The 8 of Swords
I pull a tarot card every day. I shuffle the cards subjecting them to the randomness of life, and despite this process, I very often pull the 8 of Swords. When I do, I feel both frustrated and in awe. What lesson is this card trying to teach me? It must be one that I have not yet learned, as I constantly pull this card!
The 8 of Swords contains a person standing blindfolded, loosely bound by a rope, amongst 8 swords piercing the ground she stands on. She appears trapped, but given a closer look, you might notice the rope loosely bound around her upper body is not binding her legs or feet. I imagine the rope could easily fall away with movement. This would liberate her upper body, making it possible to remove the blindfold. After removing the blindfold, she might see she is standing on dirt and puddles of water, a steady, yet sometimes messy terrain to manage. If she turns around, perhaps she sees a place she calls home. When I pull this card, I often ask, what do I perceive to be trapped by? And almost always, it’s my limiting, distorted beliefs about myself.
I am currently reading James Doty’s Mind Magic. Doty (2024) writes about the “inner critic” as “the unfortunate collaboration between the default mode network (DMN) and the sympathetic nervous system (SNS)” (p. 36). The DMN is a network composed of the midline structures of the brain, including the medial prefrontal cortex, and allows us to reflect on ourselves. It is essentially the chitter-chatter of the mind. When we experience the stress response generated by the SNS, we feel activated, making it difficult to access the power of our attention. The more activated we are, the less access we have to the power of our attention. When this happens, we may become overly self-conscious, trapped by the chitter chatter of our inner critic. Doty (2024) reminds us that when we are stressed, we are unable to access our flow state, the state in which you are absorbed by an engaging, enjoyable task that holds your attention.
I began the morning of the fall equinox with a long walk with a friend and ending with harvesting lavender in my yard. When I opened up the garage door to gather some shears and garden gloves I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. A tiny bird was trying to leave the garage through one of the south facing glass windows. I watched as the bird flew her body into the glass a number of times. Despite my encouragement to move her body and notice the wide open space available to her, she continued with no success to fly into the glass window. I was determined to help her as something inside of me deeply resonated with her panicked efforts to escape her situation. I grabbed a pad used to kneel while gardening and brought it under her feet. She climbed onto it, and when I turned her away from the south facing garage window toward the wide open space serving as her exit, she flew out of the garage, over my home and was free.
The stress she experienced while trying to find a way out of the garage limited her ability to see what was around her. The lesson she taught me was to slow down, notice my surroundings, and move with intention. Cultivating efforts to access a state of calm reveals this truth. My limiting beliefs often spoken in the voice of my inner critic, are in fact, nothing but obstacles to mental freedom. Similar to the figure in the 8 of Swords, the bird was indeed not trapped at all. And neither am I.
As I meditate on this card, I consider the question, what limiting beliefs are keeping me bound to old stories about myself or others?
