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| i said WAIT |
where you stand, the filter. if i have not named you, go no further (right): oh that's nice, you're happy :)) the 9 of Cups is a quiet joy; each thing in its place, the goblets are stacked and stable and spilling into each other, each filling the next. It's the feeling of being in a good time that doesn't feel too good to be true. It seems unnecessary to say that truth and goodness aren't opposed, but I think most of us often encounter them that way: what feels good is bad for us, deceptive, and truth is the bitter but necessary medicine. But a spring in a mountain is true, and good, and that's where you stand, in a moment of joy that promises to keep slowly, calmly, filling up your future.
The importance of a more restrained goodness is immediately reinforced by 7 of Cups, Debauch, presented to the right in our "warning" position. When we're comfortable, it's easy to seek intensity, higher peaks of pleasure since our baseline existence has become enjoyable. Debauch is the will o the wisp, the destructive fantasy. too much of a good thing, saturated pleasure that loses its context and contrast and begins to relate only to itself, robbing itself of meaning in the process. Below, in the "meaning" position, we see the Cruelty, the 9 of Swords, which points to allowing ourselves to sink into the poisoned atmosphere of violence because it feels necessary to wake from some nightmare. It's revenge and regret rolled into one, the unconscious outburst that we punish ourselves brutally for, or the urge to condemn another for their lack of self control when it hurts us. Those two cards together really reinforce taking a cautious, caring attitude towards our unconscious; we can't let it lead us into excess, nor can we kill those desires in ourselves.
Above, the Aeon tells us what needs to get done: allowing ourselves to exist in the world of the new. Often, our subconscious has a better read on the evolving dynamics our lives and relationships than our waking mind does, and it's our active consciousness that gets us into trouble by refusing to take the steps necessary to progress to the next phase of our lives. In response, our dreaming minds create fixations, indulge in harmful patterns, either to force us to understand what we need to pay attention to, or to make our current moment so painful that we have to make a change. Both are painful, and both are unnecessary. The chiefest crime of the self is to refuse to exist in the moment that you are in. Even when that moment is harmful or negative or indulgent in some way, if we admit where we are standing and identify it, we can never be lost.
There's an example I throw around a lot with my friends drawn from daoist teaching: it might seem that half-watching a movie while half-scrolling on your phone is plainly against dao; refusing to fully inhabit either moment and compromising both as a result. This is true, but the solution is not always to just pick one option. Instead, if you admit to yourself that this moment is about distraction and dissociation, you are once again back in line with the dao.
The quintessence of these cards is 9, the Hermit. You've gone ahead of yourself and left your senses behind. Pause and wait for them to catch up with you, so you can find out where you are. Don't make guesses, don't listen to half heard voices. Chill out!!!! Where are you???
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| i bet ur somewhere rlly cool after all :)) |
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