With awareness, your instincts lead to right action. Arthurian Tarot: The Fisher King, The Homespun Tunic
Mayan Oracle: Manik, Greater Cycles
Aleister Crowley: Valour, Worry, Abundance
Medicine Cards: Turtle, Turkey
Osho Zen Tarot: Success, Postponement
Healing Earth Tarot: Ace of Feathers, Eight of Pipes
Ancient Egyptian Tarot: Justice, The Tower, Nine of Wands
Words of Truth: Aspect, Forbearance, Inappropriate Place, Pleasure
In this month of family, feasting and gift giving, we also get a mixed bag of exhaustion, worry and chaos. The cards indicate the sudden changes from November continue to affect December's forecast. Setbacks may force us to see the truth underneath our overly optimistic attitudes. The tensions that have been building since summer are finally released in dramatic ways. This breakdown allows us to create new patterns, rather than continuing to reinforce badly constructed realities.
The darkness threatens to consume the light literally as well as metaphorically for this darkest month of the year.
Events create a change in stability along with a renewed determination and strength to accomplish the task at hand. Balancing the awareness of impending dangers with skill and knowledge will help defeat future attacks which might emerge from expanding threats in the Middle East. We need to reclaim the hidden resources we hold within and uncover new ways to address the obvious problems that loom in the not-so-distant future.
This would not be the Christmas to spend until your credit cards begin to melt. This Christmas learn to appreciate the small and wonderful things about family and life. We really need much less than we realize to be happy.
This month, do what you know instinctively to be right. Incorrect action or ignoring the truth when it is presented will cause continued chaos and upset. Correct action serves the greater whole and includes all truths and perceptions so that healing and transformation can occur. Just because your ego wants to be right or believes that it knows what is true for another does not mean that action would serve everyone.
Think of it like this. In a first stage of awareness, we are out to get what we want exclusively. We want to get our needs met quickly and immediately. We need to be right, and we need to have our truth validated in the way that makes sense to us. The problem here is that what we thought we wanted might not actually serve our expansion and growth. Therefore, the universe will often let events unfold that do not go our way, which can create misery and upset until we learn to let go. Exploring and expanding our limited understanding of truth allow inner self and purpose to align.
In a second stage of awareness, we want to communicate and learn to become aware of the perceptions and beliefs of others. In this stage, we believe that we can all come to an amicable conclusion and fairness will prevail. This may not always work, especially if you are in negotiation with people who want to get what they want regardless of your feelings and beliefs.
As Americans we believe that discussion can lead to changes. Unfortunately, action often speaks louder than words, which leads me to the third stage of awareness and the question of appropriate action.
In the third stage of awareness, we look at what serves love and life moment by moment. Sometimes, that requires an intense, in-the-moment response to external stressors, such as when your children are about to jump off the roof. In such a moment, you do not have a quiet discussion with the child. You emotionally react with love. You yell to stop the child. You instinctively grab in a mixture of anger and love to interrupt the activity. The emotional explosion and force can come across as anger, but it is mixed with love and compassion. The child registers this and immediately integrates that moment as a lesson.
We all have these experiences throughout the day. We shift from a level one moment to a level three in the blink of an eye. No level is bad; we just need to become aware of what level we operate from and objectively make choices that allow ourselves and others to grow.
If we constantly operate from requiring our needs to met by others, we will be disappointed, frustrated, and angry. Anger can turn to hatred, and that hatred can become a blight on the soul. It wants to lash out and hurt others without connecting to their hearts and feelings.
During December, choose to open your heart to a level where you serve others moment by moment. Let go of what you think you want and choose to feel with those who suffer much more than you. Reach out with what you have and touch others, even in a small way. Each gesture can be the magic balm for the soul whose pain may be building up a charge that may lash out in anger and hurt others.
If only we could get governments to become the lightning bolt of truth and love that will not tolerate negative and hurtful behaviors yet do it with intense love and power and the intention to serve all and minimize harm to everyone. This will be the great challenge for 2008.
Waves of change are coming whether we like it or not. Our environment is reaching a critical threshold. Everyone will be forced to make adjustments and to look at how choices we make every day affect each of us. We are not alone, but we are all intricately connected. Our new awareness needs to create alternatives for how we all act and react in this new and evolving world.
Have faith that events unfolding are the lightning strike awakening those who are apathetic to world suffering. When we all align to a higher calling that serves all, then the world will shift to accommodate that new perception. u
Suzanne Wagner is the author of numerous books and CDs on the tarot. She lives in Salt Lake City.