🪞Fall 2024 Reflection

Do you find yourself within a forest dark?

Hello, my friends! It’s been some time since I sent out a reflection, but the urge struck me on my sunny morning walk. The muses are feeling generous with their inspiration on this first day of fall. I’ve pulled a few cards and I hope my interpretation of them resonates with you; you can think of these as words of encouragement or guidance to carry with you into this new season.

From left to right: Four of Pentacles, Nine of Wands, The Chariot

Maybe you’ve been feeling lost recently. Blocked or pent up, adrift, unable to forge a path forward in any direction. This is the energy of the Four of Pentacles. This has caused you no end of frustration and confusion, and perhaps you’ve been trying to brute force your way through it: telling yourself to suck it up, using lots of negative self-talk to bully yourself into gear, feeling ashamed of your self-doubt and lack of momentum when comparing yourself to others (or the version of themselves they present). Perhaps you’ve taken the opposite tack and have been avoiding the feeling entirely with the usual coping methods—mindless scrolling and media consumption; constantly seeking out opportunities to socialize and keep busy so you never have a moment to be in your own company, alone with your thoughts.

It may not feel like it, but this is good news! That feeling of being lost, like you don’t know what the next steps should be, is a sign that you are already on your way. The lack of direction, feeling stuck and confused, is a natural result of striding down a path that is unique to you. You aren’t following in someone else’s footsteps or allowing someone else to set the course of your life for you. You’re carving the course yourself, and that means you will feel lost and won’t see the way forward at times. And while that may be of little comfort when you’re in the middle of processing these intense feelings of confusion or shame, try to remember that: A) a life well lived isn’t about being comfortable; and B) trying to force or control your feelings will only compound your anxiety. Instead, you might try having compassion for yourself and practicing patience. Have faith that you are on the precipice of a new and exciting season of your life, and all will reveal itself to you in time. That is what the Nine of Wands asks of us.

If you listened to my recent episode on Temperance, I talked about the cycle of spiritual alchemy and all phenomenon in our lives move through each element in the same order: earth (the gathering of information, facts, grounded in reality); water (the dreaming of ideas and possibilities); air (the freefall, the tumbling and turning of our perception as we wait for the next step or path to reveal itself); and finally, fire (divine inspiration striking at last, knowing what the next action should be).

You are in the air phase right now, but fire awaits if you can endure the discomfort and uncertainty a little longer. The Chariot represents this. It’s associated with strong will, confidence, and triumph. While it’s very possible all you dream of is coming to you, you would do well to keep in mind that sometimes we don’t get what we want and often that is not a bad thing. Many times in life, we make our minds up about what we think we must have or want to achieve, and only later on, after it doesn’t work out, do we realize how unknowingly blessed we were to be redirected, even if it felt like a crushing loss at the time. The Chariot drives forward and carries us along regardless, and sometimes our strong will and confidence is about trusting ourselves to make the best, wisest decisions we can with the opportunities available to us while we keep a larger goal in mind. You can have a destination in mind and make incremental steps towards it while not letting perceived defeats and redirects throw you off course, all the while remaining open and flexible about your ability to grow, gain new information, see things from new perspectives, and change your mind at any time.

I’ll leave you with these relevant words from David Whyte. I’ve been making my way through Dante’s Divine Comedy recently, so when I saw a clip from this video in which he quotes the opening line, it grabbed my attention the way synchronicities tend to do. (”Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.”)

David Whyte goes on to explain:

“How do you know that you’re on your path? Because it disappears. That’s how you know. How do you know if you’re really doing something truly radical? Because you can’t see where you’re going. Everything you’ve leant on for your identity has gone. So you are going to enter the black, contemplative splendours of self-doubt at the same time as you’re setting out on this radical new path.”