173. Loving Ourselves with Two of Cups
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How can we embrace the parts of ourselves that feel challenging to love, opening to a kind of radical self acceptance that can shift the way we engage with the world? Today on the podcast, we look to Two of Cups as a loving anchor for this kind of deep 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 look at how we can deepen into our relationship with Two of Cups, identify pivotal moments to call upon it as an anchor, and explore ways to connect it to our Lovers work. I also answer a listener question about how we can engage with The Lovers and Two of Cups if and when it shows up in positions around love and relationship, and so much more.
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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: Trauma, chronic illness, ancestral trauma/inherited generational patterns, grief, fear, religion
The content in this episode contains references to trauma, chronic illness, ancestral trauma/inherited generational patterns, grief, fear, and religion. 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.
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(Instrumental intro music)
[00:00:21]
Hello, Loves, and welcome to a brand new episode of the podcast. I hope that our shift into the month of October has been gentle, and easeful, and supportive. I hope that our episode on our card for the month ahead, The Lovers, was medicinal and resonant. I heard from quite a few of you that it really, really struck a wonderful chord, and that makes me very happy.
Of course, this week and for the next couple of weeks, we're going to be deepening into the message and the invitation of The Lovers by exploring it through our anchor cards, cards that can actually help us to enrich our relationship with The Lovers and any subsequent card that we're working with for any of our months ahead (Lindsay laughs).
You can also export that practice totally outside of the framework of the card of the month into any personal practice you have. If you have a strong card that you're working with for the year, for the moment, for a particular situation, you can always draw upon anchor cards to help you to deepen into your relationship with it. And so I'm very much looking forward to doing that with today's episode and today's card. It feels really nice.
We don't have any announcements today. Heart of Service starts today, and the enrollment period is closed for that. And I'm so excited to dive into that with everyone, especially since it is looking more and more like that's probably going to be my last guided course for a long, long, long time, longer than— I had thought probably 2022, I wouldn't probably host, or guide, or facilitate any of my larger courses live, but I think it might be longer than that. So it's feeling really sweet and really perfect to dive into that container with everyone.
[0:02:30]
And yeah, October's feeling really good. I hope that you're moving through those New Moon in Libra invitations. It was quite big to have to navigate that. We also don't have anything coming up next week that we're going to spend a whole lot of time on, and so our episode is really going to be sort of purely devoted to the anchor card at hand and to our listener question. And I'm really, again, very excited to get to dig into this with you.
So last week, of course, we dove into the very heart of our month ahead, which was our theme of Reclamation, our card that's going to be traveling with us as a companion through this entire month—The Lovers—and how deeply complex, how deeply rooted, how deeply kind of threaded this card is, its energy is. It's an external card by design. It does light up things that are happening on the earthly end—our relationships, our transactions, as you were, our projections, our correspondences, our collaborations, you name it, right? The things that happen between us and someone else, a place, a thing, something outside of us that's tangible, earthly. The Lovers hangs out in that realm.
The Lovers also brings sort of that needle and thread, and stitches it deeply into the heart, into the bones of the internal, like how are we interpreting, and clinging on to, and being enriched by, or not being enriched by our relationship to this person, to this place, to this thing, and why? You know, sometimes we don't always know the answer to that question.
[0:04:27]
So The Lovers card is a mirror, and it is really here to do sort of this beautifully dual and yet really wholy united thing. It's here to really illuminate for us where we get caught and stuck in projections, where we are looking for something outside of ourselves to complete us, to validate us, to give us something that we're perceiving or believing we can't give ourselves. And there's usually some pretty good reasons for that, right? There's wounding, there's trauma, what we were told. It was something that got really stitched into us when we were very young. And The Lovers offers us the opportunity to transmute that, to transform that.
The other side of that mirror, as it were, is that it's also an invitation to deeply Reclaim—our theme for the month of October—our innate lovability, worth, validity, the beauty that lives in each one of us, and how it shines from each one of us so uniquely, in such a special way that only we can exude, right? And that's not easy to believe in. That's not easy to negotiate. It's not easy to... It's not easy to reclaim it, right?
We have, again, really exquisitely good reasons, typically, for not feeling like we can reclaim those parts of ourselves. If we were told we were too much. If we were told we were too intense. If we were afraid of being too much, of losing the love, or the attention, or the approval of certain people or our caretakers.
[0:06:29]
I know for myself, the love I received from my caretakers was, like, in opposition, I guess, to love. It was very, very, very limited and often pretty dysfunctional, and abusive, and conditional. And when I finally got my first taste of attention, of specialness, it took a long time to unravel those patterns, which were actually pretty unhealthy. Those first tastes of specialness came from sources that were actually not that safe. They were just as inappropriate, but felt, you know, warm and fuzzy, because someone finally was giving me some kind of attention. It just was coming from inappropriate people.
So it takes a while right? And obviously, I'm not a therapist. This is just speaking about this from a really sort of subtle and kind of zoomed out context. Just really, I think, most of us have this kind of stuff happening within us, right? And some of us it's way more deeply rooted, and it definitely takes a team and people in our lives sometimes to help us to unravel that.
And then other times, we're able to traverse that path just fine on our own. Sometimes those things show up in other ways, right? And for some people, the love they got from their caretakers was really strong and really solid. And there's something else that's sort of connecting them or tethering them to their Lovers’ work, right?
[0:08:17]
So our job with The Lovers is supposed to recognize and reclaim—recognize the old patterning, honor it for what it is, acknowledge why, like, what are we looking for, seeking, without judging at all. And then reclaiming, “I can give that to myself, I don't need to be validated by someone else. I'm already valid. It doesn't matter what anyone else says.”
Not negating the fact that it's really hard if we're not getting that piece, but we can offer that to ourselves. And the more we do that, I think, the more people who are not really offering us the baseline of love tend to flow out. It leaves space for people who really do match what we want to come in, whether that be friends or lovers. And I think oh gosh, I'm really navigating this with my work. And you know, without getting into it, because I don't even... so much of it is unknown to me right now.
I love doing courses. There's nothing wrong with doing courses at all. It's not like, “Ugh, I'm so sick of it, blah blah blah.” I love doing courses, and I'm also ready to do other things. Like I'm ready to spend my time in other areas of work. I'm ready to expand beyond it and I'm doing my own Lovers work with that, right? Like what was I believing courses were going to give me? What was I believing that it meant for me to do them? What would it mean to move into a different form of service? Like what would that require of me, ask of me, ask me to put down. So, The Lovers is never about other people. It can be, it's not. You know, it can be about anything.
So today, the branch that we're sort of climbing and hanging out on, that’s helping to seal and deepen into our work with The Lovers in a certain area, is around how we can begin to love ourselves, right? The recognition piece, like where we have tendencies toward, you know, not seeing, toward projecting, toward believing that something else will give us (Lindsay laughs), you know, like what we're looking for when it really never will truly, that's another branch. And that's something that we're going to look to probably next week.
[0:10:55]
But this week, I think it's really important to talk about like, what is it to embrace ourselves and reclaim ourselves? And how can we flirt, or engage with, this idea of reclamation of these beautifully integral and innate aspects of ourselves without putting the pressure on ourselves to feel incredibly comfortable with the whole thing? It's uncomfortable to do this work. We don't want to overstep. We don't want to go too far. We don't want to put pressure on ourselves that we can't possibly meet, right?
Likely, if you engage with this work, it's going to be a little while before you feel an authentic sense of, “Wow, I really love and appreciate this part of myself,” or “Whoa, I'm really aware of this deep longing, this clinging. How can I meet that and be really sweet to that part of myself without making it wrong or bad?”
And the card that I believe can be a profound anchor to really help us to deepen into this work is Two of Cups. Two of Cups and The Lovers are really kind of a PB&J (Lindsay laughs), like they're a very natural match to each other. Just like I think Two of Swords and The High Priestess are often sort of a PB&J style match for each other. It just sometimes happens that way, that there's a real sweet connection between two cards that may not be so linear or specific in nature, but we sort of feel it or we can sense into it, right?
[0:12:39]
And the title of the episode today is “Loving Ourselves with Two of Cups.” And why Two of Cups is probably the most profound, unbelievable bottomless pool and resource for education, for re-parenting, on loving ourselves, is because it really starts right at the kind of foundational point, which is loving what's here, right now. Not on a condition, not when we're perfect, not when we have this thing or that thing all figured out, but right now. Now, right?
And probably even more powerfully asking the question, how can we actively seek to embrace the parts of ourselves that feel the most challenging to integrate into the fold, to include? Because whether we're aware of it or not, all of us have parts of ourselves that we may think, again, whether consciously or unconsciously, whether all the time or just in certain moments, “If this part of me was different, I would be able to love my being. I would be able to embrace myself. I would not have to be so hard on myself. Because this part of me that is so troubling, that is so bothersome, that is so undesirable to me, wouldn't be here. It would be easier for me to love myself.”
[0:14:29]
And I think there's a big difference between that and an awareness of just like, I think many of us travel through life with parts of our personality or things that we struggle with or aspects of our body, illnesses that we're living with that make life very challenging. And there can be absolutely no awareness of like, “I so wish I did not have this injury. I so wish I was not working with this health concern. I so wish I was not dealing with this issue related to my trauma, with my emotions.” That is so valid, and we're not bypassing that at all, but that's also not an indicator of who you are, right?
What we're talking about here, and where Two of Cups really kind of centers and settles is maybe our jealousy. Do we get jealous? Do we get really embroiled in that? Does it get real nitty gritty, really “ugly”? Does it feel ugly to us? Do we then turn on ourselves and think, “Ugh, no person who was really, you know, devoted to their practice, or doing their work, would ever get stuck in jealousy like this.” That is when Two of Cups will come up, right?
Do we get angry, super angry? Do we maybe even like, feel rage, or do we sometimes in spite of our best intentions, lose our temper and then feel terribly for it, and think, “What is wrong with me that I cannot get this fucking shit under control, that I cannot move through this piece?” Right?
If we give ourselves away. If we say yes, when we really want to say no. If we say no when we really want to say yes. When we take on a little bit too much, which can then roll into anger and resentment and all kinds of different things. It's like a bowling ball plummeting toward (Lindsay laughs) all of these emotional pins.
[0:16:45]
Those pieces, you know... I know for many of us, because I've just talked to so many listeners of this podcast, or heard from you, or talked to my students, there are so many of us who have gone through periods with our own inner kids, or we're going through periods with our inner child, where we just think, “If this part of me that is so sensitive and so scared was not a part of the whole, I would be so much happier, so much freer. Like, ugh, if I didn't have to deal with this part of myself, right?”
So I share these couple of examples, again, not to bypass anyone's experience with themselves with their emotional state, I mean, really, who am I to tell you anything about yourself? (Lindsay laughs) You know, I'm still working on myself and I don't claim to be an expert in any way, but I share these examples because I would be willing to bet a lot that probably every single person listening to this, myself included, has had these thoughts and experiences, likely very regularly. Whether it be jealousy, and/or rage and anger, and/or feelings about our deeper, more sensitive places, you know, and/or even things I didn't mention.
[0:18:12]
Why do I always procrastinate? Why do I get stuck? Why can’t I get this thing going? We really beat up on ourselves. And rather than getting curious, which is challenging to do, about why we have this anger come up, why—that likely it's probably pretty righteous and valid—why we have these feelings about our inner kids, Most likely was projected onto us because our own caretakers felt that way about their inner kids, and so did their parents and etc, etc. That's very much an inherited thing, I believe.
Jealousy. Everyone feels that, everyone. There are some people who experience it way more intensely than others. And in my experience, like just taking jealousy for an example, if we have whether—I don't want to say valid, it's valid—whether it's something that we can track or not, if there is a deep fear in us and this fear can come from so many places. It can come from ancestral trauma that was inherited through the bloodline. It can come from life experience. It can come from a whole mix of things.
If we have a wound in us that is afraid and active that there isn't going to be enough for us, which usually has roots with our inner kids, we're gonna experience feelings of jealousy. That, it just is. It's a siren song. It's a clarion call to say, “This wound is popping up again.” Right? And before we have an opportunity to even sense into, “Well, why is this directed at this person? Do they have something I'm longing for that I want? Am I angry that they have this,” right? There's usually some core wisdom to it.
[0:20:16]
And I'm again, I'm not romanticizing it. I feel jealousy very, very strongly. It's a really strong wound for my inner kid, and I've done so much work on it that when it comes up, I'm usually... It takes me almost immediately into a very strong... right into the heart of the matter, which is that there's grief and fear at the bottom of that.
You know, my little one is afraid. It's an old thing that's coming up. Because I can point to and remember so many different times when it just was so clear to me that there was so much less going in my bucket from a love, appreciation, caring standpoint than other kids. And it just, you know, rolled into how I was chosen for projects, how I was chosen for plays, how I was, you know, and when the perception that I'm not being chosen for something, even if it's something I don't really want to be a part of, gets activated, it's strong. And usually jealousy is a pretty big indicator. Like there's some wounding here, there's some pain, right?
Here's where the Two of Cups-ness comes in. Two of Cups is the teacher, the helper, the anchor that we call upon to help us to move through those rough waters with a sense of gentleness and curiosity to notice, like, “Oh, I'm making some kind of war with this feeling I'm having, with an experience.” It's just an experience, it doesn't define us, and in fact, may be profoundly important to our process, to our healing, to our life.
Anger is not something to be cleansed or washed away. It's not an emotion to be avoided, right? We can take empowered steps to navigate temper, to navigate, you know, that sense of rage, to channel it appropriately to give it a sense of appropriate discharge. Not just because it's ideal for our interactions in life, but also because we're giving the anger the kind of outlet that it really wants rather than waiting until we blow our top, right?
[0:22:39]
And if we never were taught how to do that, if we don't know how to do it, then, you know, we have to learn (Linday laughs). You know, kicking ourselves in the ass is definitely not going to help. So if you'll notice all of these little wound points, which are just a couple of examples, inside of a huge universe of options of ways that we can rail on ourselves, turn on ourselves, really buy into a belief that there's something really wrong with us and if this aspect of us was different, we would be a better person, all of them come back to the sense, you know, to some kind of relationship, some kind of tethering, to comparison, right?
If we didn't have the story from toxic wellness culture, and from really, I think, just inherited Puritanism from religion that kind of flowed into new age wellness world about like, “We never feel the hard stuff, we only feel the good stuff. We're only going for the light, never this, never that,” we wouldn't have the feelings about jealousy likely that we do because it's considered to be in the community, and in sort of the spectrum of new age and wellness, like an ugly, undesirable experience.
Whereas with Two of Cups, and when we're looking at sort of the full inclusiveness, the full spiral of honoring our entire experience—it doesn't mean we're identified with it, doesn't mean we're going to act out of it—we miss the opportunity to actually dive into the heart of it and and get curious, what is really being desired here? Is there a feeling of this isn't fucking fair? If so, let's tend that. Let's be with that. Let's nestle up to that. Let's let that part of us have a chance to blast that out. Let's go into the car and shut the door and yell about how it's not fair. I'm being quite serious.
[0:24:52]
All of those things are what Two of Cups asks us to do any time we turn on ourselves, anytime we move away from that sense of curiosity, and of openness, and of embracing of the experience. It doesn't always mean that we have to like it. It doesn't always mean that we'll do it alone. Some of these things are appropriate to do with processors and therapists, and we may not even want to touch them right now, with or without a processor. That's okay. It's just an invitation to start to consider maybe there's absolutely nothing wrong with this feeling. This experience that we're deeming as problematic, maybe there's a lot of wisdom to it. And there is a lot of threading back to the inner child, which I think is connected in many ways to The Lovers too, right? We project. We tend to look for in our relationships, in titles, and achievements.
If we're in a Lovers’ exchange, where it's not, “Oh, this thing would be great if I got it or not, but it doesn't need to complete me. It's not giving me anything that I'm not able to give myself.” If we're in that kind of a healthy relationship with it, we're not going to have the same grip that often happens with The Lovers work. A lot of The Lovers wounding and a lot of The Lovers patterning, I believe does tend to start in childhood.
[0:26:31]
And I do think it is, you know, quite interesting that, you know, The Lovers is the second to last card in line one of the Major Arcana. Line one of the Major Arcana is about foundations. It's about our imprinting, our identity, our egoic development. It's essentially, you know, ages zero to eighteen. (Lindsay laughs) You know, and The Chariot is kind of like the leaving behind—it's the graduation point.
So The Lovers, while we may not, you know, literally in the spectrum of aging, go through our Lovers’ experiences before the age of eighteen, or twenty-one, or whatever, however we may be—because it's all spiralic and not super linear—but if we can sort of map that on to this idea that sense is present. Like we are healing something that got rooted into us in childhood, and that we thought, “Oh, wow, this makes me feel really good about myself. If I can give more of it, maybe I can get approval here. If I can get more of that, maybe I can get this here.”
It's all to get love, all of it. And Two of Cups can hold that, and it also calls us back into saying, “As much as you may be believing that you have to strike this part out, cut it out, cast it away, you know, whatever it might be, the shift, and the antidote, and the movement, the transformation really starts to happen when we open our arms to this challenging thing, when we start to get curious, as I mentioned, objective rather than identified, right?”
And if we can start to consider the possibility, or the idea, that we're sort of kneeling down and working with feelings of our deepest inner children, when we move through a Two of Cups experience, it can—not for everyone—but it can be very useful to draw that understanding. So again, just really saying, “Your feelings are valid and I'm right here.”
[0:28:52]
Sometimes with my Two of Cups work, I don't even really need to say much or do anything. It's just in pulling it that I can do kind of a quick scan and think (Lindsay snaps), “I'm totally in this. I'm totally believing. I’m kicking my butt about something. I'm in some deep, kind of, you know, tough self talk. I'm in some hard feels right now about me, and about myself, and about who I am, and about how I could be better, different, if I was just this way or that way, when really, the first step is just to open my arms to what's here and say, ‘Hey, you're here right now. And I know it hurts really, really badly to be ostracized, to be cast out, to be judged, and I'm sorry for doing it. And I'd like to be more loving.’”
There's a reason that there's a kind of a depiction of a marriage happening here. We are entering into a sacred union and a partnership with all of us, not just the parts that are nice to look at and really sweet, but the nitty gritty, the tough parts, right? The more we can embrace those parts of ourselves, and again, this is a lifelong process. So if you're sitting here, you're listening to this and thinking like, “I can never love that part of myself.” Just be mindful that that's one of the ways that the thinking mind A) tries to protect and B) kind of tries to like, take us out of the work before we've even started.
[0:30:34]
First of all, you don't know whether you will or you won't be able to love a part of yourself. It might not even really be about the kind of love that you're imagining. It might be a deep sense of respect or a deep sense of tolerance. It might be a sense of appreciation or of empathy. And it might be something that, again, you don't have to find a way to on your own. We have the opportunity, many of us, to work with therapists, and processors, and friends, and, you know, loving people in our lives who can help to hold that mirror up. We don't have to do it by ourselves. So just know that, right?
Loving ourselves, first of all, it can be a total redefining of that word ‘love’. It can be a complete transformation of our relationship with it, and I mean, just even consider right now, what would it be like no matter what's going on with you, with your inner self, with your sort of all the things that move through you, what might it be like to radically embrace them and to start to listen to them, to give them your time, and attention, your care, rather than judging them, or trying to kick them away, or blaming others or blaming... Like, just to be aware of all of those pieces? Just to be aware, to open the arms rather than kind of fold them and turn away. That's what we're going for. And it's probably the most profound re-parenting that we could ever do. Because isn't that the core wound?
We don't want to be judged. We don't want to be ignored. We don't want to be rejected. We don't want to be rejected. So we seek and we search, and we try to make ourselves perfect, and lovable, and right, and good. Not just you, not just me, all of us. We all have behaviors around that.
[0:32:36]
So Two of Cups can be a really potent, gentle tool in the big toolbox. You know, all of the kind of tools that are available to us in that box. Just as a gentle reminder, what would it be like to just radically love, and acknowledge, and include in the fold the stuff that feels really hard to love? It will feel so challenging at first, and then it will feel like a complete setting, you know, a freedom that can really only be experienced by us, you know, in giving ourselves that sweetness, that care, that love on a consistent basis.
So again, it's a very, very powerful anchor for The Lovers work, because it's very hard. It's one thing to look in that mirror and acknowledge like, “Oh, wow, I am looking for this person, this thing, this source outside of myself to give me something, validate me, love me, fill this part of me, fill this cup.” It's quite another to know how to even take the first step, the first move, toward curiosity around like, “Well, if I'm supposed to be the one that meets that need and fills that cup along with others in my life, but if I if I stopped putting all the emphasis on this outside aspect of myself, how do I how do I go about that? Like, what is the first move? What is the first step?”
[0:34:20]
This is the first step. This is the first step. Being able to acknowledge these are the parts of myself that feel the most challenging to make loving space for, the most challenging to care for, to include, to center to acknowledge. And again, it's not overnight. But if we're really willing to dive into the heart to notice, because again, Tarot is deckless.
And what I mean by that is that you don’t need to pull Two of Cups to help you to dig into this work, or to signal, or alert you to the fact that it could be useful. We’re in Two of Cups opportunities every day of our lives. If we have a moment where we do get a little sharp, we do, we fall into that feeling of like, “Ugh, god, like other people don't do this. Like what's wrong with me? Like, ugh!” That's Two of Cups work. That’s deckless reading. That's letting the Tarot come with us in any situation, not just being sort of bound to, you know, the flow of pulling cards, which is beautiful, but there can be so much more to it than that. So that's our first anchor for our work with The Lovers.
And then a very apropos question (Lindsay laughs) from our listener Blithe about all of what we were talking about today. So Blithe asks, “My question is about The Lovers and Two of Cups. Often when discussing The Lovers, we're told it doesn't mean literal love or union, but other representations of love and partnership. Ditto for Two of Cups. But The Lovers has been repeating in readings I place in regard to someone special in my life. And I recently did a birthday reading for myself in which The Lovers and Two of Cups both appeared in the love portion of my reading. Are there times when the meaning of these cards really are as simple as they seem? When The Lovers or Two of Cups appear in readings focused on love, what other insights might they be arriving to share with us? Thank you for sharing your wisdom.”
[0:36:31]
So I feel called to say just kind of off the top, sure, they can be as simple as they seem, right? But it depends on what you mean by simple. And I, again, you're asking me the question, so I'm going to be just slightly and lovingly annoying about this aspect of the answer. What does simple mean to you in regard to these cards? I think that's an important question to ask. Does it mean like, this is a perfect love? Like if I pull The Lovers, this person's a lover for me. Okay. If that's it, that's pretty, I mean, that's on the nose, but I don't know if it tells us much, right?
And if that's all you're looking for in that moment, then—not even you, Blithe, but anyone—you know, sure, like why not, right? Like, truly, I would say, let's entertain that. Absolutely. If Two of Cups, to you, if the simplistic version of this is, “This is someone I like, and I'm deepening into intimacy with them, and here we go.” Sure. You know, I would never say never, right? It's not it by definition, but sure, it could be, you know. So I don't want you to lose sight of that, and I encourage you to keep getting curious about it.
But when you—because you're asking me—when The Lovers or Two of Cups appear in readings focused in love, what other insights might they be arriving to share with us? So here are a couple of insights. One could be, and obviously I'm not reading you, I don't know anything about your situation. I'm not like, I'm not touched in at all. This is just very sort of clinical around like, a couple of different options I'm throwing out.
Number one, it could be—let's take The Lovers, right? It could be that it's an invitation to pay attention to any areas where you might not be in full receiving of the love coming from your partner. Sometimes that happens, where there's a lot of love coming at us, but we don't feel like we're worthy of it or we're not quite feeling like the full embrace of it, because of our own stuff.
[0:38:43]
Could be the opposite, that we're sort of looking for a lot from our partner that maybe they're not meant to necessarily be giving us, or that they are giving us but it never feels like enough because there's a little void in us. I actually think sometimes, and by the way, again, not reading you, this has nothing to do with you or your partner, and I don't want you... I don't want anyone who pulls The Lovers to have this color their experience. Just don't let the thinking mind get in there and make you think that like, “Oh, Lindsay was trying to say something subtle,” because I'm not. I actually think it could be, you know, letting you know that maybe the person that we're dating at the moment actually isn't as great as we're telling ourselves they are, that actually we're really looking for them to give us something because they're there.
But are they really giving it to us? Are we really able to receive it? Is it really like a true bond? Are we really moving together in this way? Maybe it's the exact opposite. Maybe you're sparking sacred beautiful valid reflections in each other. You're really seeing each other and that's amazing, right? Different, like, those were just a couple of ways to interpret that. All of them valid, and all of them are just starting points, right?
So they all, though, come back to you, which is interesting, right? If you and your partner are really seeing, and witnessing, and validating one another, that's beautiful. But I would say, like, let's not miss how powerful and how important and what it took—you know that is and what it took for you to receive that.
[0:40:34]
If your partner really isn't giving you what you want, and what you need, and what you deserve, but you're sort of in it because you'd rather have it than be alone, that's also inner work to do, right? That's also some reflection on our part, right? If we're looking for something from our partner that they can't possibly give us, that's our work to do. If they're loving on us really big and we just kind of can't receive it, and we know that. We're just actively turning away, we're afraid. That's our work to do.
So it's interesting, because really, no matter what, it'll always come back to us. So I find that to be pretty powerful and pretty interesting. Same thing with Two of Cups, right? That whole idea of like, of this idea of exchange and of appreciation and how when we're typically in a very strong, very powerful relationship, our stuff comes up. It's intense, right? Because we're getting loved in, and seen, and witnessed, and regarded in ways that are often, you know, bring up a lot of stuff about receiving worth, and am I enough? Am I gonna lose it? Am I actually lovable? Maybe they're wrong about me. (Lindsay laughs) Like, if we have some really hard patterning around that it can be really challenging.
So it'll come back to us to be able to say, “Okay, you know, there's this fear that's coming up around receiving this love. I'm afraid I'm gonna fuck it up. I'm afraid, you know, this, that, and the other.” Or if there's aspects of us that keep getting activated in the relationship, which can happen in Two of Cups—same thing, right?
And let's just say Two of Cups was coming up as the most like binary, like, example of sort of, like, we're moving into a sacred partnership with another person, regardless of what that partnership looks like. All of it's... It's a very intense thing. It's great, and it's lovely, but it also is probably gonna bring up like, all of our stuff. (Lindsay laughs) You know, and like, that's just what it is. So we can't ever really, like the nervous system sometimes wants certain cards to come in. I see, this happens a lot with Ten of Cups too. We are human beings. We want cards to come up and sort of just give us relief.
[0:43:09]
Like “Oh, just because this card comes up, that means everything's gonna be okay, or this is a soulmate, or this is whatever it is.” I'm not saying, again, you're believing that, just you're asking about this particular thing, so I'm choosing to take it here. But the fact is that no one... We don't ever know (Lindsay laughs) what journey, what direction, what path our relationship or experience with someone else is gonna take. We only have this moment.
And as somebody who's been in a relationship for, I think, it's twelve years now, it is literally a choice that we both make every day. And it's not a hard choice, but it is a choosing. Every day we're always growing and learning. We're always changing as individuals. And so far, it has felt absolutely beautiful and right to continue to be with one another on that journey.
So even if it seems “simple”, like, “The Lovers is coming up around my lover.” Why? Like, what's the invitation and what are you being invited to pay attention to? Because the “simple” is, again, totally valid, but what is it telling you? It's not telling you much other than reporting, but once we dig past the surface, when we understand The Lovers is not in any way, shape, or form dominated or dictated by this idea of lover or partner, then where does it lead us? It leads us back to the self and the same thing with Two of Cups.
So I hope that helps. You know, you asked sort of two questions there. Can it ever just be simple, and if not, what does it mean, or what are some of the ways that it can come up? So hopefully, I answered your question and I really thank you for asking. It's a beautiful question, and one that I think will help lots of folks because I know it comes up for lots of people. So thank you.
Thank you so much for being here, Wild Souls, for listening. As always, just so grateful and thankful to be here with you. We’ll connect next week about another anchor card for our deep The Lovers work through the flow of October. And until we meet again, in this space, please take exquisite care of yourselves.
[0:45:47]