Learning Objectivity

One of the things I’ve been working on lately in my tarot practice is detachment. I’ve discovered that when I am detached from the outcome of the reading (in many ways and on many levels), then my readings are most inspired. Lately, I’ve not been looking at my client at all, just the cards, and letting the information flow. When I look at my client, their reactions register and interfere with my detachment. Weird. I know. But recently I was browsing Tarot: Theory and Practice by Ly de Angeles and read this:

Practice: Learning Objectivity—What do you really see?

• Please set aside a space in an area where you will not be disturbed for the duration of your training time and have a notebook and pen with you for the exercise.
• Draw a dot on a clean white sheet of paper in front of you where you are sitting.
• Sit quietly and look at the dot.
• Write down what you see.
• Realize from the outset that this is not a trick exercise and that, if you are working this exercise with a group, every person’s answer will be different.

Your answers will not be:

• Too limited
• An intellectualization
• A personalization
• An esotercisation
• A description of the dot or the paper
• A mental exercise

From my experience with groups, this process can go on for anywhere between on and three hours, and students almost always run the gauntlet of every conceivable emotion from simple frustration to downright rage. This is an excellent way of self-examining one’s own motives.

The, like the Hundreth Monkey, one person’s overhead light bulb will flash as they realize it’s quite possible that the question is not challenging their spiritual understandings or their intelligence, it isn’t a trick question, and that there is absolutely no mental activity required. Once after another you will achieve the answers and smiles, as you understand how complicated a simple thing can be made to seem—how much each of you needed to be right—and how necessary to the answer your honesty must be.

With Tarot there is no right—there is only telling it as you see it, or hear it or sense it or feel it, even sometimes as you smell it., because all of your senses will come into play—some more than others, depending on your natural talent.

The best way I can think of to describe the answer you will require is to describe a technique employed by martial artists when in a sparring situation with several others: what they do not do is look into the eyes of any opponent, because to do so would trap the person within the identity of the other and they would no longer be able to see the telegraphing of information available through non-focus. Therefore the martial artist will look at nothing and see everything.

Freaky interesting, right? I thought so.