Inward Journey Ep 9: Tools of Divination & Disappointment

[00:00:21] Storyteller: Wise Whys - Inward Journey

[00:00:34] Episode 9: Tools of Divination & Disappointment

[00:00:41] A crisp, cool breeze flowed in through the slightly cracked window, gracing everything in the living room including the candle that Stevie was struggling to light. Finally, on the 8th match strike, a flame ignited, pleasing her spirit and easing any would-be frustration that began forming in her chest.

[00:01:02] The lit candle was the last detail of her so-called “Self Care Sunday” preparation that she tried to carry out whenever her husband, Stan, was spending time with his buddies. Early on in their relationship, she resented him for not wanting to spend most Sunday evenings together, but since she began expanding her awareness into self development, her perspective had shifted and she adopted her own self care routine to fill time in his absence.

[00:01:30] Tonight’s intention was centered around a new job that Stevie had recently interviewed for the day before, after receiving a text from Haven that a Montessori school on her way to work was hiring. She had spent the last four years working administratively for a local dentist but her desire had always been to work with kids. This passion had been rekindled thanks to her interactions with Rio and the deep internal dive she had been doing, asking herself over and over “what is my passion?”

[00:02:04] Stevie shook her hand back and forth to put the match out and returned to her wool blanket on the couch, which was carefully draped next to her recently purchased deck of tarot cards. Once comfortable, she placed the deck in her hands and quietly set her intentions, asking the Divine, or what she called “Source Energy”, the question “What can be revealed to me about my fate with this new job?”. Once she felt her energy was projected onto the deck, she started shuffling in a slow and methodical nature, sticking with the overhand method since the cards were not broken in enough to shuffle any other way.

[00:02:42] Once she felt an urge to stop, Stevie cut the deck, placing the bottom half on top and dealt herself 3 cards, side by side. She had decided to go basic with this pull and do a past, present and future read on the current situation, thinking it would give her a good understanding of the direction the energies were taking her. She placed the remaining deck down and then flipped over the 3 cards, left to right. Her forehead scrunched as she revealed the Two of Swords, The Sun and the Nine of Pentacles.

[00:03:16] Not being totally familiar with their full meanings, she took to the booklet that was included with her deck and began to read out loud to herself and her cat, Simone, who was curled up on the other side of the couch.

[00:03:29] “Two of Swords - difficult choices, indecision, stalemate”

[00:03:35] She grunted, showing non approval of Source Energy’s choice.

[00:03:40] “I guess maybe that is because I was so discontent in my current job that I didn’t know what to do about it”, she mumbled.

[00:03:47] She then moved on to the next card. “Ahh, next, the glorious Sun card! - Joy, success, celebration! I knew it! I can feel this right now! This is an amazing sign!”

[00:04:01] Finally, she eagerly flipped through the pages to find the Nine of Pentacles and read its short descriptor: “Fruits of labor, rewards, luxury. Wow!”

[00:04:15] Immediately, the emotion of joy came roaring into her chest. Her enthusiasm for life soared as she began to have some tears of gratitude for what she had just read. Gratitude for perhaps the relief of becoming unstuck in her current work situation and moving on to a new experience.

[00:04:34] While in this emotion, she grabbed her phone eagerly off the coffee table. Even though Stan had asked her to only text him in an emergency when he was enjoying his time away, this seemed like something she just had to express to him. This was going to make a difference in her happiness and possibly fix the discontentment she had in their relationship. With these thoughts running through her head, Stevie hit the send button and her message of “I’m getting the job! My intuition is right! xoxo” disappeared into the ether towards Stan’s location.

[00:05:09] The next day, Stevie was in the final 15 minutes of her lunch break, eating an apple and sitting in her car listening to some low playing tunes. She did this often while taking breaks from her over-demanding boss in an attempt to keep herself together and have enough energy to make it through a full day. It was a strategy she had read somewhere on a self development tips post on instagram.

[00:05:33] The song on the radio was suddenly interrupted by a loud jingle made by her cellphone, informing her of an incoming email on her personal account. A little intrigue entered her overall energy as she fumbled through her passcode to open up her inbox. There it was, an email from the company she had just interviewed for her potential dream job.

[00:05:56] Stevie paused, took a breath, in and out, and then pulled the screen closer to her face. Her index finger then slowly moved toward the phone and tapped the screen. Her face dropped and heart sank when the words “we regret to inform you” were scanned by her eyes.

[00:06:15] Her hands suddenly lost all grip as they moved toward her face. Her phone fell to the floor with a thud as she began wailing in disappointment, expressing herself in the form of tears. Negative thoughts streamed into her head as she began descending into a state of hopelessness. Her dreams, hopes, and desires were suddenly stolen from her in just a few words from an email.

[00:06:41] After two solid minutes, her sobbing began to subside, only to be reignited when she remembered she would have to continue working her current job for the foreseeable future. This created even more of an emotional reaction that led to her punching her steering wheel and letting out a few obscene words.

[00:07:01] In her mind she wondered: what have I done to deserve this? The signs were all there… how could the cards be wrong and why did I let myself believe in them?? How will I ever recover from this?

[00:07:16] [Phone Alarm]

[00:07:16] An alarm suddenly woke Stevie out of her unconscious state.

[00:07:21] “Whoa-? Whaa-?”

[00:07:24] She lunged over, lowered her arm and dug around on the ground where she remembered she dropped her phone. After retrieving it, she looked at the screen and noticed that it was a reminder that her break was over.

[00:07:37] “No No No! I can’t go back to work like this.”

[00:07:41] Stevie grabbed the driver’s side visor down revealing a mirror. While staring at herself, she grabbed her sleeve with her thumb and smeared her tears into her cheeks.

[00:07:52] “I’m such a mess!” she let out in a helpless voice. After taking a deep breath in and exhaling in a deep sigh, she flipped the visor back up, opened the car door and exited, walking toward the building she worked in.

[00:08:09] There was only one way into her work office and, unfortunately, it was through the front door and through the waiting room. Stevie remembered this as soon as she opened the door and 5 people stopped reading their magazines, turning their gaze to her.

[00:08:25] “Stevie! Oh hi!” Greta shouted out upon meeting eyes with Stevie’s. Greta was an older woman who lost her daughter in an accident many years ago and often thought of Stevie as having a deep resemblance to her in looks and personality.

[00:08:41] Stevie, not wanting to converse with anyone while in her current emotional state, put her head down and tried to make herself invisible as she walked past the waiting room toward her office.

[00:08:52] “What a beautiful day out there, isn’t it?” Greta added to Stevie, not getting the hint that she wasn’t in a social space.

[00:09:01] Stevie felt her emotions come up and tried to talk herself out of reacting to Greta’s overly positive energy, but failed as she mumbled under her breath, “What’s so beautiful about it?” just loud enough for Greta to hear, but question the actual words that were spoken.

[00:09:19] “Huhhhhh? What did she say?” Greta responded, in a tone that was way too loud for the situation.

[00:09:27] Stevie ignored the response and kept on walking through the next door and around a corner, making her way to her office, immediately kicking the door stop up causing the door to slam behind her.

[00:09:39] Having just realized the reaction she had toward Greta, she collapsed into her chair with her head in her hands, restarting her waterfall of tears. Her mind kept looping over and over, “Why is this happening to me? Why can’t anything ever go right?”

[00:10:04] Aaron: Well, Alexander, I've been waiting a long, long time for this story to come up in our timeline because this was one of the first ones that I had written in our kind of brainstorming before this podcast really became what it was.

[00:10:17] Alexander: Yep.

[00:10:17] Aaron: And it encompasses a lot of my experiences around using tools and buying into my biases while using them and then having those ups and downs when my experiences after that don't match what I thought the tools were telling me.

[00:10:40] Alexander: Right. Yes and this is a very common thing that many people experience, especially when they start dabbling in metaphysics or different ways of looking at things. And some signs can be animals, it can be numbers. It can be somebody from the past calling or dreams. So there's many different types of signs. We even talk about some tools that's used here with the cards and utilizing that, the tarot cards. And, there's also, you know, astrology and so there's many, many different types of signs that people use, but the question that I typically have for most everyone that this subject comes up around is, are you able to utilize that sign with non-preference? We'll get into, in the complete story, just why that is so important. But, it is a little bit of a different view from the manifestor's view, but it does incorporate the understanding of polarity and how important polarity is, into how energy works on this plane.

[00:11:45] So I do look forward to going deeper and deeper into it, but I think it's, that's at least a place to start to at least plant a seed in people's minds that there is different ways to utilize signs, different ways to utilize astrology, different ways to utilize tarot or any type of tool. So yeah, I know this is a hot subject for you, I think both from the past and maybe something fairly recent.

[00:12:10] Aaron: Yeah. And of course when we're using these tools, we're trying to do it to get clarity on maybe a preference that we have. And so if we're not using them in a beneficial way, then they're kind of having the opposite effect, right?

[00:12:24] Alexander: Yes. Because a lot of tools create frustration for people, and a big key to that is, if you have a preference, then more than likely you're affecting the tool of whatever that is. And then that brings in possibly a lesson that you need to learn. So, you know, when the subject of manifestation comes up around me, I like to suggest that we both manifest things that we want and things that we need. And what we want and what we need isn't always in alignment. And so this is what creates that disappointment or expectation and disappointment can only exist with expectation, and this is the difference between expectation and living with intention, is you don't carry that preference.

[00:13:15] Aaron: And we may even need something before we can get what we want. So it's never that easy of, Oh, I just need what I want because maybe you're not ready. Maybe it's not the right time. There's so many variables that are important, and that is the importance of staying out of having a preference or trying to at least because essentially we're not seeing things clear. Only like, We could talk about Source Energy, or God, or our Higher Self can really see more than what we can, because we're going blind and we don't know how far along we truly are in our development in order to attract something that we really want.

[00:13:49] Alexander: And many times, yeah, a couple of doors may have to close before the one that is really right for you has to open up.

[00:13:56] So that's the thing about using tools and why the non-preference is important, is not taking a door closing, say at a job that you thought that you really wanted, as anything negative. You can choose to be thankful for it and say, "Well, obviously that wasn't the one for me, so I'm gonna go to this next one".

[00:14:13] And getting no's or getting rejected does not have to be a negative experience. It can be a very spiritual or religious experience for people that are really tapped into that. Of using the sign to truly direct them to where they need to be, rather than directing them to where they want to be, right then, right now, at this particular point in time. And that's where a lot of frustration and friction comes in.

[00:14:41] Aaron: So this episode began with Stevie kind of setting up what she called her Self Care Sunday, because Stan was with his buddies and she had the candles going and maybe some essential oils. So she was getting in that mindset to be grounded and to create space for her to do her tarot reading.

[00:14:59] She created her intention, and one thing that the story describes is kind of like the tarot deck is new, and she even had to shuffle it the normal way. She couldn't do like a bridge because it was too new. And even in past episodes, she brought in like how she was just getting into tarot. [Mm-hmm]. So, so we know that it's a new phenomena for her, but yet here she is using it to kind of clarify like a major decision for her and maybe she felt like there are signs that even outside of the tarot, that she's meant for this job because maybe that question of what is your passion keeps coming up for her.

[00:15:36] And she went deep internally and figured out what it was, and now maybe she thinks, now I'm ready to do this. And so maybe that even played a little bit into it. I wanted to just ask the question about utilizing tools before we have a good sense of how to use them.

[00:15:54] Alexander: Yes. Just looking at it as anything else that, in the beginning it's practice. Like if anybody's ever learned to play an instrument, you don't just start playing songs right away. You want to, but the way that the energy really works is that you work at something long enough to build it. To create it.

[00:16:14] And so in this situation, I mean, there's only been what a few weeks that have passed since this just came to her attention with a conversation with Rio. And yes, she got the message from Haven that she probably took as a sign, but I say yes, they're all signs. They're all signs, but when they don't go in a direction that you prefer, and you choose to see it as a negative sign or that you misread it, that is correct. Because you weren't neutral enough to just receive the information.

[00:16:48] So this is an obstacle for many, many people in using signs, and it's very similar to intuition. Many people have a hard time understanding that it's challenging to trust your intuition completely until you are able to truly manage your emotions at a very large degree. Because many people's intuition is being filtered through an emotion and therefore it's clouded.

[00:17:15] So sometimes they're on and sometimes they're off. And so see, to work with any of these tools or anything we're talking about, it's about building your confidence and that confidence comes from your connection to something higher than you. You know, there's many different, whether that's God or Allah or Energy or Source Energy. You know, we don't carry a preference in what you call that, that energy and staying connected to that.

[00:17:43] And again, a little bit of a different view between the manifester view, and this is a little bit more of a view of getting in the river and choosing to pick your feet up and to go where the river's going to take you. And, the consciousness part is that you're aware that there's gonna be hazards along the way, that doesn't mean the river is against you. But you may need to pay attention to the rocks that are coming off and be able to push off nicely to soften the impact. And every now and then you may get hit in the head or in the elbow with it, but that doesn't mean the river's mad at you.

[00:18:19] So this is the way that this philosophy is designed is in relation to nature and how nature works through vibration and frequencies. So that's the way we want to approach, and we will be going deeper into the approach of using these tools as well.

[00:18:35] Aaron: During her reading, she saw it as being overwhelmingly positive and she allowed herself to engage in these large, although positive emotional reactions, even to the point where she was showing gratitude.

[00:18:49] I'm not saying that showing gratitude is a bad thing, but I feel like there's a tendency for people to only tap into that when things are great. Because it's so easy to be like, "Oh, I'm so thankful. God is great" when things are great.

[00:19:02] Alexander: Yes, see that gratitude is emotionally generated and because she's excited and she's getting what she wants, she goes into that outward gratitude.

[00:19:11] But see, that's almost like having food and just throwing it in the air. Well, you had food, but you just gave that energy away and that's many times the emotions is what drains the energy of the beauty that was given. And so if she could learn, and will of course get into this deeper, but learn to be in the same level of gratitude whether she's getting what she's so-called wants or she's not, from the view that she's building the energy over time. And that's the phrase we use a lot in this philosophy is chop wood and carry water. And if you chop wood and carry water long enough, you can build a house. And that's a little bit of the, the energy in the way that we're discussing how this can be approached.

[00:19:57] Here I want to add as well that Stevie is a Manifesting Generator and would operate a little bit differently if she was a Manifestor and able to create things with her, her voice. But we're really talking about signs here, but I did want to make sure that we weren't leaving out the importance of manifestors as well. They, just only happen to be 10 or 11% of the population, that are manifestors.

[00:20:21] Aaron: And during Stevie's overly joyful mood, she goes ahead and texts Stan, even though it seems like they have a boundary set and agreed upon in their relationship that when he's with his buddies on Sundays, that he doesn't want to be bothered, unless maybe an emergency.

[00:20:38] So I feel like that overly high emotion allowed her judgment to get blurred and she overstepped a boundary.

[00:20:46] Alexander: That happens very often again and here it's being filtered through the emotion. And good intentions of the death of a wise one, is a saying that I really like to keep in mind because we can intend have good intentions, but many times we take shortcuts or we jump the gun and this is what gets emotional issues really riled up.

[00:21:07] And we'll see how, you know, it affects her when they come back together and able to discuss, because it will wind up being a misunderstanding and that creates communication breakdowns.

[00:21:18] Aaron: So I wanted to bring in her kind of downward spiral in the car on her break when she found out that she didn't get the job. And even to the point where she said that she was feeling hopeless. Because I feel like that's kind of a dramatic overdramatic way of having a reaction to not getting a job.

[00:21:38] But I feel like the way we discuss emotions and energy here, that was kind of the downfall from having that overly high emotional reaction earlier on the previous day, right?

[00:21:51] Alexander: Mm-hmm. Yes. And this is where people can self sabotage themselves, so to say. That you get so excited and see the excitement is an expectation. And especially when you feel like you're reading these signs that everything's leading toward this.

[00:22:06] But again, her not getting this job is still part of the sign. It doesn't have to be the end, like she's taking it into this downward spiral. So again, it gets into the whole point of practicing being able to live in non-preference.

[00:22:23] Aaron: And finally obviously wanted to bring in Stevie's interaction with Greta, who we can have compassion for Greta in her situation, because here she just wants to be friendly and connect with somebody who reminds her of her daughter who passed on, and Stevie most likely knows this and has sort of a, a relationship with her kind of because of that. And Stevie comes in and she's still in that emotional reaction and kind of mumbles under her breath that, you know, what is good about this day when that woman's just trying to maybe brighten her day. Unfortunately, that woman doesn't realize, I think, what was said. But Stevie kind of gave her like some negative emotion. Then when she gets back to her office, she kind of instantly has that feeling of, I don't know if it's a regret, but she realizes what she did and that she allowed herself to do that. And then feels even more awful, you know, in retrospect to that.

[00:23:14] Alexander: Yes. And seeing how the emotions just accumulate and turn into like an avalanche. So when we act out those negative emotions, then we have to go through the guilt and the shame that comes almost always after it. And that's the vicious cycle that people get stuck in. And, you know, we're going to discuss in the full episode, some techniques that maybe she could have done in a very short amount of time to have shifted the energy. Because again, this was a situation where she recognized where she was and that she wasn't in a good place, but she had to go through this specific way to get in and she happened to interact with somebody or resist interacting. And so, so see our emotions don't just affect us, they ripple out into everywhere we're at.

[00:24:02] And that may create some sadness in that older lady, and then she's gotta go home and possibly she's gonna be by herself, and that was one thing that she went out to do today, and she got rejected. We don't know how that ripple's going to continue to happen, but that's why the J.U.S.T Philosophy's, one of the main focuses, is on learning to manage and process our emotions so that we don't vomit them on people around us.

[00:24:27] Aaron: Man, really looking forward to diving way deeper into this subject, so-

[00:24:31] Alexander: See you guys later.