Ace of Swords:
work in progress
Two of Swords: Expanding the texture of our mental facet in uncertainty
Montaigne expresses his idea of treating experience as a means to the knowing: “There is no desire more natural than that of knowledge. We try all ways that can lead us to it; where reason is wanting, we therein employ experience,..” Children learn that flame is blazingly hot by accidentally having their fingers burnt. We realize that sorrow and happiness are two sides of the same coin by going through ups-and-downs in relationships. Experiences hovered by our willingness to cast an analytical eye over lead to a deeper knowing of ourselves and the world. Two of Swords is the analytical eye in us.
Experiences in life, however, can be uncertain. People’s intentions often come across as ambiguous. Even our own mind betrays us for being indecisive. Uncertainties in life sometimes show up as an obstacle to a clear path. We do not know which way to go, when is the time to exit or how to say no. Two of Swords pleads for a positive way of seeing those unsettling experiences as a chance to expand the texture of our mental facet by going through a series of honest investigations of the self and surroundings. What will the future be like after the COVID pandemic? Why am I allowing this person to come in and out of my life? We might not know the answers right away. Two of Swords invites us to make a shift in our perspective, taking the uncertainty as an opportunity to go within, stay with the discomfort of not knowing at the moment, and to take credit for simply just going through this experience.
Three of Swords: Trigger stacking
Our body induces a stress hormone called cortisol when we are under stress. Cortisol goes into the liver and stimulates liver gluconeogenesis and liver glycogenolysis that pump out glucose for our brain to consume as an energy source. In a stress response triggered by a sudden change in environment or any novelty in life (a truck spinning off and coming at you on the street or a life-threatening global pandemic), our brain needs a spike of energy to think about how to react in order to survive. It is the positive function of stress and cortisol works in our favor by inducing nutrients for the brain in those dire situations. However, if we are exposed to stress chronically, the surplus amount of cortisol flowing in our body actually suppresses the immune system. We get sick and are sick longer. Long-term caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients are reported to suffer significantly more days from infectious illness. People who are chronically stressed also heal slower. Emotional stress throws our physiological system out of balance.
We all have a limit of how much stress we can handle. We might not necessarily know how much is too much, but our body knows. In animal behavioral therapy, there is a term called “trigger stacking” describing dogs that experience stressful events and have physiological responses once the limit is over the threshold. We, as humans, also tend to “stack up” stress, somewhere in the back of our mind: “I will deal with it later.” Chronic stress is like that huge pile in us that we accumulate over time and ignore; our immunity gets weak; mood’s unstable. And one day a tiny, oftentime irrelevant, trigger sets it off. We lose our cool; we collapse. Helpless dark clouds take over.
When we pull Three of Swords, give ourselves a second. Close your eyes, sit up straight, relax your shoulders. Take a deep breath in and when exhale, imagine the air massages those tight nodes throughout your body on its way out. One of the best ways to handle triggering is to remove ourselves from the source. But not everyone has the privilege to do so: the individual in a stranded marital relationship with children; the spousal caregiver of Parkinson’s patient. Three of Swords invites us to take incremental steps to go offline when we can; to take that deep breath when we can; to stay still to listen to the sound of bird chirping when we can. Solution might not be near, but we are so free to be free even just for a teeny-tiny period of time. Three of Swords emphasizes on giving ourselves the permission to feel angry, to feel honest about wanting to escape. We all have done enough. Maybe through these petite discoveries of peace, we will find a way to coexist with stress in a more balanced term.
Four of Swords: I’ve forgotten how to rest.
In the summer of 2012, my business partner and I opened a rustic coworking space in an “up-and-coming” (a.k.a soon-to-be gentrified) neighborhood called Bushwick in Brooklyn, NY. I remembered vividly that the landlord, Sal, warned us after we signed the lease: “Being your own boss is great, but remember to sleep.” I laughed it off thinking “I sleep just fine.” According to a research done by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the failure rate of small businesses goes up as the time goes on unmistakably: approximately 20% fail within the first year; 30% by the second. By the end of a decade, 70% of small businesses close their doors. Quickly I realized that owning a business, everything keeps you awake at night: low cash flow, membership stagnation, the one-star Yelp review. I used to live two blocks away from the business. Every time I heard a fire truck going by with the siren on, my heart sank worrying if it was my space that caught on fire. Anxiety built up and started eating me away. Sleep wasn’t an issue at first but soon it began breaking into fragments as I would wake up in the middle of the night checking if my clients had sent me emails or texts with endless concerns about their upcoming events. I let the boundary of my work and personal time loose by replying to work emails in my spare time fearing that the deal would fall through if I did not answer the questions right away. Resting for my own sake was not my priority anymore.
Five years into the business, I became disgustedly unhappy and stopped showing up for myself. The absence was affecting every aspect of my life: half-ass relationships, unpersuasive mental swings, disconnected spiritual practice. I had a hard time breathing accompanied by an increasing headache and endless fatigue. Nearly holding up, I signed up for spiritual mentorship with Rebecca Conran for help. We dive deeply into a lot of untouched territories in my psyche, including the unattended inner child and neglected desires. Eventually we hit a wall when she suggested making time in my day to do nothing. Like, nothing. The sound of her saying the word “nothing” felt hazy: I knew what it meant but I could not grasp any reference point internally to relate to it. I asked Rebecca “Do nothing? What do you mean?” She replied, “No agenda, no phone or laptop, rest.”
Four of Swords teaches us the dedication of doing nothing, of being at ease. Sometimes our physical body gets disease because we are “dis-ease” mentally. Accepting that we deserve to rest without achieving goals is inconceivable. We are constantly on the brink of falling apart. It is never enough. Pulling this card we are invited to quiet down the mind and allow our body to relax. Resting sends a signal to our whole being that we are in a safe space: anxiety is ok here, disappointment is accepted, anger is heard. There is no need to do more or less. Do nothing and rest.
This would be the ninth year of the business. I still do not really know how to fully incorporate the nothingness in my daily life as my self-acceptance of rest continues to fluctuate. But now I set a clearer boundary for my personal time to protect the breeze of ease to come through uninterruptedly. And maybe one day, I will finally get a good night's sleep.
Five of Swords: Coping with ambiguous loss through paradoxical thinking
I lost my mother when I was in college. She went missing abruptly one day in the summer of 2002 and reappeared after two weeks. On that day in the evening, I heard someone opening the front door. “It’s Mother!” I rushed over to greet her. The person standing in front of me though, was not my mother. It was her, but it was not her. She glanced at me and walked right by as if I was a stranger. Her state of being declined rapidly soon after. She passed away a week later.
I do not ever know how I lost my mother--where did she go during those two weeks; what happened to her that ruptured her mental state; whether she intended to die this way. The ambiguity in her death led me astray with lingering chronic sorrow for the next six years in my life. Eventually I came to terms with what seems to be paradoxical: the scenarios leading to her death that I ruminate are all true. No more denial of one way or the other. As Pauline Boss said it in an interview: “...the only way to live with ambiguous loss is to hold two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time.” The loved one who went missing is gone. He could be still alive, but he could also be dead. In my mother’s case, the mystery could go either way. And I am ok with it all.
This stage of acceptance after a loss is what Five of Swords brings us. Sorrow comes and goes. Griefing might never end but the acceptance of our ambiguous loss, like the string wrapping the two hands in the card, connects us gently with our loss in spirit through what forever remains in our memory. Somehow one day what we have been holding onto starts to shift. The discomfort from the unanswered slowly dissolves. Closure is still nowhere in sight but we recreate it. This transformation in us from the utterly deep sadness to a state of contentment sitting side by side with the unknown is the best gift that Five of Swords offers.
Six of Swords
Receiving is an act of self-care;
it could be from others,
or from yourself.
The love or offer you receive is helpful for caring yourself,
but allowing yourself to receive is the real part of the care. Allow it.
Allowing takes self-love,
loving yourself takes acceptance,
acceptance takes understanding, and
understanding takes honesty.
Being honest with yourself is the first step towards everything. Be honest with yourself, so you understand who you are, so you love who you are, so you allow a space in you open up to receive love.
Seven of Swords: You Are Enough.
work in progress
Eight of Swords: You Are Not Stuck
See the man in the drawing? He seems stuck: he’s holding a stick that is too long to go through the gate. The outside world is sunny with bright sky and lovely hills. All the man wants is to get away from the dark place he’s in. His shadow is just as heavy as his worries. Million things run through his mind: “Maybe I should do this…or instead of that, I could try this…and talk to this person..” But if he could hold off the thoughts for a second and carry the stick vertically, he could easily walk out without ever entertaining any of the worries.
Eight of Swords is an invite to shift our perspectives when things aren’t going our way. It is a very gentle energy like an old friend who we would always call when things are a bit sour. Behind the gentle reminder from this card however, the change we need to take in order to release ourselves from the situation could be drastic. Like the man with the horizontal positioned stick, only the willingness of trying out something uncomfortable could possibly take us out and forward.
This card is not only a lesson of shifting perspectives, but also an opportunity to get in touch with our Self: a check-in to see if we are aligned and at ease with openness when our mind needs to be.
Nine of Swords
work in progress
Ten of Swords
work in progress
Page of Swords
work in progress
Knight of Swords
work in progress
Queen of Cups
work in progress
King of Swords
work in progress