214. Embodying the Wind with Knight of Swords
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Today on the podcast, we are diving into the heart of Knight of Swords, our Anchor Card for the week ahead.
Air date:
February 9, 2023
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About the Episode
Knight of Swords is all about empowered action and movement, and can help us to accomplish more than we might believe ourselves capable of (in a way that does not overwhelm us or burn us out). We will explore ways to skillfully engage with this card, opening to the invitations it brings for us. We also answer a hugely powerful listener question about intuition and how to make sense of certain New Age beliefs.
Lindsay’s Links:
Purchase the entire Soul Tarot 101 course (or just the Digital Book for $22!)
Download your Ultimate Soul Tarot Card Guide here!
Defend the Atlanta Forest and Stop Cop City! Learn more here: https://defendtheatlantaforest.org
Help Turkey and Syria:
https://www.akut.org.tr/en/donation
LINKS TO HELP IRAN:
Thank you to Ariana (@azadi.times.three) for sharing these with us!
1. Center for Human Rights in Iran (based in NY, provides news and in-depth reports on human rights abuses in Iran)
2. How to Talk About Iran (a living document from the Iranian Diaspora Collective on Instagram)
3. Persians With Purpose (Educational content, news translated to English, and other Iran resources on Instagram)
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: surgery, birth, pregnancy, postpartum depression and anxiety, pain, diagnosis, illness, grief, relationship to body, trauma, medical emergencies, depression, OCD, systemic inequities in healthcare, death, childhood trauma, marginalization, capitalism, colonialism, harm in certain New Age beliefs, ableism, spiritual bypassing, religious trauma, systemic marginalization of BIPOC, queer, and trans communities, colonialist ideals, white privilege, and religious/capitalist/patriarchal structures
The content in this episode contains references to mentions of surgery, birth, pregnancy, postpartum depression and anxiety, pain, diagnosis, illness, grief, relationship to body, trauma, medical emergencies, depression, OCD, systemic inequities in healthcare, death, childhood trauma, marginalization, capitalism, colonialism, harm in certain New Age beliefs, ableism, spiritual bypassing, religious trauma, systemic marginalization of BIPOC, queer, and trans communities, colonialist ideals, white privilege, and religious/capitalist/patriarchal 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]
(Instrumental intro music)
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 Loves, and welcome back to Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast. It's such a joy to be gathered here with all of you, as always. Thank you so much for your presence, and for being here with me. We have a really, I feel, like a very potent, packed episode. We're going to be talking about, as we always do, our card of the week ahead, how that sort of weaves into the larger monthly theme of February. And we're going to be talking about, really digging into, such a juicy listener question that I'm going to take a swing at (Lindsay laughs). Hopefully, I manage to make contact with something inside of that, but I'm honored. And I'm, yeah, I felt a really strong call to speak to it. And, yeah, I'm really excited.
[0:01:15]
So our card for the week ahead, I think is a really interesting one. It is Knight of Swords. And because this is a podcast that, you know, we talk about the energetic invitations, the sort of very light forecasting, even though that's not what I do, really, just light preparations for the week ahead, like what will serve us in moving through whatever we're moving through in the week ahead. It's totally different than forecasting, but you get me. We have an opportunity to learn about the card, as well as get tips on how to work with it specifically for the week ahead. And I think they're evergreen, and also very of the moment.
So because we don't work with these cards, really, I think, as often, it's very nice to be able to sort of get a broader sense of like, okay, I'm working with a Knight this week. What does that feel like to really, you know, kind of dig into — what I like to call — the field research of Tarot reading? Which is that when we live our experience with a card, when we move through it, when we're spending time in a card, when it comes up for us for the day, for the week, et cetera, it's not just about sort of what that card is indicating or promising or forecasting, if that's the way we read, we really get to learn about it through the lived experience. And that can take us out of reliance on other people's interpretations, including my own. Because my own interpretation is, I think, yes, very inclusive and broad for many people, but it's still coming through my filter, my channel, which, you know, is okay. But all human beings are limited. All human beings are flawed. All human beings, you know, we're all learning, right?
What's really most important is what comes through your channel, your own, personal, intimate connections with these cards. So I know that's very obvious. But I just want to encourage everybody to truly feel permissioned and in fact, empowered to kind of be like, “Well, great, good, good, good. Lindsay says X. What's coming through for me with this card?” I'd love to hear what you discover.
I read everything that people write and ask me that come through on the, you know, that get sent through our big list of “Ask Lindsay” questions. So if you write me about that, I’d just love to see, you know, what comes through for you on that. And so anyway, now that that schpeel is over, our card, yeah, for the week ahead is this tremendous, very specific energy of Knight of Swords.
[0:04:21]
The Knights in Soul Tarot, specifically, are all about methods, rhythms, options of movement. We can go in a very binary way, very fast, very slow. We can move in a particular style. We can flow through different environments differently. All of the Knights are helpers, advocates, and tremendous guides on the journey. They’re, you know, field guides for us through different terrains of life.
And in the most barest of senses, in the most foundational ways, we look in Soul Tarot to the Court Cards as not being about other people, but about our own invitations. They, I think, really have to do, the whole of the Court Cards have to do, very specifically, with helping us to live and embody a very soul-led life, a life that's in alignment with the soul, and a life that helps us to guide and lead as much as we do honor ourselves.
And all of us lead in different ways. Whether we're a leader of two people, two wonderful, important people, caretaker of a few people, or many people, whether we are serving millions or thousands, it doesn't matter. The Court Cards can help because everybody has the capacity, the power and I think, in fact, that, like, everyone has influence, you know? And I'm not talking about like “influencers”.
If you're a parent, you have tremendous influence, like can be one person, one child, that's a really big deal. The Court Cards can help with that. If we are advocates, if we are activists, if we disrupt, if we amplify, if we are of service in any way, the Court Cards are your helpers. Very, very specifically, how we nurture ourselves, how we're being invited to move through certain situations or seasons, how we come home, like, what's our core, where do we draw from? That's all in, they're all in those cards, specifically. And again, this is just all inside of the way I teach them, but that's what I believe, and it's specific to the way I teach.
So again, we look to the Knights as these beacons, as these movement medicine, right? And they're not so simple as fast/slow. For example, Knight of Pentacles isn't slow. They are preparers, they are preparing for a journey. They're preparing. They're stretching that bow and arrow, they're training their eye on the target, and when the time is ready, they'll let go. Right?
It's an art of preparing internally before we make an external decision.
Why is that useful? Something like Knight of Pentacles? So we don’t have to make a zillion moves to get to where we're going. Knight of Pentacles can actually help us to skip a couple of really messy, kind of challenging steps that sometimes we can't skip, right? But we've all been in that situation where we thought, “Well, I can go here, I can go there, I could do this, I could do that. I gotta do this, I gotta do that.” We don't, really. Really, the medicine and the advice is to just stay fixed and rooted and wait until we're ready. And then when we're ready, we go, right?
Again, that doesn't mean that there aren't messy steps along the way. We're not avoiding mess. But when Knight of Pentacles comes up again and again and again, it's basically saying you're not going slow, you are actually very thoroughly preparing for this next big step that you're embarking on. It's not a quick thing, right?
[0:08:26]
Knight of Swords is quite the opposite, in that it moves us like the wind. It is a card that when we clasp hands with it, shows us that we're capable—at least for a particular time or season—of accomplishing way more than we might have ever thought was possible.
And I'm a chronically ill person. I'm in pain every day of my life. This is not an ableist treatment. In other words, I'm not claiming that for those of us who have chronic fatigue, who are in pain, who are suffering—who for this week, maybe they're sick. Maybe they're going through a really hard time. This is not…I don't feel this way about Knight of Swords. I think it's important to name that, very specifically, because I think when it comes to cards that have to do with like, “Oh, this is so wonderful,” like, you know, and someone pulls this card like in a hospital bed, what are they thinking? Like, they're gonna feel completely disinclined, right?
So when I talk about — specifically, I'll call myself in here (Lindsay laughs) — when I've spoken about or when I talk about Knight of Swords, I think it's really important — I have to remind myself of this over and over, again: all of our capacities are different. So with Knight of Swords, it could literally be that one day, the biggest goal for you is to take a shower. And you do it, and you maybe don't want to do it, it's maybe really challenging to do. You maybe have to ask for some support, given your situation. But if it happens, and it's like, “Fuck I did that,” that's Knight of Swords.
It's something that when we think about, it feels impossible. But when we can witness the thought, and just kind of see what the capacity is beyond our thoughts or our beliefs about it—without sounding woo-woo here—it can transform our understanding or our awareness of what is possible. This is so true for us. Even, let's go beyond this idea of like, you know, because I want to be really clear that depending on what's on your docket, what you're being invited to sort of focus on, pay attention to, this is not about what you can accomplish. This is about the realization.
But the medicine, the seed in this card for all of us, is about recognizing that sometimes the stories we tell ourselves are different from what's actually possible. In fact, I think there's a world and a conversation that can be had about Knight of Swords, where we actually do the inverse of some of those common, more common examples, where we actually say, “Holy fuck, I need to get all these things done.” And we actually say, “I don't, actually. I don't. I can technically do that tomorrow. This thing over here isn't actually, technically, really even meant to be on my plate, right now. I could…” if we have the ability, or the accessibility, “I could hire someone to do this. I could outsource this probably. I could ask someone if they'd like to help. And actually, what I'm finding is that there's only two things right now. They might be big things that really require my attention today, or this week, or whatever it is.” And that is sometimes when Knight of Swords clicks in, and we go, “Okay, I got this. This I got.”
[0:12:24]
Knight of Swords is about, I think—you know, the title of this episode is “Being the Wind”, you know? Wind is very powerful energy, right, the element of Air. Air can weave in and out of places that we don't expect. Air can literally transform what certain things look and feel like; the landscape. We call upon Air to help clear out debris, things that have died and fallen back, things that are ready to be cleared, that are dried. It can help to, literally, you know, change landscapes.
And so, when we allow ourselves to be like the wind, there is a kind of a surrender that takes place, there's a powerful shift that happens when we say, “Utilize me, allow me to be wind, and allow me to flow in the direction that I am meant to flow in.” So again, this idea is that we allow the body, we allow — somehow I think it's connected in there — Spirit working through us and the body to show us what the body wants, what the body is capable of.
There are a thousand examples, additional examples I could give you. There are times where I have a really strong opinion about what my body wants and doesn't want. When I actually check in with my body, sometimes it has something to say that's really different than what I'm expecting. So then there is a conversation and a dialogue that takes place where it's like, oh, well, I really want this; my body's really wanting this. Why do I want something different than the body? Sometimes it's because I'm avoiding whatever's happening in the body. Sometimes there's a tendency to take on too much and, you know? So this is not about bypassing or disconnecting from any of the kind of family systems that occur within each of us.
This week, we have a glorious opportunity to befriend, to make friends, to talk to, to dialogue with Knight of Swords. It's a friend and an energy that's flowing through all of us this week. That's here to help us. So here's some of the ways we can work with this card here, some of the ways it might be showing up for us this week.
[0:15:05]
So the biggest thing for us this week, and anytime we work with Knight of Swords, but very specifically, is to get out of our own way when it comes to allowing what wants to come through us, to come through us; allowing where the body wants to go. We may have some really strong ideas about like, obviously, don't do anything that is irresponsible that harms you or someone else that puts you in a position that isn't safe. But meaning, if you—like, this happens to me all the time.
Because I am chronically ill, and because I do have chronic pain, there are times when, let's just say, I want to go on a hike. And there's often a lot of grief for me in this, but I have to tune in with my body, really ask: is this something that you desire? Is that something that feels okay for you today? And sometimes I will get a no, or I'll get an invitation to do more of a gentle walk (Lindsay laughs), rather than hike. I can I have, a lot of the times, really strong feelings about that. There have been times where I've kind of pushed through that. I, you know, will then have to do a lot of tending because there's soreness or inflammation later.
But the opposite is true sometimes, where I'll get invited to go on a big walk or something or out or whatever. And I'll think, “Ugh, I shouldn’t do that,” you know, “I don't want to deal with pain or whatever.” And then I tune in and it is a yes. The times where I've been willing enough to try it, it's usually gentler than I thought it would be. It's an opportunity for me to really be vocal and clear about going at my pace. It's an opportunity for me to say it's okay for me not to do this whole loop, I can do some of the loop or whatever it is. So that, all of that, to me, is Knight of Swords medicine. All of it, to me, is saying: this body is a vessel, right?
No matter how we move, no matter how we take action, no matter in what way our body takes up space in this world, whether it is tremendously slow, tremendously singular, as in, like, just getting in a shower. Like, if you've just had surgery, a shower is a huge deal for some of us. And so it's that. Those are, that's one example that like, we might think like, “Fuck no.”
I remember after my C-section, I was like, “There's no way I'm gonna get up and walk.” I had a beautiful nurse who's just like, “Today's the day, baby (Lindsay laughs). Like, you're gonna take a step.” And I couldn't believe it. I remember thinking, like, “I can't believe I'm like up on my feet,” even for a short amount of time, and I just had surgery. And in some ways, that's horiffic, and in other ways, it was really quite empowering. So that's Knight of Swords, too.
[0:18:13]
So we want to start with — and again, this is all Soul Tarot — but with this card, and with this week, we want to start with honoring and bowing to our current capacity.
What is our current situation? Are we in pain? Are we sick? Are we limited? Or do we not have childcare? You know, are we free as a bird, no limitations? Even if there's no limitations doesn't necessarily mean we're flying at 180 miles an hour, right?
So we start with what's here, and we take away this idea that Knight of Swords is about, like, really pushing ourselves to our limit. It may take us to a limit. It might take us past what we think we can do at a certain moment or situation. But it doesn't mean that it's going to exhaust us, going to burn us out. It doesn't cause harm. Right? So we want to begin with what's here: where are we at the beginning of this week? What's going on? What kind of, what are we working with? Like what containers, what structures, et cetera?
And how do we feel about that? Like, if we don't have childcare, we got one thousand things to do. Like, that's incredible, maybe no big thing. It might be a huge thing. It might be typical, it might be very atypical, right? It might be that it's usual for us to be up and out and going and moving, and we have a very full schedule. And it might be that maybe that's our normal but right now we're taking it a bit slower for one reason or another.
So where are we today, and what are we working with? That's step one.
[0:18:13]
This month of February, the theme is uncertainty, and we're being invited to really, like, get curious about uncertainty, be okay with uncertainty. There is a massive amount of Saturn work going on this month because we're working with The World card as the tallest, biggest, North Star for the month of February. That's our card for the month ahead, one of our big cards.
This is a big deal because it means, with The World, that we're going to be invited to revisit things that we might think are the way to go. It's actually a visitation that allows us to go, “Whoa, this is so not what I want.” As my teacher, Michelle, would say, a lesson in contrast. “This is so not what I want, and I'm realizing dipping back into it made me feel this way, this way, this way.”
I just had a situation like that in my own life where I had a really clear idea of kind of the direction that I was going to take a launch in March. And when I sat down to do it, was the most violent, intense NO in my body. And I thought, initially, it was contraction. And I pause, rather than push through a contraction. So I was like, wow, that's a really strong response for it. And I kept getting a yes to it, so I was really very confused.
And at the end of the day, really long and twisty story short, the direction that I had thought I was gonna go into was not a yes. But it was a yes to go through the entire path of exploration. So I actually was, sort of, could really shut the door on what was really underneath me wanting to make that other move in the first place.
It was also an invitation, I think, in working with my beloved and gorgeous business coach, Amy Kuretsky, who I cannot recommend enough, they're always, Amy's always inviting me to like let it be just like 10% easier, a little bit less complicated (Lindsay laughs). Like, what could bring a little bit more ease? And so that was also an opportunity for me to be like, “Yeah, I could go in this direction, which is really, really hard.” It would be really hard. And I didn't realize it at the time. But it would actually cause me to change my entire business model, which was a no. And then, or I could try this, you know. And there was a lot of working with stuff that came up around that, but it was good for me to do.
[0:22:48]
All of that is being with uncertainty, thought I was doing something, was like, “Oh, I guess I'm not doing that, or maybe I am doing that. Wait, what am I going to do?” And then (Lindsay snaps), “Oh, I know exactly what I'm doing great.”
Being willing to be with the uncertainty, as you navigate through all of these different pieces that are ready to be cleared. You may not have an example like what I went through. But I guarantee, I guarantee there's something.
Maybe it's a lot smaller, maybe it's a lot more subtle, maybe it's about a relationship, maybe it's about a job. And there's been a kind of a confusion potentially about like, “Wait a minute, I thought this was right. I got a yes—like, what the fuck?” That's some of World work where we're like, “I gotta yes to this, like, what? It's not coming together.” And sometimes it is so we can really go on the full ride of being like, “Oh yeah, this is…I don't want this, okay.” And then we don't have to kind of do it again. So that's one of the loveliest and most kind of hard parts about the World work.
But uncertainty, when it marries with a card like Knight of Swords, what we're being invited to do here is really be in kind of that dialogue with self, about what we think we're capable of, where we think our limitations are, where we're like, “No, I shouldn't. No, I ought not to,” or “I should do it,” where we're “should-ing” ourselves, et cetera, and allow in a little bit of a refining process this week.
Where are we maybe really limiting ourselves because we're believing, “Oh, I shouldn't do that,” or “that's not in alignment,” or blah blah blah, without even really checking in about it, potentially? So check in about it: is that actually in alignment? Is that a yes for me? Are there parts of what I'm doing that are not in alignment? Parts that are? What's the specificity around really being willing to be with all that? So that once we're clear, we can be like the wind and let that energy take us.
[0:25:05]
The most important thing, as I've said before, with Knight of Swords, who, in our working with it, is not about us going fast or slow or accomplishing so much. Although, this week you may get more accomplished than you ever thought was possible (Lindsay laughs). Even if that's something, that to someone else seems really small. Like, if you're just like, “I need to get out of bed, I need to create this Google Doc, I need to get my taxes filed,” that's a huge deal. And if it just feels absolutely insurmountable, Knight of Swords is who you call upon as an Anchor.
And Knight of Swords isn’t a blast of wind that guides you here and there without stopping. Knight of Swords can be the energy that we call upon to say, “Okay, I'm going to set an alarm. And I'm going to do 15 minutes of writing. And then I'm going to stop and say a prayer,” or “I'm going to stop and check in with myself, I'm going to stop and whatever, then I'm going to go back to it. And then I'm going to go back to it.” It's climbing the mountain and chipping. But then at the end of whatever it is that we do, however we do it, we look back and go, “Oh my God, I didn't know that I… I didn't even know I can do that.”
[0:26:21]
There's something inside of Knight of Swords being here, too, that I think is really interesting, is that sometimes Knight of Swords comes up as an opportunity to reflect on something that's been passed.
So now that I'm coming up on my daughter turning a year old in a few weeks, I have been very naturally thinking about my pregnancy, my birth, and my postpartum, which were all — my birth was great, but my pregnancy and my postpartum were absolutely hellacious, and postpartum was worse, by far.
And I have been saying to Chase, my partner, for the last few weeks, like, realizing, oh, I'm not postpartum anymore. Not because of my child's age, but I'm not inside of that swirl. I'm not in that underworld anymore. I'm not in that wave pool of what postpartum was for me. I feel, not like my old self, but like a different version of myself that works for me that I like, and I can't believe that I survived it (Lindsay laughs). I can't believe that we're here. I can't believe like, we're all doing quite well. My daughter's thriving and like, happy and beautiful. So that's Knight of Swords, too. That, like, “Oh, my God, I did that. Like, how did I do that?” and actually internalizing that, that things change all the time. Cycles come in and out, you know.
This week, we have the capacity to be deeply reflective about those past seasons, to let this sacred, transformative wind, this profound, airy Anchor, to be with us as we navigate situations, events, opportunities. It can help us to really filter, really clarify what's for us and what's not. It can really help us through the confusing moments. It can really help us through those confusing moments and help us to direct our energy in a very powerful way. And the gift of that is for us to realize, “Oh, I'm capable of a hell of a lot more than maybe I give myself credit for” or “this is too much, and I want to give myself the gift of reclaiming my energy, directing it in a different way.”
I think that Knight of Swords is like being like the wind, is being the wind. The wind, the air, the breeze is so different. And however it's directing us to be, whatever kind of wind, whatever kind of breeze, whatever kind of airflow wants to roll through our lives this week, my invitation to you, to myself, is to trust it, and to let it take you where it wants to go.
So that is our big opportunity this week, and anytime we work with this card, that we want to try to get curious about what we're being invited to explore, to navigate, to dive into, that might be way more spacious, and way more powerful or quick or brave, than we would have thought of giving ourselves credit for.
So, I’d love to hear from all of you about how this lands and would love to hear about how this showed up for you at the end of the week.
[0:30:35]
So now, we're gonna move into our powerful listener question that, funnily enough, I've been really subtly, there's been moments inside of this that have been a nice throughline. I don't plan on that, but just sort of happy accident a lot of the time. This is from Anonymous, and it's a little lengthy — which I love, by the way. I'm just letting folks know who are listening.
Anonymous asks:
Hi Lindsay,
I have a question about intuition, in general.
There's this idea in New Age culture that when things are “meant to be” or “in alignment with Spirit,” that things generally flow or fall into place; that the synchronicities find us and things work out more easily. Trying to live a spirit-led love life has been more confusing for me this way, has been more confusing for me and my nervous system.
I understand that Soul Tarot is about our internal experience more than external situations. So I'm curious your take on this external situation as being the “right thing.” I understand that it's all growth lessons, but some external roads do obviously seem less spiky than others, and I want to be self-loving, and Spirit-led in my choices.
I will sometimes be engaging with something that feels “so right,” but things do not flow smoothly at all. For example, a relationship may feel in divine alignment, but also have some hard external and internal barriers. Or maybe I will feel that my body is healthy, only to get an unusual health diagnosis. Or maybe I'll feel very intuitively called to something, only for it not to work out at all, and later, see how many red flags I missed?
I once heard someone say that when things are “right” it feels peaceful in our body. What if there's that peaceful body, yes, but our nervous system also contracts or has a hard time being useful? Or what if we rarely get a clear, easy yes, at all, and instead, spend a lot of time flip-flopping in maybe? How do we know if a situation is truly no, or whether it's about loving ourselves through the healing work or the contraction toward the gifts on the other side?
I think of your concept of staying at the center of the wheel and often wonder whether my external situations are actually “the wrong exit” or whether it's my nervous system freaking out over every little bump. I'd love to find a balanced way of co-creating my life with Spirit. Would be so grateful to hear your thoughts.
Thank you for trusting me with this question. I feel honored to attempt to give it a go. And I just want to acknowledge that my answer — not everybody is going to agree with it, and I think that's okay, you know?
I think that because you're asking me, Lindsay, I'm going to answer personally and give you my thoughts (Lindsay laughs). I just really want to acknowledge again, dear listener, that you're going to find different answers from different folks. So just know that I'm not right, you know, whatever. No one's right, you know?
[0:33:47]
Okay, so a lot of what you're bringing forward about what New Age wellness ideals say, that when things are meant to be or are in alignment with Spirit, that things generally flow or fall into place, that synchronicities find us, and things work out more easily. And that some folks say, I'm quoting you here, that “when things are right, it feels peaceful in our body,” that you've heard that. I do not agree with those things (Lindsay laughs). I don't agree.
It is true that when, I have found for myself, when Spirit really wants me to do something very big, that the steps kind of form themselves as I'm walking across the chasm. That doesn't mean that — like, I'm thinking about my move from New York to Portland — that didn't mean that we didn't, like, run out of money in the middle of the move (Lindsay laughs). I had to come up with something to do and to teach because we like, literally, ran out of money. So like, it's not like all the money was there. Like I had the means and the ability to do it. Like I'm not. There was enormous privilege in my being able to say like, “This is something that I think I'd like to teach about, and I also need some income to help supplement this.”
It didn't mean that there was not, that I didn't, like, sob every single day because moving was incredibly traumatic for me. I'm a trauma survivor and moves, transitions, changes—doesn't matter how happy or how exciting they are—feel like death and terror to my inner kid. And, again, I'm not complaining at all about having the ability and the income to move across the country, you know, from one apartment to a house that I'm renting here. Totally not complaining, but it's not like every single thing came together.
Now when I look back, my willingness to be like, “Sure, Portland? I guess, sure. This house in the woods. I've never like, okay? Okay,” you know? Like, there were a lot of things that felt like a yes, that I was like, “Really? Okay, like, sure?” that has worked out, that there have been pieces inside of that that didn't (Lindsay laughs), you know? Like, it's not like everything flows. And it's not like I didn't have some really fucking, big-ass feelings about it. It's not like I didn't sob and say that I've made the biggest fucking mistake of my life, you know?
And having my daughter was absolutely in alignment, many years in the making. You all know about my postpartum journey. Like, and if you don't: our doula, that was a lifeline for us, because I knew how prone I was to postpartum depression, like, got COVID, there was total disruption in care—again, incredibly privileged to even have care upon having my daughter, but just acknowledging that was my situation. I had health problems after health problem, emergency surgery, away from my four-month-old daughter days at a time, literally, taken away in an ambulance; horrific postpartum depression, anxiety, OCD, dealing with, like, internal bleeding. It was a nightmare. And yet, when I look back, I don't feel like it was all meant to be, but like, I survived it. So, you know, like, I'm here. And I'm lucky to be here with the maternal mortality rate and the postpartum mortality rate being what it is, especially for black, expectant parents, mothers in this country, specifically.
I am sharing — I apologize if it doesn't feel right for me to be centering myself. There's a lot, like with my childhood, you know, being as horrible and as devastating as my childhood was, there's been a lot of moments where I've recognized like, I probably would not be here without my childhood. And yet, there are a hell of a lot more ways that could have gone that would have made it a lot more easeful.
[0:39:02]
The truth is that that perspective on New Age is entirely informed by a white, Western, capitalist, patriarchal, I think, colonialist, like religiously-informed perspective, and it's incredibly harmful. It's incredibly harmful. We do not do anything to call in illness. We don't do anything wrong or right to have a situation that flows or doesn't. There are all kinds of situations that seem to hum along really beautifully until they don't, that's not our fault. It isn't. It just isn't.
And yes, once you get deeper and deeper into like, honoring the body, your heart, your soul, your knowing, like I can't really do anything that isn't a yes for that part of me. It's really hard for me to dive in because I'm used to the things that were previously very subtle.
If that example I shared earlier in the episode where I was like, “Oh, I'm going to do this in March, this kind of launch,” when I actually sat down to do it. It was such an intense, contractive no. Like, trauma came up, and I was like, what the fuck? And initially, I thought, well, I can get really strong contractions when expansions are very, very big. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna, like, be with these feelings, you know? And then I sensed into the idea that it was actually a no. But Spirit had told me yes, yes, yes to this idea.
So let me break down why that sometimes happens:
If we're going to look at Spirit or Guides as kind of like an external helper, right? Like, I think that they're both outside of us, but also within us; like, they're the compass that helps, but we're also the compass; like, I don't really think you can separate the two, which is also my own very personal opinion. Spirit is here to help us to evolve, to help us to discover and learn and experience.
And so with this idea I had—again, I'm just gonna speak for myself—there are times when Spirit, when I ask “is something in alignment for me?” when they say, “No, it isn't,” and I have to kind of lean in and try it. And sometimes nothing happens, and sometimes it's really clear why it was a no. And usually, it just means that like, it's costly to me, or it's not really the experience that I was expecting, or there's more grace in me leaving earlier or not getting involved or whatever.
When something such as my situation, I get a yes, yes, yes, and I sit down to do it and it's a total no, what that helped me to discover was what motivated me to want to do that idea in the first place, that wound up being scrapped. There was a lot of important stuff I learned about, like my own story about what's successful, my own story about what I think people want from me, my own story about what I think would be welcomed or enjoyed by students or whatever, rather than what I'm actually being called to do. And when I really sat down with that, it got much clearer, and I was able to, to bring some real compassion to the part of me that was like kind of trying to do good things but wasn't truly a north on the compass.
[0:43:06]
So that's why sometimes we get yeses to things that wind up being dumpster fires: not because we're being called to suffer, but because sometimes we learn through the experience. And other times, it's a yes from the mind, it's a yes from the heart, but it's not really a yes in the soul. Because I'm not trying to suggest that we, you know, we say yes to abusive or harmful things to like, learn a lesson or whatever the fuck. Sometimes it can be like that, and sometimes it isn't.
The truth: Life is really, really hard. And it's really hard for folks, and it's harder for some of us, right? It's harder for folks who, you know, are, you know, historically marginalized identities, it's harder for people of color. Very often, it's harder for folks who are queer, who are trans. It's harder. It's harder for folks in other places, in certain regions of the country sometimes, like along a divide, along like a town. Like, life is hard. Life is hard. It's challenging. It's beautiful, too. Very hard.
And what has really happened with New Age is that folks—a lot of folks, I'm not saying everyone—use New Age principles and wellness principles as a way to sort of make the ego feel a little better about eventually being in a body that will get sick and die. And so there is a sense sometimes of like, well, if you're living correctly, if you're behaving correctly, if you're really listening to your intuition, essentially nothing bad will happen to you. Essentially, you'll never get sick, you'll never be in pain. And if you did, there must be something wrong with you. Like, “Oh, if this was truly in alignment, you wouldn't have all these different things happening to you.”
I can't tell you how many times my teacher and I have had that conversation where it's like, I think that one of the things that is just I guess, a part of how I've made sense of my life, and a part of what you might call, like, a personal sense of calling is that I get a lot of my information, a lot of the things that I teach, it comes from like, being in hell, going through a diagnosis, or going through an illness, or an experience of excruciating pain, or a shock or trauma, or something that I reach inside of that void for something that makes sense for something to anchor me. And then I teach what I've experienced, and that's my way.
And so, I, my thing, is not to kind of be up above that, but to kind of be in life. And, again, I hope I'm making sense here and not rambling, but I'm trying to say that we all deserve to be comfortable, to be nourished, and well. I'm not trying to romanticize experiences of pain or of suffering as some sort of spiritual torch. I do think that many of us teach and help because we've experienced something that makes it so that we—that's the only place to take it—to want to sit with or be by someone's side inside of a situation like that.
[0:47:11]
So no, I don't think that the body is peaceful when something is a yes or when something's in alignment. Every single time that something's been a true yes or in alignment for me, I've completely freaked out about it. Because my brain is really freaked out by expansion and change. My brain has tried to fight every good thing that's ever come into my life. It's gotten to the point where literally, if my brain is like, “No, no, no,” I’m like, “Oh.” it'll get me curious about it, like, there’s gotta be something to it,” (Lindsay laughs) you know? And you might be different. That's me. Right? That's me.
So no, I actually think the body can be tremendously like decentered, and, you know, kind of knocked off its axis sometimes when there's a feeling of powerful alignment actually. I often find like, when we're in those big spaces, that's when big things come up.
I didn't start to have major, major, major chronic pain until I got onto this path. It doesn't mean this path is wrong for me, it's clearly what's in alignment for me. It means that my body has been by my side, and it has helped to say, “Yeah, you serve through this.” If I didn't have this service, alongside of all of my physical stuff, I mean, there'd be no place to put a lot of the energy. You know, it's opened my heart tremendously. It's caused me to have a lot of empathy. So it's not something to be avoided.
And I do think that there can be synchronicities. Like, I have definitely experienced what I've perceived as synchronicities around situations I look back on and I'm like, “Oh, that was terrible,” (Lindsay laughs). You know, we find what feels meaningful for us in the moment.
So do I think that all folks in New Age feel this way, that there's really just kind of a bit of an avoidance of human stuff? No. But do I think that's driving a lot of the large part of those beliefs? I do. Yeah, I do.
I think that there is a very natural human instinct to avoid suffering and the idea of death and being out of control. And so, the argument that when you're in alignment and again, living “correctly”, that there won't be any of this discomfort. There won't be… like everything will click into place. I don't agree. You know, I don't agree.
And I would say I'm living a life that feels very aligned for me. And really, there's still a lot of stuff that is super unconscious in my life that I still struggle with, tremendous tenderness and vulnerabilities, areas where I have I can't see objectively, where that's why I work with Amy, I work with Cheryl, who is my creativity coach. And Amy is someone that I do business coaching with. Michelle and my therapist, Jen, like, all of those people on my team help me where I can safely say, “My intuition, I don't know, I can't be objective. I can't. I don't know how to trust my Guides here. I'm not sure, I'm not clear, whatever.” That's everybody. That's everybody. It's hard.
[0:51:03]
I do think the more we, again, trust the soul, the more it becomes super clear if something's a yes or a no, or whatever it is. But I have a couple of situations in my life right now where I, Lindsay, I'm like, “That's the right path for me,” and Spirit’s like “Uh-uh,” you know, or I felt like, “Well, I'll do things this way. And then Spirit, or life or whatever, has swooped in with something different. And I'm like, okay, well, alright.
So like, everything is unknown, and things are really hard. And really, I think the key is that we cultivate enough support around us, enough objective, loving, compassionate support, through our tools, through our own self-tending, through the friends and the processors that we have, that can help us just to make sense of it, you know?
And that inner compass, I do think, is really important. But I think it is also important to understand that they're not trying, I think that Spirit helps us to avoid things, certain things. And I like, if there's a path of greater ease. But then I have totally been encouraged to follow something that's like, “Whoa, that was really hard,” (Lindsay laughs) and later, often, for me, there is a sense of like, “Okay, you know, there was some muddling around that there was some confusion around that. But whoa, did it ever teach me this? And now, I won't do that again. Now I really understand,” you know?
Living a spirit-led life is confusing. And when you live this kind of life, where you are available to move through whatever is of highest and best in any given moment for you, trying your best. it does activate the nervous system. It just does. It takes the place of how we try to dig through and like, clear shit without there being a natural, organic process to it. There's yeah… I hope, oh, geez, I hope I'm making sense of it. I wish we were in a dialogue, of course, so that I could pause and sort of ask you if this was resonating or not.
So, for example, the example you gave of like, you feel like your body's healthy only to get an unusual health diagnosis. You will get an unusual health diagnosis. So will I. We all will because we're in bodies that are not meant to be here forever. It doesn't mean your body is unhealthy. And it also doesn't mean that it's like we don't have to qualify it as healthy or unhealthy. There's a hell of a lot more spiralic space inside of that.
It means that when, inevitably, we get a health diagnosis — because we all will, eventually — we have some sort of anchor system to help us through it. It's not about avoiding anything. It's not about trying to move away from, bypass. And I'm not saying you're doing this, I'm speaking to those beliefs that you brought forward.
So, it is not my personal experience that when something is a yes or “right”, my body is peaceful. A lot of the time, my nervous system and my body are very activated (Lindsay laughs), depending on the right situation. And again, that's because the brain knows chaos. The brain knows like noise, it knows distraction and confusion. It knows what's familiar. And if we've had a lot of trauma and chaos in our life, all those things will feel like home. So whenever something is exciting, expansive, delightful, safe, comforting, warm—my body's like, “How do we arm ourselves through this as adequately as possible?” (Lindsay laughs) And I'm sure for other folks, it's even more heightened, depending on the situation they're dealing with.
[0:55:50]
You will spend a lot of time flip-flopping in maybe. Like, I gave you an example of like, something was a yes, yes, yes, and when I actually sat down to do it, it was an absolute no. I had to weed through it. And then I realized why it was yes: I wasn't meant to do the thing, I was meant to explore the things that led me to want to do the thing. And that's why I always talk about spiral, because it's not linear. It's not like we get a yes and then we do the thing. We get a yes, so we can explore around and then course-correct or do the thing or change what we thought we were going to do, change our minds.
So if you ask these hypothetical questions, like what if there's that peaceful body-yes, but our nervous system also contracts or has a hard time being easeful? In my experience that's inevitable, and actually a signal that I'm headed in the right direction. And I know that sounds nuts, but it is true for me that when I freak, when I have contraction—I'm on to something. Which again, I know, sounds odd, but it's true for me.
I really want to bow to Michelle to like, even to Jen, my therapists, like everybody that I work with or have the privilege of dialoguing with, in this area. It's all very similar. It's sort of like everything feels like… It’s like I have to pay attention sometimes, because when I get too grippy about like, “This is such an aligned yes!” I'm almost like, “Oh, I think there's a lot more ego in this than I'm aware of. And like, I should just get curious about it,” you know? I'm just gonna get curious about why and see. And nine times out of ten, when I have that kind of intensity, it's not actually yes, or it's at least not an immediate yes, or there's something to be worked with. So there's one answer: flip-flopping and “maybe” is really normal.
[0:57:59]
How do we know if the situation is truly a no, or whether it's about loving ourselves through the healing work or the contraction, maybe toward the gifts on the other side? I don't know that those two have to be mutually exclusive from one another. Sometimes they're together, sometimes they're apart, you know?
The more we live in this rhythm, the more familiar it becomes. It's just like a completely different rhythm. And, again, I don't want to be in any way disrespectful to, you know, anyone's very deeply held, you know. So again, I don't want to make really wild assumptions, but I do think I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge, like, the kind of rotten core at the heart of a lot of really well-meaning, New Age sentiments, because they really are just sort of ego and perfectionism and colonialism and capitalism, and religious sentiments of purity, like wrapped up in something that looks much more palatable, and like, appealing, you know? So again, that's not everyone, and I don't want to generalize, but I do think it is an enormously problematic part of New Age.
And I'm not a part of New Age, so I don't—I'm a Tarot reader and a teacher who does not consider themselves a part of that culture. So I did, and then I think, like, the more I learned, and the more I understood about it, I was like, “Oh, this is not. I don't agree.” (Lindsay laughs) So you know, it's okay you know?
But I do think that yeah, like it sounds to me like you're right on the right path (Lindsay laughs), dare I say? Not to like, you know—but these questions about like: am I allowed to be human? Is my nervous system like allowed to contract and allowed to kind of feel scared about these big leaps into the unknown? Like, yeah, of course. Absolutely.
And I think that the whole deal is really that we're cultivating a deep and rich relationship with source and with our Guides and with our inner compass over time, that feels like it can come with us through anything. That’s not meant to help us transcend all of the human stuff, but actually helps us to be with the human stuff. Like what kinds of Anchors, like I've shared this on this podcast before but—I talk a lot, and I promise I will shut up and end this episode now. I swear. We've been talking for like, 20 minutes, but it's a big question.
[1:00:59]
When I was in like the hospital a few months ago with, yeah, that's six months ago. I couldn't read Tarot. Like what was there to read about? Like, there was too much going on. So my system of Soul Tarot is like, ultimately, you get to this place where Tarot just comes with you. You don't have to read it, you understand.
Like, Tarot Anchoring, you understand what you're in, the season you're in, and the card that can show up as medicine for you within that season. So in those moments, I was like, “Well, this is the journey from The Tower to The Sun, like this is Tower meets Star meets Moon, again, and again, and again.” My whole postpartum journey, I barely read for myself. Like I read when I really needed it, and it sort of helped sometimes. But I just knew. I was like, I'm in this season. Period. I'm just in this.
And it didn't prevent anything from happening. It didn't mean that I did anything wrong. It didn't mean that it was a result of any of my choices, it didn't mean that my daughter wasn’t meant to be born, it didn't mean that I was “low vibes” because I had to have a million surgeries. It just happened because things happen in life. It was how I met the moment: let myself fall apart, and then came back to my center, again and again. That's why we reach for these things, you know?
And I would say that a spirit-led life is less about like, never having these things happen, never having the nervous system be activated and never having our bodies go through the natural ebbs, flows, and cycles of illness, injury, death—but more about, like, when we're in those moments to be able to say, you know, “Okay, like, I'm gonna respond to this in the best way I can and take my center with me, and do it from my center as much as possible.”
So I invite you to write me back and let me know how this lands. Happy to continue a dialogue about it sort of on the podcast (Lindsay laughs), like through your letters. And yeah, I just want to say to anyone who listened to this and is like, “Whoa, this is really different than what I've thought or what I believe,” like, I'm not, you know, I'm not inviting you into anything like that you're wrong, that you're right. I just think it is important for us to be really, critically thoughtful about these stories, these beliefs, and think about the way that they're affecting folks who are going through difficult seasons of life, because if these teachings and these ideals don't come with us into those very, very intense seasons, then they're not really very helpful, you know?
So we're allowed to be human, and it is a spiral path. Spirit is all over the place, you know? And hopefully, I hope I've permissioned you to trust some of these things that you've been going through. Like, it's okay for you to be feeling the way you're feeling, and it's okay if these things don't really make a whole lot of sense. Like these, again, New Age ideals, they don't really hold too much water when put up against life and stuff that happens in life. That is no fault of any ones.
So I hope this helps. And again, please write me back and let me know how it landed with you. And, again, I'm only sharing what is true for me today, and definitely not seeking to be an inspiration, or a model for anyone (Lindsay laughs). We're allowed to have our own feelings and our own opinions, but hopefully, this was useful to you.
—
[Conclusion]
[1:05:25]
Thank you everyone for listening to this and for being here. And if you have questions that you'd like me to answer on the podcast, please email me at Ask Lindsay. Or don't email me at “Ask Lindsay” but click the link on the show notes called “Ask Lindsay” (Lindsay laughs).
Yeah, thank you so much for being here. And I'm really excited to be gathering with all of you next week. And until that time, please take exquisite care of yourselves.