Facing my fears with the Nine of Swords

Musings from my morning meditation with a card (let’s face it!) no one likes to receive…

After feeling inspired by a recent post by Claire from The Moon Shed, this morning I decided to pull a card before meditating, rather than seeing if I had time left to quickly pull one afterwards.

I usually choose a guided meditation but this time, I wanted a card to guide my moment of stillness before the chaos of day commenced.

As I shuffled, the 9 of Swords flipped over in the deck. I saw it… and then debated ignoring it and to continue shuffling as if I hadn’t seen it (haven’t we all done that!?) but decided, nope if it wants to be seen then I better take a look.

So I stared this card right in the face, gazing into those piercing eyes staring back at me.

Then the questions came… “What are you ignoring? What is it you are choosing not to see? What fears are you pushing down, that actually need looking at?”

So I put 5 minutes on my meditation timer and explored my internal world for some answers. Turns out there were quite a few fears whirring around in my brain, that I hadn’t stopped to acknowledge but that were clearly having some kind of influence over my daily actions and taking up precious brain-space.

But reassuringly (and surprisingly!) none of those fears felt too overwhelming. It was as if, by giving them a bit of air time, they actually didn’t seem so big at all. They just wanted to be seen.

And for all the fears that appeared, came an accompanying answer, solution or gentle word of comfort. I then heard the words “everything is figure-outable”

I breathed a sigh of relief just as my timer went off.

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As wonderful as it may be to understand meanings of the tarot cards, my personal philosophy is that we don’t really need to. Because they always guide us to the places we need to go and the internal bits we might be turning a blind eye to, but actually would feel better for looking at.

I really enjoyed using the cards in this way, as a companion to my meditation practice, and can this becoming a regular thing (thanks Claire!)

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts and whether this might be something you give a try yourself!