Your Week Ahead: May 5 to 11, 2025 – Clarity Is My Birthright

Fear is the mind-killer. This famous quote from Frank Herbert’s “Dune”, aptly describes how such a mental perception can hinder and repress us both mentally and physically. To explore the definition of fear or where it comes from is a huge subject. Fear can mean so many things and stem from so many places.

There is a healthy type of fear where our awareness is heightened to protect us from something or someone that doesn’t quite sit right with us. We must evaluate our conclusions so that we are both factual and instinctual. We must be skillful, but not fearful. When we are “fearful”, we identify with the victim side of the situation and are afraid of losing something important, namely our identity and the ability to choose whatever we want freely.

There is a relationship to authority here, perhaps memories of being a child where we grew up with certain rules and guidelines. As we grow up and our ego seeks individualization, we confront authority and want to move past it. Yet, the authority we experienced as young people always seems to get replaced by someone or something else.

We get a job and have a manager or boss to account to. We must answer to a collective. We must behave and act in accordance with the rules of society. We must, we must, we must. The truth is, there is always a limitation if one looks for it. We often define ourselves by our limitations, real or imagined.

Which brings me to the unhealthy type of fear—the meaningless, illusory kind. This ‘fear’ eats away at our self-confidence when we pay more attention to what we were told about ourselves than to what we are actually capable of embodying. We may have had actual experiences of failure or were made to feel like we couldn’t succeed without the help of someone in authority.

Reliance on authority is probably at the root of the social collective hive mind behaviour. “Think like us and you’ll be safe and sheltered; if not, you’ll be left out of the tribe and starve in the cold.” Fear is very powerful, and yet so meaningless.

One of the keys to working with fear is to observe how it operates. It seeks primarily to keep one in a small place. This can be about having limited access to people or things, not having freedom of movement, and not being able to ask questions. Sounds like the pandemic to me. Two weeks to flatten the curve, I mean five years, or… did we just stop counting? Was the curve flattened yet? I can’t remember anymore. Funny that. I guess the war in Ukraine took over all of society’s attention. Now it’s Trump. We are ruled by one emergency after another.

Fear hates objectivity, it hates questions and anything that could get us larger than that which is defining us. It loves emotional manipulation. “Think like this and you’ll be rewarded.” We internalize so much of what authority thinks of us, or what we think others will think about us. This is not a petty commentary about what is happening in the world. It is a reflection on why we act the way we do when we are confronted with opportunities that make us grow and expand.

This week’s reading is a perfect description of the repercussions of fear and its illusory quality. The 2 of Pentacles starts off the conversation. It suggests the possibilities facing us. We are working with some options that can open doors for us. We might feel as if we could lose our balance and our hold on things but we enjoy it nonetheless. This kind of “imbalance” creates focus and attentiveness. Yet we are still new at this dance. The steps still need to be rehearsed and memorized.

This is when we might want to reach out to someone of authority. The Emperor describes the opportunity to recognize our own ability to respond (responsibility). Sometimes, someone enters our lives seemingly to test us, asking, “If you don’t know how to do this, I’ll do it for you.”

Now, the sensation of being “small” comes in. This is when fear creeps in. So, the advantageous thing to do is to take one gentle step into your own authority, broaden your chest, take a nice deep breath and say, “I’ve got this, thanks.” It’s not a test; it’s an opportunity. There maybe someone there or someone in your mind, it doesn’t matter. Fear wants to keep you small, returning to the place you came from, easily controlled and disempowered.

Even if you don’t have all the answers (and who does!), just calmly tell yourself, “I’ll figure it out as I go.” What this does is stabilize ourselves so that others are not doing it for us. If we lead ourselves forward, our gravity expands because we are defining our progress. We invite new information, new opportunities, more objectivity, more growth, more potential, more expansion, and more situations to step into. We become a leader.

The sensation of making a mistake is always there. It’s a human condition. Mistakes provide opportunities for learning. The 8 of Swords says to us, “Don’t identify with the perception of failure as your authority increases. Don’t engage with fear. Move past the momentary insecurity that you have learned from others.”

In summary, this reading is about not letting authority determine our course of action. We may have had limited choices in the past, but we certainly are not and should not be confined to that state of mind now. This is a psychological shift. The mind is where we address this first. When we are clear and move with clarity, nothing can stop us from embodying our birthright—our fullest potential.

Affirmation: The world is a dance with the unknown, leading me on a beautiful journey of expansion and opportunity. I step into myself as I know I can, calmly and with a full chest. Quietly, I release the old stories with a smile of certainty.

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

Daniel Palmo

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