Six of Wands with Knight of Coins

Legacy of the Divine Tarot by Ciro Marchetti

I see in my mind the young hero having come back from some great war, sitting on the top of the back seat of an open convertible, grinning and waving to the cheering throngs, ticker tape descending in twirls and flutters onto the pavement around him.

On a whim he snatches from the air one of the thin strips of paper snowing down from the surrounding stories above. He stretches it out before his eyes and reads the text printed upon it:

You will soon have a regular job.

Fast forward to our one-time hero, the top button of his collared shirt loosened along with his tie, the crown of his head barely visible across the sea of cubicles, the sound of office phones chirping intermittently amongst the cadence of computer keyboard clackety-clacks.

On Saturday morning he pushes his lawnmower across the quarter acre lawn then douses the dastardly dandelions with the herbicide that is the second cousin thriced removed of the gas compound used to smite the enemy abroad. He is only a half hour away from drinking a mountain spring filtered canned beer in the maple’s shade while listening to the symphony of the surrounding cicadae.

We often see the lives of these people of greatness in the form of highlight reels, their grand achievements of a lifespan ranging from 24 to 94 years distilled down into vignettes of accolades and awards and recognitions. Yet the gently rolling hills and slightly dipping valleys of daily living comprise the majority of our lifes between those dizzying zeniths of grandeur.

Life is an iceberg. The great milestones such as seeing children born or being handed a diploma or traveling to every continent, the parts of our lives that the world gets to witness in all its magnificence, is only a fraction of who we are and how we spend out time. The vast majority of our lives stays invisible to the world, suspended below the surface. The passing days and the mundane repetition of daily living can feel cold and dark and lifeless as we feel like we’re endlessly drifting through frigid waters.

However, when we dare to dream, when we entertain visions of ticker tape and confetti dancing in the air around us, when we imagine inhaling that oxygen deprived air as we stand atop that alpine peak we’ve successfully reached, that cold deep stagnancy becomes a sanctuary of tranquility.

The Zen saying before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water shows us that the mundane span of time that comprise the largest percentage of our days transforms into peacefulness when we puncture the tapestry of our lives with grand visions and exhiliarating aspirations. The pursuit of those wonderfully lofty goals is what gives meaning to the mundane.

Six of Cups

Two children admire flowers growing in chalices in a courtyard

The process of manifestation begins with identifying what it is we want to attract into our lives. The process of very powerful manifestation begins with identifying, acknowledging, and embracing our dreams, our ultimate heart’s desire.

Oftentimes we will set our sights on what we believe is attainable, which is fine. Yet we will set aside focusing on our dreams as we may believe they are far beyond our reach. We have come to accept the limitations of what we are able to accomplish in our worlds, having long since abandoned the childhood dreams we once embraced.

There was a time in our lives where our dreams were unfettered by the “realities” of adulthood. We believed we could attain any outcome our hearts desired when we “grew up”. Soon the conditioning of the idea of a harsh world that demanded conformity, obedience, and survival began to take root as we transitioned out of adolescence into becoming a grown-up. We found ourselves acquiescing our dreams to the realm of being unrealistic and unattainable.

When we embrace our dreams as we did through the perspective we held in our childhood, we pursue them with utter abandon. We no longer hesitate at the idea of skinning a knee or breaking a bone, knowing the pain is temporary and the hurts will heal. We allow ourselves to be magnetically pulled toward the euphoric notion of holding our realized dreams in our hands. We disengage the restraints that we’ve allowed the concept of adulthood to place on our momentum.

When we allow ourselves to dream big, we find within those dreams our true purpose. Our dreams contain our destiny, the reason we came into this incarnation. When we move in accordance to our gestalt desire, we live in accordance to the sole reason we are alive. Through that we will not merely set a series of intentions to manifest; rather, we will discover that which we are manifesting are all the wonderful things in life we didn’t even realize we wanted, all as a byproduct of embracing our dreams.

My credentials

I had a dream last night where I was entering comments and replies to an informational piece I had written. One of the comments was asking to see my credentials. The author of the comment wanted to know what my background and formal training was that qualified me to present the information in the article.

I contemplated this, as I had contemplated it in my waking life before. So now I will take the time to present my credentials. So let me address the person that insisted on needing that sort of substantiation:

Me.

 

Dear Me,

You had asked me to provide some credentials, some evidence that I am qualified to speak on the specific matters of which I have been writing about, that offer insight and help to those who might need it. My assumption is that you ask because you want to make certain I have acquired the prerequisite knowledge to speak on such matters with any sense of authority or position.

Perhaps it might assuage your concerns if I were to present you with certifications and diplomas, with letters and dots in the caboose of my name. Perhaps you would be delighted to know what educational institutes I have attended, what academic experts or spiritual advisors I have studied under, what great distant lands I have traveled in search of truth and enlightenment. Perhaps it might please you to see me demonstrate channeled knowledge from ascended masters, information from deceased loved ones or enlightened spirits. Or perhaps I can send you a photo of myself framed in my stacks of earned millions, real estate deeds, stock holdings and ample dividend statements.

I understand that once you see the evidence of my credentials, you can then accept all I convey in my words as valid.

I will now present you the evidence that I am appropriately accredited to speak on the matters of which I often speak:

I am blessed beyond my wildest dreams. I have a fantastic family life, of which I could ask no more than what I have. My wife and I make a comfortable income that meets our needs and desires, from a position of a standard middle class income earning bracket. The only debt we could be said to carry is the mortgage on our house. A house that offers a fantastic view of the water in a peaceful neighborhood, the type of house and neighborhood that we both dreamed of living in someday, and that day is today. We travel frequently enough to satisfy our curiosity of other places in the country or the world. We eat good healthy meals consistently. We have in our lives friends and family that we see often and share our love with.

We are blessed. We have peace in our lives. By no means are our lives free of challenges, nor would we ask them to be. We do not spend our time wishing for a life other than what we currently have. It seems to me this is what most people strive for, a life that contains within it peace, love, and joy.

I have been able to create this life for myself without a college degree, without accreditations, without exceptional abilities or volumes of wealth.  I am the poster child of the majority of us, someone who is able to achieve all this in my life without the preconceived expectations of what is required to do so. These are my credentials.

 

Signed,

A person no different than you

 

An unorthodox message

I listened to a sermon today.

The sermon was from my own minister. There were not many words. It was an image. It was an image of me standing on the beach with the minister. The water wanted to roll in gently, lapping the shore gently and lazily with easy leisurely strokes as it is inclined to do when the tide begins to roll out, but it was restless with the wind. The kind of sea wind that bats at your clothing like flags, that shakes everything that has not declared its status as stationary and unmovable. The wind commanded the water to speak its thrashing sounds in the language of rough surf.

There was a gull flying in the wind. The gull faced me, but it could not move. The wind was against the gull, so it remained in the same place in the sky, not moving forward, but not being carried by the wind. Any attempt at travel or movement by the gull was futile. Yet the wind gave it no need to flap its wings at all. The gull was like a kite.

The minister turned to me and told me I had the voice of the ocean. My voice has the same effect as the ocean waves. He said I am the gull.

I understood what he meant by the gull, but as always, it troubles me. If I turn and face the same direction as the wind, will I be swept far away from where I think I need to be? Am I that mistrusting of the intentions of the wind? Do I not recognize the futility of the resistance of trying to move against it?

These are my dreams. My dreams have a tendency to be comprised of being lost, of not being able to find my way to where I intend to be. Not where I am supposed to be necessarily, but where I think I am supposed to be. Hence, where I intend to be. My dreams also leave me in a classroom, where I feel somewhat out of place, or the lessons may not apply or I have not studied for what is being taught. Or I am wandering from one classroom to another in a school.

A few nights ago I made a request to not be so lost in my dreams. To not have to taste the flavor of frantic chaos that leaves me to wake exhausted, desiring a gentle calmness of my psyche as a respite and reprieve from the tumultuous dreamscape. My request has been granted and I have awakened with a sense of ease and peacefulness.

Yet I am concerned as to what message I am delivering to myself in my dreams that I’m sweeping under the rug. So the minister now shows up on the beach with this message.

It sounds silly and ironic to say this, but I may have to sleep on it.