On Friday the 28th of August, I was on the radio show Synchronicity. I had a blast doing this interview and am really excited to do more in the future. Marie, the host, is a great person.

We talked about how to learn Tarot and how to use the cards to build the life you want to lead. I give several short readings as well. You can listen to it here. I hope you enjoy and look forward to hearing what you think.

We all probably know people who have done everything. They are master this, exalted that and currently learning the 20 latest techniques. That is all well and good, heck, if you look at my resume it probably reads like that too. The challenge with doing 1,000,000 things is not in any one thing, but in how they relate to each other. Or in how they integrate in you.

The biggest problem, aside from the obvious jack of all trades issue, is in putting them together. It’s like that song by Johnny Cash where he steals the pieces from his job to make a car and when he puts it together, it ends up being a bit of a Frankenstein: 3 headlights, 1 tailfin and so on. Perhaps that is your aesthetic, which is fine, but building a spiritual practice out of pieces designed to be a cohesive whole is a lot easier.

How to integrate your tools!
So this spread takes a bit of a different approach – you start by choosing a card that represents you or your goal. In choosing, I don’t want you to pick a card from the deck, but instead choose one from the following list. If you are not sure which to use, you could pull them all and draw one randomly from them. This card will be put in the middle to represent the core, the center, or, if you prefer, the goal.

Magician – personal power, knowledge-driven
Hierophant – spiritual leadership, groups
Emperor – earthly power and leadership
Empress – for creative endeavours
High Priestess – personal power, intuitive-driven
Hermit – when setting out on your own
Fool – when starting over, or just beginning

So, now you have one card by itself in the middle to represent you, your aspiration, and your goal. Now place one card for each of your practices around this center, leaving a space for another card to be placed later between each card on this outer ring and the center. For example, you might be doing Yoga, studying Qabalah, Tarot, and Reiki – you would then put one card for each making sure to keep track of which is which.

Flip them all over, one at a time, and see what the cards have to say to you about this practice. Is it good? Is it neutral? Is it bad? Does the card match what you are getting from this practice, or its current state of importance in your life? Once you have a sense of the state of the union, it is time to move on to how looking for how to integrate these practices into your core.

Place another card in between each of the practices and the center. These cards will help you find integration, or perhaps point out that a parting of ways might be coming up. Go through each card one at a time and look at how they encourage or discourage the flow between the outer card and the core.

As an example, I might have chosen the Hierophant as my core, gotten the 9 of disks – gain – for my Tarot practice. This is not just a part of my practice, but is also my profession, so getting the 9 of disks is a great card – material prosperity and gain – cool! The next card, for integration, is the 8 of wands – swiftness – a card of communication. I would read this card to say that deeper communication, and success in my work will come from spreading my message. Getting word out about what I do and what I am all about.

If a negative card showed up either for a practice, or it’s integration, you should read it as a questioning of the value of that practice in your life. Though it might be tempting to ask whether it is just for now or for good it might be more fruitful to just carry the question with you into meditation. Questions to ask yourself are things like; have I learned everything I need from this? Is it off point from my primary direction? Am I staying in my strength instead of continuing to challenge myself? I am sure many other questions will present themselves to you.

Let me know in the comments how your integration is going!

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For years when I started walking my path, I felt that if I did not do spiritual things every day I was not fulfilling my end of the bargain. In looking back over my journals from those early years I find frequent comments about how little I was doing. It was not until I started to use a more graph like system to track my work that I realized how much I was actually doing.

In retrospect I can also see now how some of the activities I was doing were perhaps good spiritually, but were damaging to other areas of my life - I spent too much money, I neglected relationships - to name a few. If I approached work the way I approached my spiritual life people would have said I was a workaholic. Today if we talk about work life balance most people get it – but this wisdom should be applied to our spiritual path too!

I always found the monastic kind of life appealing. To be the Hermit, living away from the world communing with spirit sounded like a sweet deal to me. What I found challenging, was not in connecting with spirit, but in bringing that connection into the world. It is the ability to sustain and nurture that connection and insulate it against the challenges of daily life that I have found the hardest.

I think that there are many ways in which spirit and daily life can be balanced, but to me the 4 of disks holds the answers. If you look at the image on this card in the deck of Thoth, it is a castle. It is a card of establishing order to promote sustainability. This card is not about static structure it is about dynamic order. The 4 points, or turrets, are given to the elements – Fire, Water, Air and Earth. These elements are in turn given to different aspects of our lives. Fire is spirit, Water to emotions, Air the mind and Earth our bodies and material needs. The lesson of this card is that if any one piece goes out of synch all might be lost.

As far as lessons go “making sure you take care of the different aspects of your life” is pretty simple. However, the reality is that its pretty hard to do – that is why a dynamic order, not a static one is needed. Visually it is easy to see that the cycle just restarts when we get to the end, in fact there is no end – it just starts up again.

Building a sustainable life and walking your path.
This process is designed to help highlight where there is imbalance in your life and to diagnose what can be done to help correct the imbalance. To get the most out of this don’t look for a cure, or permanent solution, but reassess on a regular basis in order to keep things on track.

Step 1
Put out four cards - 1 for each of the corners of the castle. If you start in the upper right and go counter clockwise you have Fire, Water, Air and Earth.

Start by looking at each card individually. Which position, or element’s card is strong and vibrant? Which blocked or out of control? Generally, problem cards carry their own suggestion as to the solution, for instance:
5 of wands, strife, would suggest conflict in your self, or that area of your life
5 of cups, worry, suggests that fear is getting in the way
8 of swords, interference, suggests looking at what outside force is getting in the way
7 of disks, failure, is a dead end and suggests starting over

Now assess the balance of the 4 cards. Does one area stand out? Before getting to heady about it ask yourself if there is an obvious solution. Is there time and energy going into that area? Will it take time to develop? And so on. Often, just having issue highlighted, will help solve the problem. If you got your answer skip to step 3.

Step 2
If there is no obvious answer then place another card by the position(s) that are not going well to provide a solution. Whatever the card that falls, look for an action in it, for example:
8 of cups, indolence, which often talks about laziness in this case might suggest a break
8 of wands, swiftness, brings up communication as important
6 of disks, success, says money might help
4 of swords, truce, says accepting what can’t be changed, at least right now, is important

At this point you should have an idea of the problem and what will fix it.

Step 3
Finally, it can be helpful to look at the flow in the initial pattern of four cards. How well do they relate to each other? Do they support each other? Life is an interwoven web where no part can truly stand alone. If all four cards are positive, cool! You are doing great. If one area, or suit stands out, ask it to find its way back into alignment. If you don’t know what to do bring order place one last card in the center to speak to what will unify the whole pattern.

The power of using this process comes from repeated use. By coming back to it month after month, season after season, deep patterns will emerge and further accelerate your growth and journey on the wandering path. http://www.thehermitslamp.com/wp-admin/post-new.php

In the next post we’ll look at dabbling as an integral part of the journey and potential pitfall too!

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