This is The Minister of Myself website and blog. I am the minister, the host, and the author, David Dear. Here you can find:
The Tarot of Manifestation blog
The Menage a Tarot podcast
Feel free to post a comment in the comment section of any of the posts.
You can also email me at myownminister@gmail.com
or via this contact form.
Thanks for visiting!
Recently I’ve been hearing the idea of microaggressions tossed about, although the term has actually been around since 1970. I have no desire to chase down Webster or Wikipedia or any sources in an effort to give a nice clean clinical definition for you; however, I will give you a description of how I understand it to be.
I see the idea of a microaggression as an act or statement against a group of people (generally a minority) that could be construed as offensive, whether intended or not, but not necessarily overtly. I’ll give a personal example here. As a biracial person, I have been told several times in my life by one person or another that they don’t think of me as black. That statement could be construed as a microaggression.
What makes it so? In this case, there are implications that can be called into question. What does the person making the statement consider a black person to be? What is the intent behind the statement? Does it hint to how they may view black people, or how they view me in the perspective of that contrast?
In light of the deconstruction of that statement I just gave, it could be considered a microaggressive statement if you choose to chase it down the cultural rabbit hole deep enough. At some point amidst the roots and rocks and hardpan and grub worms is buried the grain of sand that gives way to offense. Therein lies the nerve that has been jabbed to send up a klaxon of psychological antibodies.
I think of such epithets as heat seeking missiles and our unresolved angst in the given cultural genre as the heat signatures. In the example I gave above, I personally find the statement very much a throw-away; it has little to do with who I am and mostly to do with who the bearer of the statement is. But what if I found it deeply offensive? What fragile and delicate part of me did it speak to where I felt a call-to-arms in protection of my ego and definition of self?
I am not making light of people slinging around offensive statements without consideration or forethought. Nor am I condoning it. I am saying that being offended is a cooperative action. We enter into a contract with the offender where we are consenting to being offended. Our offense is often our ego imposing an expectation on all others out in the world to view us the way we insist that we should be viewed.
To flesh out the example I gave earlier, here is how the conversation went:
Microaggressor: You know, I don’t think of you as black.
Me: (facetiously) You know, I don’t think of you as white.
Microaggressor: You know what I mean.
Sad thing is, I actually did. And it had nothing to do with me. At least that’s the way I chose to see it.
Indulge me for a moment while I briefly discuss sports. American sports. Specifically, American football. I promise I’ll make it brief.
In 2008, the New England Patriots went to the Super Bowl, facing the New York Giants. New England waltzed into the Super Bowl having not lost a single game in the entire 16 game regular season, giving them a 18-0 record going into the big game. New York was facing this undefeated team after squeezing into the playoffs as a wildcard with a regular season record of 10-6.
Needless to say, the Patriots were heavily favored to win the Super Bowl. Yet New York was able to beat them in the big game 17-14.
Here’s my belief in the outcome of that game. Had the Patriots lost a game in the regular season they would have probably won the Superbowl.
Nobody save the psychological masochist or the celebrated victim likes to lose. Losing rends from us the last shred of self-confidence we clung to for survival during our final battle. The higher the stakes of the contest, the harder the gut punch we receive with a loss.
The biggest losses we experience, or let me be so bold to say nearly every loss we experience, comes through necessity. When we experience defeat it is a defeat that is necessary and often overdue. The loss tells us that our current trajectory of growth has plateaued, that there was really nothing more for us to gain with a win, and that it is our destiny to rediscover ourselves.
Does a win compel us to look inward to the degree that a loss does? Does one win create as great of an appetite for victory as does our most recent defeat? Now mind you, this is not to say we should make sure we lose or that we should deliberately lay down our swords in the midst of combat just for the sake of experiencing a loss. Au contraire, we should play to the hilt even knowing the odds are stacked against us, for when we lose in light of this, our loss creates an even greater opportunity for us to grow, beyond where we would have otherwise.
Someone’s parent or teacher or pastor or guidance counselor probably gave them this advice at some point: It was something to do with making clear logical decisions by setting aside one’s emotions. Yeah, I don’t know about that.
That’s all fine if you want to don a lab coat and tote a clipboard around (or is it a laptop these days? Probably a tablet, I’d guess…). Decisions devoid of an emotional influence are best made with control groups and data sets.
I am an advocate of making emotionally-based decisions. Before you start pecking at me like a bunch of territorial crows, let me flush this out: I believe how one feels about the outcome of a decision, paired by one’s truest desire, provides for the absolute purest compass for the direction to take.
I’m not talking about that kind of flailing-wildly-in-a-state-of-panic type of emotion. That’s what comes to mind for many people when referencing the idea of deciding by feelings. I would be so bold to say that fear and panic are more reactions than emotions. They are more byproducts of the klaxon of the adrenal medulla figuring out how to get the heart out of a box on fire. The ensuing actions we take due to panic are rarely based on any thought whatsoever during episodes of an epinephrine surge.
The clearest decisions we can make are the ones that trace directly back to what we want. This is actually the trickiest part, as our truest desire is often layered and stacked and dogpiled with several other subsidiary wants. Many of these are based on what we think we are supposed to want, gifted to us by cultural expectations, social mores, and all things obligatory. We will find many of these lesser wants battling it out, vying for psychological dominance.
At some point, we need to strip away all of the little wants that are in essence superfluous in the background of our true desire. We have to distill down to the single most emotional intention that catches that glint of light in our solar plexus. We have to identify what we want most as it is left standing on its own after clearing away all the emotional flotsam and jetsam, leaving only the purest of aspirations. It is from here that we make the best, clearest, and most focused decisions, and these are the decisions that yield to us the greatest growth and success.
Summary:
The year is 2031. The United States has sealed itself off from the rest of the world. The state of the country is dire; the Constitution is ancient history, the poverty level is at an all-time high, and there is more corruption in the government than ever before. And oh yeah, Mel Gibson is president. But something is wrong with Mr. Gibson. He doesn’t seem quite…human. What unfolds is a battle unlike any other. Bring on the Invaders, a secret society whose mission is to destroy the unknown forces in D.C. and take back this country.
Head over to Audible to hear a sample of this book. You can listen to it for free when you sign up for a 30-day trial membership. Enjoy!
Summary:
Mitch Paulson, a burnt out Detroit homicide detective, retires to a small, Northern Michigan resort town only to be reluctantly coaxed out of retirement by his brother, the local Chief of Police, to investigate the murder of a beautiful, young female lobbyist from Washington, DC, whose body is found in a building of an abandoned state mental hospital. In the course of his investigation, Mitch finds himself enmeshed in the most complex case of his career.
Head over to Audible to hear a sample of this book. You can listen to it for free when you sign up for a 30-day trial membership. Enjoy!
Today I’m making a slight departure from my usual Tarot posts. I went into my box o’ cards and noticed this beautiful and unique set of cards. They asked to be used, so this is what I drew today. To learn more about this interesting deck, visit http://www.dreamingincolor.us/
Anyone who reads Tarot, or should I say most people who read Tarot, will experience a bit of synchronicity when they draw or read the cards. This was the case for me when I drew these two cards.
As much as I would love to isolate myself from the media- mainstream or otherwise- I find it difficult to do so. I spend a lot of time online, reading blogs, posting to social media, etc. etc. Invariably “news” finds its way to me, whether I’m being insidiously fed it through posts and banners and tweets, or I have someone lean close and ask me if I heard about some or other tragedy. I would say I do my best to mitigate the visual and audial contact of malaise inducing media, but that would be insincere of me to do so.
As a result, I leave myself unshielded from reports of the darker side of humanity; police shootings, mass shootings, acts of terrorism, the vilification of one or another class or group of people, to name a few. The slacktivist responses to these atrocities are often calls to inaction such as thoughts and prayers, decrying hate, and other idioms and expressions that can be summed up in bold white letters over a compelling photo on a jpg image.
All these reports of human vitriol and animosity toward each other had my wife Jacque and me participating in another conversation around such incidents. We conjure up imagined diatribes with hatemongers and test them by sending our rebuttals on the backs of canaries into the coalmines of debate. In doing so, I declared that hate was born of laziness.
Let’s look at the dynamic of what hate is. Hate is an idea, a perspective or a concept which incites within us a very negatively visceral reaction. That which we hate interferes with our ability to experience freedom, joy, and love. If we could only remove the source of our hatred from the realm of our purview, we would once again experience peace.
When it comes right down to it, hate is a great convenience. It allows us to eschew self-examination and personal accountability. We instead place the blame on the evils that lurk outside our sphere of influence, easily encumbering it with our personal baggage which we have chosen not to examine and sort through. The more things we can find to hate, or the stronger we can make our hate, the less work we have to do on taking the necessary steps to improve the circumstances of our lives. It’s not our fault we are angry and dissatisfied, the fault lies in that which we hate.
The truth is, we don’t actually relieve ourselves of the weight of responsibility when we pass our hate onto the objects of our abhorrence. Our own hate is our own encumbrance. The people, situations, circumstances, and such that we believe we despise are simply aspects of our own feelings of helplessness, inadequacy, and fallibility that we are refusing to acknowledge. We believe the work required for self-examination, self-correction, and self-improvement seems Herculean in nature, but casting blame for our circumstance on another is Sisyphean in nature. The former resolves through our own realization and enlightenment in personal growth where the latter has no end. If that which we believe we hate does go away, it gets replaced by another, as the true source of our hatred is our own self-loathing.
Anytime we find ourselves saying the H word, or feeling bile rise at the thought of something we believe to be worthy of our ire, it is a roadsign that, if we chose not to ignore it, would lead to where we need to do the personal work. Otherwise, we will become consumed by our own hatred.
I need to preface this post with a disclaimer: normally when the Death key comes to the surface in a reading, I take pause in going straight to that Chicken Little reaction of someone’s going to die! Most Tarot readers and students know that Death doesn’t necessarily mean anyone’s mortal coil is about to unwind any more than The Devil means Satan is going to show up unexpectedly to your dinner party or that The Lovers means you’re going to meet Mr. or Ms. Excellent or that The Hermit means you’re about to go out and buy a vinyl copy of Led Zeppelin IV.
However, as a Tarot reader that has instilled in myself to be cognizant as to what on a card might draw my attention during a given reading, today I found myself drawn to the two towers behind the boy in this rendition of the card. I was pretty sure I remember it from the Rider Waite, but I went and referenced it anyway to be sure… yep, they’re in there too.
I wonder how many of you are thinking of where I’m headed, or if you yourselves have gone there at any point in time. My mind quickly went the the fateful day of September 11, 2001, an eternal blight on the collective consciousness of the United States, and to some degree, the rest of the world.
I’m not going to go all David Icke meets Nostradamus at a Masonic dinner party here. I’m not going to fold dollar bills presciently or convert 9-1-1 into specific foreboding font symbols. I just can’t help but reflect on the degree of death focused in a single time and place that occurred on 9-11-2001. I’d say it is just a coincidence that it shows in this card, but…
Let me not digress into too many stories of Archons and Reptilians and Annunaki and ruling elite family cabal globalists. Rather, I want to look at what came to mind as I see the Ingalls family play out in Tarot syndication on the card to the right. I want to look at the juxtaposition of the big mean spooky boogeyman of the Tarot abreast it.
Here’s the thing: In talking about the tragedy that irrevocably tore our society asunder fifteen years ago this year as I write this, I do think about the symbol that Death is intended to convey in the Tarot. I see the Ten of Cups talking about what is on the other side of the door or river or chasm or realm or Van Allen belt or veil, that it is a glory, a jubilation, a realization of a reward when the new life is attained and realized.
When I put this in relation to that horrific memory and image that that fateful tragedy invokes, I ask myself where the rainbow is. How have we grown to become better people, better human beings, better members of society? It is a highly debateable idea by many that the Holocaust brought about a raising of consciousness of sorts, an awakening of the self-awareness of humanity within that was long dormant, that could only be jarred awake through such an extreme atrocity. Viktor Frankl, himself a Holocaust survivor, echoes this to some degree in his book Man’s Search For Meaning.
Yet here we are, a decade and a half after the September 11 attacks and I have yet to see any lotus bloom growing out of the mud. We invest inordinate amounts of time and energy putting “security” measures in place that are intended to make us feel more safe yet have the unintended (debateable by conspiracy theorists) effect of making us feel less safe. We have discarded the notion of personal privacy offhandedly. We have added another race, religion, and culture to our collection of Them that are out to get Us. We immediately release the hounds to sniff out the extremist Islamic group du jour after the town cry of every newscaster generated by an attack upon a group of people like a war vet reacting to a car backfiring.
I’m waiting to see us arise from the horror and tragedy of that event into a place where we see our unity and interconnectedness, where the deaths of those 3000 victims of the event and the resulting deaths 100 times greater in number from the reaction to the event are not in vain. I can’t see a burgeoning police state with its Orwellian overtones being worth the number of lives lost. I can’t imagine the departed soul believing its death was meant to propagate jingoism and racism for decades to come.
Death indicates a transition where a state of being must come to pass to make room for a new consciousness. If we cannot move into creating a beauty and new light from the ashes of the fallen towers, we are still in the throws of death and have not yet transitioned to the side where a new life is born. We are still wandering through the rubble no matter how many illuminated monuments we construct at Ground Zero. Endless wars and wary eyes on every Middle Easterner will not bring justice. Balance, growth, and renewal only comes through the joy that is created from the loss. This is what we are still waiting to find from this tragedy, and it seems to be slow in coming, as the evidence of it has yet to come forth.
I am the minister of myself 