182. Letting the Body Lead with Four of Pentacles
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In our journey around making space for our wise heart, how can we bring the body with us, honoring it as a companion and a loving compass to us through this life? Four of Pentacles can be an extraordinarily helpful and bolstering Anchor Card for the kinds of invitations that Three of Swords brings to us, inviting us to take our time, to honor our timing and our process, and to generously gift our bodies everything that they are asking for.
Air date:
January 14, 2022
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About the Episode
In today’s episode, we dive into the heart of Four of Pentacles, and I answer a listener's question about whether we can be in multiple seasons at the same time.
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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: birth and trauma related to the body
The content in this episode contains references to birth and trauma related to the body. 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 bi-monthly podcast that explores the Tarot through an inclusive, soul centered, trauma-informed perspective for growth, healing, and evolution. I'm your host, Lindsay Mack.
—
(Instrumental intro music)
[00:00:21]
Hello, Loves. Thank you so much for being here and welcome to a new episode of the podcast. As always, I'm so delighted to be gathered here with you. Today we're going to be diving deeply into our sort of supportive Anchor Card, the Tarot card that really volunteered itself to be sort of a deepening and expanding of our card for the month of January, which is Three of Swords.
In that first episode that we explored about two weeks ago, we really unpacked how in Soul Tarot, Three of Swords is not a card to be frightened of, it's not a card to be panicking about, to be fearful of. If you have those feelings around that card, that's valid and okay. Feelings are always okay and welcome, but they're not necessarily always the place that we stop, right? We always want to honor our feelings in fullness and then if we can, if it feels safe enough, explore them a little bit more deeply.
Now, in the case of Three of Swords, the level of… it’s a strong word, but I'm willing to kind of embrace it and claim it. The level of indoctrination around Three of Swords being a really bad card, challenging, indicating that something horrible is gonna happen — that level of indoctrination is really, really high. So when we have a Tarot card like that, like Three of Swords, or Death, or any of the cards that sort of overculturally have been labeled as bad or scary, or “Whoa, problem,” we know that we have these thinking minds that are constantly scanning the environment for what could go wrong and what (Lindsay laughs) could happen, and so it's really easy to have all of that play out when we experience a card like this.
[0:02:23]
So, last week when we really kind of sunk into Three of Swords being the Anchor Card for the month of January, we spoke about ways to sort of unlock that, to untie that knot, and to begin to look at it from the framework of how we see it in Soul Tarot, which is really a card that can help us to come back to the heart space, to come back to the pain, wounding, sensitivity, or vulnerability that all of us feel in various moments. It doesn't need to be some shocking situation, or some trigger, or some activation to get us there, right?
We work with Three of Swords organically, even if we're not pulling it, any time we find ourselves in a situation where the mind is attempting to sort of make sense of something, figure it out, blame us, blame someone else, take an action that will somehow alleviate the discomfort we feel. And we can inadvertently in that process totally override and bypass just being with the fact like, “Whoa, there's fear here. There's hurt feelings here. There's disappointment here.” Right?
So in Soul Tarot, the way I teach, Three of Swords is a homecoming to that and when we looked at this card and the theme for January, we looked at the idea of letting the heart lead. And Three of Swords, you know, in the Smith-Rider-Waite has this big kind of juicy, beautiful, red heart on it and I find that even when that's not represented explicitly on a deck, it's such a heart-centered card (Lindsay laughs).
[0:04:12]
Like that's the irony is that there's so much fear wrapped up in this, again overculturally, but it's all about the heart, all about the heart. It just holds a space for how we as human beings tend to not center that part of us so much, and that's really what January is all about. It plugs directly into our work with The Lovers in 2022, directly. That's this whole year: the heart, the heart, the heart, the heart.
We may think of the heart as being like all love, all light, whatever. The heart is raw and fierce and intense. The heart—when we lead from the heart, we're coming from our most vulnerable place. When we lead from the heart that's often when we're saying things like, “Hey, you know, I have something on my heart to share. I'm not sure how it's gonna land or how it'll be received, but it is really important that I share it.”
And it asks us to kind of, let go and surrender, like, what other people feel or think about it. Because we can share our heart and get rejected or told no. There's a lot of courage, like it takes so much courage to lead from the heart. And in our world, where so much, especially like social media and things, so much of it is persona and so much of it is comparison-based. And, you know, there's so much kind of intensity across the board, it is hard to let the heart lead. It's hard to even sense into like, where our hearts are right now. It's really intense.
[0:06:10]
And so Three of Swords isn't always the most welcome flavor in the spice cabinet (Lindsay laughs) you know, of Tarot cards, but it certainly does clear up a lot of confusion and a lot of, yeah, like lack of clarity for—you know, a simple way to put it—on our journey to what's true, right? Because as we spoke about two weeks ago, we can spin out and drop into the thinking mind around a million different things. It's never—no action, no deed, no word—is ever, ever going to take the place of just being with, “Whoa, there's hurt here, there's pain here, and I just want to be here with it. I don't have to fix it, I don't have to solve it. I just need to be present.” Right?
So that's January, letting the heart lead, letting the heart speak to us, listening to the heart, making space for the heart, really giving ourselves the opportunity to be witnessed, to be that part of us, to be really centered. Because it doesn't happen as often as I think most of us wish it would or, or that we even think does, right?
So this month in January, in our work, we're kind of kicking off our Lovers year strong (Lindsay laughs) and we are sensing into what it is to let the heart lead, like we're sensing into that energy and that potency, you know, in a really, really big way. So what, when we think about the work we do in Three of Swords and how that might be landing for us, because now we're about halfway through the month of January, so we've been working with this. And I encourage you, before I can finish my sentence, to just quickly check-in and ask yourself like, how has Three of Swords been visiting you? How has it been showing up as an Anchor?
[0:08:29]
I find for myself that those questions are usually the things that help to soften any of the spiky, challenging places where I might be holding assumptions, preconceived notions, fears about a card, is that if I can look back and say like, “Oh, wow, it's actually been a pretty soft month or there's been a lot of cracking open in therapy, but nothing like shocking, sneaky, no betrayal.” That's good information in terms of field research, meaning you're living the card. So that's part of why I structured these podcast episodes the way I do, (Lindsay laughs) because it lends itself so naturally to field research where we can sort of follow along in the month with like, “Whoa, how is this showing up for me?” Right?
So when we look at this card and how it's showing up for us personally—because it'll be different—how might we sink into, sense into, a secondary supportive Anchor Card to help to take our work with this energy a little further, to expand it, to widen the container so that it's holding even more than we could even imagine?
So there's lots of different directions we could go in, right? We could almost call upon any of the other seventy-seven Tarot cards to help us to be with Three of Swords. In terms of Anchoring, I guarantee you I could find some through-line, some thread, that could bring about something helpful and useful, but the card that really volunteered itself to be spoken about on today's podcast is Four of Pentacles and, more specifically, what it is to let the body lead with Four of Pentacles.
[0:10:35]
So that is where we're going to sense into today, that's what we're going to talk about today, that's sort of the place we're going to take the work and the root system that we laid down two weeks ago, and again, widen and expand that open to hold so much, you know, as we continue on our journey of discovery this month with our theme, with our card, etcetera.
When we center the heart, we're talking about living in a very different rhythm than we typically do, right? We are most of the time, and I've said this before, this isn't a demeaning of this. It’s okay, like there's a problem with it—but most of us are bouncing around in the world ego/thinking mind first, right? That part of us that wants to kind of know everything's okay, it wants familiarity, it wants quick answers, it wants security, it wants simple, right? Like the thinking mind wants simple.
Sometimes, I know for myself, my thinking mind can wildly and hilariously, often in retrospect,
profoundly complicate (Lindsay laughs) a situation. But I think it does—at least my mind—wants like, a simple answer. It wants everything to be okay, it wants me to be okay. And sometimes, I'll just speak for myself; I notice my thinking mind taking spectacularly misguided steps to try to get there. But I, every time I kind of sink into like, “What was the why of this?” Even if it's to kind of like put a little tripwire under my feet, it's usually because that part of me, some part of me, is frightened, some part of me is a little bit too open to be comfortable.
[0:12:38]
The more I'm aware of it, the more I can be with it, rather than sort of have that part of me subconsciously like, driving the bus of my life. So why is this important? Because again, when we center the heart, we're clicking into a different gear on that vehicle, on that car, on that bus. There's a different driver taking over. When we lead from the heart, there's a sense of personal integrity involved in that. And personal integrity, I think, is defined however we define it, right? Like one person's definition of what is integrity, it's going to be completely different from the next person. And that's part of the autonomy of this life, of us, of our practices, of our relationship with the Tarot.
So it's up to us to really acknowledge and honor for some people, where they are right now, integrity is, “I'm going to push through and work on and zero in on a project no matter how my body is feeling, no matter whether or not it's a no, because my word is my bond.” And for some people, their integrity is to say, “Hey, I know that I said yes to this project, but it is a no for me. My body is saying no, my heart is saying no. I am completely holding that you might be very upset with me, but I have to back out. I'm so sorry.”
And I think that for wherever we are, both are totally valid, and of course, there's a million places we could go in between the two. So it's this different rhythm and it's about plugging into where we're at. It's about no longer betraying ourselves, no longer bypassing the truth of who we are, what we want to do, and where we want to go, right?
[0:14:26]
It's about really taking responsibility for that whisper within us because the heart, the longer it's ignored, the longer that pain, that wounding, those blocks within us are ignored, it's going to get our attention by any, and I mean any, means necessary. So it does behoove us to try to at least say, “Heart, I know that I'm supposed to be kind of centering you and making more space for you. I have no idea what the fuck that even means right now, but I'm doing my best, here I am.” That's a huge step, right? That's a huge move toward something, right?
But yeah, it's a big deal to center into that vulnerable, soft part of us, to speak from the heart, to let ourselves be witnessed in our pain or in our vulnerability. It's a game-changer in many, many different ways. And when we let the heart lead, again, it clicks us over into some very, very different ways of responding and being in the world.
We talked about that two weeks ago as well, that when we try to come at life from only the thinking mind, and especially if we're in kind of a Three of Swords flow and we're actively sort of trying to stay away from tender, too much feelings in the heart—the thinking mind is trying to kind of circle around it and avoid it. Then we can really… that's when we look back and we think like, “Whoa, I was, I can't believe I said that to that person. I can't believe I responded in such a like, petty way. Or I can't believe I took that opportunity. Like, I can't believe I like told that person I'd hang out with them or I'd go on a date with them. Like, I can't believe it.”
[0:16:24]
But we can believe it (Lindsay laughs) because we're disconnected from that, from that part of us. Really, the oracle of our being is the heart. Then the thinking mind is fully in the driver's seat and we're going to make decisions based on that need for some kind of control or, you know, in some way, trying to grip, trying to get a sense of normalcy, or of some kind of rooting in the midst of something that's really uncomfortable. And inside of that, we're going to sometimes make decisions that we're not like really, fully all that happy with, and that's okay.
I've done that a million times (Lindsay laughs), you know, or we purchase something and then think I'm gonna send that back, you know, whatever it is. So, when we let the heart lead, again, it actually creates a much more robust sense of self-autonomy, self-sovereignty, and of impeccability with what we do commit to and say. There is a kind of integrity that we can plug into where we can be like, “Okay, the invitation here is to tell this person everything's okay, even though I'm really fucking upset with them, and I'm not going to give in to that invitation right now. I'm going to be with the upset feelings. I'm going to let it wash over me. I'm going to let this part of me feel like, I want to say something, I don't want to say something. Like I'm just going to be in the swirl until things feel more rooted and clear.”
[0:18:05]
So what does it mean when we let the body lead? Like, what does it mean when we allow the body to come along with the heart? So the body—I know all of us are in completely different places with our bodies, how we feel about our bodies. So know that inside of this lesson, first and foremost, I am honoring that. I have stuff with my body in a myriad of different ways. I have trauma with my body. I have feelings about my body. I have moments where I betray my body without realizing it still. I am on the journey, just like you.
So know that while I can't necessarily speak to or hold every single person's experience in the exact, right, specific way they might be feeling it, please know that in my speaking about this Anchor Card and with letting the body lead that I am holding space for the fact that your body and you, and wherever you are in your relationship with it—is exactly right. Even if it doesn't feel that way, that's valid too, completely.
And that you don't need to be anywhere with your body to tune in with this card, Four of Pentacles, to deepen into a sense of even just soft curiosity around like what would that be like, you know? What might that feel like? You also may be somebody who, upon hearing this, thinks like, “That's so ridiculous, right, to let the body lead. I'd be nowhere if I let the body lead.”
Like lots of different beliefs and feelings can come up when we explore this, so I trust that you can absolutely tend and hold any of those, and know that I am with you in solidarity (Lindsay laughs) on this lifelong journey that is kind of learning to befriend and create more love between the self and the body, because we're pretty much pitted against our bodies from like day one—unless we really had a lot of conditioning otherwise. And even then, it's very challenging.
[0:20:24]
We live in a world where it's like, there's no profiting off of you, or me, or someone else being in really close kinship with our bodies. It's a huge act of radical, I think, disruption in the best of ways. And so yeah, just really holding the journey that we're all on with regard to that.
So when we include the body along with the heart, what we're doing is plugging into that sense of taking our inner work, our heart work, our work to our efforts to connect and contact these emotions, these feelings, to center them, to love them, to tend to them, to make space for them, and we are really plugging that into and connecting it with how we take space, how we let things digest and land, how we communicate or don't communicate about our experience, how we let ourselves take the time that it takes to feel our feelings. It essentially plugs all that internal heart work into an external framework, and really bridges that gap between the inner work we do and how we communicate about it, how we live it, how we actually actualize it.
So when we think about letting the body lead, and when we think about touching in with Four of Pentacles, all of The Fours of the Tarot are, I've described them, as like little forts that you might make when you were a kid or now—if you are amazing and you're making yourself forts, highly appreciate that about you if that's what you do.
[0:22:23]
But it's like a little nook that we make ourselves. And the point, when we pull Four, is that it's a call from that little fort, from that little nook that lives within us, proverbially. It's a call to come back to that space, because something, whether we're aware of it or not—there's a need for some kind of digestion, some kind of integration, some kind of process for letting something land, and some kind of time for either rest or regeneration or play. There's different notes, right, that The Fours hit.
Four of Pentacles, very specifically, is a card that basically says, “Can you give your body, the animal of your body, the time, the space that it wants and needs to process something?” Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be super specific or that you even need to understand it. That's part of the thing, right, is the body holds different charges than the thinking mind does.
We often have experiences where the body will feel something and the thinking mind will go, “Well, that doesn't make any sense. Like why do you feel uncomfortable around this? Let’s just do it, go.” And we can have that internal pressure, and then later we look back and think “Well, because of this or because of that.” Right? There's this societal thing, like, “Bypass the body and push it, like push it, like stretch it. Make sure it's really like, going in these directions, make sure.”
[0:24:13]
There's such a high premium placed even in like, you know, spiritual work or in mindfulness work or in wellness work, like “lean into the discomfort”, and sometimes that's not appropriate for the body. Like sometimes it's actively triggering, actively re-traumatizing, and it's important to recognize those moments in life when it's really crucial to send a message to the body, “You matter to me. Of course, we can take our time here. Of course, we can say no thank you to this.” And moments when we kind of have to roll forward.
Birth is one of those examples. Like when birth and labor start, like, you’re in birth and labor—like it's happening. Your body is on a ride, it's on a process. And then it becomes really about getting the thinking mind out of the way, right? But if we're in a situation where that, it isn't necessitous, it isn't emergent, where the body really just wants to like, be able to take their time. Like, how can we give that part of us permission to do that? And that's a huge support to Three of Swords.
Once we've gone through a Three of Swords experience, where we actually let ourselves feel into the emotion, or the pain, or the grief that might be present underneath kind of a noisy mental experience, we're gonna want to take some time with that. We're going to want to let some of that chemistry ride out. We're going to want to kind of breathe through. Maybe process it, digest it in some way.
Essentially, what we're doing with Four of Pentacles, is we're giving ourselves back the permission to take our time. We're honoring the body as an important and sovereign part of our decision-making process. We're giving time and space to this beautiful animal, to this, you know—the heart is an oracle, the body is an oracle—to this part of ourselves that is so wise, and so smart.
[0:26:28]
And also giving ourselves the opportunity to caretake the body through a challenging experience. Like sometimes my body doesn't want to do something and we kind of have to, and after I've really spoken to it, soothed it, you know, been with it, it's a way more expansive experience than if I just sort of forced it into the car and made it come with me. We often don't think talking to our bodies—I think a lot of us—as an option or something we can do or something that's particularly useful, but it's one, one of the most useful things that we can offer to ourselves, truly.
So when we let the body lead, we're paying attention to the moments when we need some space, when despite all the logic in the world, we don't want to be touched. We don't want to be around that person. We don't want to really be around people. We don't want to be alone, right? Like, we don't want to be in a crowd. We don't want to be here, we don't want to be there. (Lindsay laughs) Like, we don't always know the why of it. Like that's very true of life. It's true of intuition. We don't always understand the why. And I know for myself, we can get really caught up in like, “But why? Why don't I want to? I would really like it, this would be good for me, yada yada yada.”
It’s only when we really tune in, and go deeper, and touch in, that we can feel into the difference. Because there are moments when the thinking mind says, “I don't want to do it, I'm not sure,” but the body really wants to go forward. And if we're not really letting the body lead, if we're not giving the body that respectful space, that audience to say, “I would actually really like to go to this,” then again, we're missing out on a really key piece of the whole choir.
[0:28:42]
And the opposite is true. When the thinking mind says, “Go, go, go. Like, you'll want to, this will be great, blah, blah, blah,” very often, when we really tune in with the body, it's like, I’m just tired, or this is a no for me right now, or we don't need to know the why. There is no explanation that is required. Sometimes we never know the why, you know.
And I feel for myself, there's never been an experience that I have missed out on because I respected what my body wanted to do. There might have been a feeling of FOMO, there might have been a feeling of like, “Oh no, what if?” But most of that's thinking mind stuff anyway, you know, like, “what if” is classic brain stuff. So we don't have to get wrapped up in that.
We can make space for the body. We can make space for the wisdom of that part of us. And that is a tremendous part of what Three of Swords calls us to do. It brings it from the heart, all the way into how we move through the world, how we take action, how we show up or how we don't, and it can have profound effects on the way that we parent ourselves, the way that we caretake ourselves, to actually remind the body over and over again, “I am your advocate. If something doesn't feel like a yes, I'm going to advocate for that. Something feels like a no, I'm going to advocate for that. If you'd like to stay home and just sleep, I'm going to respect that in the best way that I can. If I miss out on the signal and if I read you wrong, or if I completely forget to check in with you, I will make my amends. We will do better next time.”
[0:30:36]
So again, this plugs itself into Lovers work and 2022 in a whole other way—that Lovers card work does start with kind of, asking us to note our projection, checking in with where that lands with us and what we're sort of hoping to get with that projection—like what the belief systems are—and then by doing that inner work, it completely changes our relationship to those projections: how we live them out, how we take action around them. And this is very much the same thing; it's taking this from the heart to the body, and really extending it.
It’s making space for us to be able to play with like, what is it for me to say, “This is not, you know—I’m not available for this today, or I'm you know, I'm way too burned out (Lindsay laughs) or, like it's a no for my body, or this is my limit, or these are my boundaries, or you'll hear from me when you do.” You know, and just like letting that be enough. Not needing to caretake anybody, just really letting the body show us, you know, letting that heart work be a lantern that gets lit inside of us and allows the path to be made clear through the depth of our work.
And in that way, Four of Pentacles can be just such a beautiful Anchor that can help us to clarify so much more, like “This is where I'm being called right now. This is where I'm being called away from right now.” And all of it again, is wholly and completely, not just valid, but necessary work. Truly.
[0:32:25]
So that's just a little taste of the Anchor, but I think that—I invite you to let it really sink in, to sense into like, where are you with this? How does it feel? What's your relationship with this right now? We can be in the most distant relationship or the most intimate relationship with this idea. You might be listening to this and thinking like, “Ugh, this is like five years ago for me. I never make a decision without touching in with my body.” And I think like, that's so incredible. It's so admirable, and you're ahead of many of us.
And I hope that no matter where you are, whether this is sort of the first time you've considered it or it's old hat for you, that you can really gently get curious around what would your life be like if you allow your body to be part of the decision making, instead of bypassing it to achieve something or to go for something, or whatever it might be, right? And sometimes, especially for an athlete or if we’re really working with our body, it might not be about that for you.
It might be about like, “This was a really hard exchange for me with this friend, with this parent, and I need a little space like before—or this life experience was really intense and I'm feeling kind of touched out, and I need to sort of be in that, be in that recovery space before I feel available to be in an engagement with someone physically.” Like whatever it is, just giving ourselves that permission, that total permissioning, to be exactly where we are in our process with this is what Four of Pentacles is all about and what it's all about, especially as an Anchor for Three of Swords work.
[0:34:16]
So hopefully that is of use to you, and I'm going to dive into our listener question, and then we'll bring it all to a close. So this is from Rebekah. Rebekah asks,
“Hello, Lindsay. I have a question that's been sitting with me for some time. I've been using the seasonal lens to understand where I am in the various realms of my life—it's been deeply helpful and supportive. But recently I've noticed some really intense polarities where in one area of my life I'm germinating or blossoming, but in another area of my life, I'm in deep winter that never seems to end. What insights do you have about holding this polarity and being both in winter and in early summer at the same time?”
So, I don't know whether these are insightful additions to this, but I do just want to say that not only is this totally normal for you to be feeling, but it's like, expected. In fact, I think there's nobody on the planet right now who's just in one experience. There's always, you mentioned the word, kind of, polarity. We're very, very, very, very spiralic, complex beings, right? And we can be very easily and often just organically, in a place where our love life is totally blossoming and maybe our career is in a germination time, maybe the opposite is happening (Lindsay laughs). Maybe, you know, who knows?
Like we all have, we're all in, kind of, all the seasons at the same time in different areas of our lives. It might not be as present as… or something we can pick up on like, it might not be as obvious to us, but it's there. And I think the fact that you're aware of it is really wonderful and shows a lot of really keen insight into yourself because it's just the way it is, like, that is the seasonal lens.
[0:36:35]
And if you look at, sort of, like the Earth in general, right? Right now in the Northern Hemisphere where I live, we're in winter—looking out on snowy firs right now, out in the forest outside of my home. And in the Southern Hemisphere, it's really warm and everything is blooming open, and it's the opposite, you know, there's a moving into summer there. It's like, the Earth holds all of it, so why can't we, right?
We want to ask ourselves that question. So I don't think there's any reconciliation to do here. I think that you're just touching into, tapping into, the truth, that we are always all of it. We’re always in all four seasons and in like, sub seasons, and in subtle moments that kind of have no name but are their own weather system or own seasonal flow. That's just sort of what it is to be alive and to be learning and growing and in different places at the same time. We’re totally capable of that in different areas of our lives.
So I would just say, how might you bow to that and really begin to see yourself as somebody who can hold all of those things—can hold all those different notes on the piano and celebrate that about yourself? Because it really is a great thing, and also, you're in good company, because every single person in the world (Lindsay laughs), in the world alive right now, is going through different seasonal structures or different flows in their lives at this moment in time about all kinds of different things. So I hope that is useful to you. I hope it helps.
[0:38:39]
And yeah, thank you so, so much for being here with me for today's episode, Wild Souls. I will say we only have a couple more of these until I will be on my maternity break for probably the majority of 2020 with this podcast. I'll come back to it whenever I hear a yes to it, whenever I have the space, and whenever it's right for my body and my family, but I'll be really pleased to be with you until March 25. That'll be our last podcast episode and then we'll go on break.
So yeah, I'm really going to enjoy the time that we have together leading up until that time. It'll be a pleasure to be gathering with you every other week until, yeah, until that time. But I think at this point it's just about five episodes left. So thank you so much for being here with me for one of those final episodes before the break, for being here in general, and until we connect again, please take exquisite care of yourselves.
[0:40:03]