78 Degrees Of Wisdom

A weekend in the West Country is always a good way to blow off a few cobwebs, but this weekend held an added bonus – learning a new, empowering skill for working with your intuition. That’s probably not most people’s first thought about the tarot, but then they obviously haven’t met Kate Tomas. She’s a talented crystal healer who also happens to be a whizz with the tarot deck and has a gift for teaching others to access their own inner wisdom with the cards. In only two days, something that had been pretty much impenetrable to me suddenly made complete sense and I had a total blast learning it. That, as they say, is a result!

Kate uses the Mythic Tarot, which uses images from the Greek myths to tell the archetypal stories that the tarot represents. All human experience is depicted in the cards and the interpretations are psychological, not fatalistic. To get clarity on your own inner guidance and the circumstances surrounding you, this method of reading is a tool par excellence. You don’t have to have any grounding in myth to use this deck, as the illustrations are very clear, light and accessible – unlike most traditional tarot decks.

What surprised me most was how much fun it was to learn. OK, there is a lot to pack into your head in a short space of time, but the images speak to a deeper part of yourself so it is quite a simple process to intuit the meaning of a card even if you’ve never clapped eyes on it before. What I particularly like is that this is a kind of fast-track way to turn up the volume on your intuition.

The voice of inner guidance speaks in very soft tones, so it is often difficult to distinguish between what is intuition and what is simply a passing thought. Sometimes it comes with more intensity, but generally it is a quiet inner prompting, rather than a booming flash of insight. The beauty of working with a pictorial deck of tarot cards is that you can not only begin to make clearer sense of the insights you’re getting, but that you can also find clues as to how to work with them. As the mythologist, Joseph Campbell, has said ““It is the function of art to carry us beyond speech to experience.” The images allow us to access feelings that words cannot fully express.

The watchword for intuition is subtlety. It won’t shout at you, so you have to develop your sensitivity. To access strong inner wisdom, you need to become like the fairytale Princess and the Pea – able to detect even the most minor and subtle of feelings. That comes with stillness, self-awareness and practice. Equally you can use a tool like the tarot, but less for divination than self-knowledge. Real empowerment comes not from knowing what is coming, but from knowing how to deal with it.

If you want to develop your own intuition, start by making the very real assumption that you are always receiving information intuitively – every time you have a gut reaction to a person, a place or a circumstance, that is your own inner knowing trying to get your attention. How many times have you continued to do something you had a bad feeling about, which of course ended badly? Or how often have you instinctively felt something was right and followed your hunch to a positive conclusion? You’re already doing this naturally, so now it’s just about offering nature a little help.

Pay attention this week to the coincidences that show up in your life, noticing patterns wherever they occur. Sometimes you’ll find that a particular symbol keeps cropping up or that you keep hearing different people tell the same kind of story about what’s happening in their lives. Then notice how that might be relevant to you and your life. Guidance can come in the most bizarre of ways – through things people tell you, something you randomly see in a book or hear on television or radio and occasionally things just fall into your lap. A friend of mine recently had a strong intuition to call me, so she used the number programmed into her phone, but somehow got connected with a television producer she’d lost touch with, who only that day had been discussing using her on a future programme. That’s a little spooky, but a good illustration of how ignoring your intuition could cost you opportunities.

One great daily practice is to write a few notes in a guidance journal each morning. Get quiet, do some slow, deep breaths and feel yourself connecting with your inner wisdom, the part of you that knows what is best for you and holds all the information that you need. Ask it what you need to know for today and write down everything that pops into your head. Do not censor it and above all do not judge it. You may get images or symbols and perhaps a phrase or two, or even just a strong sense that you need to pursue something.

You’ll feel like you’re making it up, but that doesn’t matter at all. Just persevere and you’ll strengthen your ability to distinguish between random thoughts and inspiration. At the end of the week, read the notes and see how many of the images or impulses were significant or related to things that occurred during the week. Avoid the temptation to re-read the material any earlier, as you will only discourage yourself if nothing is making too much sense straight away. Like any other mental muscle, intuition takes practice to keep it in tune, so don’t give up at the first hurdle.

Of course, you could always hot-foot it down to Glastonbury and do a tarot course with Kate to get your intuition fired up and ready to rumble. Get your skates on, though, as she does have a waiting list for both her crystal healing and tarot courses. Also, as she’s due to be featured in the October issue of Vogue, I’d suggest signing up for it sooner rather than later if you want to beat the Christmas rush. You can contact her via www.katetomashealing.com.

Coach Fabulous is updated every Thursday at http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. You can also use the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right. For alert emails on new postings, send a blank email to IAmFabulousCo@aol.com with 'Subscribe' in the title field. All material © 2006 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 13 Jun 06)