174. The Myth of Not-Enoughness with Seven of Swords
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How can we radically love and accept ourselves when we live with an inherent belief that we are not enough? Today on the podcast, we look to Seven of Swords as a powerful anchor for this kind of deep unraveling, exploring it as a continuation of our journey with The Lovers, our card for the month of October.
Note: This episode is a re-release of an episode I recorded in 2020, with a fresh intro. The original verbiage for the episode is below.
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About the Episode
All Sevens in the Tarot represent a call to engage with inner work that often feels like it needs to be resolved externally, with an external action. With Seven of Swords, we are called to explore the ways in which we get caught up in the myths of not-enoughness that our mind often presents to us: the fear that we are not okay, that there's something wrong with us, or that at our core, we are fundamentally not good enough.
Are we willing to courageously tend to the deep internal wounds that lay underneath those thoughts? Are we willing to come back home to ourselves, lay a hand on our heart, and just be with ourselves when things feel tender, or uncomfortable?
In today's episode of the podcast, we will explore Seven of Swords as a huge and beautiful Anchor for these kinds of experiences, and concrete ways to begin to work with the energy of this card, and with ourselves, in these moments.
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Land Acknowledgement
Honoring and acknowledging that this podcast episode was recorded on the unceded land of The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, currently called Portland, OR, with the deepest respect to the Kalapuya Tribe, Cowlitz Tribe, and Atfalati Tribe.
Please Note
CW Tags: extinction, environmental degradation, religious structures, loss, death, illness, trauma, systemic marginalization
The content in this episode contains references to extinction, environmental degradation, religious structures, loss, death, illness, trauma, and systemic marginalization. We have done our best to identify difficult subject matter, but the labels may not be comprehensive for your personal needs. Please honor your knowing and proceed with necessary self-awareness and care.
Transcript
[Introduction]
[0:00:05]
Welcome to Tarot for the Wild Soul, a weekly podcast that explores the Tarot through an inclusive, soul-centered, trauma-informed perspective for growth, healing, and evolution. I'm your host, Lindsay Mack.
Hello Wild Souls and welcome back to the podcast. So excited to be gathered with you. I'm very excited to explore, continue to explore, our card for the month of October, which is The Lovers through the lens of another anchor card. And this week on the podcast, we're going to do something slightly different.
So last week, we talked about Two of Cups as an anchor energy for The Lovers and how, really, you know, because The Lover speaks, you know, so hugely and powerfully, there's such a profound kind of subterranean impact to that card—of the need to get really clear on where we're sort of missing our own magic, lovability, beauty in the world around us, the way we project out onto people, places and things, you know.
Is it possible, The Lovers ask, that what you are so desperately or fervently seeking from another person, from something, from this title, from this goal, from this, whatever, that you're actually meant to give that to yourself, that no one actually can give that to you? Even if you were to get it in the highest possible form, it's not to say that those experiences cannot be hugely impactful and important. But if there's not some kind of knowing within us to back that up, the external will feel ephemeral—even not enough, right? Like a sense like it's just not enough.
[0:02:00]
So The Lovers seeks to fill that cup. And we explored Two of Cups last week as one of our anchors for that really important work, which basically says one of the ways that we can fill that cup, rebalance, and start to actually see our own lovability, is to love ourselves, to seek to embrace ourselves, as we are.
So many of us are told or taught, or there's a subconscious influence, like, “When you're better, when you're perfect, when you've achieved this, you'll get some kind of expression of love.” And we can carry that over, unconsciously, to our own self-parenting—and sometimes to our own parenting, if we're not really aware of that. So the invitation of Two of Cups is to love ourselves radically, as we are, even amidst our humanness, the inevitability of us making mistakes, of fucking up, of being disappointed.
And this episode, in particular, is going to be a little different because it's actually a re-release of an episode that I recorded last year. And the reason that I'm doing that is because I just could not think of a better follow-up Anchor Card to sort of continue our conversation about The Lovers’ themes than Seven of Swords. And I feel very happy with the episode that I recorded about Seven of Swords last year and sort of the emphasis that was placed on the Soul Tarot interpretation of Seven of Swords, which is that that card often comes up around our felt sense—sometimes quiet, sometimes hugely present—that we're not enough, right.
And what we're seeking to do on this podcast now is to really look at how these different Anchor Cards that we explore through the weeks of the month can really be a balm, can brace us, can be sort of the rungs on the ladder that can help us to climb up, climb down—the direction doesn't really matter (Lindsay laughs). But each Anchor Card can be, and often is, a support system to help us to understand the Anchor Card of the month, more deeply, right.
[0:04:39]
And so, Seven of Swords is, I believe, one of—because there's an infinite number of ways we could go—one of the most powerful, next, kind of, de-layerings that we can provide ourselves in this exploration of The Lovers. So I don't Imagine I'll do it often, but the perfect episode, the perfect opportunity presented itself, and so this is a fresh introduction to that episode, of course. But in a few moments, I'm going to sort of dive right into that re-released episode, and you'll get to really explore like the myth of not-enoughness, right?
We were talking last week in Two of Cups about how we are, you know, by virtue of our birth, by our presence on this planet, we are enough. It's not to say that we're not meant to grow, it's not to say that we don't have times where we look back and think “Whoa,” (Lindsay laughs) “like, I wish I had known this,” or “I could have reached so much further with my understanding or knowledge or inclusion or equity in this area.” It's not to say that we don't have human, earthly regrets, right. But as an essence, as we are human, being outside of the earthly comings and goings, we are enough, in and of ourselves.
Two of Cups asks us to embrace ourselves with all of those pieces that we wish we could change. Seven of Swords brings it down even further, and really sort of extends another arm to to include the opposite branch of what can happen with The Lovers, which is when we start to grip, when we start to cling, when we start to think “I gotta get that thing, I gotta have that thing, I gotta make sure that I get that thing.”
And Seven of Swords is a very powerful energy, first of all—and I go into this in the episode, but just to sort of put a brief primer on it—Sevens are very powerful in the Tarot, because they usually come up around a particular kind of situation that can feel like it's external, but it's actually an internal issue. So we can try, initially, to solve it through external means, through changing ourselves on the outside, shifting our actions, but it really does require an inside job. And they're very intense, very complex, they're not very—meaning, the cards can be understood simply, I think, or at least it's possible to break them down in a way that feels very familiar to us. But the actual living out of them is often a very complex experience.
[0:07:36]
We have to also acknowledge that the Sevens are connected to The Chariot. And that's exactly The Chariot. Everybody always thinks, like, “Oh, The Chariot is so perfect, the symbol of victory.” I used to think that. I used to teach that, you know, just to show growth is possible (Lindsay laughs). The Chariot is, it's not so much, it's not about that, but it's ruled by Cancer. This is about layers. This is about the willingness to let go of the perfect layer, let go of the layer that looks good. Let go of the thing that our ego wants, because it wants to be loved, to be accepted. It wants to have the stuff that makes it feel better and okay. Our inner kids want that.
The Chariot is a radical step of outgrowth of something that maybe held us, maybe kept us secure, maybe a container, right? And that container can be a dream, it can be a vision. So many of us have that idea, like “My dream is that I'm going to be XYZ,” and then we get a little older—we change, evolve, and grow. We outgrow that dream because there's some part of us that's willing to acknowledge there was a desire to attain that because maybe that was the first place we ever thought we'd get approval. Maybe that was one of the first places that we ever got love or applause, or someone ever told us “good job,” you know, or we thought it was so secure that we never considered that maybe there was something else that we desired even more.
[0:09:10]
So these are big initiations in life and that is a part of The Lovers work is acknowledging where— without any kind of judgement or application of shame—we cling, because all of us, you know, that depiction on the card is so powerful. We have five swords in the hand already. We have things that we can play with, that we can joust with. We have ideas, we have things to communicate, write about, and things to tend, and things to, you know, things to utilize here.
Swords are amazing, right? They represent the way we communicate and connect with the world. They represent how we work with our thinking mind and how we bring the whole unification of what we might call “soul,” or the higher, you know, the deeper knowing of us, and our thinking mind, like where it all comes together. That's really, really powerful.
So we consider, like Smith Rider Waite imagery and a lot of other subsequent decks, it doesn't always show a human being holding these swords, but very often there are five swords together, two apart, right? And what we see in the Smith Rider Waite—which, again, I go into in the episode. I won't spend a ton of time here—is someone very confidently striding forward with five swords in the hand while looking back at two behind them. And that's how we get it, right?
We have so much beauty and deliciousness and so much in our lives to work on, we could say, or to focus on. But most of us, you know, especially if we're going through a really tough time, like, it's not invalid, this experience, it's so valid. All of us want to look back to figure out, “How do I get those two swords?” And if we're not careful, we can wind up being in a situation where we're so abundantly full, but we're still looking, because we haven't actually been willing to look at that sense of not-enoughness, that sense of emptiness within us, that may have actually already been filled in some way. But if we're not quite caught up to that, the behavior can just keep, unconsciously, you know, perpetuating itself.
[0:11:44]
And we all have had an experience of that, where our life is rich and full. It might not be where we want it, exactly, in one area or another. But we spend so much time trying to figure out how to get at something, because of why? Because we'll be whatever it is, right?
And I want to be really clear, there's a pretty big difference between having a goal in mind, having a desire, and being in pursuit of that desire, and being in Seven of Swords energy. Seven of Swords energy, very specifically, is about pursuing something based on a feeling of, “I'm not enough, if I don't have this. If I don't have this, there's going to be a sense of panic, or I need to grab it while it's here.” So that's that, very specifically, that sort of specific bullet point is what we are looking at.
And that is our Anchor Card for this week, Seven of Swords, and looking at the other branch of The Lovers card. What do we do if we don't feel like we're enough? How does that sort of enact itself? How does that continue to spiral forward and perpetuate itself? And how can that cause us to act unconsciously throughout our lives, clinging on to things, or trying to get things that, if we actually had room for them, like, it would be a hell of a lot easier to pick them up?
You know, we don't often consider, sometimes it's a timing issue. Sometimes it is. I know for myself that there are things that I know I'll probably accomplish or at some point, touch upon in my life, or get to experience. But right now, for one reason or another, I know that I'm not ready. Or sometimes I don't know that as much as I wish I did (Lindsay laughs), but I do recognize a grip in myself, “Okay, I gotta have it,” or “time's running out” or there, you know, that can be really, really challenging.
[0:13:48]
So when we work with Seven of Swords, it calls us into a deeper exploration of this idea, and that's the Anchor energy that we're going to be working with this week. So it doesn't follow our typical patterning, obviously, but I do think that this episode is really potent, and definitely is a deep dive, and does provide a lot of medicine and context for the idea of this being our anchor for the week and a continuation of our exploration of The Lovers card.
And I'm not going to spend too much time on it, but this is a big week we have coming up ahead. We're moving into Scorpio season this week, which is huge. Mercury is going direct, which I can't wait for. We have a Full Moon in Aries, so a very, very potent opportunity for a whole new cycle to begin to, you know, come into itself. It's a very potent opportunity for harvesting, for processing, for understanding something a little bit more, for our last sort of leg of deep work with Libra season.
Of course, this Full Moon in Aries is a chance for us to work with The Emperor card, which is always so potent, and The Fours and the way that we root into the earth, how we call upon deep support. So I hope that this entire week feels as supportive as possible, and I cannot wait to dive into our Anchor Card with all of you next week. I'll answer a listener question then.
And yeah, I hope that you enjoy this re-release of “The Myth of Not-Enoughness.” And if you'd like to read the transcript for this episode, with all of our episodes that have come out in the last year or so, you may do so at the link in the show notes.
Okay, Wild Souls, until we connect again please take care of yourselves.
—
[0:15:56]
Hi Loves. Welcome back to a brand new episode of Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast. I'm your host, Lindsay Mack, and feeling ever grateful, as always, to get to gather with all of you listening, who are called to listen in this virtual space.
And today we're going to be talking about a card that I think is really important, a very important ally for these times, and that is Seven of Swords. And Seven of Swords is, I think, a fairly... it probably feels to many people like it's a pretty unlikely ally (Lindsay laughs) because most people have some pretty strong feelings about this card. You know, most folks, based on the really old school interpretations, tend to really limit their view of this card to being, you know, kind of a sort of divine heads up about thievery or treachery or sneakiness, or somebody taking something from us, or even us being sneaky, you know; that we essentially kind of have to watch our back. And that's not true at all about this card. It's not even a little true. And one of the reasons that we know this, is because that's not what the Sevens are about. Period.
The Sevens in the Tarot are, quite specifically, all around an invitation to do inner work around something that seems like it can only be resolved externally or with an external reaction. Typically, you know you're in Seven energy when you're like, “Ugh, if this person could just call me, if this thing could be ready, if I could just have an answer, I could relax.” And the Sevens are not exactly the most pleasant of energies (Lindsay laughs), you know, but they do say, “Well, maybe it could be possible for you to relax right now,” you know.
Is it possible for you to trust that, you know, if something was supposed to be here, it would be here? Maybe you're meant to trust that you know, this thing that's working its way toward ripening and readiness for harvest, or this question of whether we should go or stay, or protect or defend, or lay down our weapon in the Seven of Wands, so to speak. You know, are there really, or is there really something to defend? Or was there, and now we're just replaying the story. ,again and again?
[0:19:04]
You know, with Seven of Cups, very often the feeling of “Oh my God, I have to figure out what's going on. I have to make a decision,” you know, this card, it actually says. “There's no decision to be made right now. Can you just dream? Can you just float? Can you just be in the not-knowing? Can you be in the experience of the liminality of the Seven of Cups, and can you just sort of be with these aspects of possibility, knowing that none of them are likely the choice that you're going to make?”
Likely, the choice you're going to make is yet to be determined. And the more you can hang out and just chill, the more clearly defined — and more clearly acted upon — that scenario can open to, you know. It can open to really, clearly knowing what the scenario is in the first place and how to respond to it, when we're really able to just be with our inner work around something external.
And usually with The Sevens we have it kind of reversed, where we think like, “Oh, I feel this way. Let me touch in with this external action in order to mitigate the feeling.” The Seven says, “Mitigating the feeling or attempting to do so through external means is only a band aid. It's never going to give you what you're looking for. Can you go inside of your heart, can you touch into your heart? Can you talk to yourself? Can you be with the pain or the wounding?”
You know, what is underneath every Seven is some kind of wounding, pain, or fear. “I'm afraid I'm going to miss it. I'm afraid that if things don't move quickly enough, they won't be okay. I'm afraid that maybe this thing is never going to ripe, never gonna harvest, that I'm going to be in this forever.”
“I'm afraid that if I don't take action, if I'm not clear, if I'm not defended, if I'm not armed and hypervigilant, that a threat could come my way, and I'll be overtaken in some way, shape, or form. If I'm not in constant defense, what if something happens and what if I'm caught off guard?” Right? “What if I miss my decision? Like. what if I miss the moment? What if I'm not good enough, not clear enough, not paying attention enough? What if dreaming actually keeps me from what I want to do?” You know, those are some questions that come up in The Sevens in the Tarot.
[0:21:58]
The reason that this episode is called “The Myth of Not-Enoughness with Seven of Swords” because this particular card calls us into some inner work that is both very powerful, pretty confronting, and tender, for most of us, and uniquely, something that I believe that we A) all experience — cross-culturally, across generations, no matter where we're from, who we are, what we have access to, or availability to, or what we look like, or what privileges we have — we all are imbued working with what comes forward in Seven of Swords. And the second reason — and we'll talk about that in a second.
The second reason is that, you know, why I think it's important to talk about this right now, why it's an ally for this moment is because the Seven of Swords is actually coming up very presently for all of us right now. And because it's a brain chemistry card, it can feel really real, or it can feel really true. It's totally real, but it can feel really true. And we can forget because the brain is so good at convincing us that it's the only narrative to follow, that we shouldn't question it. You know, we should just take it for what it is or take it for granted or never bring any measure of inquiry to it at all.
And what's been coming up for most of us now, perhaps even more than ever, is this idea, this thought, this insidious whisper, that all of us get confronted with at some point, but I believe the volume is turned up very, very high on it right now, which is the story of the whisper of “I'm not enough. I'm not enough. At my fundamental core, what if I'm not enough? What if my best isn't enough? What if my parenting isn't enough? What if my work, what I'm offering, my teachings, my counseling, my labor isn't enough? What if I'm not enough?”
And by extension to that, “What if I'm not good enough? What if other people can do this better than I can? What if I'm doing the same thing as the next person? And they're getting all of these, you know, all of what I'm perceiving as attention or whatever? What if I can't do it? What if I'm not good enough?” you know.
And probably the most, you know, on a similar note, “I'm not okay. There's something wrong with me. At my core, fundamentally, there's something off, there's something wrong. I'm not okay. If I was okay, there would be XYZ. If I was okay, or if there wasn't something wrong, I might not feel XYZ, right?”
[0:25:29]
So we all have this — we can just get that out of the way (Lindsay laughs). No matter how beautiful or together or accepted or popular or successful someone may look — and in fact, the more they have those things in our minds — the more they might actually be dealing with this stuff. Nobody is immune to this. Nobody buys their way out of this. In fact, most people attempt to. There's a lot of desire, especially with these thoughts. “Well, if I'm not, if I don't feel like I'm enough, I will take action. I will do what I have to do. I will push, I will force, I will make myself, make my life, make my whatever it is enough. I will do whatever I can to make sure that I am enough.”
And on that journey and on that quest to, essentially, quench an unquenchable thirst, we can totally bypass our own feelings and experiences. totally bypass the tending, totally bypass the wounding, the beliefs, and the stories, and the why of those stories. Like what did we inherit? Why do we believe that? Did our parents believe that about themselves? Did we inherit that from them? You know, what is the big myth? What is… Because we all operate under this myth.
There's no parent that I've ever met that has not felt like they were failing as a parent. And I've never met a parent who hasn't been working their asses off (Lindsay laughs) to do the best they can by their kids. So while this guilty feeling is, obviously, so normal, why do all parents, you know, many, many parents have this feeling? It's not a judgement. It's just something to begin to look at, you know.
Why is this here? Why do all of us have a feeling like we're not okay, there's something wrong, there's something to fix, there's a broken piece in there that we have to get right, or we won't have XYZ; we’ll fuck up, we’ll pay, we’ll get punished or called out, or we’ll, you know, whatever it is?
[0:27:53]
And the truth is that around this particular experience, Seven of Swords is such a strong ally because it represents the moment where we get to make a choice.
In this card, at least classically, if we look at the depiction on the Smith Rider-Waite, we see an archetype who is, you know, we're not sure what the story is. There's some problematic elements to this, most certainly, maybe some problematic undertones, you know, to be sure with this card. But the story seems to be that this person is sneaking away from a camp where they've just stolen all, perhaps, their enemies' Swords. And there are two more, sort of holding five Swords, blades to the palm of their hand, arms totally full. Their body is striding very strongly forward, but their head is tilted behind them, because their eye has caught these two other Swords that are stuck in the ground.
And here we see this moment, this snapshot in time, of the body and the reality of our situation. The body is moving one direction very strongly. It's moving forward. The body is always — it's never moving backward. The body's always moving forward, always wants to move forward. It's primary op, we're always evolving, and it's not really possible to ever go backward.
So the body is moving so strongly forward but the mind is not following the body. The mind is not with the body. The mind is off in “Why don't I have that thing? Why do I not have this level of approval? Does this person hate me? Am I not enough? Am I not good enough? Am I not okay? Do these feelings, thoughts, experiences make me a bad person? Am I, you know, am I fundamentally wrong? You know, do I have a right to be here?” You know, all these different feelings.
And what does the mind try to do? The mind tries to fix, to help. It doesn't want us to be in this uncomfortable experience. So, then the mind turns away from the present moment, where all these hurt, uncomfortable feelings lie and goes, “Hey, here are these two possibilities here, you know. We could take all of this external action that could maybe help to at least distract, if not mitigate, all of these feelings of not enough. You know, maybe we could stir up all this drama or come up with all this stuff or take our eyes off our own paper. Try to do it the way this person’s done it for a little bit because we're a little uncomfortable. They've paved the way for themselves that seems authentic and comfortable. Maybe we could try that. You know, maybe I could try religion. Maybe I could try a dogma. Maybe I could try to quiet my mind through going on a silent meditation.”
Like, none of these things are inherently bad, but that's what we do, right? Rather than just gently bring the head back to center, bring the head and body, the mind and the body, back into the same direction, we tend to split. We tend to separate — not split in the psychological sense, but split as in split our energy, where we start moving one way and the head starts moving another way.
[0:31:28]
And then, you know, we talked about Sevens, all of them being about inner work that must be acknowledged internally, but that we assume can be mitigated, can be worked through, or resolved externally, or through or with an external action right?
And Seven of Swords specifically speaks to this myth of not-enoughness, speaks to this collective, and yet very, very personal, kind of constant hum in the background like “I'm somehow failing. I'm somehow not enough. I'm not meeting. I'm not at my best. I could do better,” like, just this constant, constant inner critic.
And the attempt, the medicine, the work, the power contained in Seven of Swords, and why it's such a profound ally, is because it not only shows us our typical patterning to either distract away from the moment that is so desperately calling us back in, to bypass the feelings, and try to come to some kind of external thing, even if it's just distraction, even if it's just like, “Oh, let me get on my phone, let me, you know, whatever it is,” you know, right. There's not just the depiction of what happens to most of us, but the opportunity to change it, the opportunity to do something different, the opportunity to understand like, “Oh, wow, this actually is my internal work to do. These feelings of not-enoughness, not-okayness, nobody could ever fill that void in me.”
No title, no partner, no child, no parental approval — it is never going to happen that someone else, or something else outside of you, or something that you do outside of you, is ever going to fill that void. Ever, no matter what. And that can both be devastating and, ultimately, it can also be wonderful news, because that means you don't have to wait for anyone other than yourself anymore.
[0:34:09]
And this is really coming up right now, specifically, both in relationship to this pandemic, and even for those of us who are very much out in the world, very much putting their bodies on the line, very much not having any kind of experience of solitude or isolation where their own inner work is, you know, coming forward. Even with folks who are deeply external, or having to be very external right now, the level of inner work is not not happening with those folks. It may come to them at a later time when things even out slightly, or it may be happening in their dreams, or it may be happening when they're home. There's never a... it's not like that doesn't happen. It's not as if things don't come forward, even if we're tremendously busy at home right now or out in the world.
And yet for many of us, privilege or not, who do not have the ability to go out, who do not have the ability to work, whether because they're their only source of childcare, or because they're unemployed and can't find a job, or because they happen to already work at home, and now are working out what it is to work from home, and not actually be able to go out, depending on their circumstances, there's a huge feeling right now of us getting drawn back into our own work.
There are a lot of reasons for this: the pandemic is just one small part of it — believe it or not. You know, we've been talking about this on the podcast at any rate for years, you know. We're at a point now in human consciousness and evolutionary consciousness, with mass extinction on the horizon, with climate change, with the potential of a pandemic that is wiping out and killing thousands and thousands of thousands of people — ultimately, perhaps, millions of people. With so much devastation, so much loss, and so much confusion and mystery, when so many of us do not have answers, when we're trying our damnedest to work through our own stuff, this card is a huge factor right now.
Because if you're out in the world, if you're having to put your body on the line, you are working through your own stuff about “Why the fuck are people going out? Why are other people going out? I'm working here because I have to. Why are you coming in for, like, a bottle of wine and a chocolate bar? (Lindsay laughs) Like, why are you allowing your children to get too close to me? Why are you… you know, whatever it is. You know, why aren't you understanding?”
You know, I'm positive, medical professionals, I've heard some of them say it, you know, the challenges of having, you know, not having access to the equipment that they need, not having access to the resources they need, being completely overburdened, depending on where they are, folks who want desperately to go back to work, and they cannot, and think that protesting is the right way to go about doing it, and some people who are, you know, doing everything they can to be, you know, doing nothing and to not putting their body in harm's way and feeling helpless.
Like, no matter whether you're out in the world, or you're not in the world, you're doing a lot of inner work. There's a lot of inner stuff to tend to, and a lot of that, right, is externally-based.
[0:38:06]
But what Seven of Swords really calls us to is this sense that lies underneath it, that's been lying underneath our conscious thought from the moment we were born, basically; this slight fear, this slight confusion, this slight worry that we're not enough.
So don't get it twisted: no matter what situation you're in, you're being called upon to come back home to yourself. You don't need time and luxury to do this. You don't need a meditation practice to do this. It's any moment. Catch yourself right now. Have you today, up until the point that you've been listening to this podcast, been believing in some way, shape or form, “I'm not enough here. I'm not doing enough. I'm not enough, in and of myself. I'm not okay. There's something wrong with me. I'm broken. I'm sure that if people knew who I really was, they would agree. You know, my best is not good enough. If it was, I would have XYZ.”
These are painful fucking beliefs to have, and you had them long before the pandemic. The pandemic is one of a lot of things that have been trying to get our attention. Well, let me be very clear here (Lindsay laughs): the pandemic is not happening to direct our attention to these things, because it just isn't. The pandemic is happening because it's happening. There doesn't necessarily have to be a reason, and I don't even know that there is.
What I do believe about life is that we're handed things, very often, that we don't understand. And our choice, in any moment is, well, are we available to play with what's here, and perhaps better wording would be, are we available to evolve, to grow, through this uncomfortable circumstance? Is there in, you know, the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, “Is there a lotus that can be nourished from all of this mud?”
And this is one interesting place where a lotus is really asking to be birthed right now because we've all had this. It's just now we're in, many of us, some pretty excellent positions to be able to bring a little bit more self-tending and self-awareness to these patterns.
[0:40:43]
And, you know, very specific to the recording of this podcast, this is very much what the Full Moon in Scorpio, which is today, is asking us to look at, you know.
Any Full Moon is a harvesting, is a clear cutting, and really looking, like what did we grow? What did we, what have we birthed forth here? Not just from one Full Moon to the other Full Moon, but looking really spiralically, are you, like me, having a nodal return right now? Is your North Node in Gemini? If so, you're having a nodal return, you know.
Maybe that's a part of what Scorpio is calling your attention to, this piece, you know, “you're not enough,” that reflects in some way to you, to your Gemini-ness, or a place where your North Node expresses itself in that way. Maybe yes, maybe no, right? Your communication, your thinking, you know.
More than anything though, Scorpio is about the Plutonian themes of life. It's about what lies underneath. And this Full Moon says, “You cannot keep going without acknowledging this.” We can't keep going without acknowledging this because most of the reason why we're here in the situation we're in — with the environment the way it is, with inequities the way they are, with privilege being what it is — because there's a constant, constant hunger for more that is driven precisely by what we're talking about.
“I'm not enough? Great. I'll get more. That doesn't feel like enough? Great, I'll get more. I'll reach for more. I'll make more changes. Oh, it must be this person, that person. It must be their fault.” And you can see how this just constantly makes for “I'll take action. I'll try to do this. I'll try to take action in some other way,” when Seven of Swords teaches us, yeah, there absolutely may be an opportunity for aligned, external action around some way that, you know, maybe we are being invited to grow. But that's not where this card asks us to start. Most of us are really comfortable with the external stuff like “Oh, great. I'm not enough. I'll change.”
This is about can you lay a hand on your heart and just be with the wrongness, with the squeezing, with the broken feelings of “I'm not enough?” It's really painful, and you've been walking around, all of us have been walking around, with a lot of pain because this piece — “what if I'm not enough? what if I'm not okay?” — it's an unanswerable question. Nobody can validate it but you, ultimately, right? Nothing can do it for you, other than yourself.
And that's great because, again, you don't have to wait for anybody anymore. All the wounding that you have about this, all of the pain — “Why didn't my parents give this to me? Why did they make me feel like I wasn't enough? Why don't I get the validation I want? Why don't I get seen? Why is there no love in my life? Why don't I have any friends? Why do I constantly feel not pretty enough, like my body doesn't match with how I want it to be in the world? Why don't I feel queer enough? Why don't I feel cool enough? Why don't I feel accepted enough by my community?” — you know, these are all incredibly valid feelings. We never want to bypass any of them and yet, nobody can truly validate you, but you.
And the more we look for external validation, the more we're not going to get it in increasingly dramatic ways (Lindsay laughs). It's like the second you look for someone to give us something that only we can give ourselves, the stronger it will not reject us, but certainly not rise to meet us where we really want it.
[0:45:15]
So, we're in a harvest time, we're in a review, you know. Have these thoughts been coming up for you, especially lately? I guarantee you that they have.
We're in unprecedented times. So many folks listening to this are attempting to work their jobs, get a job, get unemployment, you know, trying to keep up, while holding their mental state, holding their mental health as best as they can. So many people are in unsafe situations, so many people are attempting to work their job from a distance or working with, potentially, not having the resources they need. They're homeschooling their kids, they already feel like maybe they don't have, they're not doing enough as parents. Now, there's so much added stuff on top of that with homeschooling.
There's… you know, I have these feelings constantly about my work, about the podcast, about my courses, you know, it's like — and I can hold a both/and. I can. Anytime a student says in one of my courses or whatever, like, “Hey, I, you know, I heard your interpretation about this card. I did not agree with it, but my own interpretation came forward, and it was amazing.” Like, that's a win for me. I want you feeling into your own medicine with the Tarot; that is a win-win-win for me. And there's personal tending to do around that in order for me to keep celebrating you.
It brings forward, I get to do more work around “What if I'm not enough? Should I have been better? Should I have not,” you know. And then it can breed defensiveness like “I remember I did say that about a card once, and like, whatever.” (Lindsay laughs) It's just like, it's never gonna be, it's never gonna come from external anyway. And especially for me, if I'm doing my job, my students are thinking for themselves, right? Like, ideally, they're not agreeing with me. They're thinking critically and independently because that's, you know, everybody's viewpoint on the Tarot is crucial and vital.
We all have this. No matter how together it might look, no matter how together another person might look, we've all got it. So now that we know that, the cat’s out of the bag. The brain loves to isolate. The brain loves to tell you the only one who feels like this. You're the only one that constantly feels like there's something wrong with you. You're it. And there's something wrong with you for feeling there's something wrong with you (Lindsay laughs), you know.
[0:48:00]
So now that we've pouted the brain in this way, as being the jerk and jabroni that it is, how do we come back to a sense of clarity, of caretaking, of working with Seven of Swords as an ally?
The first healing begins when we understand that we're not alone in this. This is very universal to feel: a sense of inner, not-enoughness. And it's a myth. So the first place we can begin is: “I'm not alone, everybody feels this.” Not everybody is comfortable saying it, not everybody is going to be comfortable saying it to you, not everybody may be comfortable validating it to you.
And yet, our willingness to say, “I constantly feel like I'm not enough. I constantly feel like I'm falling short. I constantly feel like I'm failing, and I constantly am being invited into the idea that I'm broken, there's something off, that I’m wrong,” when we can be open about that — because we're used to tending ourselves in our own process, instead of looking for others to validate that there isn't something wrong, that we kind of are enough — the more permissioning we can give to others.
And because I am so comfortable sitting in those experiences because, again, I feel those invitations from my brain every single day, multiple times a day, sometimes all day — I'm always working. I'm always sharing something, be it on the podcast, and, of course, I'm always working on something — like, the more I work, the more I expand, the more the brain gets threatened, and the more it tries to whisper me back into shrinking down or hiding out by saying, like, “This isn't enough. It's not good enough. You got to redo it, you know. You have to, whatever,” right?
So it's constant for me. So I know that, for me, it's probably pretty constant for most everyone else I know. So it's probably constant for you, too, in some way, shape, or form, right? You may not have it around your work, but you might have it around your parenting. You might have it around the way that you caretake, you know. someone in your life, or you may have it about being a good daughter, or a good son, or a good parent, you know, or a good child. You may have it about being, you know, whatever. I could go on and on, right?
[0:50:45]
So the first place is to recognize you're not alone in it. This is highly universal, and there's nothing wrong with the feelings, in and of themselves. It means, actually, that you're doing everything right.
This is as ancient as time itself. These feelings have come with us throughout time, throughout evolution, throughout history, throughout storytelling, you know. What, how do we battle these things? How do we? You know, this is as ancient as it is, as it could be, snd there's nothing wrong with you for feeling it.
Once we begin to consider — because you may not believe me, but if you're willing to consider, as my teacher, Michelle says, “You have you have everything,” you know (Lindsay laughs). If you're willing to consider this, that there is nothing wrong with you for having these feelings, we can begin to drop into tenderness, and that is the key.
If we want to bring our heads from, you know, that turned position away from the body, we want to gently bring the head towards the center of our body, back to the body, uniting mind and soul. uniting our whole being as one. We can put a hand on our heart and just be with the feelings.
We don't have to fix them. We don't have to change them. They don't have to go away. We don't have to feel like enough. We don't need to feel like we're okay. We don't necessarily even need to feel like there's something that's, like, not wrong with us.
This isn't about bypassing or erasing. This isn't about railroading over our feelings. It's about learning to be with our feelings so that we are not constantly projecting and transferring them out, so we're not constantly trying to mitigate our feelings by taking up too much space when it's inappropriate; by attempting to connect with external resources when we're really the ones that we're looking for; by not consistently asking for other people to do work for us that only we can do.
You know, this is a sacred rebalancing of our own inner resources. This is about us coming home to ourselves.
[0:53:26]
In fact, that sense of not-enoughness is like the most insidious, time-wasting, bullshit lie. And it's a lie we believe so completely that it completely can totally drive our lives. We can spend our entire lives looking for something and be like, “Well, I’m never going to get it, so…” you know.
And we just want to feel into the practice of like what is it to be with ourselves and to not feel like we have to fix anything? Just let that, let those feelings be there. Let those invitations be there, understanding that feelings — while valid, and crucial, and sacred — are not necessarily facts. Thoughts, while totally valid, are not necessarily true. In fact, sometimes thoughts are not valid (Lindsay laughs), you know, just straight up. They're like, total, bullshit, fantasy lies, and there's just nothing to them other than an invitation. And they can be real, but not true — as Tara Brach says, you know, so often.
So we don't have to clean anything up. We can just simply be with it. We already, Seven of Swords teaches, you already have so much in your hands, you have so much mental energy that's poking you in the hands, the extension of your heart, that's literally blade to palm, trying to get your attention. Those are your thoughts trying to, like some part of you saying, “Hey, I really want to be tended to here.” But the brain can kind of go ahead of itself, and it can go “Well, let me try to figure out some external piece that can, like, help you not feel so uncomfortable.”
And uncomfortable is not a problem, necessarily. It's not like we ever have to like any of this shit, but it's not a problem. The more present we are with discomfort, the more we can actually evolve through it, and that's really how we grow.
[0:55:30]
So this is also a question of coming back home to ourselves from a bigger spaciousness. Like, who's living your life, if you're off in someone else’s? Like, when we compare ourselves and judge ourselves, and think like, “Oh, like, I’ll do it kind of how they're doing it,” or “use this person, almost like weaponize them for myself, like to try to convince myself to be like this person or to be different, you know.”
Who's doing your personal, soul work if you're off in other people's business about how they're doing their work, you know? Who's channeling down and offering your medicine, if you're in someone else's medicine, offering it as your own, you know? Like, there's a million examples I could give to that. But we’re always trying to step out of the discomfort, to mitigate our own, you know, to help ourselves, and this is just another invitation, another way, you know.
Because what comes forward in these feelings of not enough/not okay, it's never true. You are fundamentally okay, fundamentally enough. There's no such thing as good enough. Good enough because of why, you know, says who? Measured against who? Even against myself, but who you are as a spiral being, completely spiralic.
So how can you measure anything based on a linear system when you're a spiralic being? Not possible. It's a myth. It's the thing that drives most of us to do what we do, and it's totally not true. And that, you know, it's coming up so strongly for most of us, because most of us can't hide in our regular, kind of external validations right now, you know.
Even if we're out in the world, it's so different and so — unless we're not, you know, unless we're believing or thinking something like, “There is no virus,” or whatever it is (Lindsay laughs), you know, that we might be feeling there is. But that's fine, you know. Unless we're really in compartmentalization — which is absolutely appropriate for some folks who are really out there doing their thing right now — this is really coming up. Like, how am I enough? How am I okay, you know? What is it to not feel okay, to not feel enough, to not feel right, and not make any of that wrong?
Because we're not talking about pushing that away and being like, “I am enough. I am okay.” You know I’m not about that life. You know, there's nothing wrong with people who are. It's just not my way. I am not available to bypass my own experiences, and I don't want to bypass anybody else's. So you are always fundamentally okay, even when you don't feel okay. It's possible to hold both/and, and there's never anything fundamentally wrong with you. On a soul level, there's zero chance of tarnishing anything.
[0:59:07]
So we're not, again, shifting into this false sense of positivity. We’re not erasing or taking away your total right to say “I'm not okay.” What actually happens here is one, when we start to honor both of these things, the “I don't feel okay, and I recognize that as a living, breathing soul, in a human experience, I am fundamentally okay,” two things happen:
We begin to tend the wounds of not-enoughness that are so present for so many of us, and just come home to what wants our attention, rather than trying to drift off into something else. And even temporarily, we stop looking for the two other swords, even if it's just for a moment. We take our attention off of the external band aid, the fix, which is totally rational and understandable that we would look for that, and we turn that back in on ourselves, which is exactly what the Sevens call us in to do.
We're never going to get what we think we're going to get. We're never going to fill that void from an external source. It's only us that can ever do that. Ever. It can hold both of these things, can pull us, invite us back into the now, where we're both okay and not feeling okay. And again, we're unconsciously just always looking for those two other swords, “How can I pick those up? How can I get those?” just in a ton of strategy about our inner situation. We buy into this story that something outside of us can fill the void, and it just isn't true.
We can have all the support in the universe, everything that money can buy, and if we don't understand that it's an inside job. We can spend our whole lives looking for something that's vapor. It's smoke, right?
You're always whole. You're always perfect. You don't need anything — anything — to give you that. Nothing. You just don't. Yeah, it’s nice, you know, but if you can't take it in from yourself, it's never going to feel like enough when it comes from someone else.
[1:01:38]
We're all learning right now how to be our own. This is… we are in an Emperor year, of course, and this is very Emperor: rooting down into the soil of our own being, turning to ourselves, our work, our medicine. What does the world need from us right now? Not other people's teachings, not other people's, you know, stuff, but us, you know.
And again, like, I'm very sensitive to this right now from teaching. We're totally allowed to honor our lineage, honor our teachers, like, honor our journey of stepping into ourselves, and we're coming to ourselves right now: total Emperor medicine.
And we're already preparing for Hierophant next year, and for the Five year. That's going to be no joke in 2021, big time. Because Hierophant is all about, you know, taking that idea and going even further. Not only “How can I stand in myself?” but “How can I speak from that place? How can I ensure that I'm not, you know, going off of something that I don't really believe? What am I believing? What do I…” you know, paying attention to all those pieces.
The medicine of Seven of Swords is cluing us in that there's some part of us — when we work with this card, when we pull this card, when we're engaged with this card — there's some part of us that believes that we're deficient in something, and we go off into externals looking to find it.
And with this particular card, it says, “Can't be. Never gonna. There is no thing.” It's not even like, “You can't find it until you get yourself right.” It's like, “It's never, you're never going to get what you think you want or need from external resources because it doesn't matter. What really matters is that you're just loving on yourself.” Because the more you love on yourself and trust yourself, and know that, despite what your brain says, not only are you enough, not only are you okay, not only are you doing your best, but that you are whole — even when you feel broken, that both are possible, and both are always happening — the more we will actually be able to hold others; the more clear we will be in our own purpose, the more that we will be able to not take up all of the space in a room when other folks maybe need it a little more than we do.
We will be able to become more conscious of our privileges, become more conscious of where we're beautiful, become more conscious of like, “Oh wow, like I've been looking for this group or this community or, you know, to validate me and like, I don't need it.” And ironically, when we stop looking, we kind of find that we start getting a little bit more (Lindsay laughs). We start recognizing a little bit more where we are being validated, because it's an inside job, because it's something that only we can do.
[1:05:05]
So, what is coming up for you right now around this idea, Wild Souls? You know, what is ready to be, where are you ready to come home to yourself? Around what stories can you give yourself a little spaciousness? How can you actually witness and honor yourself in these stories, perhaps even more than you are now?
Because, again, most of us when we have a story of “I failed,” or “I'm failing in some way,” we can tend to believe it and just battle, battle ourselves, isolate, and yet, simultaneously, we’ll look to some kind of external resource to either validate our fuck-ups or to try to make us feel better, and it never really gives us what we're looking for. Ultimately, folks can absolutely, you know, give us lots of love and, you know, our ability to take that in is really dependent on our willingness to receive it from ourselves first.
So, what's coming up for you right now, and how can you recenter into your own sacred self care? Are you willing to consider this myth of not-enoughness, that, in fact, it is a myth? Because it feels really true for a lot of us, and it's not unreal. It's just not ultimately the truth of who you are. And it can be there with you every day for the rest of your life, that feeling of not enough and still not define your actions.
I mean, I wouldn't even be on the planet. If I believe that voice, which is very strong in me. I would never put myself out on the line and record any kind of podcast. I would never teach any courses. I would never never do anything, if I paid attention to that voice. And if you've ever appreciated even a little bit of what I've shared, it's because I can let that voice be there and understand it is not the truth of me. My soul is the truth of me, and I'm on this planet to help. That's part of my job.
And it's part of my brain's job to be like, “No!” (Lindsay laughs) “She needs to stay small and safe. I don't want her around all these people! I don't want her out on this limb. I don't want this for her!” And I can say, “You know, Brain, thank you, sweetheart. Like I totally get it. Thank you. Thank you, thank you.” And like we're good. We're so good, and then it can swipe and be like, “Well, you're not enough, and you're failing these people,” and whatever.
And I've just never found it to be true even when the feelings are so real, but that doesn't stop me, ever, from putting a hand on my heart and just loving myself in those feelings because they are tough. One of the easiest ways for me to go about doing that is knowing I'm not alone in them. I know you feel them, too. I know people who are way more successful, way more together looking than I am feel that, too.
[1:08:28]
You know, Glennon Doyle said something I can't remember — some quote from not that long ago, even like a couple days ago. It was like, “The only thing that was ever wrong with us is that we felt that there was something wrong with us,” you know. That idea is as accurate as it gets. The only thing wrong is that you believe the story.
So what might it be like for you? What are those two other swords? What do you believe is going to fix it? Be really honest with yourself, you know. Is it your mom’s finally telling you she's proud of you? Is it you finally getting a partner? Is it you finally… like, whatever it is. What is, what are the two swords? And it's really something that only you can know. And how can you let those two things be there?
How can you thank them? It’s like, “Wow, thank you. I know that this was such an important way for me to try to get love. Like I totally see, I understand this. And I ultimately now know that it's not anyone's job to do this, but me,” you know. So how can you begin to turn to the five swords in your hands, and maybe even place them down and place those hands on your heart, and really, really love yourself up, and hold what you're going through without feeling the need to change it, to alter it, to lessen it, to make it go away?
You can just say “no, thank you” to this story and hold it because it's fundamentally untrue. It could never be true of you. Never. You couldn't try to be not enough if you tried, (Lindsay laughs) like, for real, you know. That's really true. So it's an important ally for these times right now, you know, to be in alignment with the inner work that needs tending, and to be really honest with ourselves about who can give to us, and why we want it.
—
[Conclusion]
So thank you for listening to this, Wild Souls. What an honor to be, hopefully, of service to you, but most certainly, again connecting with you in the space. And until we connect again on Tuesday for next week's Weekly Medicine, I’m wishing you well. Please take care of yourselves.
[1:11:19]