Cups) and Nine of Earth (Pentacles) from The Good Tarot and #41 Soul Mates in protection (reversed position) from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Book notes:

And so, the art of freedom becomes the necessary adventure of grasping the secrets that are everywhere in the open and stirring their aspects within us, in such a way that we come alive: learning from the fish how to surface and dive, from the flower how to open and accept, from the stone how to crack and let light in, and from the birds that wings are more useful at times than brains.

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening – for 12 March (p. 86)

This reading reminds us of the power of seeking wisdom in water and the other elements as a way of accessing answers. The Messenger of Water (Page of Cups), via the affirmative and positive ‘The Good Tarot’ deck, speaks of the power of “seeing the best in others.” I love the imagery of the Messenger focusing on the seahorse, exemplifying looking for the rare, mystical and beautiful in our encounters.

This morning I swam with many fish again and found a sense of peace. When I intuitively reached out for Mark Nepo’s ‘The Book of Awakening’ message for today for this narrative, it is all about finding ourselves reflected in the life about us. There is a meditation or visualisation for each day’s reading in this book. Today’s, for March 12, is about revisiting a special place and reconnecting with one aspect of why you keep going back there:

It might be the wind through the grass, or the sound of the water, or the light through coloured leaves.

I visualised and connected with where I swim and that first feeling of pushing out and stroking into a small reef where fish swim. It is the most liberating and calming feeling. I return there again and again for peace and stillness, finding myself and answers as I move through the water.

seeking wisdom

The gifts of challenge

The Nine of Earth from ‘The Good Tarot’ deck reminds us of the value of pursuing excellence and of self-control and focus. We are almost there, and whatever else is happening, there is an underlying sense of progress despite obstacles now. There is freedom in this and part of seeking wisdom this week is realising how far we have come. Knowing what to do to focus and finish the work we have planned is of value.

My own transition journey has four key features: life coaching, writing, tarot and personality type work. And this is what I seek to meld to offer to others.

I’ve been working on each of these areas for many years but in a focused way for the past 18 months. It’s time now to bring this vision and unique set of connections home into practices and offerings to support others. I’m ready to roll this out and am weaving the blend of skills, knowledge and experience only I can bring forth.

It is the same for each of us. We all have our magic brand of wisdom and talent, our passions and personality, our values and desires.

The Good Tarot ‘Nine of Earth’ reminds us:

I am diligent and disciplined, focused on completing the work I began long ago. I stick to my program, trusting that the plan is unfolding before me exactly as Spirit intended.

Seeking wisdom in water and elsewhere

These times are not without challenge and the energies lately seem so sensitive and highly strung. So as you work on your plan to bring goals to fruition, you may be facing challenges.

Seeking wisdom in the challenges is also encouraged. The Wisdom of the Oracle ‘Soul Mates’ card asks:

What is the gift in this?

We are encouraged to look in the mirror rather than blame others. There are old stories to be healed and seeking wisdom as we negotiate stormy seas is a way to a calmer passage. Wherever you are feeling relationships bringing you down, there is richness in there to be gained if we can dive deeper.

Seeking wisdom in the calmness of water and elsewhere may help to bring these lessons and answers to the surface if we can quiet our minds and listen.

seeking wisdom

Self-leadership in seeking wisdom

It’s important to remember what practices help you in your own self-leadership at this time. What helps you in seeking wisdom? Which activities calm you and bring things gently to the surface without so much fanfare?

These are the activities to engage in this week.

For me, they are:

  • Morning Pages and other writing
  • Tarot and Oracle work including this Tarot Narrative
  • Blogging
  • Swimming
  • Reading
  • Walking in nature

And poetry. It was lovely to get back to poetry recently via a contribution to Sabrina Davis 25 Tips to Living Unapologetically. It’s wonderful to remember and revisit what makes your heart sing.

Write your own list of activities for being in the now and seeking your inner wisdom.

It’s time this week for seeking your own messengers of water, ways to connect with emotion and deeper meaning.

This is a great week for seeking wisdom in water and elsewhere, whatever helps you listen to your own inner voice in peace. 

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to hear if you are feeling these energies around seeking wisdom in water and elsewhere, especially what places and activities help you to be still and listen within.

  • Where are you feeling swirly and out of control?
  • How can you make time for the practices that calm you?
  • What special practices have you let go of and what is the impact of this?
  • How can you weave a little gentle wisdom seeking back into your life?
  • Which element is calling you – water, fire, earth or air?
  • How can you connect with the element you need or that sustains you?
  • What’s the magic seahorse in your life to focus your attention on?

All best wishes for this week of seeking inner wisdom especially if you are facing challenging times. See how you can work with the elements to connect you. I hope that you find wisdom and answers as you listen.

May the Messenger of Water guide you as you seek to finish those long planned for projects and heal those relationships that need it. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

seeking wisdom

This image by Lauren at Sol + Co

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:

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

inspiration & influence intuition

Alchemy and conducting magic with spirit and heart

February 26, 2018

Our small lives, which so often can seem random, or meaningless, are actually an organic part of the cosmos.

Rachel Pollack, Tarot Wisdom

___________________________________

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: alchemy + conducting magic with spirit + heart

Theme for the week beginning 26 February

The theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards – Journal ‘Dear Nature…’

alchemy

I always draw the theme card first to set the key message for the week. At its core, this week is about connecting with ourselves through the alchemy and spirit of nature. When life gets a bit crazy, tuning into the magic of the sea, the bush and the sky is the perfect way to get answers. As I have moved through my transition journey, I’ve spent time sitting on the beach, journal in hand. It’s time to get back to this practice now and listen to the wisdom of nature, spirit and ourselves.

This is a great week for finding quiet space with a book and a pen and connecting with the cosmos. Advice from the Guidebook is:

Receive advice and guidance from the natural world.

We are encouraged to write a letter to Nature voicing concerns, asking for advice, to then walk and notice anything that comes to us. And then to allow Nature to respond by writing a second letter once home.

This is such a wise way to engage with nature and open ourselves to the alchemy of wholeness. Writing in nature is one of the simplest acts of connection. But how often do we do it? It’s so easy to get caught in our offices, our homes, our cafes and forget the magic that happens when we open ourselves to the natural world and its gifts.

Whether it’s finding shells that shape speak to us, stones that we can hold to ground ourselves, or feathers that seem like messages on our path, being open to these gifts can help us gain insight and meaning. The sheer act of opening up to a blank page in a quiet space in nature is a way of opening up to ourselves and seeing what the universe provides as an answer.

So the guidance this week is around the alchemy of being receptive to the elements and wisdom of the universe. We are actively encouraged to engage with this practical magic with book and pen in hand.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 26 February

alchemy

Tarot Narrative: 

You might be focusing on all that’s not perfect or right just now. Or maybe you’ve learnt through habit to think in terms of loss, feeling poor or less than. But you are standing like a magician posed between the earth and sky, conducting creativity like alchemy. Get out into nature and ground yourself like the conductor you are. As you manage change on many fronts, know that connecting yourself with joy and spirit through the elements – wind, water, earth, warmth – will yield solutions and magic as you co-create with forces beyond you.

Reading notes

Cards: Five of Earth (Pentacles) and The Magician from The Good Tarot and #12 A Change in the Wind in protection (reversed position) from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Book notes:

Our small lives, which so often seem random, or meaningless, are actually an organic part of the cosmos. This is one of the great teachings of the Tarot, and ultimately one of the reasons we do readings – not just to find out information, or to seek guidance or self-knowledge (all of which are important) but also to demonstrate to ourselves that the universe is not broken pieces. Things connect.

Rachel Pollack, Tarot Wisdom (p. 34)

This reading and narrative sends strong messages about connecting with the alchemy and wisdom of the universe. Rachel Pollack in ‘Tarot Wisdom’ emphasises that The Magician is a card that is auspicious especially for writers and other creatives “for it symbolizes creativity itself.” The Magician is the card that I have chosen to symbolize the alchemist creator spirit of Quiet Writing. So it was exciting to see it arrive today in this first week of beginning a new phase of my creative journey and business, free from my former work role and fully embracing my body of work in transition.

Today’s narrative reminds us that though we might find ourselves having a habit of focusing on what is not right or not done or over the next horizon, we just need to still ourselves in nature. Connecting the inner and outer especially through writing in nature are highlighted at this time.

alchemy

Dealing with a habit of loss

The Five of Earth from the beautiful ‘The Good Tarot’ deck reminds us that reminds us that we can get preoccupied by “the illusion of lack”. It also mentions “overlooked treasures.” I have included the Rider-Waite version of the card too in the tarot flat lay so you can see the visuals there. It is all about difficulty, feeling in exile, out in the cold, or like we are seeing everything through a glass half empty lens.

My journey through transition and leaving the organisation I have worked in for 30 plus years has certainly had overtones of just this feeling. With my job deleted and becoming redundant, it’s been easy to feel like I’m out in the cold and focus on the negative. This can happen with any experience of change – change of location, relationship or job. All can have elements of feeling shunned, undervalued, less than or just plain nostalgic for how things used to be. With all of this melancholy, we can miss fully embracing the treasures unfolding under our nose.

The Good Tarot ‘Five of Earth’ reminds us through its beautiful imagery that the answer is to ground ourselves in the earth, in nature, connected to the magic of nature and the beauty of the world. As the Fountain Tarot puts it for this card:

From a place of quiet you can assess what is truly imprtant, learn from what the moment is teaching you, and determine what resources are actually at your disposal.

Just as last week’s narrative focused on blossoming, this week’s theme is about the alchemy of connecting with nature to work out our magic.

Alchemy + conducting magic

The Magician reminds us of the importance of partnership with spirit and gaining a broader perspective of our efforts. Just as the habit of thinking in terms of loss can cramp our vision, so can not opening ourselves to spirit. Again, the Rider-Waite imagery for this card is valuable in reminding us of how we can be a conduit for creative magic through being receptive and grounding ourselves.

This card shows us that we need to be reaching up to alchemy, to spirit and the power of the universe, to the magic of synchronicity. At the same time, we need to be grounding ourselves in nature and the elements, represented by the items on the table at the Magician’s disposal. The Magician is like an orchestra conductor as he stands between spirit and nature, connecting them. So too we can be conductors of magic as we open ourselves to spirit and inspiration, especially from natural sources.

Sallie Nichols in ‘Jung and Tarot’ talks about the Magician in terms of synchronicity and how we can open ourselves to increasing chances of meaningful coincidences at peak times:

It is our inner Magician, of course, who is responsible for these miraculous eruptions of the unitary world into our everyday world of space and time, cause and effect. (p62)

alchemy

Alchemy + connecting things

The Magician’s art of alchemy is about connecting things, especially between the inner and outer. So we might be outside in the elements, gathering thoughts in our journal as we connect with nature and notice gifts in our surroundings. Or we might work with tarot and oracle cards for guidance and wisdom as a way of engaging with spirit and connecting with our inner wisdom. Synchronicity might be a visitor as we tune in for signs and symbols especially at times of change.

Alchemy and making connections to transform them positively is a key theme this week weaving through all of the cards. Sallie Nichols shares in ‘Jung and Tarot’ that:

Magic is sometimes called the science of hidden relationships.

She says Jung identified through research that “hopeful expectancy” is an ingredient in common in many magic, miracles and parapsychological events. We need to embrace the “archetype of the miracle” at this time instead of the stories of loss, lack or poverty we might have told ourselves.

It’s time this week to channel our inner magician, get our conducting wands of spirit and creativity out that just might be in the form of a pen and book. And seek natural environments that will open us up and renew us, rather than shut u down.

This is a great week for alchemy and conducting magic with spirit and heart. 

Look to see where you might be working out of a perspective of loss, comparison or lack and see where you can conduct your own magic. Get out in nature and write. Don’t be afraid to use the tools that work for you, being unapologetic. Embrace what you love. You too could have a desk like mine 😉

alchemy

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to hear if you are feeling these energies around alchemy and conducting magic with spirit and heart, especially being in nature to help connect our inner and outer worlds now.

  • Where have you developed the habit of thinking in terms of loss or lack?
  • How are you making time for connecting with the magic of nature?
  • Where are you practising alchemy and where could you deepen your practice?
  • In which areas are you holding back because of fear or other’s opinions?
  • How can you conduct magic in your writing or other creative work?
  • What stops you feeling that sense of alchemy and magic?
  • How can you be more magical in your approaches to life?
  • Where can you be more receptive to synchronicity or meaningful signs?

All best wishes for this week of being out in nature and writing, conducting creativity with the aid of the cosmos and grounding ourselves with the wisdom of the earth. I hope that you find meaningful connections, alchemy and synchronicity arising as you create this time and space in your life.

May The Magician guide you in conducting creativity and connecting with spirit to guide your path especially if it’s a time of big change. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

alchemy

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 February and March 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:

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

Secret superpowers for creative energy and inspiration

Creating essential intent and making the right choices

Creative practices in my tool-kit to make the most of this year’s energies

How I plan to manifest energy, joy and intention to make the most of this year

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