Your Week Ahead: November 10 to 16, 2024 – Opening the Heart

It has been some time since my last post, but sometimes life moves very quickly and in new directions. I’ve really missed doing these short readings as offerings to anyone who comes by them. They are my way to stay creative and to nourish a part of myself while hoping to be of some small benefit to others.

I’ve had a beautiful break since June. I got married to my lovely lady of 11 years and celebrated in Costa Rica shortly after our wedding. Today, on my birthday, I created some space to get back to what I love doing and hope that I can continue this small activity.

Recently, while visiting Fergus, Ontario, I chanced upon a store with some tarot decks. One jumped out at me and I decided to purchase it and see how I liked it. Well, it didn’t disappoint. The images are inspired by the traditional Rider Waite deck. However, they take on a very intimate feel as they look closely at images we are familiar with. It makes me feel as though I’m right up close. I hope you enjoy them too. Sometimes a new perspective makes all the difference.

The theme for this week’s reading seems to be about the flow of water, emotion, and of life. The emotional content of our lives are very often the things we cling to and identify with, even in their darker forms. Joy and pain are simply two sides of the dualistic coin of life experience. We learn and grow through them as they provide an immediate contact point for our projections and what comes to us as relationships. We are in relationship to many things, even Nature.

The issue that comes up from time to time is how we lose touch with this flow. We become tense, constricted, and too identified with our anxieties. Identity labels help us to focus and to put names to things that feel abstract or intangible. We read books about subjects that discuss these labels and we often find that they help us sort it all out.

There’s a point on this path that the repetition of this material starts to produce a habitual response within us. We may find ourselves having a response that is the same as we become less and less able to see or accept an alternative analysis. It becomes the “forever filter”. The danger here is that it becomes scarier to break apart what we’ve attached ourselves to. We are confronted with the unknown again and feel as though we are back at square one.

The key is looking at things from a spiral perspective. Meaning, we never go back to the past; we are always progressing forward, taking with us all the gifts of our learning. The gift we give ourselves is our ability to be open to new ways of looking at things. While the Four of Cups shows us being closed off to the symbolic Ace of Cups, it also represents some emotional detachment and structure needed to assess where we are.

In contrast to Temperance, we see flowing water between two cups, rather than being blocked to it. It shows a period where we are contemplating where we are and where we want to be. Using other words, what we want to allow. If Temperance describes recombining of materials in new ways so that they are stronger, the Four of Cups shows what is a bit stale. It can also indicate the state between being stationary and movement towards a new form.

This movement takes us to a new viewpoint. We feel and see those stagnant elements in our life that need to be released so that new life can take hold and blossom. Death is both an ending and a beginning. However, it highlights again this feeling of the spiral. The phrase, “The King is dead; long live the King!” describes a generational shift, a continuum of life experience. However, it is transformed into a new form.

The Death ritual is something our ego is petrified of. The dismantling of our conceptual attachments places us in direct contact with the void, with death itself, and the unknown. We fear change and so we steer ourselves right back into old paradigms. This reading is asking us to take a step beyond a threshold. Beyond that line is something special wanting to be experienced.

Stepping into the flow of life and allowing ourselves to move into a new state of being will mean the acceptance of certain stagnant perspectives and elements in our life. Once we can see them for what they are, we can let them go so that life can take on a new productive phase. It is a time to examine the ideas of who we think we are and to ease up on any excessive attachments to that persona. We can ask ourselves, is my response a healthy one? Can I choose a better, more positive and productive one? Are my initial ideas more connected to what I have experienced before? If there is something I didn’t like about the past, am I able to do something different now?

These are always good questions to ask ourselves because that is the flow of love represented in the Four of Cups wanting to come inside and nourish a new life for us. An open heart is the canvas of life’s spectacular painting with which we create our world.

Affirmation: I am the beautiful person I see myself to be. I choose what feels better because I know that’s the person I want to be. I love knowing that I can recreate myself and see myself in a new light. The flow of life moves through me and takes me to a new place of understanding. This is a beautiful new chapter.

Thanks for reading, and I wish you a wonderful week!

Daniel Palmo

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