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Tarot: Looking at Both the Mundane and the Divine, by Lisa Freinkel Tishman, PhD

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

I'm a shaman and a mindfulness teacher. You may not think that these two identities are at odds, but I'm here to tell you: they are.

The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that a shaman, "is a man or woman who is regarded as having direct access to, and influence in, the spirit world which...empowers them to guide souls, cure illnesses, etc..." Shamans divine—"divine" here in the verb sense of the word. Shamans practice divination, meaning that they receive truth from divinity. Shamans light sacred fires, peering into the dancing flames. They gaze into the fathomless depths of an obsidian disc. Or perhaps they sift through the dregs of a holy brew and channel hidden messages. Shamans receive truth from the beyond.

In contrast, we mindfulness teachers are continually pointing folks back to the here and now: to this body sitting in this chair, sipping mint tea as the birds start to sing on this particular drizzly spring morning...Mindfulness, in other words, guides us back to our own ordinary experience: to this collection of skin and bones and intestines and hormones, moods and thoughts, burps and belches, eyelashes and finger nails and tastebuds.

Shamans channel truths from elsewhere. Mindfulness practitioners bring loving, non-judgmental attention to the world all around us. Shamans reveal—unveil the hidden. In mindfulness we just point: look here. It is what it is.

Shamans try to fix things, cure things, manifest new outcomes. In the ancient world, kings and commanders sought to win battles, gain wealth, woo their women with shamanic help. For every Stannis Baratheon seeking the Iron Throne, you had someone like the Red Women divining and spellcasting at his side. Heck, even Nancy Reagan had her astrologer, Joan Quigley. Nancy brought Joan into the White House after John Hinckley's failed assassination attempt on the President. She hoped a shaman like Joan could save Ronnie's life—preserve his power—and shape the future of the free world.

In mindfulness practice, however, we're not trying to shape anything. As I tell my students: nothing is broken, nothing needs fixing. Let's hunker down in life as it is—noticing what's already here and all around us. This is the path to accepting ourselves and to finding our way home. This is not about power, exactly. This is about peace.

Shamans offer power and influence from beyond. Mindfulness offers peace and humble self-acceptance right here.

How can I be and do both? Shaman? Mindfulness teacher?

In my book Mindful Tarot, in fact, I make a sharp distinction between between a "mindful Tarot" practice that points us to the world right before us—and a prophetic or shamanic practice that looks for answers from a world beyond.

But, I'm also living proof that when we deeply investigate what it means to be mindful—what it means to bring loving, accepting attention to the world all around us—then that's precisely when the world of shamanic magic begins.

I learned this truth at a silent Zen meditation retreat a few years back. I was the retreat leader, and part of my job was to figure out where everybody would sit. It sounds easy, but people were coming and going all week long—and since meals were being served in silence, in formal Zen style, right at our seats—my job included a complex game of meditation hall Tetris.

Do you remember Tetris? That video game where you manipulate falling blocks so that they slide neatly into place? At this retreat, I needed to figure out how to arrange the room throughout the week. I had to keep all the gluten-free people in one corner of the hall, and all the vegans in another. And where would I seat Sally, who had to avoid legumes at all costs? Could Billy take her place at mid-week, or would his life-threatening allergy to onions and garlic confuse the cook and the food servers too much? In this complex culinary choreography, how could I make sure everyone got safely and promptly served throughout the week?

I remember sitting during a meditation period one day and instead of bringing my attention mindfully back to my breath, I couldn't stop obsessing over a mental map of the room. I focused my mind's eye on an internal image of the hall, picturing how I might move chairs and mats around as the week unfolded and participants, with their nut allergies and such, came and went. In my mind's eye, I kept shuffling the pieces of the puzzle around, trying to map the perfect flow of bodies. I was trying to fit everything into place.

The effort was exhausting! My mind couldn't stop churning.

And suddenly it dawned on me: this is what we do with all of the pieces of our lives, every day. We create mental maps, as it were, of places and people and things of our world—and then we try to maneuver the parts so that everything fits.

We do this in ways both subtle and obvious. At the more obvious level, I might imagine my drive to work, picturing how the traffic flows at 7:35 a.m. and trying to plot the perfect, quickest, easiest route from door to door. At a more subtle level, I might worry about a difficult conversation I need to have with my boss once I get to work, and I might picture all the things I could say and all the ways she might respond—trying in advance to control the dialogue and achieve a favorable outcome.

But the fact is, when we play Tetris with the world, we often lose. We all know how easy it is for our mental maps to be wrong, and for our calculations to fail. Traffic patterns often defy our expectations, and difficult conversations often go sideways. The truth is, it's hard to maneuver our lives. All too frequently, the world pushes back. Life usually refuses to slide neatly into place.

That's why I love the Tarot so much. When I draw the cards and lay out a spread, the pieces of the puzzle fall precisely where they fall. My job as reader requires that I interpret the pattern right in front of me. I don't get to move things around—to return that pesky 10 of Swords back to the deck, or to move the 9 of Cups into its place. I can't play Tetris with Tarot. The cards I've pulled are precisely what I must work with. Anything else would feel like a cheat and a dodge. If I'm going to get serious about Tarot, I need to make sense of whatever cards I pull, learning to interpret them in their own terms, right here and now.

Indeed, Tarot teaches me to accept the hand that I've been dealt.

What a metaphor for life! How often do we take a long deep look at what is—at the cards we've been dealt, in life—and accept them without hesitancy or reserve? But such is the work of mindfulness, where we bring open and kind attention to our present-moment experience. Mindfulness asks us to take our time, to open our heart, and to accept the patterns of life just as they are.

In this mindful decision to play the hand we're dealt, we also find the origin of shamanic empowerment. The shaman's insights emerge from the patterns that the world provides, whether she consults the wheeling constellations of the sky, the spread of the cards, or the reticulated swirls of a crystal quartz.

Because the insights of the shaman can seem profound and life-changing, we tend to think their source lies beyond mere appearances, beyond the everyday. But indeed, the shaman's true strength precisely derives from the everyday. She refuses to turn or twist things around. She sees, deeply, the ordinary patterns that others bypass. Her power lies in her ability to examine the world unwaveringly, in its truest form. She really looks at the world, precisely as it appears, here and now.

Jesuit theologian Walter Burghardt once called mindful contemplation, "a long, loving look at the real." Mindfulness requires gentleness and love, and a deep willingness to encounter reality.

Being a shaman requires the same love, the same extended embrace of our lives. If shamans have the power to cure and transform, this power begins in love.

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2019. All rights reserved.

For many years, I lived a very happy and blessed life. Then about four years ago, one thing after another started to go wrong. First my mother died, then my father met and married a new woman and they moved far away and now have nothing to do with the rest of the family, which has really broken our hearts. I've suffered some strange health problems, am going through a financial crisis, and nothing that I used to do in terms of praying and manifesting seems to be working. I think I may be going through a so-called crisis of faith, for I'm definitely wondering if all the good things I used to believe about life and the Universe and how we have the ability to create our own realities were ever true. Why is all of this happening? Do you believe that we go through hard times as spiritual tests? If so, how do I handle all of this? Do I have any power to influence what is happening in order to break free of it, or do I just have to ride it out?

Becca

Susyn:

Your letter doesn't surprise me, for most of us - myself included - experience a difficult cycle at some point or other in our lives. You didn't mention your birth date or age; it would be helpful to have that information to determine if what you've been going through is astrologically driven.

This influence could involve Pluto (the planet of karma), Saturn (the planet of limits), or Mars (the planet of movement). These three planets generate cycles that can last two to four years and create just the sorts of experiences you've been struggling with. You may want to consider having an astrological reading to determine if these cycles are in play, when they began and - perhaps most importantly - when they will start to clear. Clearer understanding of how the stars may be influencing your life would be helpful for lots of reasons. For one thing, it would reassure you that you are not the cause of these problems, and that they are part of a bigger picture and higher plan.

When moving through a phase like this, there are a number of things to keep in mind. First, you are being challenged to change your thinking. Because these events came in one after another, they are probably all mixed together in your mind. It is never easy to lose a loved one, so I imagine your mother's passing was really devastating. Although she is always near you, losing someone we love dearly often challenges us to grow in very intense ways. Hopefully, her passing has helped you develop greater spiritual awareness of life as well as death.

Regarding your father and your manifesting skills, you are learning the lesson of powerlessness. When I tune in to your father, I sense that his reluctance to be around you and the rest of the family is arising from knowing but not wanting to face that what he is doing is wrong. You can't control his actions now, but you can take heart in knowing that later down the road, your connection will be restored. As in any cycle of loss and rebirth generated by Pluto, he will come back after learning his own karmic lessons.

Finally, remember that it is easy to have faith when things are going well. It is not that the Universe wants to dump heartbreak upon you, but rather that you need to grow stronger in your faith and resilience. If you look back on other times in your life when loss and disappointment came your way, it should be a bit easier to see that eventually, everything worked out so that you were aligned with your perfect path.

I can assure you that the crises you are dealing with will cycle around once this phase of your spiritual testing is complete, and in the long run, you will find yourself in a much better place for all of this.

*****

Oceania:

When things unfold as we hope they will, it's easy to feel happy and spiritual; it's when circumstances take unexpected turns that our spirituality is really put to the test! The challenges we encounter in life bless us with just what we need in order to grow spiritually and strengthen our values and identity.

I'm sorry for your suffering, and want you to know that you can significantly reduce your pain by changing your perspective. When you describe a situation as something you must ride out or break free of, you're declaring it to be negative and oppressive. By viewing this as something awful that you must endure, you're forgetting that there are no happy endings to unhappy journeys. You cannot BECOME happy; you can only BE happy now. I recommend you welcome and embrace your situation, and choose to trust that there are gifts, lessons and blessings in there somewhere. If they aren't clear to you, you might pray for help in discovering them.

Let's redefine the events you've been experiencing from wrong to natural. It was your mother's time to transform. Your father may have survived his devastating loss by distracting himself with a new relationship and dissociating himself from anyone who reminded him of your mother. Try to muster compassion for him. Many men have a hard time processing their emotions; indeed, a number of men die shortly after their wives do because they are so bereft.

If you haven't already, consider letting your father know how much you love him and how much you welcome his return to your world when the time is right for him. It is possible that he is mentally stuck in a perspective very similar to your own: New love enabled me to go on living, but my children have rejected me and my new companion. Choose to be happy for your father. Welcome him and his new spouse. See his desire to pair up again as a tribute to what he shared with your mother, rather than a rejection of her.

Health problems can be a wakeup call to healthier living, so give thanks for your symptoms, and welcome this opportunity to make adjustments to your diet and routine. A financial crisis can alert us that our career path no longer fits. This may be the time to simplify, downsize and reexamine your core values and life purpose. Usually, second careers prove to be more meaningful and service-oriented than first ones.

Prayer and the Law of Attraction may not be working if you are overlooking the multitude of blessings in your world. If you maintain the belief that everything has gone wrong, you can only manifest more wrong, but if you identify the ways that things have gone right, more blessings are sure to flow in.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.