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transition

inspiration & influence transcending

Courage to ride the Wheel of Fortune

December 19, 2016

.wheel of fortune

Image via Pexels.com

The Wheel of Fortune

The ‘Wheel of Fortune’ tarot card has been popping up for me for a while now raising questions about courage in the face of uncertainty.

It first arrived in April this year via a personalised reading by the fabulous Marianne aka @twosidestarot and featuring the dynamic Sakki Sakki tarot deck.

At that time, ‘The Wheel of Fortune’ was intersecting closely with the ‘The Moon’ in a broader reading that generally indicated change was afoot. An attitude of surrender and also of ‘throwing my hat into the ring’ was encouraged. As Marianne’s beautifully worded reading explained:

The best way to approach The Wheel is to surrender our attachment to the outcome and take a risk anyway. It is a super bold move, it takes a lot of courage and strength, but I think it’s a good hand to have up your sleeve as you navigate this period.

This initial introduction and the events that have ensued have indeed shown me firsthand that ‘The Wheel of Fortune’ can be a very wild and spontaneous ride, with much of it outside my control. Events have also reinforced that trust, courage, risk-taking and actually learning to enjoy the ride despite the uncertainty are part of the challenge.

Embracing uncertainty

It’s made me think about my own relationship with carnival rides over the years. When I was younger, I wasn’t naturally keen on wild rides like roller-coasters. Over time, I taught myself to enjoy the speed, the excitement and the wind in my hair. As I got older, I became more afraid again and more reticent to take the risk to enjoy the moment. And later in life, that side of me that enjoys a bit of wildness and uncertainty has reappeared.

In one instance, I was the only one in my family wanting to go on a roller coaster ride. I consequently found myself sitting with a ride-savvy nine year old who had great pleasure in hinting about the approaching terrors. It was great to feel the acceleration and speed of the turns and again embrace uncertainty.

Playing a role in change

Just as I have had a changing relationship with rides over the years, so our own relationship with change can be a factor. ‘The Wheel of Fortune’ card has continued to arrive reminding me about the big picture and the need to ‘expect the unexpected’. Most recently, it appeared via Dame Darcy’s Mermaid tarot, this time with the image of the Wheel of Fortune as a ship’s wheel:

wheel of fortune 4

As Wikipedia tells us:

A ship’s wheel or boat’s wheel is a device used aboard a water vessel to change that vessel’s course.

I like the imagery of this card suggesting that while life changes around us, we can play a role in changing course and influencing outcomes by taking risks, perhaps also with a little research and navigating.

For me, this latest journey is about shifting more into the realm of inner life and spirit. So whilst I can play an active role to some extent, some of this landscape is unfamiliar and the horizon is uncertain. I can see that the journey is ultimately about self-transformation, spiritual growth and expansiveness. Looking for opportunities for learning and growth as I traverse this time is critical.

As Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom reminds me:

The Wheel spins our fate. We can ride it – or gamble with it. Life is a game of chance and the Big Wheel symbolises the joy of playing the game.

It’s important to look beyond the current situation to see the broader map, the tides, the whole pattern and my reaction within that context.

‘Courage is not just the absence of fear’

This has also made me think about courage at this time. As Colette Baron-Reid wisely explains with reference to her oracle card ‘Sacred Pool’ in The Enchanted Map deck (in the protection position):

Remember that you have a responsibility not just to yourself but to the Divine spark within you. Courage is not just the absence of fear. Accept the discomfort of seeing with clear eyes and you’ll soon find that wondrous adventures are awaiting for you. Step into your magical life. Take the leap of faith.

Those words – ‘discomfort’ and ‘leap of faith’ echo the sentiment that it’s not always to effect change especially in unfamiliar terrain. Sometimes you have to sacrifice certainty for progress, feeling secure for being challenged and being comfortable for seeing things from a new and deeper perspective.

Around that same time, Lisa McLoughlin’s Plant Ally card ‘Courage’ also made an appearance asking very directly:

What brave steps can you take to move forward?

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Trusting intuition

Ironically, I think the bravest steps are actually the vaguest: trusting my intuition and embracing it.

I am an INTJ Myers-Briggs personality type so introverted intuition is my dominant gift. Whilst it’s an orientation that is naturally strong, I need to value and activate it more in my life now as a guiding light. Courage is indeed a step beyond just not being afraid. It’s about actively taking on this uncertain journey where the word ‘spirit’ is making an ever increasing appearance.

It’s about embracing these intuitive powers as a gift rather than something I secretly rely on and don’t really understand. It is about learning about this power, communicating it and using it to connect with others, with spirit and with my calling which is finding its way forward.

So the courage to ride ‘The Wheel of Fortune’ and navigate its surprises is essentially within, spirited by deep connection and collective identity:

But enlightenment is a deeply personal experience. It cannot be studied or even pondered but only lived. The series of outer lessons culminate in the Wheel of Fortune which shows us a vision of the world and ourselves which must be answered.

Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom, Rachel Pollack (p71)

So I’m bravely stepping into uncertainty, going on that ride, turning that wheel and surveying the landscape. Must say, despite the strangeness, it’s riveting and I hope to share more of this with you as I venture forth into this new terrain.

I’d love to hear from you: Where in your life are you riding on The Wheel of Fortune and finding the courage to leap?

wheel of fortune

Thought pieces

Uncharted – by Colette Baron-Reid is my current read. It’s an excellent guide for navigating the uncharted waters of intuition and spirit.

Two Sides Tarot has Daily Weather reports on Instagram, essential reading for me every morning. It’s great to be learning about tarot each day as well as checking the weather for the day. Marianne’s tarot readings are beautifully written and insightful. Plus there are tarot decks for sale with free postage for those in Australia.

Let’s support those living and writing intuitively!

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inspiration & influence love, loss & longing

The unique voice of what we love

November 30, 2016

A way forward is to find the unique voice of what we love, whether it be through journals, poems, speeches, blog posts, conversations, novels or any scribbled piece of the heart.

Recently I drew the ‘Bone Collector’ card from Colette Baron-Reid’s The Enchanted Map Oracle Cards.

bone-collector

I don’t know about you but this image evokes lots of different reactions in me. It sounds a little grim and the bones hanging about are a bit confronting but there’s smiling and a sense of richness. My initial  feeling – there’s much to work through with this card.

The overall message of the card is positive and reminds us:

You are whole and have everything you need within.

However, there is a dark side about what is buried and casting shadows. The Bone Collector particularly focuses on life experiences when young and how we can become wounded and feel less than, damaged in some way. The wounds can dive deep beneath the surface. We may not talk about them or even be aware we are acting a certain way because of them. We may feel essentially flawed. There’s a message about the Bone Collector as an inner resource to help us to “reclaim lost or stolen power”.

Speaking up to let love live

Not long after, I was working with Alana Fairchild’s Sacred Rebels Oracle Deck, when this card came to light, developing that same theme:

release the dark wound

This card reminds us:

You are being asked to honour the path of your own love – what inspires you, what feels exciting, joyful and perhaps even rather different? Let that live! Release the dark wounding of false belief.

And a key way this ‘false belief’ plays out is as a tendency to perfectionism where our ideas and thoughts wither on the vine and do not even make it to formation or light. The dark wound especially “demands perfection and denies process”.

What a tragedy of spirit this is.

A way forward is to find the unique voice of what we love, whether it be through journals, poems, speeches, blog posts, conversations, novels or any scribbled piece of the heart. Every word, every piece, should be a fight back, a healing process, a spiritual journey to uncover our possibilities and potential.

And part of this is knowing it is all already within us if we can only be kinder and more trusting with ourselves and let our ideas live.

Discovering our unique voice

The New Moon in Sagittarius is gently beaming energy into these dark places too right now. Mystic Mamma has a fabulous New Moon post which brings together key messages about the moon energy and how to work with it.

The words that spoke to me, reflecting the spirit of Quiet Writing, are from Patricia Liles:

It may also be pushing you to take care of yourself in ways you never were able to see before. Speaking up for those parts of your self that have not had a voice before.

There’s a whole raft of reasons why these parts of ourselves have not had a voice before: time, distractions, pain, fear and dominant discourses where these voices just don’t seem to fit or be heard.

But as Colette Baron-Reid reminds us (via The Enchanted Map #47 Sacred Pool – reversed):

Dimming your light serves no-one

We need to value process and not silence ourselves with concerns about product and outcomes. We need to challenge that perfectionist part of us that won’t let ourselves shine and or even turn the light on in the first place. We need to quiet those voices that stem from ‘comparisonitis’ and feeling envious, less than or better than. You can easily see there is nothing to be gained from going there and there are no winners in this intellectual warfare. So why is it so compelling that we go there, allowing it to deny our unique abilities so savagely?

Time to collect the bones

It’s time to collect the bones and honour them. It’s time to release the dark wound, like returning a fish to water to enable it to swim, upstream if necessary, into the sacred pool where we accept what we love and find a voice for it.

With my natural creativity to guide me at this time, I’m digging deep into wounds and possibilities, knowing that I have so much to give, as we all do. This collecting of the bones is about not being afraid to go there and being able to speak out and not worry about what other people think. There’s been too much silence.

And a key part of this digging is hearing my voice now weaving spirit into words – finding the broken pieces to heal them, holding on to words like fins that can propel me and linking with other kindred souls also now speaking up.

The advice from the Bone Collector is:

Act as if you have what you need and you’ll find you have it after all. Anything is possible.

Even the strength and ability to collect those bones, to honour those wounds and to speak up and in doing so, find that unique voice that others may recognise.

unique voice of what you love

This image is from pexels

Thought pieces:

Reviving the Ancient Sisterhood is an excellent article that came to me via the sisterhood at The Mojo Lab’s Inner Circle. The article focuses on feminine wounding, women’s collaboration and community as a healing force, archetypes, traditions and sacred aspects of women’s connections including equality and mastery of expression.

Psychoanalyst Karen Horney wrote extensively on these issues many years ago including the impact of such dynamics on women’s sense of self. Marcia Westkott’s The Feminist Legacy of Karen Horney offers an analysis of this work:

In breaking through the inner fear, in embracing what she has dreaded, the female hero shatters the internal form of her victimization. External shoulds are driven from their internal stronghold, and conscious choice rather than fearful compliance informs her actions. She experiences, finally the extraordinary power of her ordinary real self.

 

spirit-into-words-wings

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introversion music & images

Waterlily thoughts

September 7, 2014

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One image can sum up a holiday, a phase of life. You wonder what draws you to photograph certain sights, certain objects. What makes you strive to capture this particular image this way or that. Or when you take so many photos like I did when in Japan recently, it’s surprising how one or two images can capture the whole time and experience, the reflection in the lens coming back.

The image and symbol for that recent holiday and right now is the waterlily. The photo I took of two waterlilies in a pool of many at Yahiko, a little village in north west Japan, somehow captures this time now.

I’ve always loved waterlilies, the beauty rising from the mud, the perfection blossoming, the majestic clarity they carry and hold.

They have popped up at different times in my life. An etching I did once years ago at a time of immense change when I was pregnant, features me jumping from one lily pad to another in some archetypal riotous spiralling motion.

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At another earlier time, Australian author Kate Llewellyn’s ‘The Waterlily: A Blue Mountains Journal’ became a favourite reflective piece, read at a time of great turmoil many years ago when my heart was somewhat broken.

Kate captures twelve months of making a life in the Blue Mountains in her poetically infused language and style and especially the sense of being present through the flow of days and the feelings that ebb with them:

Shall I say in similar fashion, that it is now clear to me it is all visitors coming and going and then being alone and then visitors and cooking and cups of tea and talking and picnics and looking at the vast blue valley and the fire and the autumn, and then meals and making dinners and breakfasts and then looking at the plants and feeding the birds and stoking up the fire and writing in between. Something like that.

IMG_9186I must reread this lovely book and lose myself again in the rhythm of her days to refocus mine. There is pain and longing there but the calmness of the moments being harvested is soothing.

The Book of Symbols tells me that the lily generally is connected with queenly divinities, identified with purity and innocence. Further…

Highly regenerative, the lily surfaces even after fire or drought. Alchemy honored the lily as evoking the very essence of Mercurius, the spirit of pysche’s unconscious depths and transforming opus. As the quintessence, the longed for goal of the adept, lily represents psychic integrity that is no longer pulled apart by affect.

The waterlily particularly symbolises the cycle of life, birth and death, and with its ability to produce blossoms and fruits simultaneously represents universality.

In the spiritual arena of Hinduism, the concept of resurrection is symbolically denoted by the water lily. This is because at night (or during darkness) the lilies close their blossoms and with the first ray of the sun, they open. It is also a symbol of purity, because even though the plant grows in mud, the flower is pure and free from blemishes.

From What does a water lily symbolise?

So many ways of interpreting this image, so many waterlily thoughts.

So what does the waterlily symbolise? For me, it’s a symbol of renewal, of optimism, and of quietness, recognising the stillness and productivity in each moment and in the everyday. It’s about beauty and positivity rising from an environment of muddiness and complexity. It’s about honouring the fact that the mud the plant grows from is the anchor and grounding for so much more. Without it, the beauty would not exist.

What images are you noticing and what are they saying in your life?

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creativity love, loss & longing transcending

Rebooting

July 16, 2012

Restart and reboot yourself

You’re free to go…

Shout for joy if you get the chance

Password, you, enter here, right now’

  from ‘Unknown Caller’, U2

It was a small, old, blue, beach cottage, up the coast, hidden in trees, shells everywhere suggesting a time to be spent collecting yourself. The cottage even had a name, ‘Chill-out’, written in shells and hanging on the lounge room wall.

There were magazines, books, TV, DVDs, day beds. There was no network connection, no phone line, no internet. You could hear the roar of the sea’s thunder from the back room open out onto the air.

It was also across the road from where my parents used to live for some 15 years, before they moved back to the city about eight years ago. Since then, my brother and father have died, and I was bringing my mother back to where she lived before all this, back to happy places and old friends. My aunty also was with us; she lost her husband six weeks before my dad died. We had all come to visit and stay in this little town for most of our lives. And so we returned, and lots of thoughts came along with us, of people we loved who had also loved this place and who came here to recharge and unwind.

Having no internet was challenging. Life is all so very connected and I realised this past week how dependent on technology I am. Apart from the obvious work reliance on email, I have a strong need for personal connectedness it seems. I read the papers on the net; do sudoku and crosswords; connect with family, colleagues, friends and fellow bloggers and online friends who value creativity, reading and writing as much as I. I read a book and find out more about it online; I connect through Goodreads and find out more about the author. I find out what’s happening in the world through the news in my twitter feed. I research online content to inform my writing and read a huge range of blogs through feedly.

I write a blog, I create content, choosing as my focus ‘Transcending’ and dealing with love, loss and longing, strengthening yourself through reading, music, writing, strategy and productivity, whatever it is that gets you through, takes you up and onwards. I connect with other creative people through this and am keen to progress my blog writing during the week away. I find that without the internet, I can’t connect the parts, do the research, create the images, and even instagram fails to work.

So I take photos on my iphone. I enjoy the company of my family; we eat, we drink, we relax, we walk through a canopy of trees on a boardwalk beside the beach, we read, do sudoku, play scrabble, catch up with our old neighbour, now a sparkling blue-eyed 86 years young. We reminisce, we talk about those not with us any more as the place brings them back into our conversation and our lives.

I take two books to read that week that both turn out to be about the presence of those not there any more in the physical sense. ‘Poet’s Cottage’, by Josephine Pennicott, set in Tasmania, is all about family, ghosts, old houses and their history and the interplay between them. As reviewer, Elizabeth Storrs, comments, ‘If you ever have doubts as to whether ghosts exist, then you should visit Tasmania.’ This is true – I’ve felt this when travelling there, in old houses where you can feel a strong presence of others no longer there. ‘Poet’s Cottage’ was an atmospheric read about the past and its influence on the present.

Then I read Anne Tyler’s ‘The Beginner’s Good-bye‘ in which the main character, Aaron, loses his wife when she is struck down by a tree. He starts to see her again and have conversations with her, never sure if they are real or not. Through this, he begins to re-establish a new and different life.

It was only last night, coming home and reflecting on the week, that I realised my head was fully engaged in reading about the presence of those not there any more, of reflecting and moving on.

When we got home last night, our ipads were not connecting to the wi-fi. To get mine to work, I turned off and rebooted, suggesting to my partner, “Sometimes you just need to restart to make all the connections again.” Even when the words come out of my own mouth, I don’t get it straight away. The universe must think me so slow.

So today with time to reflect on a deeper level and stumbling across the words above from U2’s ‘Unknown Caller’ in one of my notebooks, I finally gather together what the week was about: the opportunity to turn off some of the input, unscramble the data, to recalibrate and reboot, knowing I have the password and the resources to shift up and on to what matters, with the love of those who have left us, still ringing in our memories, somehow cheering us on.

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Full review of ‘Poet’s Cottage’ coming soon as part of the Australian Women Writer’s 2012 Reading and Reviewing Challenge.

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blogging family history writing

Transitioning

December 11, 2010

There has been something of a hiatus here. Not for lack of things happening. I have been incredibly busy and it’s a time of change. Something about the end of one year and the beginning of another always means being busy but this year has been an extra busy time with much transitioning.

I have been finalising a challenging work role that has been the focus of my energy for much of this year. I was heartened to read Danielle LaPorte’s recent post on entrepreneurial spirit inside and outside the 9 to 5. Whilst my job recently was much more than 9 to 5, it was very much carried out in the spirit of entrepreneurship, of change and of creativity in solving problems with heart and courage.

I read this year about being a linchpin and a career renegade; more about the art of non-conformity and about being a fire-starter whilst in this work role over the past nine months. This spirit very much pervaded the way I tackled some long-standing issues. The feedback was positive and I appreciate how much my reading and engagement with social entrepreneurship has guided my leadership work this year. In fact, I don’t know what I would have done without it at times. It was fascinating how many times I became stuck or was trying to solve a crucial problem when a critical post from Chris Guillebeau, Colleen Wainwright, Danielle LaPorte or Jonathan Field, amongst others, came through to light the way.

I have also been travelling and busy getting organised to leave a warm Sydney to visit a very cold UK and Europe. I have enjoyed again the feeling of transitioning across countries, being in the air suspended between and the arriving. I have been visiting East Sussex and the place where some of my ancestors lived for hundreds of years before part of the family broke itself off and moved to Australia for warmer climes and a new life of opportunity in the 1830s.

I am especially interested in one ancestor: my great, great, great grandmother, Jane Honeysett, and her journey. In the end, it was not a happy one but I am inspired by her transition, her hope, what she left behind, where she went and why and what it was like living in Sydney as an early woman settler. The female migration experience is not much written about it seems. I am keen to find her voice and that’s why I have been visiting East Sussex and listening to the voices and the accents; feeling the icy weather; walking around the church where she was married in 1825; driving through lanes with their high hedges, the worn and ancient stone homes with moss on the roof; and visiting the castles, inns and abbeys that were the centrepieces of life in East Sussex then and now.

I am also beginning to write that story now. That is my goal: to write a novel that is the story of Jane’s life and the female migration experience. Visiting the land of my ancestors seems to have enabled me to start to write finally, breaking through that invisible line of resistance. I am grateful for The Writers Cafe software by Dr Julian and Harriet Smart, which I found through Joanna Penn and her podcast conversation with Harriet. The software really is very good. After all my procrastinations about starting to write, it really was as simple as blocking out some scenes already lined up in my head and filling them out.

This transition to actually starting to write seemed to need to occur in the location. I’m not sure why but I had a keen sense in arriving of returning to the place where Jane could not return after she left. Maybe she is my guardian angel, some ancestral support, helping me. I know she could not read or write so maybe I am her voice, her writing, her words and her song and being in her birthplace and her home was a catalyst for beginning.

I have also been Unravelling this past few months, working through the online experience Susannah Conway creates that is very deep and unlocks so much.  Through creating a supportive environment focused on images and words and enabling an online network of participants, Susannah successfully creates connection between people and within souls that is magical. It’s hard to describe and the unravelling is still occurring, but I suspect this experience has also been the backbone of much of this transitioning. I’m comfortable in my own skin and its various guises of leader, researcher, writer, reader and blogger and enjoying the connections and cross-fertilisations this year has brought, most recently culminating in so much arrival.

What transitioning is happening for you at the end of this year?

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transcending

Lost in transition

September 15, 2010

On the 18th floor of a hotel in another city and there is a huge window looking out. It is like ‘Lost in Translation’, that wonderful film with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, where as two people adrift, they spend a strange interlude in Japan, with much time spent looking out over the lights of the city from the hotel.

This hotel has peaceful zen-like music playing on the television when you arrive. The desk here is well-positioned so you can write and look out. It’s all beech and linen and grey and light timber tones with a large brown vase illuminated here above me. ‘Lost in Translation’ is a perfect metaphor for this state.

How I need silence, absence, space and a place to breathe and write. If ‘lost in translation’ is about being a little stuck in a world you can’t quite be fluent in, then that captures it.

Or am I lost in transition? There is another language I wish to write in, another world I wish to capture. It is about this space, these colours, this window, and speaks of more through some deep breathing in of silence and space. Oxygen, stars, dark night, and a stream of steady cars that line a highway heading east.

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