175. Honoring Completions with Death
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How can we let go of old patterns that no longer serve us, and open to a more supportive, nourishing cycle of relationships, creativity, and self love? Today on the podcast, we look to Death as a supportive anchor for this deep and potent work, exploring it as a continuation of our journey with The Lovers, our card for the month of October.
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About the Episode
Together, we will explore the importance of releasing (and fully honoring and grieving) what we've outgrown in order to make way for new, and more resonant processes to take root in our lives. Lastly, I answer a listener's question about how to stay grounded in the midst of a spiritual initiation, and we dive into a bit about the upcoming Samhain/Beltane portal.
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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: death, grief, and loss of a loved one
The content in this episode contains references to death, grief, and loss of a loved one. 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.
[0:00:22]
Hello, Wild Souls. And welcome back to the podcast. Welcome to a new episode. Happy Scorpio season. We’re, at the recording of this, we're sort of almost there, and when this episode drops, we'll have about, kind of, one more day, I believe, with the Sun being in Libra. And then we'll transition into my personal favorite time of the year to be sure (Lindsay laughs). Scorpio season can be so brutal and intense and confronting, but I really appreciate those aspects of it. And it's fun that in a week, we'll get to travel through the Samhain portal.
Absolutely, without question, Samhain’s my favorite portal, personally, in the spiral of the year because I always try to honor the both/and of where the wheel lands. And so the idea that this cross-quarter is shared with Beltane on the other side of the hemisphere, on the Southern Hemisphere, and in the Northern Hemisphere, we'll move through Samhain, is just a really apt reminder for me that while we, in the Northern Hemisphere, are in this profound peak of the energy of death and completion and of transformation and turnover—in the Southern Hemisphere, everything is happening around that, but it's coming forward, instead of falling away.
I also think it's really powerful to name that Beltane—which, again, for us in the Northern Hemisphere, happens on May 1—I love the idea that, you know, we talk so much about how the veil is the thinnest on Samhain, which is October 31, of course. It's just as thin on Beltane. The veil is just as thin. When we're in the process of huge birth, huge blossoming, huge creation energy, it's really powerful to think about that. So definitely my favorite cross-quarter, and very fun to honor kind of the both/and of that. So I'm definitely looking forward to that in a week or so.
[0:02:33]
So we're continuing on our journey of exploring the energy of The Lovers card, our card for the month of October, deepening our understanding and our work with it through all of these different anchor cards. And so far, we've explored Two of Cups as an anchor for this card, we've explored Seven of Swords, and today we're going to be applying another anchor, another very powerful anchor and a very apt anchor, given the fact that it is ruled by Scorpio: the energy of the Death card—a very, very potent complement to the work we do in The Lovers card.
We don't often think of Death card energy as being sort of a helper. I imagine that some people probably do, but I don't think collectively we tend to, like, immediately land on the Death card as being a useful ally and helper on our journey to sort of reclaiming our own worth and lovability and beauty and like (Lindsay laughs) all of the gifts that we possess. And I think there is something really strong and powerful around the idea of even reclaiming the flexibility, the spectrum of what the Death card can be, because it is so many, many, many things. And so we're going to be exploring it through sort of that lens view today. But before I do, before we get into that, and before I answer a listener question, I want to put out a call to my listeners:
So next week we're going to be doing, next week is sort of our Samhain-Halloween-Day of the Dead episode, and the card, the Anchor card—I'm gonna sort of spoil it in advance (Lindsay laughs)—is Three of Cups, which in Soul Tarot, which is the kind of Tarot I teach, we explore Three of Cups, not from the interpretation of Three of Cups that is more classic; this idea of like gathering together and joining up in community. That can totally be what this card is, like absolutely, but it's not all that it is. And in Soul Tarot, the primary place that we start with is actually developing a root relationship to the invisible family and community that surrounds us in the form of our Guides, our ancestors, and our beloved dead.
And ironically, I imagine a lot of folks might assume I might do Death, you know, next week, in honor of, sort of, Samhain, and maybe Three of Cups today. But that's not the way that it wanted to go (Lindsay laughs). And, yeah, so Three of Cups is really our gateway card to this idea. And we'll get into this way more next week: that we're never alone, we're always surrounded by love. How can we, you know, kind of sense into that? So we're going to talk about that card.
But the thing that I'd love to center the most, actually, next week, is that I would love to spend the majority of our time together doing Q&A and answering your questions about just that; about contacting and communicating with your spirit helpers, with your, you know, kind of invisible supports, with your intuition, with your inner knowing. So I welcome you to really flood the Ask Lindsay form (Lindsay laughs), which is the link to ask your question about any of that. It’s in the show notes, it's also in the links button on my Instagram, @wildsoulhealing, it's on both of my websites, I believe, but definitely, definitely for sure on tarotforthewildsoul.com.
And I'm going to be recording that early next week, so definitely do ask your questions now, rather than kind of sit on them, because we record now in advance. So yeah, I would love to support you, and I would love to have that be sort of, in honor of the Three of Cups-ness, kind of this sweet, communal, you know, shared feel. I think that would just be really, really special. So send me your Q’s about all of those things, and, yeah, I really look forward to reading them and sensing into them and answering the ones that I feel like I'm capable of answering (Lindsay laughs), as best as I can.
[0:07:28]
So as we have been speaking about, The Lovers is our card for the month of October. And now that we're really kind of ending, you know, we're wrapping up October very, very quickly. In just a couple of weeks, we're going to shift into a new anchor card, which is incredible. I mean, I, personally, again, I'm really feeling the presence of this card.
There is so much coming up, I think, collectively, that has to do with mirrors and illusions and assumptions, and like it's a lot, right, inside of everyone. There's just a lot of that right now and a lot of invitations, most certainly, to clarify for ourselves kind of what were we looking for to complete us? What did we put our stock in, in terms of what we thought would give us an answer, would give us that sense of wholeness that all of us are looking for? We're human beings; that's completely normal to be seeking that out.
And the subtle, kind of evolutionary opportunity instead of the month of October—really, this is available to us any time—but October is really, really making itself known, is offering a very present invitation: what would it be like to begin to say thank you to those old forms of projection or bypassing or transference or misunderstanding, you know, or misplaced affection or desire or love or whatever it is, and open to a different way?
And so far we've, because The Lovers is about reclaiming everything that is glorious about us that we have difficulty or challenges integrating into our whole being, because it wasn't safe to do so, because it might have been dangerous, because we were told the opposite about who we were, because it wasn't safe. You know, there are a million reasons, right? So we've already explored a couple of anchor cards that, really, kind of were here to assist us in deepening a bit into this idea, right?
We had Two of Cups that invited us to take the first step in our Lovers work, which is to embrace ourselves as we are, to almost enter into a sacred partnership with ourselves, honoring ourselves as we presently are, not once we’re improved, once we’re better, once we’re whatever it is, right. So that was our first sort of branch on the tree.
[0:10:22]
Last week, I actually released an older episode that I thought just struck the perfect note on the piano in terms of the next level of deep work. If we're going to reclaim and love ourselves sort of as we are, it then very naturally leads us into this question: well, where do we always get caught in a sense of not feeling like we're enough? Let's explore that more, because it's impossible, I believe, to just sort of blindly say, “I love and accept myself as I am,” (Lindsay laughs). We're human, right?
We will have situations, circumstances arise, where we'll find ourselves caught in old patterning, we will struggle with a part of ourselves that is challenging to love. It's okay to have parts of ourselves that feel difficult to love. It just is, you know, that's really the grist for the mill. Those moments are the tough crackly places where we can actually get even more curious, even more deep, right, around where those patterns started, what information they're bringing forward, and how we can deepen our love and re-parenting even further.
And Seven of Swords does, typically—again, in Soul Tarot terms—we look to this card as a gentle clarifier, as a little heads up, you know: where are we consciously or unconsciously locked in a little bit of patterning around feeling like we're not enough? Are we striving, are we reaching, are we sort of not in the present moment of our lives, because we're feeling like, “Well, I got to get this thing going on?”
And Sevens are really challenging because they’re inner work, that has to, kind of, start from an inner place, but they often feel very external in nature. So what that means is that sometimes with the presence of a Seven, there can be a lot of thinking mind, that's like, “Well, we got to do this, we have to make sure that this is present and taken care of, and that we're good and that we're okay.” And so moving through that, and sort of weeding through the spiciness of, sometimes, that dissonance of, “Well, there actually isn't anything to do here. Externally, action-wise, today—this is more of an internal issue. My work on this has to start from the inside, right, rather than the outside.”
It's really the only way, that internal to external flow the Sevens really show us, is really the only way that we're ever going to lift some of the mental and the pressure of the discomfort and the perpetualness of those cycles and patterns. And so that's a part of our Lovers work, too; getting just really clear on where, again, we don't feel like we're enough, where, you know, we get caught, right, in this really painful patterning. And this week, we're moving into the energy into the invitation of Death.
[0:13:37]
So how can Death be a helper on our journey with this energy, with The Lovers? Why? Why spend time with this? What's useful about it, and how can it be an anchor for this work? So there are a couple different ways:
This episode is called “Honoring Completions with Death,” and I would say that, in our Lovers work, there's a great deal of emphasis placed on the reclamation of the self that's there, that's whole, that's worthy. It exists within us, period. Like we are enough. It doesn't mean that we won't work. It doesn't mean that we won't mess up, make amends. It doesn't mean that we won't be aware of times where we think, “Wow, my capacity at that time of understanding or of action or of holding was so diminished. Now, it's different.” It's not about, we're not going for perfection here. We're going for rawness, we're going for honesty, we're going for willingness.
So because so much emphasis is placed on the reclamation, we're not always fully rooted in what has to be done in order to make room for that reclamation. We don't have any kind of sort of collective acknowledgement or honoring of any kind of the threshold that it is, to sense into a way in which we were pursuing something, looking for something, looking for someone to complete us, looking for something external to make us whole, okay, to give us what is lacking. We don't have much that helps to support us in crossing the bridge from those old paradigms to something different. And Death can help us to not just—you know, last week with Seven of Swords, the acknowledgement of where we get caught in those cycles. Death can take us a step further, and then many steps further from there, by helping us to actually bring about an acknowledgement and a completion to those old ways of not quite seeing our full self in that mirror, because it takes a tremendous amount of courage. It takes a lot of courage, you know, to move off of the hamster wheel of “I need this external thing to fix it, to relieve me of the stress, to tell me I'm lovable.” I mean, this is very raw, vulnerable stuff, and we get caught in it. It’s very hard to know how to discontinue the pattern.
Of course, I'm not here to say that a Tarot card, alone, can help you do that, nor am I saying that I can be the person who can guide you through that; that wasn't even really what this episode is today. But it's to let you know that there's medicine, there's invitations embedded in the Death card, that can be of assistance when we are ready to cultivate, and name aloud to ourselves in writing, the willingness to let go of the old way and open to something different. In that way, we are honoring a completion, something that we do not have a ton of framework for.
[0:17:24]
There's not a whole lot about honoring completions, right? There's not a huge level of systemic support around any kind of completion. We don't have a whole lot in our overculture around grief. We don't have a whole lot of support around death, in general. It's out there, but it's definitely not as overculturally normalized and understood as I wish it would be, as I think it really should be.
So the Death card can help. It can help to cut, to clear away the shame, the judgement, the self-loathing that can come up around getting caught in some of these patterns. It can help to really open our eyes to where we get stuck in this patterning. Like, what were we hoping these externally-derived things were gonna give us? Were we believing that there was some part of us that was defined by them? What happens if, and when, they go away, right? Do we still have contact with our innate wholeness on the other side of that? You know.
And again, The Lovers promises a new way: there's a new way forward that's possible with The Lovers card, where we actually can completely shift the kind of relationship we have with those externals. The Lovers card doesn't say you can't desire someone, you can't want to be in relationship with them, you can't desire to be a part of a supportive friend group, or to have some kind of wonderful accolade, or, you know, goal in mind. Like, that's great.
It's when we get caught in that frenzy, that gripping, that “have-to-have-this-or-I’m-less-than,” right, or acting out of a void within ourselves because we're unconscious; we're unwilling to look at the work that needs to be done before we move into that. It's big stuff, you know, so it's not nothing. And in order for that to flourish, there has to be a weeding of the garden. There has to be a laying down on the compost pile of the old ways.
What I've learned, personally, from my journey with Spirit—and certainly has been impacted and certainly fortified through the helpful advice of my teacher, Michelle—we don't always need to know the whole thing that we're clearing away to move into, root into the willingness to let it go. We can say, “I’m willing to,” in a gentle, digestible, safe way, “begin to detach, begin to untether from this old attachment, this old, gripping mechanism, this old source of obsession or of need or of desire, that I know is not serving me. I know it's not actually what is for me.” We have to be able to let that go for the new thing to really, again, have room to grow and change. And that is a part of many, many things that the Death card can support us in, in terms of process.
[0:21:14]
Death card is ruled by Scorpio, and it is an energy of transformation and of turnover in life. It represents, to my way of thinking, essentially, the process of turning something into sacred fertilizer. It is the act of—you know, Death card can show up in a million different ways—but it is the act of either moving into the garden of our lives and realizing that something that we've had growing and present in this garden has died, has passed, you know, the roots are no longer producing anything, and it's not salvageable; we're just complete with it. Or when we move into that garden, and we acknowledge: this thing that I planted so much of in my garden I feel complete with, and I am choosing to uproot this.
I don't think that gets talked about enough, that the Death card can sometimes be an empowered choice. There can be an awareness like, and I love tomatoes (Lindsay laughs), so it's probably not the best example, but maybe an acknowledgement like all of this nettle—and I love nettle, too—was working super well. And now I'm realizing I actually would like more room for tomatoes. I would actually like less tomatoes and more room for this thing, you know. It really depends.
And we have a proverbial, soul-level compost pile for those things. It is natural for us to outgrow things. It is natural for things to let go of us. Right? And so sometimes this process can feel very sacred, very empowered. It can still come with grief. Still, even if we're aware that this is something we've outgrown, this is something that you know, is no longer meant to be sort of a part of the garden of our lives, it doesn't mean that that thing is gone, it means that it's coming back into a different form, a different energy source, in a new way. It's becoming compost.
You'd better fucking believe that the old ways that we grip and cling and look for some kind of meaning-making or some kind of validation can absolutely become sacred fertilizer that helps to nourish and allow the new things that we're planting in our lives to grow. We can look back and think, “Wow, how far I've come that I was looking for this person, this group, this community, this lover, to define me, to choose me, that I needed that. There was some part of me that needed it so badly, and what an important part of my journey to recognize, what an important part of my path to honor.”
It's impossible to separate the work we do around releasing and letting go of those patterns. And it's impossible to separate the important work we do around those sort of old patterns from where we go after that. They helped to get us there, and we don't fully always acknowledge the complete life-death-rebirth cycle that's inherent in that.
So again, sometimes what's in the garden has died. It's died, it died a long time ago, and we don't see it really until we're kind of ready to. And that's Death card work, too, right? It’s the process of, the recognition, the realization, the uprooting of the thing, the laying it on the compost pile, and then engaging in an act of ceremony and ritual and acknowledgement of grief, and letting our experience be what it is, in the transitional act, in the completion of this beautiful life form, having a place in the garden of our heart, our soul, our lives, whatever you want to call that, right. And then there are other times where that thing is still alive and flourishing, and we decide (Lindsay snaps), “This is the end of this.” And we uproot it, and we can honor the same thing.
[0:25:58]
I think that that is a big part of Lovers work. Sometimes something is dead for so long, and we just don't realize that it's been dead for quite some time. And we've been really trying to sort of prop up something that hasn't had a whole lot of life force moving through it. Then there are other times where it's kicking a little bit still, and we just think, “You know, this has served the purpose that I want it to serve here.”
This is our garden. We are empowered, allowed to make this space our own, right? But the point is that we have to honor the completion. And you know, this is just a reminder, as we're talking about all these things, that for me, personally—because again, this is my podcast (Lindsay laughs), and I'm teaching what I know, and teaching what makes sense to me—I do not associate the Death card with death. It's not to say that it can't come up around the process of grief and loss, it's not to say that it cannot be a part of that, associated with that; I just don't teach it as being a part of that, because I think that the Death card is very much about soul death. It's very much about personal transformation, and moving through loss and grief, especially of a loved one or a beloved pet.
There are lots of different notes on the piano of grief, and sometimes when we go right to the soul-level invitation of the Death card, especially as we're it exploring here, it can feel kind of insensitive, like we're just supposed to, like, uproot this idea, and immediately have it be this idea of compost, and taking on a different form? It doesn't actually connect—and I actually really stand by that.
Because The Lovers card is not really about lovers, and the Judgement card has really nothing to do with judgement, and the Temperance card is not about being temperate—so, I think it's as appropriate and important to begin to detangle the idea of the Death card as being about death. It can be, if someone has a really rich relationship to it in that way. Certainly, it's not wrong, but it's just not what we're centering today. It's not quite what I'm teaching, and, you know, I think that's important to name.
[0:28:25]
So how do we honor these completions? We cultivate and create ceremony and ritual. We do this without appropriating other cultures. We do this—you know, it's perfectly fine to look to, as much of our own sort of innate, felt understanding of what that looks like. It can be very, very simple, or very, very elaborate. It can be as simple as writing the things down that we're pledging our willingness to be complete with and burning them. It can be as simple as going to somewhere that feels really special and really sacred to us, sort of naming those things out loud to the wind.
I have had some of the most powerful completion experiences around ceremony and ritual for myself, just sitting at the table that enacted, itself, as my altar in my apartment in New York City. It doesn't have to be anything. It can be whatever you want it to be.
This kind of sacredness is available to us in any way. Sometimes it happens, you know, in spirals and layers. Sometimes we do a lot of this kind of completion work on our own, and then we might gather with a group, and there might be some kind of letting go, some kind of witnessing that's necessary, for us to see, kind of, the whole spiral, right, to see the other side.
I think the Death card offers us a profoundly important opportunity to sense into our own relationship with ceremony and ritual as it pertains to completions. And what could be more important around Lovers work than reclaiming a wisdom that lives within us, letting that deep whisper inside of us guide us to where we're going next, to where it might be the most useful and valuable, to shift into this different relationship with our own honoring and witnessing process, right?
The last thing that I'm going to name, that I think is very interesting, is the fact that The Lovers card shares a vertical line with Death. So we can look to, if we line up the three lines of seven cards in the Major Arcana, we will then have seven vertical lines. And the sixth, the second-to-last line, is comprised of The Lovers, Death, and Judgement, very powerful, you know; and all presenting us, actually, with these crucial steps, crucial completions, letting go processes, and reclamation processes, simultaneously, that allow us to move forward into the last card of the line, where we sort of spiral into something completely brand new.
It's the necessary work that has to happen before we can open to the next big thing, and it's the thing that most of us tend to skip, right? This idea of really getting down, really starting to understand: what is my process here? What exactly was I looking for? You don't need to know how to give it to yourself. The Death card says, “Can we just be in the willingness to understand that this is complete?” It's complete, you know.
[0:32:12]
And it doesn't always need to be about relationships. It can be so subtle, our Lovers work, you know. I mentioned a couple times on the podcast and in various places, but I've gone through this with my courses, where my courses have been conducted or presented in such a way that it worked, and then it didn't, and then it was time for something new. But there was no way that I could open to this something new without fully going through a grief and completion cycle around what the course was, and that involved—for me, I really do resonate with the idea of just writing down what I'm letting go, and like spending some time with that and burning it. And there was a lot of time doing that, you know, inside of that process, and a lot of tears, and a lot of grief, and a lot of appreciation and gratitude extended to the course; a lot of listening to the course, a lot of communication, and, actually, trust-building, you know, and a lot of awareness on my part about where maybe I haven't been, you know. Maybe I hadn't been as present with this course as it really wanted me to be.
And probably some of the most important work inside of that for me was like: what was I looking for in this old way? What worked about that before? What did it teach me? What did it help me to understand? What did it help me to do or to know? And again, what was I looking for? How can I have compassion for myself around that? What was I wanting to give? What was I wanting to have the work be? What did I believe about that? What did I think was necessary about engaging with it?
For me, personally, especially with the courses, it was the awareness that like some parts of the way I was running my courses, I didn't want to do anymore, and it didn't want to be involved anymore, the course itself. And there was a lot of time spent in like, “I've never really enjoyed those aspects, like those various aspects. Why did I do it?” And there was a lot for me and like, “that's just what people do when they do online courses.” It took a lot of courage to say, “Yeah, that's okay, and I don't have to, you know. I don't have to do that.”
So, it's just to say that this process can be around an offering. It doesn't, again, need to be about anything relating to even a relationship, it can be about anything, you know. Once we're sort of invited into this work, it can just call us into some of the most powerful, powerful places. And I do believe that Death card work is an essential ingredient to our Lovers card reclamation.
So I hope that this is feeling resonant, I hope that you play around a little bit. Then maybe even take some time and sit a little bit with this idea of letting go, with this idea of composting, and having there be a kind of transmutation of that compost into sacred fertilizer, that then can nourish all that you want to grow from those old patterns. That, as much as we believe, like, we have to banish and burn away, that the burning—even the burning (Lindsay laughs), you know—is a part of the compost process. Nothing gets kind of isolated or distilled or moved away from the whole picture of our growth. And that's what Death card, as an anchor for our Lovers work, can help us to do.
[0:36:12]
So our question this week is from Jo, and Jo asks:
I'm moving through a pretty huge transformation, one that was initiated about six months ago when I made a sincere commitment to listen to Spirit. Since then, I've made more decisions according to my intuition than ever before, and after months of scream-falling through the void, I found myself in a very different life.
On the one hand, I feel inordinately blessed. On the other hand, I am sick with fear. I'm afraid I won't actually be able to stomach the reality of what I've longed for; like my body and heart aren't actually big enough to survive what this change will demand from me.
When I pull from my Tarot deck for support, I receive it in the form of Major Arcana cards, like the Empress or The Fool or The Moon, cards that I have a very hard time rooting into concretely. I feel seen and lovingly witnessed by my guides when I pull these cards, but I struggle to find the actionable advice, if there is any.
How do you stay grounded in the midst of big change? How do you continue to trust your choices after you've passed the point of no return? What practices help you resist the fantasies of fear?
[0:37:23]
So Jo, beautiful question, beautiful work. “Scream-falling through the void” really touched me, resonated very strongly with me. You are speaking to—beautifully and articulately—the messy and challenging and wholly life-changing process, initiatory process, that every single person who starts to welcome Spirit and a more soul-led rhythm into their lives enters into; it can't be avoided. I don't even know if being grounded inside of it is something to aim for because the whole point is that the ground underneath us is sort of eliminated and gets reformed in a different way.
So I encourage you to play with what it might be like to bow over to the fact that there is no ground right now. The fact that you're pulling The Fool and The Moon, you're already being— arms of support are already being wrapped around you with regard to this. This is the process of The Fool: once we start to say yes, the ground underneath us really does dissolve, and it becomes a moment-to-moment process, rather than one big leap. And then all of a sudden, we're sort of on the path, you know. It is moment-to-moment work, and there's a very high degree of thinking-mind disorientation with a process like this.
The Moon card, too, is a sort of, a kind of, initiator around us befriending the void, the unknown, and helping to—if we can imagine, like putting down roots in the middle of like really strong ocean waves. Those roots can't be static, they can't be, they have to have really strong core and tether, but they're going to move around, right? This idea of seaweed kind of dancing with the waves—we want to be like that, right? We want to let kind of the waves carry us.
So you're doing a beautiful job. Beautiful job. The only practices that I would sort of recommend are working with your deck. Working with your deck, developing some anchoring practices, definitely being out in some kind of nature, if you have access to it, very helpful, you know; being around some like-minded company like, you know, just some folks who've experienced this, or at least willing to be a sympathetic ear to you, very helpful. Like, the fact that you reached out and asked this question is a beautiful signal of your willingness to be sort of witnessed and championed in this huge process that you're moving through.
[0:40:34]
Now, you're “afraid you won't be able to stomach the reality of what you've longed for, like your body and heart aren't actually big enough to survive what the change will demand from you.” That is thinking mind. And while I honor and fully bow to the thinking mind and the brain and (Lindsay laughs), you know, all of its limitations that it can tend to put on things because it wants us to not get our hopes up and be scared and disappointed.
If the thinking mind and our capacity to understand something doesn't have a prior example in place, it is very common that we'll get that sort of invitation like it's impossible. Like, “I couldn't possibly hold the bigness of what I'm moving into, of what I want. I could not possibly. My heart isn't big enough, my body isn't strong enough, it's not solid enough. I can't do it, because…”
And it's kind of understandable that we would feel that way because there's no comparison to the thinking mind to make. Like if we've never actually opened to that degree, of course, the brain is going to say, “Well, this is impossible, right?” (Lindsay laughs) like, “you can't do this.” Because according to it, you haven't done it before. And that doesn't make it true though.
The fear is really normal, that's really normal, especially in the beginning, to feel like “Can't do it. Too much. Fuck this, where's the red button? No way,” you know (Lindsay laughs). It's a reminder to you that the Empress is helping you out with this; that the receiving piece, that our body, our heart, our nervous systems, our capacity to sort of integrate and hold and receive all that we're calling in, does happen sort of over the course of time. Because if it is way too much, way too quickly—and I mean, I will be real with you: sometimes some things do come in real hot and heavy, and it's like whoa! And then we call in processors and make shifts or changes to sort of shift it into a more digestible rhythm—sometimes it is big, really quickly.
But a lot of the time, most of the time, I would say, the Empress work we do—and what you're describing here is Empress work: going beyond what the thinking mind thinks is possible, in terms of what we can literally receive as human beings before we kind of explode. Because it's too much love or too much good stuff, you know, or we get ahead of ourselves a little bit and think, “Well, I can't do it,” sure, you might not be able to do it today, but it's not here today. It will be here, you know. This stuff happens with time, in time, on purpose, so that we have time to integrate and slowly sort of expand our threshold or capacity to receive something.
[0:43:51]
So that is what I would say. I would say lean into these three cards because they are showing up as solid anchors for you. And you're right—there's nothing necessarily actionable about them. And that's okay, because you're in the work, you're living the work. It's a different way of thinking about “the work,” right, which you're living right now.
It really is like every moment contains within it an opportunity to rest a bit or to be a bit or to confront or comfort or negotiate or navigate the invitations of the thinking mind, or to sink in a little bit deeper with Spirit or with our knowing. There is powerful work going on. It's just not work that you're having to manufacture. So it can feel really strange. That's a big shift from kind of like ego-led soul work—which is totally fine to be honest with you—to like Spirit-led soul work. It’s just like, we're just, as my teacher, Michelle, would say, like, in the river moving, and there's like nothing to do but sort of be in the river and navigate that process with respect.
And you know, you asked, “How do you continue to trust your choices after you've passed the point of no return?” I don't know that we're supposed to. I think doubt comes up, and that's human and normal to confront that, and to doubt it, and to consider our choices, because things do change. And it's not to say that, like, you'll regret what you've done, but sometimes, you know, that this process is very spiralic. So sometimes we say yes to something, and we think it's the thing, but it's really the thing that's necessary to guide us into the next thing.
There's never a going backward, it's always forward. Just being in the moment, as we are, is really the only way. And when big, big doubt comes up, instead of feeling like, “Oh, no, I shouldn't feel this. Why don't I feel more trust?” This is a part of the path and the work; to let the doubt come up, to honor it, to offer it your full attention. And when big questions and fears come up, that you're like, “I don't know how to respond to this,” you can bring them to a trusted processor, a mentor, a community that, again, you trust, that you feel is actually doing this work.
[0:46:30]
I’m not, you know, meaning to—again, I'm saying this as respectfully as possible, and there's nobody in particular that I'm talking about or a community in particular that I'm talking about here, for real. There's so many communities and teachers and people who call themselves intuitives or soul-led, and they really aren't. I think they probably think they are, which is okay, but it's really important for us to do our own kind of critical thinking and real consideration and just really sensing into, like, “Does this really feel like something that someone on a similar path to me would say? No? Yes? No?” or whatever. Sometimes we think it, and then it changes. And so just know that, in going into something, that it's always important to keep a sense of common sense and critical thinking close by. But yeah, to reach out for the support, just like you did with me today. Beautiful, beautiful question.
And I would say, above all things, know that the doubt is actually a part of the path. The more it comes up in these layers, the more we're able to sort of process and let go of little bits of it. It’s normal for these parts of us to want some fucking answers. And it's okay to be with them and say, “I don't have an answer,” or it's okay to be with them and say, “You know, this person recommended this. Let's see,” right? It's also okay to just say, “I'm scared, and I don't know, and this is really intense.” And, you know, it's all right, right? It's okay.
Every time we sort of get flipped off into outer space and bring our way, like we make our way back down to earth, that's a valuable experience. It's not necessarily something we want to completely avoid. So I hope that this is useful. And again, I really bow to you and honor you on this big initiatory path. It's no joke (Lindsay laughs). Just please be gentle with yourself. It's a lifelong process. It's not work that we do in a day, you know.
—
[Conclusion]
[0:48:43]
So thank you so much for listening, Wild Souls. Thank you for being here. I'm always so grateful to be gathered with all of you in this space. Please do send me your questions for next episode, again, about ancestral healing or connecting with our spirit helpers, intuition, guides, Samhain, whatever you want to talk about (Lindsay laughs). The veil being thin? I'm about it. So send me your Q’s. I look forward to receiving them. And until we meet again, please take exquisite care of yourselves.