Ace of Cups: The project of Epimeleia Heautou, the care of the self
Dreams are too often vaporized. Wonders live a short life. But there is no better place to be---the seclusive corner of the mind; the container for the self where we tuck all the whispers away; the source of the creativity where our ideas germinate.
Ace of Cups calls for the project of Epimeleia Heautou, “the care of the self”, a continuous act to cultivate and transform one-self in order to have access to the truth. In Plato's Apology, Socrates tirelessly approaches people and encourages them to attend to themselves, take care of themselves, and not neglect themselves. As Foucault puts it, “The care of one-self is a sort of thorn which must be stuck in men’s flesh, driven into their existence, and which is a principle of restlessness and movement, of continuous concern throughout life.” With this card, we want to take a more ambitious stand for the modern concept of “self-care” ---we are not only allowing ourselves to soak in a hot tub under the moonlight, or to receive an overdue massage; we are also touching the kind of self-care that is beyond physical relaxation; that rises fruitfully from the spiritual and intellectual awakenings, the kind of self-care that is utterly uncomfortable yet empowering, the quintessential act of Epimeleia Heautou. We draw our attention back to the source of our mind. We are asked to put the emphasis on the self, not in the sense of selfishness, but the solitary enrichment of the self that enables in fact, the opposite of selfishness--the consideration for and connection with the others to grow authentically. As Stephen Batchelor puts it, “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” In this card, we are face-to-face with the relationship of the self to the self. We become the object, as well as the subject of the act.
“To tell the truth, ...solitude broadens my horizon and expands me outward: I throw myself into the affairs of state and into the wide world more willingly when I am alone.” --Michel de Montaigne
Two of Cups: Hinge First Date
It is a house of soundless melody.
It is a house of antithesis.
It is a house of pauses made to fret the surface.
We take turns to tell
stories.
As if we didn't,
Time would slip away,
a part of us would fade,
the hand once touched
the flesh of memory
would rot
from within.
Up and down,
brightening
and then darkened.
Coexistence separates,
but singularity blends.
The end of the day,
it is a house of two cups--
half too empty, half too full.
The unfamiliar resonates,
the absent remains.
Three of Cups: Friendship
work in progress
Four of Cups: The architect of emotional barriers
From the existentialist point of view, becoming an individual, a true self, who has risen above the “herd” in a society against loneliness is a goal rather than a starting point, as Nietzche eloquently preaches. Oftentime, we are conditioned to react to life for the sake of conformity with an involuntary velocity. An empty glass? Fill it up! Below the standard? Achieve more! Love departed, swipe right. The act to elongate the empty period in between two stages has ceased to nothing as our attention span was traded with more instant posts. A life devoid of void. Dust never settles. The wound remains open.
Four of Cups asks for a moment to assemble emotional barriers within us, creating a solitary space to re-access, to wonder, to return to the true self, in situations where we are inevitably expected to react against our own timing, as the “herd” would.
Five of Cups: The remedy for a broken heart
Heart sank, body collapsed, mind fell. It’s a temporary moment when we want to keep a quiet distance from the world: miss a subway stop on purpose; park the car but sit inside to breathe for a moment; have all the groceries in hand but take a detour to get home. There is a place we do not want to be in, yet cannot escape from. It might be a physical space, but most of the time, it is a state of mind. Sorrow emerges. Balloons fly away. Sky cries. We are barely lifted. So we take a step back, to grieve, to forgive. If taking a dose of aloneness helps, so be it.
Take your time to process. Take your time to empty out. Only when we untangle the tanglement inwards do we have the capacity to let go and set free.
Six of Cups: Inner Child
work in progress
Seven of Cups: Practicing non-reactivity
Viktor Frankl, a neurologist, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor says “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Seven of Cups takes us into that in-between space--the solitary space of contemplation, of suspension, the autonomy to choose non-reactivity.
We face choices in life--a job switch, two love letters, three reservations. Everyday feels like a deadline of some sort tinted with unread texts and pressing notifications. On a good day, we get on with the rhythm. Other days we fall into a dark trap that is so out of sync. NYT columnist Adam Grant describes it as “languishing”, a mental state in which you feel neither depressed nor hopeful. The best example would be how most of us felt in 2021, a time when the most horrifying peak of the pandemic was finally declining yet the COVID vaccination rate was climbing reluctantly too slowly. We weren’t mental burned out like the year before anymore, but we’re not thriving either. In itself it is a form of stillness, stagnation. We can set little goals daily to envision the progress to calm the nerve, as Grant suggested, or immerse ourselves in characters of a Netflix show that takes us out of a sense of time, space and self temporarily. Whatever we choose to do--to go with the flow or to push it through--ultimately we can choose not to choose, at all. Seven is a deeply reclusive and private zone according to numerology. Seven of Cups calls for an introspective autonomy in us that guards us from feeling the need to react that we are very much conditioned to do. It is essentially the trust in ourselves--to know intuitively that it is ok not to fix a problem; it is ok not to pick anything from anyone; it is ok for things to fall apart. Non-reactivity is not being in denial or being nihilist. As Viktor Frankl says, it is ultimately in our power to choose our response--even a no response, a blank one that is so vast for all yet to come to germinate and flourish in spaces that are enriched by the deliberate hibernation.
Eight of Cups: The Art of Goodbye
Adios by Naomi Shihab Nye
It is a good word, rolling off the tongue
no matter what language you were born with.
Use it. Learn where it begins,
the small alphabet of departure,
how long it takes to think of it,
then say it, then be heard.
Marry it. More than any golden ring
it shines, it shines.
Wear it on every finger
till your hands dance,
touching everything easily,
letting everything, easily, go.
Strap it to your back like wings.
Or a kite-tail. The stream of air behind a jet.
If you are known for anything,
Let it be the way you rise out of sight
when your work is finished.
Think of things that linger: leaves,
cartons and napkins, the damp smell
of mold.
Think of things that disappear.
Think of what you love best,
what brings tears into your eyes.
Something that said adios to you
before you knew what it meant
or how long it was for.
Explain little, the word explains itself.
Later perhaps. Lessons following lessons,
like silence following sound.
Nine of Cups: Dreamers
work in progress
Ten of Cups: Sky Lanterns
work in progress
Page of Cups: The Creative Child in You
work in progress
Knight of Cups: Living with “stop signs” in life
Growth is not linear.
I have been an Ashtanga yoga practitioner since 2013. It is the type of practice that requires the practitioners to memorize the sequence without being led. The instructor is present to assist, give guidance and teach the practitioner the next pose in the sequence according to the individual's progress. There are six series: the primary, second (intermediate), and Advanced A, B, C, D.
I was given a pose called Kapotasana in the second series in October 2018. Imagine both of your knees and the upward part of your feet pressing into the ground (your body from the side looks like a “L”). From there, do a deep backbend so you grab onto your heels with your head and elbows landed on the ground (so your body forms a loop). I spent the entire year of 2019 working on it: from barely touching my pinky toes to finally holding onto the middle part of my feet by making deeper and deeper backbends each day. And then came the year of 2020: COVID hit. Everything paused. So did I. I stopped practicing the second series because it was simply too much for my body to handle while coping with the pandemic. Fast forward to early 2021 when the social distancing was still largely in place in the U.S., I joined a yoga center online and gradually started building my practice back towards where I had paused. Two months into the online practice, I was face-to-face with the notorious Kapotasana again, the pose that takes both mental and physical strength to achieve. I knew what was going to hurt, how and when during the pose back in 2018, yet only three years later, after a long pause of practicing, I learned how to prepare myself with more grace and patience. The COVID pandemic pulled us all back. We had no choice but to stop everything; either it’s the learning of Kapotasana or life in general. One step forward, two steps back. Progress is never linear. Knight of Cups invites us to recognize the inevitable--whether it is an abrupt move, a loss in the family, or simply a much needed break to reset--and embrace the fact that life does not always move forward as we plan. The secret is remembering the “why's” that got us going before life takes a detour--why did I start practicing Ashtanga? Why did I want to go to Italy for culinary school? Why did I want to become an architect? Never forget why you started, even if we come to a stop sign in life, the growth will eventually catch up.
Queen of Cups: Understanding Feminine Intelligence through The Power of Nonviolence
Nothing is ever too over the top about her. She doesn’t claim the center of the attention but there is a sense of acute attentiveness in her aura. She has her own set of exuberant terms to describe the world yet her observations are often kept private. When you come around her energic realm, there is always an unspoken demand of gaining access to the most genuine version of you, the one without any add-ons. That is how she comprehends: through honesty, simplicity, absence of vanity. She intrinsically knows who deserves acknowledgment, who deserves answers, and who deserves absolutely nothing. Her being is like tree roots growing underground--never aggressive with force but strong with steadiness. She knows where she belongs. She belongs to herself.
She is the embodiment of the feminine intelligence.
In his speech in 1957Dr. Martin Luther King talks about the philosophy of the nonviolent resistance behind the Montgomery boycott: “We had to make it clear that nonviolent resistance is not a method of cowardice. It does resist. It is not a method of stagnant passivity and deadening complacency….This method is nonaggressive physically but strongly aggressive spiritually.” Queen of Cups teaches us how to fight the fight through the help of the feminie intelligence that is embedded in all of us: with a strong inner anchor, the self-reliance in each one of us renders a much larger conscience collectively against oppression. The non-violent resistance, as Gandhi called it “satyagraha” which means truth force, aims to convert/persuade the opponent to your point of view by insisting on the truth steadily. It takes an enormous amount of strength--the spiritual strength that doesn’t cut through flesh but eventually, the mind. That is, the power of the Queen of Cups.
The House of Belonging by David Whyte (the Morse code in the image is an excerpt of the poem)
I awoke
this morning
in the gold light
turning this way
and that
thinking for
a moment
it was one
day
like any other.
But
the veil had gone
from my
darkened heart
and
I thought
it must have been the quiet
candlelight
that filled my room,
it must have been
the first
easy rhythm
with which I breathed
myself to sleep,
it must have been
the prayer I said
speaking to the otherness
of the night.
And
I thought
this is the good day
you could
meet your love,
this is the black day
someone close
to you could die.
This is the day
you realise
how easily the thread
is broken
between this world
and the next
and I found myself
sitting up
in the quiet pathway
of light,
the tawny
close grained cedar
burning round
me like fire
and all the angels of this housely
heaven ascending
through the first
roof of light
the sun has made.
This is the bright home
in which I live,
this is where
I ask
my friends
to come,
this is where I want
to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.
This is the temple
of my adult aloneness
and I belong
to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.
There is no house
like the house of belonging.
King of Cups: Sharing is Caring
work in progress