Trust and the Tarot’s Wheel of Fortune

I'm in the middle of packing for a river rafting adventure with my dad.

A few years ago I did a solo trip with my mother, and now I'm doing the same with him. It's exciting and frankly, also nerve-wracking.

I'm on a healing journey with my body right now, and while I'm excited for the trip, I've noticed myself in full control mode, not an unfamiliar place, making sure I have everything I need to feel well on the trip. Responsible? Maybe. Hypervigilant? For sure.

Spiritual teacher Michael Singer (famous for The Untethered Soul) says we are the sum of our learned experiences. Somewhere along the way, I had enough experiences of unpreparedness, or of a perceived failure of ‘the system’, that I learned I must always be ready, and that I alone can control my body and my experience. 

Here's the tension I live in: I value intentionality, self-reliance, and competence.



And yet the very thing that makes me capable is what makes trust hard. I fall short on trusting my body, and on trusting spirit, life, the universe to carry on without my management. What is the difference between over-managing and being responsible? Where is the growth opportunity?



Several years ago I decided I needed to take some time to examine the word surrender — which, at the time, smacked of giving up. I had to dismantle that false binary. Either I'm trying and participating, or I'm not. That inquiry is actually what deepened my practice with the tarot, and honestly, I'm still working on it. The Wheel of Fortune card (#10 in the major arcana) asks us to sit in the center of the tumult without getting caught up in it and simply do the next right thing asked of us. Hard to know what that thing is sometimes though right?

Isn't this question so much of why we're here? Do we all have some version of this tension inside of us? Just me??

Next week on the water, control won't be available. Life will do what it does. My body will do what it does. And the river, the weather, Mother Nature, most certainly will do what they do. I can participate and let myself be carried. The river knows what to do. The weather will be what it is (and it isn't looking great at the moment) and I can choose to resist or to relax. For three days, I surrender to our river guides and the elements.

My body knows what to do. At least that is the narrative I am imprinting on myself - fake it til you make it, right? I can create the conditions, but I cannot do the healing.

My practice lately: each evening, I name three things that worked out just fine today without any input from me. Turns out I'm not as necessary as I thought.

Singer teaches that it doesn't really matter what got stuck inside us or how. Our practice is simply to move forward without getting more stuck — to let go, to let go, to let go.

What narratives do you reflexively fall back into when you're in uncertainty? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Yours in living intentionally, imperfectly -

Laura