In my 20’s I had a series of dreams... Over the series of some months I dreamt that I was a woman living on a space station floating above a planet. I assume that it was Earth. At least, it felt familiar to me in my dream. In these dreams I spoke French but whenever I woke up I couldn’t remember the French I knew I was speaking. Over time I worked hard to learn how to lucidly dream so I could prove to myself that I was speaking French. Finally, after months of effort I was successful. I woke up speaking a French turn of phrase. And, before you go thinking that surely I unconsciously picked up French from somewhere I can attest that I had zero French exposure. Ya girl grew up next door to Tijuana. I spoke Spanish as a second language both in my neighborhood and at school. There was no French anywhere in my life. Later, I learned Mandarin then picked up some Korean and Turkish. No cross contamination. Nothing I have learned in this lifetime has any French. Wild, right? I could not find any future life progression spreads, which was strange because we use tarot to discern a future state all of the time.In fact, that is the main purpose for many. I was astounded to see that while there are plenty of past life regression spreads, there weren’t any future life progression spreads. To me, this seems like a natural thing for tarot to do. Tarot is only constrained by our models for reality and time. We perceive time as flowing in one direction, but when we start to look at it from a quantum perspective that hard and fast rule appears to be a bit more complicated. Perhaps we might see our past and future selves more closely as dimensional selves. Like multiple windows through states where there is one quantum constant-the soul-vibrating throughout each instance simultaneously. Did you ever make a home-grown cartoon when you were little? I did. I remember drawing each instance of my stick figure over a bunch of notecards. Each instance seems relatively self-contained, but it is in the movement, a rapid fire sequence of shuffled cards that creates a sense of development and time. I think the idea of past, present, and future selves might work like that. The cool thing is that once you get a sense of a future you, you can shape your life now to help, avoid, or enhance that other instance. For example, have you ever heard of people having strange phobias only to find out it has a past life connection? Maybe someone hates having anything around her neck: no necklaces, no tight collars until she learns that in a past life she was strangled. That is one of many stories I have heard where trauma carries across lifetimes. A Future Life Progression allows you to understand your role as it is now and how it will come into play in this future version of you. In a sense, doing the work of processing trauma in this lifetime, or breaking family and cultural toxic legacies in this incarnation means less being carried over into other instances of you. (And, this doesn’t just affect future you. You can also affect past instances of you!) (Woah, dude…) This is important now because humanity is at a stunningly frightening moment in our evolution.Many of us wonder if the true end of days are upon us, or if the planet will be healthy enough to sustain our lives. We are facing a global challenge that is terrifying in scope. Future Life Progressions help us discern, in concrete ways, the selves that are to come. This is not the end. Not by a long shot. A few things to keep in mind about your reading: You may find that some of the things that future you are dealing with are the same things that present you are working on. If you can successfully process the stuff in this instance, it might change what future instances deal with. You may not like future you. We cannot all be heroes in every lifetime. Sometimes, we can be “bad people”. While it may be hard to see, it is important to honor the truth of the reading. You are seeing “a” future you, not “the” future you. You are seeing one instance of so very many. You are being shown this particular future you for a reason. There is something for you to know in this life time so that you can somehow impact the one you are seeing in your spread. Are you itching to get your hands on my spread by now?Awesome!
I based this spread on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I felt that this was a great way to get a nice 360 degree vantage point. I also wrote a guided meditation that you can download as well as some questions for reflection after you have done this spread. I typically do not write spreads where you have “one question = one card”. Most of my spreads will allow for a scatter of cards so that you can build a narrative more easily. Each number represents the number of cards you need to pull (I don’t think that was explained clearly enough in the graph below.) Please do leave a comment below as I would love to hear who you are to be!
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There are times when a tarot reading can feel mighty disappointing. Perhaps we wanted the bright flash of new information, or hope from interesting places. Why is a reading telling us what we already know? Why might we need to hear a confirmation of what we know is true? Why are we getting reruns when we want a sneak peak on what’s to come?
What is going on here and why does it matter? And, why might we feel let-down when this phenomenon occurs? What is going on with tarot and within ourselves that might feel like we have been had? First, note that a reader telling you things you can instantly confirm (while boring) is the mark of a good reader. It takes far more skill for a reader to confirm what we know than it is to make up some malarkey about what may or may not happen 5 years from now. It is frighteningly easy to give predictions in the long term that are impossible to verify. While the sitter is waiting for a husband with a first letter of “J” to show up 4 years from now the sitter will be long gone in most cases. However, a reader who is talking about immediate issues: the micromanaging boss, the still living-at-home adult child, the husband who has been distant — these things, while they may be “what I already know” can be instantly confirmed for accuracy. Recapping known and salient information takes far more skill while illustrating that the tarot is in fact speaking to the sitter’s life and not just making up a bunch of baloney. ... Secondly, there could be a mismatch between expectations and the experience being offered by the reader. Sometimes a “what I already know” experience means that the expectations of the sitter are different from the type of reader they have hired to conduct the session. Historically, there has been an expectation for a showman style of psychic experiences. People have been trained to expect the ‘Big Reveal’, “OMG how did she know that?!” If we have an expectation that this style is the norm, that we’d be wow’d with information about the mystery of our lives, then a reader who is verifying known information may not live up to expectation. Does that mean the reader is bad or perhaps just a bad fit for what the sitter wanted? “Don’t tell me about the fact that I have not dated for five years, when will I get married, though?!” We might expect to be told about a future date while the reader is confirming known information. Is tarot just for future predictions, or can we allow that it is looking at a person or a situation more holistically? Often, this has to do with the reader’s style and approach to sessions. It is important to research what the tarot reader does and how she does it. Read her reviews; what do they say about her reading and intuitive style, these are often clues to see if her style is a match. Just like with any other service practitioner, it is important to find out if the provider will meet our base expectations before we buy. Can that idea just die, please? There is an oft-repeated drumbeat in the tarot community that goes like this: “You shouldn’t charge for your gifts.” The reasoning behind this statement varies but it usually boils down to two arguments: The first is spiritual in nature. The idea is that if you have been given the spiritual gift of reading tarot, then you should not monetize it. Your tarot reading should be freely given because your spiritual ability has been freely given to you. The second argument usually has to do with accessibility. Many readers find it a hard square being caring healer with a pay wall. I am going to respond to both. The Spiritual Argument No one really knows where this whole ‘you shouldn’t charge for your gifts’ thing comes from. But I suspect that it has Judeo-Christian origins. Jesus walked into church one day and cast out the money changers. He made it clear that commerce and spiritual activity are kept separate. Most churches are free to attend and there is typically a legacy of charitable works for the poor. That being said, I don’t know any full time religious figure that doesn’t get paid. While nuns take a vow of poverty, they are also fed, clothed, have generous health insurance plans, and are taken care of in their retirement years. Same goes for Rabbis, Priests, Imans, and Buddist monks. By tithe, charity, food in a begging bowl, or by contributions all of these people who do spiritual work are paid. They should be paid. They should be taken care of as they care for others. To expect that a spiritual worker just labor for free seems like we don’t really want them to be taken care of in. The days of Manna falling from Heaven ended a long time ago. Lets talk about the “gifts” aspect of the argument. Say that you are an incredible psychic. You are able to find buried treasure and speak the name of future kings. But what makes you different than having the gift of mathematical ability, or the gift of a great literary mind? What if your gift is that you kick a ball really well? Do we not as a society pay people who have these varied talents? Then why would those who have an ephemeral ability be any different? Why do we shroud intuitive abilities behind a wall of superstition and rules that actually binds our hands from serving more people? Here is the fear: that if you do monetize your intuitive talents, then some force (you know the Force out there, somewhere) will take it away from you. Where does this superstition come from? I am not sure, but it is old. And it isn’t true. It is just another random old superstition that isn’t based on anything real, or even helpful. It is operating from a (usually) uninformed and un-examined belief that the Universe has some kind of score card wherein some abilities are ok to charge for, but not these. I ask you, why? Economic Argument The second argument usually comes from people who feel squeamish about charging money for their services. Often, they have a background in education or nursing where they were not experiencing the direct transaction of money for their efforts. They taught (or took blood pressure or whatever) people and those people were helped but almost mystically they saw a deposit in their bank account every two weeks. They often have a disconnect with the economic machine underpinning all of that to make it happen. Let me just add that I know that person well, because I was once that person. This lovely person who decides to build a tarot business feels at odds with charging people directly. The guilt is usually tied to underlying and often un-examined feelings around money, access and privilege. They assuage that guilt by creating systems such as sliding scale payments, or charging so low that they cannot support themselves with the work. They don’t want to “read for rich people.” They want to be a friend and helper to all. This sentiment does not square well, however, if you are trying to become a full time reader so it boils down to this essential question: Do you want your readings to financially support you, or do you want your readings to be charitable contributions? Of course there are shades of nuance here but this is essentially a philosophical reflection. It is challenging to hold both arguments and make them work. Here is why: As a self-employed person I have to ensure that each reading is priced so that I am able to pay my bills, my health insurance and my retirement contributions in addition to the business expenses that go into running a business. Oh, also I pay twice the amount of taxes, yay self-employment! While I may only be paid for the actual hour I am reading, it has to be enough to cover all the other things that I am doing to keep the business afloat (writing this article, bookkeeping, emails, newsletters, class creation and so on). This is a different economic standpoint and often one not understood by people in muggle (your standard wage earning) jobs. The economics of direct service self-employment looks nothing like a salary or even an hourly wage earners. So every month I need a minimum amount to keep my business and my life afloat. But also, (caveat here-every reader is different) I have a finite number of reading sessions in me each week. Once I cross over that number my accuracy, compassion, and insightfulness begin to tank. I do not want to give bad readings because I am exhausted so I have to throttle the amount of readings I can do. Therefore, it is a dance between what I am physically capable of, what I need to live, and business costs. These calculations directly inform what I charge in an hour and also how many hours I will schedule in a week. If I add sliding scale payments that essentially means that I will make wealthier people pay a higher amount to cover the lower cost of the person who cannot. Or, I have to read for more hours to make up for discounted sessions. Honestly, I do not feel comfortable being the person who makes that economic determination for others. I do not want to politicize my work in this way. Because I only have a finite amount of readings in a week I need all of them to pay my bills. But charitable contributions I do give. I give financially monthly to nonprofits that do work that I believe in. I volunteer for a local wildlife rehabilitation center and I also volunteer weekly for Meals of Wheels. I volunteer in ways that allow me to give back, don’t contribute to reader burn-out, and as a bonus, I gain new perspectives because I am giving in different ways. I am only able to give like this because of the career I have. Just like anyone else who has a muggle job and volunteers in their spare time. I think there is no real direct correlation between your special aptitudes and those being the aptitudes you need to give away. In fact, the time you spend volunteering by using skill sets in other areas will only enhance what you have monetized. I am a better reader when I spend some time outside of the tarot booth doing other things that feed my heart and help others. There is more than one way to give. In conclusion, I think it is such a beautiful sentiment in the tarot and intuitive communities that so many struggle with the idea of monetizing their time and capabilities. We are labeled as flim-flam con artists and people of the worse repute when in actuality, most of us want to give and be of service. I think this is the right problem to have because it speaks to an underlying ethical and moral code that is needed in this world. But, I also think there are ways to examine how we want to read, who we want to read for, and whether we actually want to make a living doing it. Hey, still here? Cool! You might be interested in this:
Every week I send out Fortune Friday, yes this is a totally free and totally rad weekly personal fortune. I switch it up, too. Some weeks its tarot, others are I-Ching and some are even silly and fun like the Magic 8 Ball. Get yours inboxed every Friday. Thanks for reading! |
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Jenna Matlin
M.S. in Organizational Psychology and Leadership Categories
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