207. Opening to Spiritual Support with Temperance Rx
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Today on the pod, Lindsay dives into Temperance, Rx, our Anchor Card of the Week. Together, we drop deeply into this card, what it's inviting us to pay attention to, and how we can begin to sense into our blocks around asking for more support from our Spirit Helpers.
Air date:
December 16, 2022
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About the Episode
Today on the pod, Lindsay dives into Temperance, Rx, our Anchor Card of the Week. Together, we drop deeply into this card, what it's inviting us to pay attention to, and how we can begin to sense into our blocks around asking for more support from our Spirit Helpers.
We also answer a question from Madeleine about how to sense into our intuition when our mind is particularly loud.
Links:
Sign up for The Threshold, our channeled guide around 2023 and The Chariot card!
Sign up for Spiralic Tarot: Winter, a beautiful guide for our Earth Cycle of the year
Download your Ultimate Soul Tarot Card Guide here!
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: religious structures
The content in this episode contains references to mentions of religious structures. 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]
[0:00:00]
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Hey, loves. Just a friendly heads up that if you are looking for some incredibly powerful, solid, on-point guidance around 2023 and beyond through the lens of the Tarot, I really don't think you need to look any further than my beloved yearly offering, The Threshold. The Threshold is a channeled deep dive into the medicine of the year ahead, exploring all of the invitations, all the medicine, all the opportunities energetically of that year ahead through the lens of the Tarot card of the year – and in 2023, that's The Chariot.
With this offering, you'll receive beautiful audio lessons all around The Chariot, around all of the sort of helping Anchor Cards that we can lean into when the year gets spiky, or intense, or just is (Lindsay laughs), just for support, no matter what happens to be happening. We'll talk about how to release The Lovers year, which is what we've been in. We’ll talk about our overarching reading for 2023. There's a lot of richness in those audio modules, and of course, a beautiful workbook packed with spreads, prompts, rituals, and different goodies all to support you through 2023. So to sign up for The Threshold, so that you can truly have a beautiful root system moving into your year ahead, you can go to tarotforthewildsoul.com or click the link in the show notes. Thank you, loves.
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(Instrumental intro music)
[0:01:41]
Welcome to Tarot for the Wild Soul, a podcast that explores the Tarot through an inclusive, soul centered, trauma-informed perspective for growth, healing, and evolution. I'm your host, Lindsay Mack.
Hello, Wild Souls. And welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here. It's always a legitimate delight to be gathered with all of you in this virtual shared space. I hope that this is finding you well and that you're having a really sweet day, wherever you are. So our card for the week ahead is a big one. It's Temperance, and not just Temperance, but Temperance reversed, which adds a whole other layer of bigness to the bigness (Lindsay laughs) of Temperance. So we'll talk about Temperance. We'll unpack it. I'll answer a listener question. It'll be a fun little fun time today.
Okay, so the theme for the month of December is Adventure. And I just want to kind of land everyone in this space, just because I think it's nice to do that in the mid-month zone, to think about what our relationship is with adventure. Has adventure kind of shown up in our lives in some way? Has it like absolutely not shown up in our lives? Has it been more of like an adventure that we kind of don't want? Or has it been something kind of fun? Wherever we sort of are with it, you know, our feelings about it are valid and it's totally okay. It's just really interesting to notice.
[0:03:27]
Because when we… First of all, we're moving through such a big time right now. A very big time. We are getting ready to leave behind The Lovers and move into The Chariot by saying goodbye to 2022 and opening to 2023. So not only are we shifting into a new numerical collective year, but we're also… The Chariot is no joke. It's no joke. Like, the year coming up is big. The natural existence and reality of being in The Chariot – just speaking as plainly, as down to the bones as possible – it is being birthed from a womb space, being hatched from an egg. That's The Chariot. That's what it is.
We've been in something that's held us throughout a period of very important growth and gestation, and we have outgrown it and it's time to leave. We don't always feel ready to leave that womb space. We don't always feel ready to hatch out of that egg. Some part of us might, another part of us might not, right? So The Chariot is very much about the liminality of kind of being in a space that you know you've outgrown, needing to sort of be contracted out of it. You can't rush that process. You can't… Like, it's… There's a lot. And there's a lot of feelings that come along with it. The Chariot’s ruled by Cancer, for fuck’s sake (Lindsay laughs). Like, it's it's not a clear-cut thing. It's an experiential thing. It's a very powerful process. So we're heading into a whole year of that. And there's beauty inside of that. It's a beautiful thing to be rebirthed. It's a beautiful thing to leave something behind that we've outgrown. It also can be terrifying. It can be devastating. It can bring up all the things and all the feelings, again, all of which are very valid.
So why I mention this is because the idea that the sense and the theme of Adventure is leading us out of the year, the current year, and into the new one invites us to maybe consider the word ‘adventure’ differently than we might originally have done, or we might organically do, right? For some of us, we think about adventure as this amazing, exciting, you know, heart-expanding or mind-opening time. For another person, adventure might be ordering something different to drink in the morning at the coffee spot.
Like, adventure—and I'm really now trying to say this—adventure can be accessible. Adventure doesn't need to involve physical movement. Adventure doesn't need to be out of one's reach because of any kind of piece. And I think that's really important. Because so many of us think “adventure”, we think, “Well, like, I can't… I don't have the budget for, like, an amazing adventure. I'm like not… I'm in my home. I'm not, like, going anywhere, I'm not doing anything, so this doesn't apply to me.” But the truth is, it does. The truth is that we go on internal adventures all the time. If you decide to call up someone that you're like, “I feel like this person and I could be friends,” like, I mean, there's a lot of words to pull forward for that. It's vulnerable. It could be scary. It could be nothing to you, if you're comfortable with that kind of thing. It's definitely an adventure, you know, and it might teach you something new about yourself.
[0:07:21]
The point of December and its relationship to the word adventure and the theme of adventure is that it's inviting us to shake things up and do things differently than we might do them. Sometimes we have to do something, make a different choice—not necessarily to get to an endpoint around that particular choice, but to shake up other things in our lives. Sometimes by leaping courageously in one area, it triggers off all of these openings in areas that are seemingly unrelated to the one we leapt in, but the truth is they're all connected. They're all connected.
And I invite you to consider: has there ever been a time where you've done something that just took a ton of your courage, whatever it might be. I don't give a fuck. To another person, it might feel like a walk in the park, like nothing. You're not other people, so you don't need to compare yourself to anybody. Have you done something that was a big deal to you and after you did it… Maybe that particular thing didn't yield too much but, like, maybe it did. You know, who knows? After you did it, did your life shift at all? Maybe not. But I can point to a number of times in my life, where I've done a scary thing, and it wasn't necessarily that the scary thing yielded to like a million different things. But the fact that I did it made way, expanded, a lot of different areas in my life. And that is the greater invitation behind this idea of adventure. What's the thing that's kind of always been there that you've thought, “Uh, maybe I could do this one day. I don't know.” Can you leap into it? Can you try? Even if it's something so simple. And like, again, if you're not able to do the big thing, What are some small things you can do just to try to shake up different stuff and invite in some fresh energy into your life?
The Chariot is very… The Chariot’s so interesting because it's very much an adventure and also very much like a homebound energy. It's very much about inner work and yet has, very naturally, to do with our relationship to the world because we're shifting our relationship to the “Chariot”—the body, the persona, the personality. Whatever the thing is that we're presenting, we're being invited to clear some of what doesn't serve in order to come into the world; be rebirthed in a way that's far more… (Lindsay sighs) Authentic really isn't the word, but more easy, more comfortable. Less… Like, less based in striving. If we find like, we're just exhausted trying to keep up, what might be an easier pace? Like there's something… Like, letting go of the hardness, a little bit, around anything that might be kind of like self-motivated difficulty, self-motivated striving, right?
[0:10:40]
So the adventure piece is very important. And last week, our card for the week that really sort of helped to Anchor us more fully into this idea of adventure was Nine of Swords reversed. And in that, we were invited to investigate our fears. When we embark on big leaps, big adventures, we're going to very naturally have fears that are going to come up. We're going to have what ifs. It's going to deeply shake up the foundations of the mind, and we talked about this last week. The mind wants a safe, familiar, and in what's known, so Nine of Swords is a crucial anchor for this work. It's crucial. It couldn't be more crucial. Because it basically allows us, provides us with the platform to help to go through, inventory, work through the what ifs that are lying beyond something, and break through that membrane to the other side.
So it was kind of amazing for me to… Because I record these episodes somewhat in advance, like a week or two sometimes. I was on my first trip away out of state, since 2020. Well, like, as in, I had to get on an airplane. It was my first airplane trip since 2020, with my family to actually visit other family. And during that trip, there were a million what-ifs, for a million reasons. And it forced me to kind of go through an experiential, like, “Okay, there are all these what-ifs. We're going to try it and we'll see what happens,” (Lindsay laughs) you know? And on the other side of Nine of Swords, there is kind of an amazing liberation that happens because no matter what the outcome, you're like, “Well, at least I've investigated all of the things related to this.” So it is very powerful to move through that and come to the other side.
[0:12:48]
And with Temperance reversed being our card for this week, it's sort of the same idea. The idea of us clearing out our Lovers year in 2022 and moving into Temperance, we’re kind of like leaving no stones left unturned, (Lindsay laughs) in some ways. Temperance is, like I said, like a galaxy, truly. It's not just a planet. It's not just a star. It's a galaxy of a Tarot card. Some of them, I think, are really like they’re stars, they’re planets, they’re ecosystems within the planet. And some of them are whole solar systems in and of themselves, and I think that's Temperance. It's a very vast, very large card, very challenging to sort of whittle down and simplify. I don't even know if it needs to be simplified. But we'll do our best here today (Lindsay laughs) to talk about how we could sort of anchor it into, like, the real time; into what is, right? And the fact that it shows up reversed is sort of a galaxy within a galaxy. But it's very important related to everything we've just talked about – related to the inventorying, so to speak, of things, clearing out what's necessary in order to move into our new year, anchoring to this theme of adventure, however it's showing up for us, whether it be more internal, more external, more small and subtle, or enormous and big. Wherever we happen to find ourselves sort of in that spectrum, Temperance is here to help us.
So while last week we were called to investigate our fears, this week we're being called to investigate our barriers around a deeper connection with our spirit helpers. So in other words, where we get blocked, caught, stuck, where we experience resistance around opening to greater co-collaboration with Source. I'll just raise my hand right here, right now and say that I experience this all the time. I'm never going to sit here and tell you or sort of frame it like, “You're not doing this, and you should do it,” because this is a very, very big, very valid area where all of us are doing our best. All of us are doing our best.
There's an extraordinarily common tendency to equate our relationship with God, Spirit, Source with that of a parent. So if we've had areas where parents haven't really supported us, if we've had a challenging life, if we have stuff about asking for help, all that's going to show up in our relationship with Divine, right? So I just really want to join you in solidarity and just really acknowledge, I'm not talking down to anyone. I think this is an area where I am… I have a great deal of humility (Lindsay laughs) because I have a lot to learn myself around my stuff with asking for help. I’ve come a long way but, ooh, you know, it's hard. It's hard to continue to lean into that richness and that support. So I'll just speak from where I am today, what I feel called to talk about. And I just want to let you know that I'm on the journey with you, to be sure. So if your brain pops in and is like, “Oh, you're so bad. You shouldn't… You know, you should be asking for help. You should be at your altar more,” you can just say that's… You don't need to take it on. You just don't have to take that invitation on. You're doing the best you can, you know? You really are. All of us are.
[0:16:38]
So let's break it down here. Temperance is ruled by Sagittarius. And I want to zero us in, because I think it's so helpful, on the Smith-Rider-Waite depiction of this card, so we can zoom back out and dig into it. Okay? So in the Smith-Rider-Waite version of this card, we see a person, a depiction of an angel with the symbol for the sun on their forehead, very, very big wings—red wings—holding two cups with water sort of flowing between them. And the water is kind of suspended in midair as though it's almost being thrown like a ball between one cup to the other. The symbol for the sun is on the angel's chest. And there is sort of a crown rising in the background. There's also irises growing around them. So there's quite a bit of symbolism that we could go into around the crown, and the irises, and all of that, but I'm going to keep it a little bit simpler.
So another very important thing to note is at this angel’s feet. So one foot is sort of rooted on rocks that's to their left, and the other foot is suspended in water. Not actually on anything; just suspended. So if we look at this, there's some real, you know, loveliness to the image. But it can be very hard to sense into like, “Well, what the fuck does this mean, (a), and what does it mean to my life?”
So here’s what it's not. Temperance as a card has zero, zilch, nada to do with chastity, the old school idea of virtue, of purity, a sinless life. Zero. Zero, zero, zero. That's old fucking shit. No. It has nothing to do with that. Let's break down some of the symbolism in this card, right? We've got the water at the angel’s feet. We have the symbol of sun on their—of Fire, excuse me—on their chest and sun on their forehead, right? So we have a weaving together, a blending together of Water and Fire – two elements that, unless we're trying to make steam, which is valid, we can't hold in one hand the way we might be able to hold a piece of earth, a rock, a piece of wood and water, air obviously and water, air and earth. Fire and all of those, you know, elements will flow together in some way. We cannot hold water and fire in our hands at the same time. We can't do it. But Source can. If we attempted to move water in this very magical way from one cup to another with our human hands, we would likely spill it. It would be really tricky. But Divine Source can do it.
[0:20:05]
If we attempted… I’ll just use if I attempted to put…(Lindsay laughs) to balance one foot on, like, a rocky riverbank and have the other one like floating in water, I would seriously injure myself. Most people can't comfortably float with one foot balancing on a rock, and the other one just floating in the water. But Source can do it. Essentially, this is saying, when you're attempting to do something, figure something out, put something together, engage in a task, hold a burden… You have labor on your shoulders. Things are challenging. They're difficult. You're trying to fit it all together, and you just can't do it. You're failing. You're dropping things. You're… It's too great a burden for you to bear. Can you let Source in on it? Can you surrender it up? Can you let them help you? Can you ask for help? It's huge and certainly not… You know, a huge basis for a lot of religion and a lot of spirituality is when something is too great for our heart to hold, we look up, or we look forward, or we look…we go to the earth, we pray, we open to something greater than ourselves and say, “I cannot do this. I can't figure out how to do it. Please help me. Please help me,” right?
When we put a piece of metal in fire and we're trying to forge it and strengthen it, we're tempering that metal. Water has to be involved in that, too. Temperance doesn't have to do with piety and virtue. It has to do with us being tempered, made stronger; made stronger by actually softening and asking for help. Not trying to do it all, not trying to hold it all, not trying to put it all together. Right?
So Temperance is a gradual… Temperance as a Tarot card is what happens to us. It is the gradual transformation that occurs as we, over the years, over the decades, start letting Spirit help us little by little, a little bit more, and then a little bit more. And we do it a little bit more and then all this stuff comes up and we bump against it. And it's like, “Fuck you, Spirit (Lindsay laughs). I should never have opened up to you.” Like, this, this, and that. And “No one really helps me,” and old patterns of like taking on everything and realizing “Oh, I actually didn't have to do that,” right? And this ranges from like, “Whoa, these burdens are too great to hold. Please help me,” to, “Jeez, I'm not sure whether or not this is in alignment for me right now – whether this travel is in alignment, whether this project is ready to come. Might I remember that I'm here to be of service to this greater vision and I can always pause and tune in. I don't have to figure it all out. I can let Spirit be a greater part of my co-collaboration of my life. I don't have to do it alone.”
[0:23:27]
And I think that's the thing that's really important, is that we're not losing our sovereignty here. We're not losing our autonomy here. I love my brain in some ways. I love it and always… And don't always enjoy my experience with my brain, but I get it and I appreciate what it does. I love my intelligence. I like thinking through things, and I appreciate my process. And there are times where I will tune in with Spirit, I will get an answer, but I kind of have to figure it out for myself. Or I have to do something different and then come back to center and be like, “Okay, you guys were holding this space for me. Thanks so much,” you know. Whatever it is.
That's, I actually think, not just okay but necessary. And I think especially for the folks out there who’ve been deeply damaged, traumatized by religion, or by their experience in organized religion, and the depiction of a God-like figure or a Spirit figure who is domineering and who, like, our will doesn't matter. I just want to be really in respect and honoring of those very valid wounds because that's different than what we're talking about here.
When it comes to Guides, when it comes to what I like to call the “spirit helpers”—which in my mind range from our inner compass, our inner heart, our inner voice, our inner child to if you roll with angels, I think that's great. Guides–big G– little g guides, beloved dead, well ancestors, to Source. Like, everything in between, those are all spirit helpers to me. Like, the elementals. You know, everything. When we open to the helpers that are working with us, it doesn't make everything magically better. It doesn't make everything magically okay. It opens us up, however, to a source of benevolence, and love, and of support that is really quite extraordinary.
And if we are willing to soften enough, to not know enough, to sort of take our hands off the controls of our lives, to surrender, open to that kind of help, it does lift certain kind of burdens off. We do remember that we don't need to figure it all out. We don't need to have all the answers. We can trust that if something isn't working at this moment, it's probably because it's either not meant to, or there's something else going on, or… There's all kinds of different things that can pop up from this, and most of them are that we start to feel that we're not alone. We start to feel heartened. We can come back to a place of truth when the mind is really spinning.
[0:26:52]
And Temperance is here over the course of… And this is why it's so hard to tap into Temperance. Because Temperance as a rule… I guess it's not a rule, but it's sort of my “rule”. And I say that with like quotes, heavy, heavy, heavy quotes, because there are no rules. But I think pretty… I don't know. I think Temperance really takes a couple years. It's like when you get it, even though you might be getting it for the day, for the month, for the week ahead—like for us, it's the week—it's letting us know we're in a larger process here. And that we may start to see some shifts within the week, but to know that we're on the journey, right? That's what we're doing here. We're on the journey. It is, again, a very lengthy process; one that has to take lots of time to unfold, and unpack, and kind of let all of our stuff come up, that helps us to get closer to our spirit helpers. That helps break down those walls of feeling like we can't reach out for help—we don't know how. You know, it doesn't feel okay or safe.
Again, my hand is up too for those of you who were a part of organized religion. If it was very traumatic for you, you might be like, “Fuck no, I'm not reaching out to Spirit. I don't know what the fuck that is,” or “I've had bad experiences with that. You know, I don't want to open myself up like that.” It might take a little while. Part of your Temperance work might be you need to feel safe. So what might it be to be really fucking clear, when you tune in with Spirit, what you're available for and what you're not available for? Right? It might be that you only want to work with your ancestors. It might be that you only want to work with a certain Guide, or a certain, you know, beloved who’s passed or, you know, whatever it might be. That's all valid and okay. It's finding our own way into asking for support and assistance.
And again, I want to go back to this idea of co-collaboration. We're not calling Spirit in and Temperance to be like, “Here's my life. You take it on,” (Lindsay laughs) you know? We're collaborating with them. We're co-collaborating. We're sharing. We're talking. We're communicating back and forth. They're inviting, we're considering, we make choices. They're benevolent. They are here for us no matter what. No matter what. I know some folks have the experience of their Guides kind of yelling at them, like if that makes sense. And I just want to say that sometimes Guides can be kind of intense, but the love doesn't vary. The love doesn't waver; the love and the support. There's no passive aggressiveness. There's no resentment. There's no… It's unconditional. Our Guides are unconditional. And we deserve… In fact, we don't just deserve it. That kind of support is part of our birthright here. So Temperance is asking us to reclaim that. And it's a huge step of what…the first of a million steps, a million kind of miles that we’ll travel in our journey of opening to what Spirit feels like for us, so that we don't feel like we need to take on the load of every little thing.
[0:30:41]
Now, the reversal is a little bit more centered on the idea of asking what blocks us from feeling like we can do this, like, today. Right? So for you, it might be like, “I don't feel like it.” It might also be something in the realm of feeling like you're not worthy of it. You might not feel like you know how. It might also feel like, “Oh, I know I need to but…” you know, whatever. Maybe you're mad at Spirit. That happens to me a lot. Not a lot, but it happens. All those things are really valid. So again, this idea of adventure—remember we’re in the spirit of adventure—my mission to you, if you choose to accept it, this week is to pay close attention to those blocks, to those places of resistance, because there is wisdom in them. If you're mad at Spirit, sometimes you’ve just gotta be mad at Spirit and move through that. And other times you can tune in and ask a question and, like, still be mad, you know? And that's okay to have that.
If you don't know how, you can use your Tarot deck. That's my main source for communication with Spirit is, you know—and I imagine for a lot of you—is opening to my spirit helpers and having, you know…and asking very intentionally for them to come through my deck and let me know what I'm being invited to know about a day, or about a situation. What would they have me know? It might be for me that it's a walk and some prayer. And it might be for you that it's something totally different. Sensing into what you need there is important. It might be really helpful to consider like, is there some sort of belief in there that you're not worthy of asking, it's not okay, it's not safe, it doesn't feel all right to do that? What might it be like to hold those experiences and open to what does feel okay and safe?
Because what's at the heart of Temperance is not some sort of desire to get us to have a relationship with Source. It's to start to help us to open to being supported. It's all about support. And inside of that opening, that softening, that cracking open, there is a beautiful, beautiful transformation that happens where you realize like, “Oh my God. Like, I don't need to… This isn’t mine to hold,” or “This is mine to hold. I’ve gotta come get this,” you know, or like… It's a compass that is just so powerful, and a relationship that, over time, really becomes our own. And again, in the spirit of adventure, this is a really crucial place to sort of take a gentle inventory around and notice, like, “Where do I have these blocks today? You know, where am I with this?” Because ideally, we want to keep softening and deepening into this relationship, not just with Source or our spirit helpers, or whatever you want to call it, but with ourselves as well. You know, with ourselves as well.
[0:34:11]
So, again, Temperance is a very powerful card. And you know, the Sagittarius of it all is interesting because it speaks to, I think, both sides of the… And I'm not speaking about Sagittarians with this, I beg you to know. I'm speaking about the larger overarching Sagittarian energy. Sagittarians are seekers. They're travelers. They're experiencers of the world. They want to get out there and they want to experiment. They want to feel into every little thing. It's the journey, right? This card is the ultimate journey. We're learning what it is to have a relationship with Source that feels like ours.
And we get to… Again, there's no way to override the part of Temperance that is really more spiralic with a lot more destinations and stops than we think it is. Because again, we open a little bit, a bunch of stuff floods in, a bunch of contraction floods in, we move through and work through that, we deepen a little more. We open to more contraction, we deepen a little more. And slowly but surely, the relationship with Source deepens and gets very personal and very rich, and there's a lot of healing with it. And again, I'm not talking about Sagittarian folks. Part of the important medicine that Temperance has for Sagittarius, in general, is to remember that they don't know everything, right? They don't know everything. So it's important to keep our mind open, right? Sagittarians are so brilliant. They know so much. They're so conscientious and have a very bold and confident way about moving through the world. And like all of us, they don't know everything.
[0:36:14]
So sometimes it's important… Temperance really does inject all of us with quite a bit of humility. And I think for Sagittarian energy, that medicine is beautifUL because it helps to temper a little bit, you know. It helps to bring the depth and curiosity that is certainly a part of Sagittarian seeking, but maybe when Sagittarius energy is completely inside of that deep place, it can start just being like, “nobody can teach me anything.” And Temperance, not the… you know, just Spirit in general just really has a way of cracking that open for us.
So it's certainly not to deflate any of the exuberance and beauty that Sagittarius has. But just like with The Devil card, we learn discernment for Capricorn, because Capricorn gets to play around with the knowing that not every mountain is actually in highest and best for them to be climbing. Like, they can do it. Should they? Not really, you know. And just like The Emperor with Aries, like we don’t have to… Not every space is ours to take up, right? So there's powerful medicine for everyone. And again, not directed at any one particular person, or any sun sign group, or anything like that. I love all the signs, I do. It's just good, solid, nurturing, humbling medicine for everybody, you know? It just really does bring us to our core.
So no matter what, you know, is in our zodiac chart or, you know, where we happen to be with this, essentially, this is saying one of the greatest adventures we could ever go on is to start tuning in more, and to start opening to the intuitive medicine within us. How can we do that? How can we open? How can we become even more willing to look at our feelings about that? How can we open to greater support and greater co-collaboration, knowing that Spirit never wants to rob us of our autonomy. I mean, fuck, that's why we're here: to have that autonomy, that free will, that sovereignty. We're not supposed to be taking that away. Spirit doesn't want us to take that away. They're about supporting us in our fullness. So the more we can open to that, the deeper and richer that sense of support can be. So sensing into that, looking at that is all a part of this week, but it's going to radiate out for us a lot more, a lot more this year.
[00:39:18]
So that's my bit. That's my two bits on (Lindsay laughs) Temperance. And now I'm going to move on to our listener question. This week, our question comes from Madeleine, and they ask,
Hi, Lindsay. First of all, thank you. I entered a period of tremendous expansion at the beginning of the year, and I would be lost without the guidance I consistently find in your work. My question has to do with intuition. A huge part of the season I'm currently in centers around trusting and deepening my intuition. At this time, this trust comes easily. At others, not so much. How can I hone in on my aligned intuitive voice when my mind is shouting, distracting, and tantruming so loudly that I can't tell the difference between my Source-aligned channel and what I want (or what my mind is afraid) to hear. Thank you so, so much again.
I hear you 100% on this (Lindsay laughs). Okay. The broadest answer that I have is, you're onto something. Keep going. It's not just normal for the mind to tantrum in the presence of intuition; it's kind of the deal. It's just part and parcel of it because of the nature of what the mind does, and the nature of what we do when we tune in with that deeper truth. The mind is here to keep us safe. It's not at all necessarily the arbiter of truth. And that deeper source is meant to be guiding us to what is ideally in alignment and what, you know, is really in highest and best for us. And sometimes the two connect, and the two are totally—meaning mind and soul—are on the same page 100%. Sometimes the mind wins out, for whatever the reason. We just have to defer to, like, “This is too overwhelming. My mind is screaming too loudly. I'm gonna pause here,” right?
So there are two things that… And sometimes we, you know, defer to that Spirit- led channel. When the mind is tantruming so loudly that you can't tell the difference between your Source-aligned channel and what your mind is afraid to hear, the first thing is to just pause and name it. And you might, if you have a mentor, a friend, a coach, a community group that’s safe, speak it aloud, or share it in a message and just say, “Hey, this is happening right now.” Just naming it. You may journal about it. It helps me at least to get it out of my own mind. It helps me to get out of my own echo chamber by just communicating.
[0:42:29]
And if the person that you're working with, or working around, is kind of like, “I'm curious. Like, what are you actually tuning in about?”, you may find that they have a reflection for you that helps you to understand that typically, when the mind is screaming the loudest is when we're kind of onto something, whether or not it's meant to happen right now, whether or not it's ever meant to happen. There's something we're bumping up against that's an important evolution of some kind, an important expansion. And it's, again, very important to remember that we kind of just sometimes have to let the mind scream. And eventually, we'll come to a point where there's a little bit more quiet, and we'll be able to sense into the truth underneath it.
So when the mind’s yelling really loudly, we acknowledge it. We say, “Thanks, mind. I see you. I really honor this. This must be like a really big deal for you to be this protective of me. Thank you. I'm going to open up the circle and talk to some other folks about what's going on.” Then you talk a little bit, you journal a little bit, maybe you speak it aloud, maybe you go to your Tarot deck and say, “Whew, my mind is just really shouting and I don't know what's going on. I'd like to pull a card on what I can center back into, how I can Anchor. I'd love to pull a card on what my mind needs right now to come back to a place of centeredness; how can I support this part of myself? And I'd love to pull a card on ‘message from my spirit helpers’ and, you know, what they're inviting me to pay attention to right now.” All of that can help to provide some self-compassion around a very difficult internal experience. It can take you out of, again, that sort of more internalized echo chamber, and it can open you up to more support—human and invisible, you know?
It's really normal for there to be… Not just normal, it's just fact that there is seasonality to intuition. And that there are times when the mind is much, much louder, and it's a lot harder to sense into what's going on. And there are times where the opposite is true, where the clarity is very bright and, you know, we can sense into the mind kind of dissenting, but Spirit’s really clear and really, the volume’s up.
[0:45:05]
What I will say—and hopefully this is a point of comfort for you—is that after practicing with this so much, with so much experience on a daily basis, I've gotten into the habit, when I get a really loud response in one way or another, of pausing and saying, “Mind…” related to the question I just asked, “what do you say? Is it a yes or a no?” And I give my mind an opportunity to answer. And then I'll kind of say, “Okay, thank you. Spirit, what do you say?” And very often, the dominant answer that I heard was from the brain, you know, because the brain just… It has a different way of communicating, for lack of a better word, that just… Guides don't really sound the same. So I like to talk to my mind a lot. My mind needs, like, a lot of hand-holding as it pertains to this kind of work; really needs to know that I'm safe. So there's a lot of compassion and a lot of like, “Wow, this is a lot. Okay, I’m here to hold this and…” you know?
So that really helps me. So that's what I would recommend to you, if that feels okay. Like, what would it be like, instead of sort of getting swept away in anything, or being like, “Fuck. Like, I'm being blocked from this message.” The message is actually right there. The more I find that I'm able to kind of delineate between mind and soul, the more I am able to receive intuitive guidance while my mind is screaming. That's been the key. Because that does happen now, that my mind can totally be screaming but I can sense into the answer under it. And it's just because I've gotten so much practice at knowing the difference between the two, because they really are quite different.
So intuition building is… And it's a real bummer (Lindsay laughs) but, like, it's just one of those things where you have to sit with it and do it a million times over and over again. And through showing up and being like, “I don't know what the fuck this is,” whatever, we learn more about the ways that those channels intersect and communicate with each other. So when you can't tell the difference, some options are to pause, give it a little space, really take some gentle moments with your mind, pull a card, reach out to some folks, maybe use a pendulum if you have one or you have sort of a practice with one. There are ways to differentiate that don't put so much pressure on you needing to sort out between the two. And sometimes, again, just getting out of that internal chamber of noise can be really helpful. But also to just know that kind of the more the mind tantrums, the bigger the sense that you're typically onto something important.
So I hope that that resonates with you. And I'm very excited that you're on this path. And I'm really bowing to you in a lot of support and a lot of solidarity. You're not alone in this process. And you're asking all of the… not the right questions. They are right questions. There’s no wrong questions. But you're asking great questions. And I'm wishing you tons of luck on your journey as your intuition continues to flourish and blossom.
—
[Conclusion]
[00:49:10]
Thank you so much for being here with me, Wild Souls. It's been, again, an honor and a joy to be gathered with you. I hope that if you haven't already, you will sign up for The Threshold 2023, which is all about The Chariot card and your year ahead, as well as signing up for the Winter Edition of Spiralic Tarot, which is very powerful and lovely. And if you're looking for sort of a more present-moment framework about this season ahead, how to sort of stay linked to the Tarot in the midst of what is and what's going on, it's a beautiful offering for that exact purpose.
But I have some incredibly exciting news. So I am honored to share that I am featured in a new book. It is my very dear pal Kate Scelsa’s new book called Luminary, and it's geared toward teens and young adults. It's essentially for magic-minded, sort of magic-curious teens, and each chapter is centered on a different helping or healing modality. So I was the interviewee and the subject for the Tarot section. There's astrology, there's intuition, there's all… There's art, there's writing, all of these beautiful sections, and one wonderful person for each of them. Super honored to be in the same company as all of these folks featured in the book. It's truly–and I'm not just saying this because I'm in this book—it is truly the book that I would have given anything to have as a young person.
Kate just has such a wonderful way of communicating their wit, and humor, and depth, and goes into such beautiful, vulnerable detail about how she came to many of these practices, how magic is such an important part of her life and her…of everything that she does. And it's just truly a beautiful book. Like, I could not put it down when I was reading it, and just feel so excited to be a part of it. And if you would like to purchase the book—I don't get anything for it. It's just I'm proud to be a part of it, and I want to shout it out—there's a link to purchase it in your show notes. It's available and on sale anywhere. I have the bookshop.org link, but you can buy it anywhere.
And I'm even more excited to share that I have my first-ever journal interview with Kate on the website, on tarotforthewildsoul.com. So it's a lovely, lovely interview that I was so grateful to have the opportunity to have with her. It’s all about her process in writing the book, how she got started on the Tarot, what advice she'd give to creatives, what advice she… you know, cards that still stump her, just because I think it's so important to normalize. Even longtime readers still get kind of stumped on certain cards, and that's okay. Again, I loved our conversation. That's up on The Journal now in the link to the show notes, as well as the link to buy Luminary are in the show notes.
And yeah, I'm just really excited to share it with all of you, and I hope you love it. It's the perfect book, I think, to get for yourself (Lindsay laughs), no matter what your age, but certainly for the young person in your life. It's… Again, it would have been a lifeline for me. So I hope you love it too. And Kate, thank you so much for asking me to be a part of it. I hope that you have an absolutely beautiful week, and until we connect again, please take exquisite care of yourselves.