Guide to Navigating 2012

Cathy’s Guide to Navigating 2012 – Yearly Tarot Spread

Take heart, a new year is here and it is filled with new hope, and new possibilities. I don’t know about you, but I am ready for that! Let the new beginning settle into our hearts, for it is going to call on our ability to be present, clear, hopeful and in action. The time for fear is over, so when those pesky thoughts come up, use your mind to put them aside for later. Presence, action, and heart are what are calling us.

The tarot card for the New Year is The Hierophant – a 5-year. This indicates dealing with structure, ripping apart what doesn’t work and creating new structures around what does work. The Hierophant also is about religion, and structure we have set up to reflect our religious beliefs. What do we hold dear and how do we want access to that? After a year of looking inside, being led in and out of difficulty, and finding a new path emerging, we are beginning to examine how we are connected to spirit and rewriting the script. Also we are deciding about a new world order that comes from a structured society that reflects inner values, not the outer artifice that we are accustomed to hearing about from our politicians and authority figures.

Also, as we have seen, large religious organizations like the Catholic Church, are facing credibility issues. This is causing deep questioning  which opens up a chance for us to review why we are affiliated with religious institutions that might not reflect our personal values. What do we really expect our spiritual leaders to do and how do we expect them to behave? How do we want to relate to them and how can we strengthen our connection to source? These very deep questions resonate with authority issues on all levels, which are gently spreading across the landscape like the way a pebble sends out waves on the surface of the water. As the surface is rippling, it is allowing the inner frame work to open up. In a lot of cases it is erupting as well. Expect a lot of change with this energy, affecting corporations, governments, military, police, organizations and religious frameworks. If we allow ourselves past what is considered taboo within those frameworks to examine how we operate within them, we can see how we can change them. Or how they must change. So the taboo subjects are the places to start. Which means that we have to be able to tolerate the taboo, with compassionate and detached hearts.

With that in mind let’s take a look at the spread I pulled for the year of 2012.

Because of the difficulties that many of us dealt with last year, we enter 2012 with a new determination, clarity of purpose and direction, fueled by the desire to create balance and happiness in our family and private life. A lot of us want our voices to be heard, but we are so busy balancing our lives that it can make it difficult to have the time to protest. I think that many of us will find a way to get involved in our communities this year. It is a year for community outreach and being heard, much more powerfully than just updating our FB status. Why not take the time to write your congressperson, or even go out and talk to them. People will be galvanized to work more with each other.

We are moving away from difficulty, which is a good thing. Although the coast is not completely clear, we are able to deal with the shifting landscape in a much more clear-headed fashion, with less fear than we have had before.  So take stock of where you are, write down the debt incurred by what you have been through, look at whom you need to forgive and let go of, as well as whom you need to ask forgiveness of. It took whatever it took, to get through the past few years…it is what it is. No shame. Just awareness and a plucky sense that you have exactly what it takes to bring your life and the world back into balance. I mean, why are we here now, in this time? Probably because we are supposed to go through this so that we can correct a downwards slide that began a LONG time ago.

It is up to us individuals to reshape the world by matching our outer experience to all the work we have done on the inside. It is connected. We do have power to make change, based on what we have learned and integrated from healing our wounds and letting that healing inspire us to help others. This can be in the simplest of ways. We are ready to do this. Even if we need more healing, action is probably the most healing thing of all. Action born out of stillness. We are getting it finally…we have to go within for direction with a calm and accepting heart. From that place we will know what to do. Our inner compass will point us in the right direction.

We are stepping into the sun, opportunities are before us, and we need to just pick them up and go with it. I am not pretending that things are not very precarious, they are, but there is a ray of sunshine that brightens our path and we are stepping into that energy. Things are beginning to gel and we really need a boost to support us right now. It feels good but don’t squander that feeling. Instead use it as an opportunity to change your thinking to believe in the possible. It is not a time for magical thinking, which implies denial of our circumstances. It is a time to employ the magical, to change our thinking and believe in our passion. Solidly face possibility. We have to believe that our highest self does not want us to live on the street, or live in poverty. That doesn’t match up with what is on the inside. What is changing is how we connect with our possibilities, for the things that blocked us from them have become less daunting than before. We don’t have too much to lose at the moment, so why not?  You will find that it is all good.

The future picture is one of moving ahead and pushing, but we need to be careful that we don’t try to force it. We want to stay in the flow, connected to the heart, not just the mind. There is a lot still to cut through, old patterns to change. So we will emerge doing that, righting our wrongs and being accountable. It will take a lot of mental energy to keep ourselves on track, but the brief sunny respite we had at the beginning of the year will help us keep in that space. As we find ourselves moving ahead, we do so with a lot of compassion in our hearts for those around us who are suffering more than we are. We are energized by knowing that the gains we make are creating space for others to follow us. This is an important thing to acknowledge, for there will be many rallying cries. We must distinguish which ones have meaning for us and are worth going the distance for. Our movement creates a wake that brings many others along, as we will be brought along by those we see moving forward. It is synergy in many directions, people coming together in ways they never would have before. We will make it count.

We see ourselves healing, balancing and connecting at this moment. We are aware of a more spiritual force around us, and an earth that needs us to be more aware of our connection to her. Wholeness comes when we understand three components of healing: interacting with the energies of the earth, developing our spirituality, and letting both bring harmony to the body. Shamanic practices, from journeying, sweat lodges, and soul retrieval; to simple walks in the woods, or meditating by a tree all are calling us. That is Earth Spirituality. Or just imagining the sinuous tentacles of Earth energy wrapping themselves around us and keeping us safe. This conscious earth/inner-world/body connection is becoming more of a focus for us.

There are a lot of delusions out there, so it is hard to see what choices to make. Again, slow down and feel yourself through it. Your heart knows what choice to make. It’s an election year, and the politics are thick with all kinds of deceit. The advertisers want us to believe all kinds of things. Take a break from all of that. Otherwise it is all overload. Be strong in your heart and mind. Don’t let others tell you what choices you can make, for they probably haven’t even thought of the one that’s right for you. Use your imagination to pull yourself close to your dreams. Don’t second-guess. Get support from people you can trust.

We all fear change, yet we are in the thick of it and we can’t change that things are not going back to the way they were. Good thing, because they weren’t really working anyway. Maybe it seemed so, but if you have looked under the surface, and many of you have, there was a lot just plain wrong. So…on to the new. Here we just have to admit that if we are resisting change in any way, it is going to get really tough. It’s not worth is. Let go. Don’t be afraid, the new is going to happen anyway, and it will bring good things once the shock wears off. I say, go with it and see where it leads.

In the end we examine what holds meaning for us and how we are connected to people we love. I really think this is where we are headed, into a more loving and real way of relating to those we are closest to. It is the energy of 2013 – the Lovers card which is relating to others and remembering that within any union there is a third entity created, the relationship itself as it is embodied by spirit. So we begin to be changed to have a more reverent way of dealing with others, with the earth, with maybe even those not of this planet, as well as with our friends on the other side. We are able to see the interconnectedness of life and all of its intricacy because we have allowed ourselves to be changed by the events of the past few years, and let go of things that maybe we don’t need as much now.

Now this is going to be a year that we will be grateful to be a big part of. A year that reflects our capacity to change, our capacity to evolve in consciousness as divine humans. Let’s go for  it.