Hello and welcome to the DesignLife blog where we discuss Holistic Beauty, Personal Development and a little bit of Magic!
A very long time ago, on my first blog, I wrote about why I do tarot card readings, but I felt like I wrote it out of a position of defense and as if I needed to explain myself. It was a very long post and I intend to keep this short and sweet, just as a means to inform rather than defend. I would love to share these kinds of blog posts freely on all of my social media accounts and yet I am hesitant. Not because I am unsure or ashamed by my beliefs, but because I am wary of the closed-minded people who, even though their religions speak of love and kindness, usually respond with hateful and unkind words when they are confronted with something (like tarot cards) that they have yet to understand the purpose of.
Firstly, I'll summarise what it is that I believe. I do believe there is a God, or rather, a Source from which we all flowed. This Source is Love. But Source is not male, nor female. To give God human attributes like these is a little ridiculous, as God transcends human beings. That is to say, God goes beyond our limits, but not that God is above us, we are still connected to Source and we can choose whether or not to allow the flow. I don't believe we can truly stop the flow, only stifle it.
One of my favorite stories to use illustrate my concept of God is the story of the blind men and the elephant. In most versions of the parable, it tells of a group of blind men who come upon an elephant and touch the elephant to learn what it is like. Each one feels a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk or the tail or its foot. They then compare what it is they feel and learn that they are in complete disagreement.
In some of the versions of the stories, the men become very angry and violent about what they believe to be true. Each person tries to convince the others that what he feels is true. For example, one man is arguing that it's something with a pointed end (the tusk) while another man disagrees and says that it is something round and wide like a tree trunk (the foot) and even another gets angry, because he knows it's flat and leathery (the ear). So the men keep fighting and arguing about what it is that they have encountered.
What the story implies is that your subjective experience can be true, but that the experience is inherently limited by its failure to account for other truths or a totality of truth (thanks Wikipedia). In other words, even though each blind man is telling the truth from his perspective, he is blind and cannot account for what is the entire truth. The elephant has a tusk and a foot and a tail etcetera, but the elephant is not it's tusk or foot or tail. It's part of the elephant, not the other way around.
This is how I see God and all the major religions. We are taught by religion to believe without seeing, which is called faith. And I believe we are taught this because we don't possess the capabilities right now to SEE the entire Truth, which is God, which is Love. We connect to God through our religion, we feel God's presence by practicing the rituals our religion teaches us (Christmas, the Sabbath, praying and even things like circumcision which connects each male Jewish child to God's covenant with Abraham and with all of Abraham's descendants or the central act of Hindu worship which is puja - a ritual to engage the senses of both the devotee and the gods).
But what if (and this is what I believe) each religion is just a part of a higher truth, that we can't comprehend, because we are spiritually blind? We are taught to believe by faith, because we can't see God. So what if when we do, we realize that we have forever been fighting for no reason, all this time we have each been right in our own way. Each of us had hold of Truth, just not the entire Truth. I'm definitely not saying I'm right, because how would I know if I couldn't see? But I will tell you this... I feel closer to God now than I ever have before, even though I don't have a specific religion which teaches me who God is supposed to be, because now I experience God through my own experience and not based upon the experience of others. I can choose to connect in ways that brings me closer to God. Closer than I would feel when I force myself to go to church to "find" God. As if God were something outside of myself that I need to find. God is not above us, not below us, not around us. God is inside of us.
I would go so far as to say, we are of God, therefore we are God. Each and everyone of us, whether we are allowing the flow or quenching it, we cannot remove ourselves from that which we have come. As much as we need God, God needs us, otherwise we wouldn't be. We are God's hands with which he feels, feet with which she walks, lungs with which it breathes... God is not hateful, God is not angry and God is not judgmental. God just is. God is God. God is Source. God is Love. And you are free to connect with Source through whichever religion feels most like God for you or not through a religion at all. You can meditate, or pray, or sing, or go to church, or be with beloved family and friends - you cannot "go to" God, because God doesn't stay somewhere waiting for you to come. God IS. God is in the air and in the sky and in the trees and in the ground and in our homes and in our hearts and we don't need to GO anywhere to connect, we just need to become aware.
When are you most aware of God's presence? When you are singing? When you are doing something you love? When you are at church? When you are praying at home? When you are driving on your way to a job that you are so grateful for? Mostly, we are aware of God when we are very grateful or we are very hurt, because our hearts are most open in those moments. Even though, mostly we only realize God was with us hindsight.
I am not arguing for my beliefs, I am merely laying them out for you to read about if you choose to. If you don't like reading about what I believe, then don't. I am open to your thoughts and any questions, but I am not interested in any argument about how wrong I am and that I need to accept Jesus into my life otherwise I will go to hell. You are welcome to share your truth on your own social platforms, as I have shared mine, so that you can connect with or "salvage souls"who are also looking for your truth. I am not sharing this to salvage any soul, because none of you are lost. You are all curious and amazing and I hope that you realize that. I am posting this to remind you that it's okay to ask questions and that you are allowed to connect with God in your way.
Shortly, about tarot cards... In the same way that many people pray for a sign, or they read their Bibles as a ritual to hear God speak to them, or some people go to a place of worship to sing and sometimes fall over, because the spirit takes over them... I connect with through my tarot readings. I speak to God all throughout each day with my words, my thoughts and my feelings and God always reflects it back to me. God, in my beliefs, is just another form of us and an "see" things from a different perspective. So even thought I try my best to be aware of God all throughout each day, I choose to spend a few hours per month (on one day) to do a tarot reading. It's not some huge ritual, I don't light candles (although I actually think that would be lovely) and like I used to open my Bible, knowing God would send me the message I need to hear, now I use the tarot cards. Because I can interpret them to how I feel, whereas with the Bible I felt that it was never really my own words (or God's words) but the many people who came before me to write and translate and re-write and re-translate everything in the Bible and I just don't connect with it anymore. However, with tarot cards, I feel more connected to God (or the Universe, or Source, or my Higher Self or whatever you want to call it).
Once again, even though I thought I could keep this short and sweet, I couldn't. No matter how much or how little I write, I would never be able to capture the true essence of God anyway. All I have left to say is, it doesn't matter how you connect with God, just that you do connect with God. And as long as you feel Love and Light and Joy when you do, there is no harm in how you connect, because God is Love and Light and Joy. And when you feel really, really feel the Love that is God, you can say nothing unkind and do nothing hateful, because God is not Unkind and God is not hateful. God just is Truth, and whether you believe it or deny, God does not change. God is, was and will always be.
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