Intuitive messages

ravenest said:

To misquote a 'great' Australian politician; ' Evolution wasn't meant to be easy'.

Click to expand...

<chokes>

<recovers enough to ram on Pedant's Hat and say> That's paraphrasing him, surely, rather than misquoting?

<chokes some more>

You forget I was working in the Prosecutions area of the Australian Taxation Office when he was treasurer. I *know* what happened. I was, in fact, forced at metaphorical gunpoint to help bury the metaphorical bodies, much against my will.

But back on-topic, and with reference to Teheuti's original question, perhaps intuition is the mechanism with which we receive and process "channelled" or "psychic" messages, much as the logical mind is the mechanism with which we create and/or consider what are accurately known as philosophical ideas.

Hello, Teheuti.
Is "intuitive messages" not usually another way of saying "I intuitively get messages" or "I use my intuition to get messages"? i.e. rather than working out some 'meaning' from books & formulae?

As for where these "messages" come from, I've always assumed that for some people (especially those with slightly schizotypal personalities) some external entity like an 'angel', a 'guide' or a 'spirit' ... or even God ... is presumed to be the originator.

For others, (especially 'hard' logicians / psychologists) they are presumed to originate in one's own sub/unconscious mind. The cards are seen as one of many ways that one can access and bring to consciousness things we may, at some level, already "know" (or "gno" - as in "gnosis") but which in normal circumstances we suppress, when we are in our rational, mundane mode.

Yet others think that all knowledge / gnosis is 'out there' and potentially accessible by everyone (in some equivalent of the Akasha / Akashic records - i.e. 'all-that-is').

People's use of loaded phrases with hidden assumptions (that are usually neither acknowledged nor explained) really interests me. Another popular one is people talking about whether something is "meant to be". Meant by whom??? Are they tacitly assuming some God ... or some actual, conscious entity called Fate / the Fates ... or even their own "higher self"? This phrase surely implies a very deterministic view of life (& a personal helplessness or lack of agency.)

Teheuti said:

I've noticed several people referring to getting intuitive messages from the cards. What is meant by messages? Where/who do they come from? And what is meant by the messages being intuitive? How is this different from psychic messages? Or channeled ones? I'm just trying to understand.

Click to expand...

Hi Teheuti,

I'll try to forgo explanations and theories and focus on the facts. I personally would define them as messages, because they definitely don't come from your conscious mind, or from anywhere that has anything to do with your everyday life. Sometimes one looks at the cards and blurts out stuff that is definitely NOT in the books, but that turns out to be eerily accurate.

I have a sort of longish but good (I think) example. I'm pretty new to this, and I have been doing your 21 Ways of Read a Card course. Once I got to Step 4, Story, I got stuck. I drew a pretty busy card, full of animals, beings, even statues, so for days I tried to consciously tell the story from this or that point of view, and nothing came out. About a week later, I realized that I had been missing the main story told by the card, that it was a particular animal's journey, and I sat down to write it.

After the first few words, something happened. Some kind of dam broke, and I found myself feverishly filling page after page. One by one, the characters in the story started talking, and I just jutted down what they were saying, which I had not known the moment before THEY said it. And the story developed by itself until its conclusion, which I wasn't sure about until I arrived at it --quite literally.

I just looked at the manuscript to make sure: there are like two or three corrections, tops. It was basically a dictation. Who or what was dictating that story? I don't know. It wasn't me, or at least the conscious me, that's for sure. A friend of mine suggested that I was channeling. It is possible --especially if the entity challenged is some sort of (less talented) Oscar Wilde. It has zero to do with anything I have ever written, before or after: that is for sure.

I don't think we will ever arrive at any cut-and-dried conclusions about this sort of thing. Perhaps the only thing we can say for sure is that the cards somehow work as intuition/psychic/channeling triggers, and that we get messages through them from parts unknown. And I suspect those mysterious parts will remain uncharted.

Starshower said:

Hello, Teheuti.
Is "intuitive messages" not usually another way of saying "I intuitively get messages" or "I use my intuition to get messages"? i.e. rather than working out some 'meaning' from books & formulae?

Click to expand...

Intuition would then be a mysterious mechanism for channeling? As you note, some people could be channeling external gods or entities, and others, aspects of the self (entities within) of which we are normally unconscious. Why then not just use the word 'channeling'? It would clear up the confusion between that and the intuition that scientists and philosophers have been studying since the 19th century.

The cards are seen as one of many ways that one can access and bring to consciousness things we may, at some level, already "know" (or "gno" - as in "gnosis") but which in normal circumstances we suppress, when we are in our rational, mundane mode.

Click to expand...

This is one of the ways that I see intuition operating in Tarot. I talk often of the wisdom of the self that 'sees' more than we give it credit for. However, I don't personally see that part as infallible, nor is it especially good at predicting the future, except where knowledge, commonsense and past experience make such predictions feasible. In other words, even that part of myself is not very good (beyond 50-50) as to whether a package will arrive today or tomorrow (other than probability or inside information). In my own Tarot practice I find that helping a client access their own 'wisdom within' through the cards is far more effective than my doing it for them. Lenormand is still blowing me away with the precision of the answers, so I'm waiting for the dust to settle before I try to analyze it too much.

People's use of loaded phrases with hidden assumptions (that are usually neither acknowledged nor explained) really interests me. Another popular one is people talking about whether something is "meant to be". Meant by whom??? Are they tacitly assuming some God ... or some actual, conscious entity called Fate / the Fates ... or even their own "higher self"? This phrase surely implies a very deterministic view of life (& a personal helplessness or lack of agency.)

Click to expand...

Very powerful stuff. I agree that "meant to be" is probably a misnomer. I see it as something I once read as an explanation of karma. Our past (and this is as valid if considering the nature and nurture of just this lifetime) sets us on a metaphorical train-track that, while not totally pre-determined, moves us through changing life experiences in a mostly set way. It takes a lot to change the trajectory of that path. Sometimes I feel myself straining against the trajectory of the rails and then falling, more or less, back into its familiar pattern. It's not so easy to predict the random events that stream past us, and few of these set us onto a different track.

FLizarraga said:

One by one, the characters in the story started talking, and I just jutted down what they were saying, which I had not known the moment before THEY said it. And the story developed by itself until its conclusion, which I wasn't sure about until I arrived at it --quite literally.
. . . Who or what was dictating that story? I don't know. It wasn't me, or at least the conscious me, that's for sure. A friend of mine suggested that I was channeling. It is possible --especially if the entity challenged is some sort of (less talented) Oscar Wilde. It has zero to do with anything I have ever written, before or after: that is for sure.

Click to expand...

I've certainly had experiences like this and the feeling, for me, is one of being blessed. I stand in awe when it happens. It's one of the experiences that may be triggered by deeply going into the exercises in 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card (although no guarantees!). Personally, I think we are programmed for ecstasy and there are mechanisms for getting there. Most of the time when reading the cards, we don't reach those levels, but there are moments of grace.

However, in my experience, those states are no guarantee that predictions are infallible. They can be inspiring and occasionally life-changing, and we may see clearer than we ordinarily do, but not always. Think of religious or political zealots who have inspired massacres in the name of such inner experiences that they ascribe to a god or principle.

I don't think we will ever arrive at any cut-and-dried conclusions about this sort of thing. Perhaps the only thing we can say for sure is that the cards somehow work as intuition/psychic/channeling triggers, and that we get messages through them from parts unknown. And I suspect those mysterious parts will remain uncharted.

Click to expand...

I don't agree that those parts are totally uncharted. Yes, an element of mystery may still remain, and hopefully a feeling of grace or blessing. But I wonder how much a desire for mystery keeps us from looking too closely at those things that can be known. Is there a self-protective fear that keeps us from looking more closely? What are we protecting? BTW, I would answer that often times that self-protective fear does seem to be necessary; it is, in part, what compassion addresses. But, how good is it, ultimately, to let such a fear limit our knowledge?

This raises the question: Is there any evidence that reading the cards "without" relying on intuitive messages is any more accurate?

If we're talking 50/50 accuracy for intuition in general--pure chance, in other words--this might still be better than a more mechanical approach to card reading.

Teheuti said:

Personally, I think we are programmed for ecstasy and there are mechanisms for getting there.

Click to expand...

Ah. So beautifully said. Thank you.

firemaiden said:

I like what you say, and I think I know what you mean, and probably most everyone has an idea of what you mean, because the word "spirit" is another one of these vague concepts we accept and use without examining too much, and if we do begin to examine the word, it starts to fall apart. What is "spirit "? Is our brain really different from our "spirit" ? and what about the "soul" ? Perhaps these are different layers of our brain ? Are experiences stored as memory in the DNA ? Are experience/memories from different stages of our evolution stored in our DNA ? Does part of us remember what it was like to be a worm, a lizard, a monkey ? Does our "spirit" survive our brain ? What happens to the electricity of the synapses ? etc ...

Click to expand...

Yes. What one means by "spirit" is a matter of personal belief. My own, for what it is worth, is that we are all part of some kind of immense consciousness which is beyond human definition but which I would call "Spirit". Some would call it "God"; some would call it something else. I believe we all have parts of that great consciousness burning within us and we develop it it as opportunity, condition and choice allow.

As Teilhard de Chardin said in Le Milieu Divin we are all spiritual beings having a human experience.

Those questions you ask have all been asked before and we all burn with curiosity about them in the same way as you hope we burn with curiosity about science and the meaning of things generally. People search in so many different ways - culturally and personally.It is wonderful that we have the freedom to do this.

The questions are always so important and whatever answers we find are often just the beginning - as TS Eliot would have said

Thank you so much for joining us.

Teheuti said:

I don't agree that those parts are totally uncharted. Yes, an element of mystery may still remain, and hopefully a feeling of grace or blessing. But I wonder how much a desire for mystery keeps us from looking too closely at those things that can be known. Is there a self-protective fear that keeps us from looking more closely? What are we protecting? BTW, I would answer that often times that self-protective fear does seem to be necessary; it is, in part, what compassion addresses. But, how good is it, ultimately, to let such a fear limit our knowledge?

Click to expand...

Although there is undoubtedly an element of fear present, I personally think that it does not figure in the equation in any meaningful way. IMHO, as Tarot readers --or artists, or practitioners of whatever craft that deals with these levels of awareness-- we act as midwives, bringing stuff out of the dark womb of mystery and into the sunlight. Or perhaps it could be said that we act as spelunkers, exploring and mapping caves with the Hermit's lantern.

However, I think that mystery is an inexhaustible treasure, in a Harry Potter kind of way: it grows every time we take something out of it. In the same way, those caverns we explore keep showing new twists and turns every time we think we have touched bottom. I'm not sure I'm making a lot of sense here, but it will have to do for the moment.

momentarylight said:

Yes. What one means by "spirit" is a matter of personal belief. My own, for what it is worth, is that we are all part of some kind of immense consciousness which is beyond human definition but which I would call "Spirit". Some would call it "God"; some would call it something else. I believe we all have parts of that great consciousness burning within us and we develop it it as opportunity, condition and choice allow.

As Teilhard de Chardin said in Le Milieu Divin we are all spiritual beings having a human experience.

Click to expand...

I like what Teheuti said in that ....we are programmed for ecstasy.... I would say that we have the potential for ecstasy and we fulfil that through learning and experience. Karma to me is simply that learning experience, not something punitive. Karma restores balance or harmony, something to which we all aspire I believe.

Reading the cards or other forms of symbolic language enables me to use aspects of my mind and spirit. Some people say those things are the same, incidentally.

Of course we are not always right. That does not matter. We are sometimes right or partly right. To my mind it is the exercise and the engagement with someone else or even our inner selves which matters more than being "right".

And we should have fun, enjoy and stretch ourselves along the way.