Meaning of the Ten of Swords (part 2)

There’s more I need to say.

Ten swords are piercing the spine of our beliefs

I always have the tendency to try to sugar coat things….or as I like to call it ‘reframe’ in order to turn a ‘bad/challenging’ card into an opportunity to grow, an opportunity for self development.  Ha ha and while true in the sense that we always have a choice about how we respond to challenges.   The ten of swords is not easy. So I was intrigued to hear Michael Mosley on his podcast ‘Just one thing’ talking about five rules for happiness, the one that he and the presenter of these ideas put above all others was …..

To use SOCIAL FRICTION as FREE therapy.  i.e. if someone is rude to you….instead of getting angry or being ‘hurt’ you use the situation as free therapy.

The example was given of a young girl in a concentration camp.   Within an hour of arriving, both her parents had gone to the gas chamber and she was asked to dance for the camp guards.    A horrifying situation, there was nothing she could do, she had no  choice if she wanted to live.  It was out of her control. And how to dance in such fear terror heart break?

What she did was imagine she was dancing at the Bolshoi ballet in a beautiful costume ….she came to realise her captors were in fact prisoners of their situation also.

While in the telling years later, we can see the tools of survival she used, reframing and ‘act as if’ to get through it, to survive, and I hope to see a new dawn on her release. An exaggerated example I admit for the ten of swords, but given it was offered to demonstrate there is always a way to cope with an impossible situation….it resonated with my desire to always find the potential of a new dawn in a difficult situation. A classic example of trying to find the positive is in this  blog I wrote ages ago.

Nothing takes away from the challenge of the ten of swords.   It’s all very well being told, let go, but it’s hard. And can be painful. 

So how to handle it?? With compassion and imagination it seems to me.

I was wondering further on this and pulled the 8 of pentacles.   Which is a very down to earth, dull, more hard work needed sort of card.   To me it says just get on with the basics, keep working at what you can do, keep up your practice (in my case perhaps the energy medicine exercises I’ve been given with the understanding that they will undo bit by bit over time release/let go of the past damage that has been done.   This is a card that speaks of doing the boring bits, possibly over and over again (there’s something about the figure 8 which is repetitive) until you succeed, step by step, and get to the 9 of pentacles, the lucky bonus, the lucky extra, because you deserve it and all the work you’ve done.  I will say in Energy Medicine the figure 8 is a key aspect…..it is essential for your energy field to have lots of figure 8s in it! Synchronicity at play or not?

I digress, but it is something to do. Keep working away, there’s more work to be done, it may be boring or at least not very exciting, to achieve steady progress…

Perhaps I’ll add a bit of self compassion and imagination …..act as if I am already on the way to full recovery!!

Do come and have a tarot reading with me online or in person in battersea.