TAROT CARDS

I remember when I used to "read" people using tarot cards. From the feedback I got, I believe I was quite good at it. A lot of people were surprised at how accurate my readings were. In retrospect, I am not surprised that they were.

You see, reading tarot cards is like looking at a painting. We put together a story, an emotion, a thought or and idea based on the images and colors that we see on the canvass. The same goes with tarot reading. A story or thought is interpreted from the cards spread out on the table. There are general associations with each card (the card DEATH usually means change, moving from one phase to another, the card THE EMPEROR usually means rigidity, tradition and authority) and each position (the cards are spread in a pattern, each position in the pattern having a significance, like FAMILY, HEALTH, THE FUTURE, THE PAST). So I get the meanings of each card, their position and significance, their general feel, and put it all together intuitively.

Just like viewing a painting, there is no hard rules as to how to read the tarot. It uses a lot of intuition. So, why are the readings accurate?

We are all connected.

Deep down inside we all have similar experiences. We have all loved someone who can never love us back the same way. We have all lost something. We have all experienced happiness. We all WANT happiness. All of us have felt inferior. All of us have felt alone.

When I read the cards, I reflect a lot of what I have seen, felt and experienced to the person I'm reading for. What they see as my accurate reading into their lives is (more accurately) and accurate reading into MY life and all our lives. Our diverse, separate, unique yet undeniably connected lives.

CONNECTED

I remember feeling so alone and isolated sometimes back in high school. I felt like the world was spinning with everyone else and leaving me behind. And I know almost everyone has felt this way at one time.

I remember something I heard in college, where there was forest somewhere. People generally thought it was a forest, seeing hundreds and thousands of trees growing from the ground. But later on they found out that it was just ONE SINGLE PLANT, that they were all connected under the soil. An entire forest, a single being.

I think people are like that. On the surface, we al have our individual lives, different, separated, and seemingly alone, but at the roots we are all connected to one (And I'm not talking about being connected to a MATRIX supplying energy to robot armies). We are one.

AEON FLUX

One of my favorite cartoons is AEON FLUX. They have great philosophical thought in a lot of the episodes. There was this episode when they found out that at one time, humans KNEW that they were all connected. They felt their connection to other people, to ALL people. But then a virus attacked that part of the brain that made us aware of this connection. This virus has since then been passed on, and inherited genetically. So now, here we are, feeling alone in this world. Unaware of the inherent connection we have will all humans. Thus, we have division, hatred, fear, insecurity, paranoia and violence.

I find this to be very true. A lot of the horrible things people do to each other comes from not realizing that we are all connected. When we feel bad we lash out at other people hoping to make ourselves feel better. When we're insecure, we put down others to elevate ourselves. We rarely realize that it only makes it worse when we do so.

Oh, and I found this just now.

Nicknamed "Pando" (meaning, "I spread") by the scientists who studied it, the world's largest living organism is a 6,600-ton aspen grove and is one gargantuan plant. The entire 200-acre area it covers is filled with what appears to be an entire forest of trees, but all of the trees are "suckers" that have grown from the root system of a single tree. Scientists determined that these trees are all part of a single organism by conducting genetic tests on tissue samples from all of the trees.

http://www.extremescience.com/aspengrove.htm