The Death Card gets a bad rap in the tarot.

 

I think it’s one of the reasons that decks like “The Good Tarot” are popular.

The put a “positive” spin on all of the yucky stuff we don’t want to look at.

I mean, who wants to see the Death Card pop out in your reading, right?

 

Today in my daily reading, I pulled 2 cards:

The 2 of Wands, adventures and living the things we dream of, and the Death Card.

 

Things must die here on Earth. It’s part of the cycle of life. We know this, and we hate this.

Even if part of us can accept death, the very human, very egoic, very “this feels really uncomfortable and I want it to go away” parts of us absolutely cannot stand it.

 

We don’t like having to say goodbye. Even when we know it’s for the best, there is still a part of us that is miserable with it.

 

We don’t like to grieve. But we have to grief. There is this very real part of us that just wants the yuckiness of all of this to go away.

Being adults, we burry our heads in the sand in various ways.

We get busy.

We ignore the inevitable.

We try not to think about all of those uncomfortable things.

We organize.

We control.

We shove it in the closet to be dealt with later.

We drink a glass or two or sometimes a whole bottle of wine after work.

We binge watch.

We binge eat.

We avoid.

Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.

 

Perhaps the worst way we deal?

We try to meditate it away.

We binge on spiritual teachings.

We think if we just listen to enough Abraham Hicks, that we will magically feel good all the time.

We constantly try to perfect and fix ourselves through self help.

 

I call this spiritual bypassing – and I think it may be perhaps one of the more dangerous ways we avoid.

Why?

Because we think it’s the “good” way. We think it’s the “right” way.

We get righteous about it.

We get defensive.

 

Spiritual bypassing is by far on of the most tricky avoidance mechanisms because the lies are so subtle, yet so intertwined with our human self that we can’t even see it. And we don’t want to believe that we are tricking ourselves.

 

It’s easy to admit avoidance through drinking a few too many glasses of wine, but yoga?

Yoga is for the pure. Yoga is for the righteous. And that’s exactly why our ego loves it.

We cling to that shit like a long lost life line – like our only lifeline we have left!

 

The tarot is neither good, nor bad. That’s why I’m not a fan of the so called “good” tarot. Sugar coating Death, does not make it taste more sweet.

 

I decided to incarnate here on this Earth. You decided to incarnate here on this Earth.

We’re supposed to die one day – in the literal sense, as in the body, but also in all of the earthly senses.

 

A cycle in your life (a relationship, a belief, a career path, or an outdated plan for the future is coming to an inevitable end.

~ The Light Seer’s Tarot

 

Sit with those words for a moment: a relationship, a belief, a career path, or an outdated plan for your life that you held dear is coming to an inevitable end.

It’s inevitable.

What do you do?

Do not go gentle into that good night? Rage, rage, against the dying of the light?

Do you resist, rage, ignore the inevitable along with Dylan Thomas?

In my experience, we will live through all of the above types of death at least once (and usually more than once) in our lifetime.

 

Death is part of our experience.

Discomfort, grief, rage … they are all part of our mortal experience here.

 

There is great power in the acceptance of the reality that is death. When the death card shows up for me, as it did today, I see often themes that I am often already in direct relationship with.

A recent loss/transformation of an relationship, sitting with a decision to leave a container of a women’s circle that I’ve been with for almost 4 years now, coming to the end of a year and a half long untangling and deconstruction of a spiritual business I’ve been building over the last 5 years …. I have been sitting with all of this in my body, in my field, and in my being for weeks, months, and years now.

That’s a lot!

Death reminds us what needs to be tended to, what we need to be tender with. It reminds us that grief is a process. Grief is part of the adventure of life. It’s the journey through the watery world of our emotions, bringing us through an alchemical crucible of our experience to emerge different, changed.

We will never be the same.

 

At the same time, I am also in the process of sitting with the pieces that want to emerge right now. There are new adventures, new growth, and new foundations that are bubbling up – opportunities, travel, projects, collaboration potential.

Growth.

Emergence.

Beauty.

 

This is the beauty of life. It’s all of this and it is all connected.

It does not surprise me that I pulled the “world is full of possibilities, new adventures, making progress, and planning your future” card alongside the “endings and cycles of transformation” aka Death card.

They are inextricably linked.

 

 

They are partners in crime.

They are compliments.

We can’t have one without the other.

 

Images from The Light Seer’s Tarot