Tarot is a mirror that reflects to us whatever is circulating through our being in this moment. For the last couple days, I was feeling a lot like The Moon, whose nocturnal light summons up from the subterranean depths of the self all of the creepy-crawlie emotions that aren’t always allowed their time on the stage of conscious awareness.

Why are those creep-crawlie feelings kept at bay? Probably because they’re intensely palpable, yet bafflingly ambiguous. They are the feelings that slap you out of nowhere and baffle you, leaving you in a state what-in-the-actual-fuck?! bewilderment. They are emotions that can be exhaustingly and viscerally pervasive, yet leave you clueless as to where they came from.

When these moon-shiney tides of emotion come up, they're usually so baffling that I am left at a total loss as to what to do with them, other than just surrender to them. Not to be defeated by them (though I may certainly feel that way), but let them wash over me, and notice the specific ways they ripple through my body, thoughts, and feelings. Usually, it's some variation of pain. I try to surrender to it. See if I can watch it and listen to it, without wallowing in it.

It's easy to say all of this now, when I don't feel like shit. But last night, when I was feeling all of the aforementioned moods of WTF-bewilderment, it felt pervasive and all-consuming. If I surrender to it, it seems to shift.

How the heck does this happen?

Major Arcana XVIII: The Moon, from the Tarot de Marseille

My guess, informed by observing this recurring pattern countless times, is that when pain arises and it's distinctly palpable but its cause is difficult to discern, it's something that has been repressed. Because it's been in the shadows for so long, I don't recognize it or understand it when it first pokes its head out of the soil and into the light.

This is where surrender is key.

That pain is a form of energy within me that has been shoved deep down and told to be quiet. When pain is buried, it gets stuck. It stagnates. Like a body that's been buried, which is now rotting and festering within, the fungus of unsaid words growing out of its ears and the worms of evaded emotions sliding around its fingers. When previously repressed pain emerges (or explodes) into conscious awareness, it is finally starting to move. Even though it hurts, and probably hurts like hell, this can actually be a sign of progress because it means that energy which was once stuck is finally circulating again. Yes, it hurts. But it's moving. If it's moving, it's shifting. And if it's in a state of shifting, that means there's potential for change, transmutation, healing, and fucking MAGIC. Even while I write this sentence you are reading, it feels weird to say that pain can be transformationally magical. I know. But it's true.

What helps pain be utilized as a catalyst for healing magic, rather than a force that continually restricts us and clobbers us while taking highly inconsiderate dumps all over our heart?

Surrender!

Surrender comes to save the day like a stallion of sweet salvation riding over the hills. Except surrender usually feels less exultant and more like, "Gee, this hurts and I’d love to be feeling anything else right now, but I don't know what else to do so I guess I'll surrender and let it happen?"

What happens then?

When we surrender to pain, we allow that once-buried and neglected wound to emerge from stagnation and enter a state of circulation. That means shifting and flowing. Yes, it will hurt. But it can be a release. Sort of like vomiting up poison that was stuck in your depths. It's ugly, miserable, and messy, not to mention embarrassing if other people can see you barfing your emotional guts out, but it's transformational.

If I don't surrender to the pain, then I'm fighting it, resisting it, attempting to keep that stinky corpse of misery buried. Of course, that only makes it worse. It's going to keep on rotting and festering until its fumes seep out into my daily life with such thickness that I find myself trapped in a smoggy cloud of my own suffering.

Repressed pain comes out to be seen, heard, felt, and processed. It's an unattended wound that needs healing attention. Surrender, even though it may feel like doing nothing, even though it may feel like it's not changing anything at all, allows the pain to move, to be heard and seen, and to do what it needs to do in order to begin the healing process. The pain might not ever go away, it might not ever finish healing and reach a point where I can say, "Ta-da, everyone! I'm finally fixed and have now achieved a glorious state of unblemished perfection!" The pain might linger, but surrender allows the process of healing and lightening to begin, so that, little by little, we feel a little less trapped and encumbered. We don’t need to be miraculously fixed overnight. It is sufficient to simply put one foot in front of the other and let the shifting occur at its own pace.

Having said all of that about the value of passive, receptive surrender, there is also immense usefulness in making efforts to actively shift pain-energy. In some moments, it’s more useful to sit back and let it happen (surrender). In other times, it’s more pertinent to get up and make intentional changes. But that's a subject for another writing.

For me, when pain emerges, surrender is step one.

On my blog, you can find more writings on art and alchemical thinking, interviews about creativity, psychologically-oriented reflections on tarot, and more. You can check out past posts in the categorized list below.

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Art
- Jul 2, 2018 About the Folks Who Think You Stink (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Jun 22, 2018 The Freedom and Fear of Being Yourself (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Apr 3, 2018 Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance
- Dec 1, 2017 Why the Tutu?
- Sep 14, 2017 Art is a Portal
- Aug 17, 2017 Put the Potatoes on Your Face
- Dec 28, 2016 How to Make Magical Oranges
- Dec 19, 2016 Wakey Wakey, Inner Kiddo
Interviews
- Jul 18, 2018 Artist Interview: Kayle Karbowski
- Jun 4, 2018 Artist Interview: Sally Nicholson
- Apr 23, 2018 Interview: Yogi Ron Katwijk
- Mar 1, 2018 Artist Interview: Lawrence Blackman
- Feb 21, 2018 Artist Interview: Samantha Blumenfeld
Magical Thinking
- Jun 21, 2023 Magick for Reshaping Life and Transmuting Trauma
- May 18, 2023 Magick is a Sentient Entity: Using the Imagination to Co-Create with Magick
- Dec 4, 2020 The Healing Voice: Wounds, Addiction, and Purgation
- Aug 5, 2019 Celebrating Your Misery
- Jun 21, 2019 White Peacocks, Constipation, and Emotional Liberation
- Aug 23, 2018 Melting a Snowball of Misery
- Jul 2, 2018 About the Folks Who Think You Stink (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Jun 22, 2018 The Freedom and Fear of Being Yourself (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Apr 16, 2018 Questions for Limitations
- Apr 3, 2018 Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance
- Jan 5, 2018 Chaos' Playground: Finding Gold in the Shitstorm
- Dec 1, 2017 Why the Tutu?
- Sep 14, 2017 Art is a Portal
- Aug 7, 2017 Three Reasons to Destroy Yourself (Or Not)
- Jul 6, 2017 Nerves and Tutus
- Feb 19, 2017 Why Does Heartache Happen?
- Jan 15, 2017 Following Fear
- Dec 28, 2016 How to Make Magical Oranges
Tarot
- Oct 24, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #5: Why does my skin crawl with wonder and fascination as such important relationships in my life are connected by the eyes?
- Oct 11, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #4: How long will it be until I have a new job?
- Sep 25, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #3: Why can't I find more hours in a day?
- Sep 3, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #2: Do abusers know they're being abusive, or is that just their sense of reality?
- Aug 25, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #1: Why is the Present Moment So Much All the Time?
- Aug 18, 2019 Today's Tarot: Shifting Pain by Surrendering to It
- Aug 13, 2019 Today's Tarot: The Golden Devils Inside You
- Aug 12, 2019 Today's Tarot: The Moon of Self-Loathing
- Jun 27, 2019 Today's Tarot: Snot, Beauty, and Tea for Pain
- Feb 28, 2018 Today's Tarot: The World is in the Seed
- Aug 26, 2017 Tarot as a Tool for Reality Construction

It is happening. You don't know what It is, but It is unexpected and unpredictable. You can't make sense of it. Your reality is trembling. All of a sudden, your socks have become ill-fitting sweat sponges and your dearly held beliefs seem fickle. Your to-do lists seem like a map for a world that doesn't exist. You don't know who you are or what you're supposed to do. You don't even know what you'll have for breakfast anymore because, in an instant, you've realized that you can no longer continue having the same bowl of oatmeal every morning.

This is chaos.

Before we go on, please note that I have nothing against oatmeal. I love oatmeal, but maybe someday I won't. Chaos happens.

Normally, our mind converts perceived phenomena into cohesive data to which we can rationally respond. But when chaos emerges, the mind struggles to comprehend what's happening. Because we cannot interpret the occurrence, we don't know how to respond to it.

What do I do? How am I supposed to be in this circumstance?

In this scenario, we have a few options:

1) Fight the chaos
2) Avoid the chaos
3) Welcome the chaos

The chaos is initially perceived as a lack of order. Unstable disharmony. The key to utilizing chaos as as an aid, is to recognize that its disorder is an illusion. There is order and direction to it. It just doesn't fit within our previous conception of the world.

When we are confronted with a situation that doesn't align with our habituated perception of life, the mind may want to conclude that it is inherently chaotic, totally void of direction. The mind sees chaos and panics.

When chaos comes a knocking--or, more likely, when it kicks down the doors of perception--we may be at a loss as to how to respond. Unfamiliar situations necessitate unfamiliar, creative responses if we are to progress through them. Instinctually, we may want to fight it, get rid of it, or ignore it. On the other hand, if we can welcome it and take an open, curious look at it, we will be opening ourselves up to new modes of perception, new qualities of existence, and creative (as opposed to rote) paths of action that we would not have otherwise been privy to if we had continued along the path of predictable familiarity.

Familiarity, predictability, and stability have a definite usefulness, but so does chaos. Chaos and order are tools which the mind can use in order to alter the contents of its reality.

How can we use chaos as a helpful tool?

We can welcome it.

When we encounter the unexpected, whether it be a small accident or a storm of shit in a fan, we can circumnavigate our knee-jerk desire to fight it or avoid it. We can then intentionally strive to enter the very situation that is challenging us. Rather than shutting it out or attempting to get rid of the chaos, we can be curious about it, look at it.

In the moment we open up to the chaos, we transform our relation to it. And when we transform our relation to chaos, the chaos becomes less threatening. If we act out against it or evade it, then we are treating it as a danger. If we embrace the unexpected, then it becomes a stimulating addition to our life. Our reality isn't being threatened. It is being expanded. This expansion might not be comfortable, but if we are open to it, it won't need to be so painful. If we can play with the chaos, not only will it lose its sting, but it will also become a source of joy, learning, and creativity.

If we attempt to adhere our lives to a straight and predictable line, we will limit our experience. We will have to block out anything that doesn't fit within our conditions. This might be healthy or useful in certain times, but if we continually block out anything the unknown, we will be confining ourselves within a prison of our own making. Not only that, but we will have to expend enormous amounts of energy to enforce the walls of our box so that perceived threats don't destroy our definition of life.

What happens when we willingly get our hands dirty with the muck of chaos? The world opens up! It opens up because we have opened up. Restrictions are replaced with possibilities. Threats are alchemically transmuted into aids. Illusory dangers become friends that teach us a new way to navigate the ever-fluctuating terrain of life. While we previously knew life to be a battle necessitating a constant state of fight or flight, we will instead find it to be a game of growth and playfulness.

Sometimes, we will find it easy to play with the surprises life deals us. Other times, it will feel like life is shitting a mess of terror upon our gaping face, to which it would be impossible to respond with anything but fear or anger. We each have our own special triggers that stomp on our hearts or send them beating at the pace of demon-possessed pigs running off a cliff. Even though it will be difficult or seemingly impossible to welcome these situations--or, what's more, to play with them--it is in these very situations that we have the greatest opportunity for more freedom.

The more difficult a situation is to face, the more imprisoned we will feel within it. The larger the obstacle, the more strength and creativity we will need to transmute it and move beyond it. In this way, obstacles give us an opportunity to develop previously untapped capacities within ourselves, but only if we enter the obstacle and face it with constructive intentions.

The navigation of life's obstacles and mazes might initially seem like arduous work. A struggle through which we have to sweat and break our spine under the burden's weight. This might be the mind's initial tendency, but it doesn't need to be that way!

How can it be other? How can chaos, obstacles, and the shitstorms of life be anything but hard labor?

Through playfulness.

Playfulness is like a magical force that can transmute pain and perceived danger into avenues of discovery and joy.

When we are possessed by fear, our mind will imagine all of the things that can go wrong. We will remind ourselves of all of our failures and envision ourselves repeating those failures into the grave. We will shrink away from life, feeling disconnected from ourselves and the world.

And if we play?

The world is transformed!

Even if nothing is different externally, our experience of it will be utterly transformed. When we are playful, we naturally discover new possibilities without even trying. We feel lighter, unencumbered, more capable and more inspired to do what we truly wish to do.

The secret is that chaos isn’t chaos.

If we play with chaos, we allow the unknown to become an adventure. When we play, we find that chaos is helping us by removing our self-imposed, fear-induced limitations. When we willingly embrace chaos, we will find that it isn't chaos. At first, we perceived the unfamiliar phenomena to be symptomatic of disorder and disharmony. When we observe that apparent disorder, we will find that there is an order, a structure, a progression toward harmony and cohesion--we just weren't aware of it before.

Chaos only feels like chaos if we don’t get to know it. Just because we don’t yet see the order and creative potential of an event doesn’t mean it isn’t there, it just means that we have to look for it. And the more we engage with chaos, the more we play with it, the easier the process becomes. Heck, we might even begin to enjoy chaos.

Is it easy to find these hidden qualities in chaos? Is it easy to find gold in a shitstorm? Not always, but we can begin to develop this awareness. In this practice, playfulness comes in handy. Playfulness expands our awareness and makes our minds more flexible. Playfulness increases our accessibility to creative perception and solutions. Playfulness is the magic carpet that allows us to fly through chaos and surf its currents, rather than be disheartened by it.

subscribe via rss

Art
- Jul 2, 2018 About the Folks Who Think You Stink (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Jun 22, 2018 The Freedom and Fear of Being Yourself (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Apr 3, 2018 Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance
- Dec 1, 2017 Why the Tutu?
- Sep 14, 2017 Art is a Portal
- Aug 17, 2017 Put the Potatoes on Your Face
- Dec 28, 2016 How to Make Magical Oranges
- Dec 19, 2016 Wakey Wakey, Inner Kiddo
Interviews
- Jul 18, 2018 Artist Interview: Kayle Karbowski
- Jun 4, 2018 Artist Interview: Sally Nicholson
- Apr 23, 2018 Interview: Yogi Ron Katwijk
- Mar 1, 2018 Artist Interview: Lawrence Blackman
- Feb 21, 2018 Artist Interview: Samantha Blumenfeld
Magical Thinking
- Jun 21, 2023 Magick for Reshaping Life and Transmuting Trauma
- May 18, 2023 Magick is a Sentient Entity: Using the Imagination to Co-Create with Magick
- Dec 4, 2020 The Healing Voice: Wounds, Addiction, and Purgation
- Aug 5, 2019 Celebrating Your Misery
- Jun 21, 2019 White Peacocks, Constipation, and Emotional Liberation
- Aug 23, 2018 Melting a Snowball of Misery
- Jul 2, 2018 About the Folks Who Think You Stink (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Jun 22, 2018 The Freedom and Fear of Being Yourself (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Apr 16, 2018 Questions for Limitations
- Apr 3, 2018 Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance
- Jan 5, 2018 Chaos' Playground: Finding Gold in the Shitstorm
- Dec 1, 2017 Why the Tutu?
- Sep 14, 2017 Art is a Portal
- Aug 7, 2017 Three Reasons to Destroy Yourself (Or Not)
- Jul 6, 2017 Nerves and Tutus
- Feb 19, 2017 Why Does Heartache Happen?
- Jan 15, 2017 Following Fear
- Dec 28, 2016 How to Make Magical Oranges
Tarot
- Oct 24, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #5: Why does my skin crawl with wonder and fascination as such important relationships in my life are connected by the eyes?
- Oct 11, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #4: How long will it be until I have a new job?
- Sep 25, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #3: Why can't I find more hours in a day?
- Sep 3, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #2: Do abusers know they're being abusive, or is that just their sense of reality?
- Aug 25, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #1: Why is the Present Moment So Much All the Time?
- Aug 18, 2019 Today's Tarot: Shifting Pain by Surrendering to It
- Aug 13, 2019 Today's Tarot: The Golden Devils Inside You
- Aug 12, 2019 Today's Tarot: The Moon of Self-Loathing
- Jun 27, 2019 Today's Tarot: Snot, Beauty, and Tea for Pain
- Feb 28, 2018 Today's Tarot: The World is in the Seed
- Aug 26, 2017 Tarot as a Tool for Reality Construction