Tag: alan watts quote

Not Alone

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee.

Welcome to the TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here.

Martin Luther King Jr. famously said that “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

The 53 or so years since Dr. King’s assassination has taught us one more thing. The arc of the moral universe only bends toward justice under the weight of many people, sometimes many generations of people, pulling it in that direction.

Justice is never a solitary act.

It is always a melange of defenders and oppressors, compassion and hate, hope and fear, wisdom and willful ignorance. In justice or the absence of it, we are never alone. If we act solely for ourselves, how can justice exist much less the arc of the universe bend toward it?

Alan Watts once said that “If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet you’ll come to understand that you are connected to everything.” In that same vein, Martin Luther King also said that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

This interconnectedness makes alliances not only crucial to Justice writ large, it is crucial to our own self interest. Ignoring injustices to others is neglecting our own injury. It injures our life and energy to accept injustice to anyone.

Together we are stronger, perhaps strong enough to tug the arc of the moral universe a little closer to Justice.

Wherever you are, however hopeless it feels, you are connected to the universe. The universe is a pretty big place, so rest assured there is someone else in it who believes as you do and accepts and celebrates the person you are deep down where it matters. That connectedness, even in times when you can’t sense it for yourself, will bring all of our weight to bear in bending King’s arc.

Grab onto the arc, hold on to the notion of connection and know there are others hanging on right there beside you.

Thank you so much for reading and listening. Your likes, subs, follows, shares, questions and comments are always, always appreciated.

If you are enjoying these short sips of Tarot or you would like a full cup all your own, please see the links below or in the podcast episode description.

See you at the next sip!

Weekend Tarot Turnover: Love it

TaoCraft weekend Tarot Turnovers is an intuition building exercise that turns our usual Tarot readings upside down. I sip the coffee while you interpret the card. Learn Tarot with TaoCraft!

Today we are turning our usual Tarot posts upside down. I sip the coffee and you interpret the card. It’s not that I’m lazy. Well, actually, I kinda am. But that’s not the point. Reading Tarot is like any skill, it takes practice. It takes some time and slowly working it through for yourself. That’s what these Tarot Turnovers are intended to do. It gives you a chance to flex your intuitive muscles in a no-big-deal, safe, low key way. It’s hard to learn to read cards when you are upset or in the middle of a problem or need guidance for whatever reason.

That’s where a daily one card meditation practice like we do here on weekday or as they are described in my e-book PeaceTarot. The ebook teaches you how to do daily practice card readings plus provides peacefulness themed interpretations for all 78 RWS style Tarot cards. If you practice on days when you are calm and everything is normal, it is easy and natural to reach for your cards on the days when things are far from calm and normal.

Speaking of far from normal, prompted by world events, all proceeds from TaoCraft Tarot ko-fi shop sales of my ebook PeaceTarot will be donated to Doctors Without Borders, USA until the end of 2022. I’ve already donated myself, but with your help we can do more. Doctors Without Borders has a four star rating on charity navigator.

Back to the card. I drew a card from a random cut after shuffling three times. I’ll list a variety of possible interpretations for the card inspired by old blog posts and favorite references plus my card interpretation from PeaceTarot. Can you spot it in the list?

Take a deep breath. Read through the list of meanings below the card and see which one rings most true for you? Which one feels most right to you? Which one applies best to your individual context and situation? Does something else entirely spring to mind? If so – go with that. Your personal interpretation is the best one for you.

  • Fear and anger can come from frustrated desire. If you are afraid or angry, stop and think. What do you really want and is it really threatened?
  • Finding your true love in life – romantic or otherwise.
  • (if reversed) Your answer may lie in repressed desires.
  • Love lifts you up and heals many things, both in the receiving and the giving.
  • Love life and true love will find you.
  • Follow your heart.
  • Lust and sexuality.
  • “Even if you don’t want to desire, you still desire not to desire” – Alan Watts

So which one did you pick and why? Does the card raise any questions? Blog and and social media comments are open! Spotify and Anchor FM podcast listeners can submit questions and comments through the “ask a question” section. Podcast people – if it is hard to choose a meaning just by listening, drop by the print blog to see the bulleted list. That might make it easier to choose.

Thank you so much for reading and listening. The blogcast is not monetized and is entirely audience supported. Any likes, subs, shares, follows, tarot reading orders or Tarot Table Memberships you can spare are always appreciated!

Weekend Tarot Turnover intuition building exercises like this one typically post once per week, usually on Saturdays – hence the name. TaoCraft Short Sip Tarot nano episodes post most weekdays, usually mid morning eastern time. Short Sips are Tarot guidance for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. YouChoose Interactive Tarot posts are totally random but post a few times per month. Question and answer posts or other topical episodes give you a behind the scenes look at my side of the Tarot Table. They are even more random. If you follow the blog you’ll all the TaoCraft Tarot content from every platform right in your inbox.

See you at the next sip!

Busy isn’t bad

Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot contemplation in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. I’m glad you are here.

Today’s card is the Two of Pentacles.

When you look at a fine art sculpture the space it defines around it as sometimes as much a part of the composition as the space it occupies. Today’s card has a little of that energy. It’s not a caution energy, but it isn’t quite straightforward advice either. It feels a little like a power slide into a parallel parking space in a movie, or one of those internet memes where Wong portals in, gives some disturbing trivia and leaves out the same interdimensional portal.

Or maybe that’s just me because I’m a lazy, lazy girl.

If someone says “self care” to me, my first thought is coffee, readings a good book or taking a nap. The thing that the Two of Pents pointing toward is the fact that mental rest and re-balancing is not dependent on physical inactivity. Physical rest is easy. In modern America, we need a reminder to easy up on the mental stress.

You can do stuff without stressing over it. Arguable, you do more stuff and do it better when you are in a calm, relaxed state of mind.

This goes along with that Two of Coin’s quality of dynamic equilibrium. Maintaining balance often requires movement and adaptation. Spinning things are more stable, like a top or a bicycle or a gyroscope.

The sweet spot is a balance between activity and calm, being physically busy but not psychologically stressed about it.

Taoist philosophy describes it as wu wei. Chinese is notoriously difficult to translate. Sometimes wu wei is translated as inaction or not-doing. That isn’t to say that Taoists somehow think things will magically get done while we sit and to nothing. The translation “effortless action” seems more apt, especially in the context of this card. Both wu wei and the two of pentacles are pointing toward physical activity without mental stress.

A sense of accomplishment and productivity is a pretty nice feeling at the end of the day. Mental stress is not. A significant amount of stress is pressure we put on ourselves. It is almost as if we think easy things are somehow less valuable or less worthy of our precious little time. Again, the two card points us toward a sweet spot of balance. You don’t want to underestimate, neglect or minimize a situation, but you don’t want blow a molehill up to be Mount Everest either. That’s the balance the Two of Pentacles brings to us today.

Busy isn’t bad when it is balanced with inner calm. Mental rest and quiet is still self care, even when it happens in the center of a storm of external activity. Moving meditation is the perfect example, and a perfect way to practice mental calm in the middle of physical business. Walking meditation is very much a part of some Buddhist traditions. Of course, Tai Chi is the best known example of meditation in motion. Which circles back around to one of my very favorite Alan Watts quotes “Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about god while one is peeling the potatoes. Zen spirituality is to just peel the potatoes.”

It’s ok for things to be busy. It’s just as ok for busy things to feel easy while you do them.

Thank you for reading and listening. The blogcast and YouTube channel are not monetized and depend on reader and listener support. Email Tarot readings purchases here on the blogcast site, Tarot Table memberships and buy me a coffee donations all contribute to the creation of this Tarot content. Your likes, subs, shares and follows are always appreciated!

See you at the next sip!

Today’s Short Sip, but even shorter

Alan Watts quote with the nine of swords tarot card

Or, as I see it, opening to life in all of its emotions risks experiencing the greatest heartaches, but to do otherwise is to risk missing life’s greatest joys.

The Whole of It

TaoCraft Short Sip is Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your morning coffee. Today: Nine of Swords

Apologies to podcast listeners. Due to a technical glitch, yesterday’s “You Choose Interactive Tarot” didn’t go out through the podcast after all. It is available on the blog for anyone who is interested. Link is in the episode description.

Today’s card is the nine of swords.

Like most cards, it has several threads of meaning. Today two threads are stepping forward, universality and direct proportion.

Experiencing some degree of worry and anxiety is never easy, but it is ubiquitous. It is pretty much a universal experience. There is an adage attributed to everyone from Abraham Lincoln to Alexander Graham Bell to the Positive Mom blog and back again. It has long been said that “if you’ve never failed, you’ve never lived.” Just look at babies learning to walk. The greatest among us took a few plops on the old diaper at that stage of life. Or as Thomas Edison actually said, “I never failed at making a light bulb. I just discovered 99 ways NOT to make one.” It is just the human experience. There is no walking without a few falls and there are no light bulbs without a hundred not-lightbulbs. In the words of the R.E.M. song, “everybody hurts, sometimes.”

Alan Watts gives us a hint at the other thread of meaning. He reminds us that “we cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.” That shouldn’t deter us from experiencing life any more than a small sit-down should deter us from walking or a blown light bulb should deter us from finding a light.

If we experience life through a pinhole then worry comes as pinpricks. But pleasure can be unsatisfyingly small in proportion. Worry and anxiety can be artificially large sometimes. The hopeful side of the nine of swords is that on the other side of worry, relief can come in equal measure.

Thank you for watching, reading and listening to TaoCraft Short Sip: Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip from your coffee. If you enjoy these blog posts and nano episodes, please like, subscribe, follow and share.

Thanks again….see you at the next Sip!

Today’s Tarot: The woo isn’t everything

Gremlins

Some people blame these things on Mercury retrograde. My genX brain calls technical glitches that I can’t figure out gremlins. I still kinda want to be a computer geek when I grow up.

Just spent two attempts and more time than I wanted to spend trying to get today’s youtube tarot short to upload. I think the problem is in the processing on YouTubes end, actually. Either way, enough bashing against a road block.

In fact, that is the message this last attempt gave: put it down and come back later.

It’s a good general message. The woo isn’t everything. No every minute of every day has to be a spiritual success. Not every moment has to be some grand enlightenment. When the energy is wrong for spiritual things, and you run into one wall after another, it is perfectly OK to set aside the spritual and spend some quality time in the practical physical realm.

It’s more of the meatspace energy we’ve talked about lately.

If you want some woo…today is a good day for grounding, balancing, centering. Get your head out of the clouds and your feet planted on the ground.

It’s a good day for the Zen proverb: Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.

Or the Alan Watts quote “Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.”

So chop your water, carry your potatoes and peel your wood, set aside the gremlins and have a good day in spite of it all.

YouBoo Interactive Tarot: Halloween Week 2020

Happy week everyone! I have no idea when you are actually viewing or reading this, but at the time of writing it is a week before Halloween and a week before the second anniversary of TaoCraft Tarot’s second anniversary. I seems really weird to celebrate the second anniversary of what amounts to a name change and a new coat of paint to a Tarot practice that has been going since around 2003 or so (my website used to be Modern Oracle Tarot) but name changes can mean a lot. This one did to me, so there you have it. To celebrate, I’m giving away free one card digital InkMagick readings. You can get yours on the Special Offers page. All the fine print applies, and delivery time varies. Thank you everyone for reading, getting readings and being here the past few years and beyond. More important then a name, is the people who know it. Thank you.

Left: Ten of Wands. This card lives around that intersection of the mental and physical. It represents carrying a burden, particularly the mental and emotional side of weighty situation. That isn’t to minimize very difficult, frightening situations. It isn’t to minimize hard work. It is about perceptions of those very real physical situations. It is easy to shoulder very real and necessary burdens when they don’t carry the added weight of expectations or regrets. Sometimes the mental weight is the hardest to set down.

Center: Knight of Wands. Magic is afoot. But it all happens on the inside. A shift in outlook or perception can change everything. This could signal that it is an opportune week for personal growth, taking stock of the direction you are actively going and taking active steps to go a different direction if needed.

Right: Knight of Pentacles. The energy around this card feels very “hygge” or cozy. Pleasures of the senses aren’t as “adult” as you might be thinking. Enjoy innocent physical comforts, like a stretching, yoga, running (whatever your favorite exercise might be) Have a soak with your favorite bath bomb, or light a scented candle. Have a cup of your favorite tea, coffee, or cocoa. Get out of your head and appreciate the physical. Mindfulness and a Zen approach comes to mind, as with that famous quote by Alan Watts “Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.” Indulge in enjoying our brief moment as incarnate beings. Imma going to knit now.

Today’s Tarot: Stick to your knitting (metaphorically speaking – or not)

The Eight of Pentacles is about due diligence, effort, work, study, etc. Todays energy is very aligned with that. Even though the eight is silent on outcome in contrast to the ‘reap what you sow’ vibe that we have seen recently in the Seven of Petacles. Today’s card is short term planning, not long term planting.

Today is a day to put your head down, and stick to your knitting. WHAT that knitting IS can vary a great deal from person to person. Maybe your “knitting” today is protest and vocal activism. Maybe your “knitting” is disaster recovery. Maybe your knitting is rocking a baby to sleep for a nap. Maybe your knitting is just getting through your workday. Maybe your knitting is actual knitting.

Whatever your task may be, today’s energy is a reminder to let our mind rest where our physicality lies. It is exhausting to emotional or enthusiastic or passionate all of the time, even when things are good. More so when they are not. There is a certain deep, spiritual rest in doing simple tasks that don’t need a lot of thought and ask nothing of our emotions. Actual knitting is very meditative in that way. It is very much in the Zen frame of mind. In the words of Alan Watts “Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is to simply peel the potatoes.” Or, in the words of the proverb “Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.”

In still other words: Today is a day for mindfulness and the simple comfort of simple routing tasks. Underneath the tedium and sometimes boredom is a resevoir of quiet mindfulness and comfort when you are of a mind to feel it that way.

Today’s Tarot: Grind

 

The Five of Wands has long been associated with conflict and challenge – but it is not insurmountable. I don’t know of any Tarot cards that are hopeless. There are “change course”, or “cut it loose and move on” types of  messages, but never an “give up it’s over” kind of message. This may seem close. It isn’t going to be easy. Life seldom is. The message from the Five of Wands isn’t give up. It’s quite the opposite. It is a call to persist. We’ve made it to the point where now we know what to do (stay the heck at home, etc.) Now is the time to do it. And keep doing it. Then do it some more. It’s time to grind.

Yes, things are inside out and upside down. In an ideal world, our future selves will look back, figure out just what went wrong, and try to figure out what we need to do to stay out of this particular sh*tstorm. But how is that going to help here and now that everything has hit the fan and we are right in the middle of it?

Grind.

Just do it. Fake it until you make it. “Don’t think yourself into a new way of doing, do yourself into a new way of thinking.

On that big, gestalt, general energy, zeitgeist level, it feels to me like there has been another shift in the wind. The past several days have been a pleasant respite. That was the eye of the hurricane. Now we are headed back into it for the second half of the initial storm. There are more waves on the horizon, but we’ll cross that energy bridge when we get to it. 

For now, do what needs done without over thinking it. Persistence will overcome.

It may not be a good time for spirituality. There may not be energy to spare for that. If that is where you mind, heart and energy lies, this card suggests a present moment attention, like a minor arcana echo to the Chariot card. This card suggests that Zen is a good spiritual approach to take in the challenges to come. Think Shaolin Monk. Think Samurai. Whatever level of potato peeling you may be doing, the idea is as Alan Watts said:

“Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is to just peel the potatoes.”

– Alan Watts