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Welcome to another of my guide Melinda’s Friday messages about how to live life. If you’d like to know more about her and what she has to say you can find more in the first post in this series.

Is there something wrong with you? Really wrong with you?

When I was reading for people they would arrive in a state of emergency. Panic would have a tight grip on their hearts and they wanted me to tell them the thing to do to fix their lives. I am not judging the scale of their struggles or yours, but most often it was an exaggeration.

What a place to start a reading from. “My whole world is falling apart you have to help me fix it.” Yet when I looked into the cards what I saw was less than that. I would see struggle, challenge, obstacles (mostly of their own doing), but catastrophe, or imminent death – never. Catastrophe sneaks up on you and you do not see it coming. Death can be sneaky, or obvious, but if you see it coming it does not produce the kind of anxiety I am talking about.

In my day my competition was very good at feeding people’s fears and anxieties. Talk of curses, evil, the devil, infidelity, and conspiracy all served to feed into this ‘end of the world’ thinking. I know you are too sophisticated to believe in such things now, but I tell you that if you look around you will see the same thing going on.

How many places can you find people talking about healing? Healing their love, their life, their soul, their money and so on. Is the modern world so rife with viruses of all sorts? It is the same game that everyone played 300 years ago when I was alive. Come feed your trouble in the guise of doing something to fix it and all will be well. I will make you a deal – I’ll tell you everything you need to know right now today and at no charge to you and you can just get on with your life.

I know many of you also like the cards so let me tell you that this is all about the 9 of Swords. If you do not read the cards it is no matter as life is life whether through the eye of tarot, astrology, or your priest’s lectures.

There are three things to change when you are in this situation. The first is to stop listening to everyone. Nobody knows what it is you need better than you. The question of “what should I do?” is looking in the wrong direction. The question should be “What do I know I should be doing, but am not?” Never in all my years did I read for someone who did not know what they should do next – they just did not want to do it. It is almost always that simple. Do not get me wrong – that I did and can see farther than the people who came to see me – I did not, but when life is in turmoil asking about the future is only a cry for comfort and guarantees when there is lots of work to be done.

The second thing to do is to focus on what is real. Emotions are useless when this situation arises. They will only feed the tumultuousness inside. Look at the actual details of the situation. Every time your heart says that things are not possible tell it to be silent. The mind and the heart need to agree in time, but when things start to look like they are falling apart it is time to turn away from the heart and its sentiments – they will only cloud life.

The third thing to do, and the hardest for most people, is to ask yourself where you failed. What did you not think of? What warnings did you ignore? What did you tolerate for too long? These are the things to look at and learn from. The roots of anything but acts of nature and God are always in our choices. These cannot be healed, but must be learned from. Let me remind you that we have already asked the heart to be silent. Guilt, shame and other feelings have no use in this process. There are only previous choices and outcomes that need to be evaluated.

The 9 of Swords is a card of troubles we either bring on ourselves or allow others to foist upon us. When this card comes in a reading you must take responsibility and move on. It is a card that requires penitence in the person getting the reading for any correction of the course of their life to happen. Without that nothing will happen.

Healing is for the sick and dying. If that is you, I hope you find healing, if it is not – change your own life. There is no easy way forward for anyone and looking for one only makes the work to be done harder.

Thank you for listening.
Melinda

If you enjoyed this post you might also enjoy:
Is your life a car wreck? Or a classic to be restored?
Stop being all alone.

The Hermit’s Lamp is the blog of Andrew McGregor – Toronto Tarot reader, artist and teacher. The Hermit’s Lamp is also a storefront in Toronto selling metaphysical and spiritual supplies. Please visit The Hermit’s Lamp website for more information on readings and classes both online and in Toronto. You can also listen to the Hermit’s Lamp podcast here.

Pharmacy bottle images by Newtown graffiti