it's like gym for your soul...

My clients must get sick of me telling them to start meditating. They frequently talk about how they just can't stop thinking. How they just keep overthinking. How they worry about their kids, their jobs, their partners.

Ah. The bullying mind!

Of course, we're human and very few of us who live an average human life are going to rid ourselves of all worry. But it honestly doesn't have to be this painful.

What most of us aren’t taught - and should be! - is that the mind is a tool.

We think that the mind is us, that the crazy rushing river of thoughts between our ears is what we actually are. Sub-consciously, many of us fear that if that never-ending stream of chatter ceases, so do we.

But. The mind is simply a tool that helps us to work out how to get stuff. Like a computer does. Or Anthony Robbins.

We let the mind run roughshod over us and when we do, it’s like those cartoons you see where someone unskilled starts a chainsaw and runs round the yard chopping shit up as they struggle to get control of it.

The very best thing you can do to tame your rampaging mind is learn meditation. Meditation is gym for both the mind and the soul. It strengthens both your ability to concentrate your thoughts and your ability to clear your mind when complete calm is needed.

There are a lot of different types of meditation and a lot of different ways to learn. I always recommend people start with YouTube. Just search guided meditations and listen to a few different ones till something floats your boat.

Five minutes a day is far more useful to you than a half hour on Saturday morning. It's about making that small daily silence a habit. One day, you will find it has become so habitual, it will happen automatically during a crisis and the other people involved will say to you, 'How can you be so calm?'

It's because you'll have trained your mind to react as needed in the meditation room in the same way a weightlifter trains their body to react in the gym.

Just make a start. Put the word out to The Universe that you are ready to start stopping your thoughts - just for a while, here and there - and the path to blissful quiet in your head will open before you.


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it's like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die...

Humans are complicated. We're like walking talking symbols of Oppositional Defiance Disorder. We routinely both love and hate our significant others - partners, parents, kids - at the same time.

I often see people who are looking for intuitive guidance from the cards on how to resolve, or at least, live with these destructive dilemmas. A reading can help with the specifics of an individual case, but in the mean time, there are certain truths that can help in every situation.

Whether it's someone you love who is in your life everyday, or a stranger passing through your life, you can stop drinking the poison and experience less of the corrosive emotion of hate.

1) Understand that we are all born guiltless and that life then happens to us. Life is hard and it often twists people. If the person has done something unforgivable, try not take it personally - by that I mean that, it's them, not you.

2) Understand that nobody, except a very sick individual, gets out of bed in the morning and thinks now whose life can I cock up today? Everybody thinks they are doing what they have to do to survive.

3) Understand that letting go of your hatred helps you, not them. To say, I'm not going to be angry about this anymore is not the same as saying What you did to me was okay. It is more like saying, I'm not going to let you keep doing it to me.

4) Symbolic visualisation of what you want your emotions to do helps enormously. The human brain thrives on visual plans and wants to do what you instruct it to do. It LOVES symbols - flags, dreams and music tell us this very clearly.

5) Meditation is the greatest tool you can use to calm destructive emotion and there are many places on the net where you can learn to do it for free.

You can imagine a balloon with the object of your hate inside and release that balloon to float away out of your sight. This symbolic imagination tells your brain that you don't want to think about that person anymore. It will work soon enough if you persist.

You can imagine that hatred as a yukky poison that fills your body which you then let drain away out of you through your fingers and toes. This tells your brain that your resentment is toxic and it shouldn't allow poisonous crap to hang around in your mind because that also affects your body.

If that person is still in your life and you are forced to unpleasant confrontations, you can imagine yourself as being surrounded by a shield which protects you from any 'bad vibes' that might come from them. This tells your brain to disregard input from that person.

You may be thinking How can these things help me? It's all imagination.

Well, great news - so are your emotions!

Yes, it's true - your emotions are all in your head. Which is not the same as saying they are not real, it just means that you are in charge of them. Yes, they are an unruly bunch and when they are running very high, it takes effort and clear thinking to keep them civilised, but still, they are yours to command.

If you have been very wronged, it can take time to heal and release your hatred - but while ever you are making the effort to let it go rather than to hold on to it, you are moving forward towards freedom and happiness.



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magic is all around us, every single day...

Just a quick reminder. 

You are a marvel!

You started as a miracle when two invisible cells found each other in the dark of your mother's body and for better or worse, bound together in the holy matrimony that is you!

Then your amazingness continued to grow as you were built - inside your mother's body! - using some mysterious blueprint science calls DNA.

So, think about this. Two cells - one from Mother, one from Dad - find each other in the pitch black, become one and begin to build every single organ in your body by dividing itself over and over again.

So. Once that cell has divided, how do those two halves know what to become? I mean, some of them will become heart cells and some of them will become brain cells. How do they know which is which? Is there a team picking thing going on in there?

'Okay! You. You. And... you! Over here - you're on the kidney team.'

That gob-smacking process used the material of your mother's body to create you. Think about it. Where else did all the stuff that was you when you were born come from? It came from your mother's body - not just what she consumed, but what she actually already was. This is why women get so tired being pregnant. They are literally growing a machine more complex than any other on earth IN THEIR BODY.

This is why women can loose teeth when pregnant - if she isn't consuming enough calcium or if, for some reason, the calcium she is consuming is not bio-available, Life takes the calcium from her teeth and bones to build her baby's teeth and bones. That's why pregnant women are so often anemic - Life takes the iron from her blood to build the baby's blood.

Creepy - and yet, phenomenal, spectacular, astonishing!

But this is not a post about what mothers give up for their kids. It's a pleasure and an honour to do Life's work for her - or at least, it should be.

This post is about what a miracle you are, as is every single person you will meet today, as is every creature you see in your travels. Even spiders and snakes. And I don't mean 'miracle' in the religious sense of the word. I mean it in the 'Holy %$#*! That's unbelievable' sense of the word.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I long for the day we all give the miracle of all Life the deep respect and love it is due. We need to stop fighting and killing each other and all the other incredible creatures we share this planet with.



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the mysterious other ...

I've been reading tarot for thirty years now and it's an activity that I come to love more and more as time goes by.

To me, a tarot reading is a process that takes place between two people, a deck of cards and some mysterious Other. Some readers call will it God. Some call it angels and some guides. There are as many explanations as there are readers.

So, what do I think that Other is?

Well. Hmmm. Um.

I'm sorry to disappoint you but I have no idea! Oh, I suppose that's not strictly true. Of course after all this time, I have some ideas about what happens during the profoundly mysterious process of a successful tarot reading but I will never know for sure whether I'm right or not until after I go to The Big Reading Room in the sky.

All I really know is that a person, often a stranger, comes to me and we take a small amount of time to tune into each other by each shuffling the cards in silence. I do have a couple of mental rituals that I go through while I shuffle but these rituals are not noticeable to the person I'm reading for and are much closer to meditation than they are to magic. I simply try to clear my mind to allow whatever intuition is released by the spread of the cards to come through more clearly.

The amazing thing to me is not when I am proven wrong - and I freely admit there are such times - but that the information I get through these mysterious means is so often right. Why should it be so?

Most readers use a combination of academic knowledge and intuition. That is, they have studied the meanings of the cards and can get a general meaning from any tarot spread. But once the cards are out, intuition overlays another level of interpretation.

Intuition is information that comes to you through a channel other than your average five senses. Intuition works for me the same way as trying to remember the details of a movie you saw a long time ago; you've got the general gist of it - but it's not completely clear.

It's like someone is prompting you to remember it, giving you little hints, and you're saying, 'Oh, right! Yeah, there's a guy, isn't there? - but I'm not sure what colour his hair is. Oh, hold on - wasn't it black? And yeah, I think he was tall. Wasn't he? And good looking too! Oh, right - it's coming back to me now! He saw this girl he'd never met before and...

And that, is approximately the process that leads a reader to pronounce those infamous words: You are going to meet a tall dark stranger.

I've spent thirty years learning the meanings of the cards, how they relate to each other and how to read the story they are trying to tell me - which is, of course, the life story of the person I'm reading for. I believe we all have fascinating lives which contain meaning beyond that which we can see, hear or understand through everyday means. I believe that pretty much all of us want to do what's right and best for ourselves and those we car about. I believe the journey depicted in the tarot offers us all guidance on how to best live our lives to our own greatest fulfilment.

But you know, after all this time, I'm still no closer to understanding the nature of that mysterious Other, present in all helpful readings, which steers us in the best direction for our future success.


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The Universe sends Townsville tarot reader a message of peace and joy...

I did a nice pre-breakfast reading for one of my favourite regulars in London - Hi Karen! xx -  via Skype this morning. How about this world we're living in, huh? The miles don't mean anything any more.

But that's not why I'm writing this.

After the reading, I took my lovely daughter out for a very posh breakfast at a very suave establishment. Okay. So, it was actually MacDonald's. There. I confess. I drink Macca's coffee and I'm not ashamed to tell the world.

But that's not why I'm writing this either.

I'm writing this because I wanted to share with you the fact that the Universe sent me a very cheery Have a nice day! message with my coffee this morning. I took the lid off and laid it on my free newspaper and here is what I saw:

Of course, I was quick to notice the bikini clad woman who appeared to be leaping out of my coffee lid smiley face because of the position of the newspaper and so decided it was time to have a little fun with her. 

And so, The Coffee Lid Showgirl was born.

You have a nice day now too!

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no, I can't read your mind...

Something I have always found a little disconcerting is the number of people who think that I must  be all-knowing if I’m an effective card reader/spiritual counsellor.

Recently, I went to my hairdresser and after I’d been there a while, a woman and her sixteen-ish daughter came in. My hairdresser - Tanya, God bless ‘er - runs a very successful home business from a cosy room under her house and when other clients come in, everyone talks to everyone else. It’s like a tea party only with one very chatty woman wielding scissors.

So, everyone was talking to everyone else - except for Ms Sixteen. She was NOT talking to me. In fact, she was noticeably uncomfortable and refused to meet my eyes, though she seemed quite fine with everyone else.

After a while, she began to relax and then someone mentioned my car which has my logo - a big pair of eyes with That Tarot Lady written above them - out and proud for all the world to see parked in front of the house. I told them that I’d decided to apply modern marketing methods to my work as a reader.

This opened a whole lot of questions from our little tea party.

Did I think that commercialising in this way goes against the spiritual principles of helping others? In a word - no!

Do people stare at my car? In a word - yes!

But, as always, it’s from out of the mouths of babes that the most honest questions and answers come. Ms Sixteen, with her facial piercings and her purple hair, leaned towards me suddenly and said, ‘Can you read my mind?’

I laughed and looked at her for a long moment as I decided whether to screw with her head or not, and then said, ‘No, I can’t read your mind.’

‘Are you sure?’ she said suspiciously.

I laughed again. ‘I’m sure. And you’ll find that most other successful card readers can’t either.’

She looked relieved. I’m used to that. Some people think that even if I could read minds, I’d have nothing better to do with my time than to invade the privacy of their head-space.

Look, the honest fact is - I don’t want to read your mind. I have enough trouble with my own crazy thoughts without yours and those of every other passing Tom, Dick and Harry as well, thank you very much!

I said to Ms Sixteen, ‘Think about it - how on earth would I be able to function normally if I was going down the street hearing everybody else’s thoughts as well as my own? I’d be a basket case!’

I explained to her that we humans come with a built-in sanctuary that is ours and ours alone. No-one else can go there without our permission. It’s called our own mind. You will notice that most readers take the time to ‘tune in’ to their client one way or another at the beginning of a reading. For me, it is while I’m shuffling the cards. 

I believe that the increased intuition common in successful readers is a result of the ability to lower our own guards rather than the ability to penetrate the guards of others. I like it that way! Imagine shopping and being able to hear the check-out chick think about the great sex she had with her boyfriend the night before or the guy in front of you thinking about how much he hates his wife.

There are some people who are so sensitive and their psychic boundaries so minimal that they can in fact ‘read thoughts’ - but the truth is this state of receptivity is often so painful and frightening that they find it difficult to function in the real world where they are constantly bombarded by the troubles and sadness of everyone they meet.

A good reader has many skills at their disposal - intuition is just one of them. There are also empathy, experience, humility and a full knowledge of what the cards mean so that you can interpret what serendipity is trying to tell you instead of imposing your own opinions onto the reading.

But I guess the main thing I want you to understand here is that you really really don’t have to worry about your privacy during your average reading - I don’t know what you got up to last week at the office party and I don’t want to know in graphic detail; that’s between you and the photo-copier. 

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what tarot reading MIGHT be...

Last entry, I told you some of the things I think tarot isn't.

So I'm sure you've been waiting ever since with bated breath for me to come back and tell you exactly what it is. No? Well, okay - I'll tell you anyway.

Tarot is a guide on how to best proceed in your life from your present position to get to where you need to be in order to discover or fulfil your life's purpose. Tarot, at its best and most useful, is a tool for revealing the things you need to know about yourself and your situation to make the right decisions for your future.

This is not to say a tarot reading doesn't come up with some pretty amazingly accurate predictions of the future. It does. It can also be very good at identifying what's going on now in your life - but your future is much less clear. I can tell you what the cards say you should do in any given circumstances - but you can walk out the door of my salon and do whatever you like, no matter what advice the cards may have given you. The future is not written in stone. You hold the power to make the best or the worst of any situation in your own hands. Don't try to give it away to me - I don't want it!

Many times, people will come to a tarot reader hoping for confirmation of an opinion they already hold. For instance, a woman once asked me whether she should begin an affair with a man she worked with. She was married and she loved her husband but the chemistry with her workmate was so strong, she didn't know how she could stand it if they didn't consummate their relationship.

I told her that I wasn't there to tell her what she should or shouldn't do and that she would have to make her own decisions based on her own ethics. But I was able to offer her some advice from the tarot; it was clear - the cards I laid down after shuffling were among the worst in the pack. An affair would be a disaster that would adversely affect her work and her marriage, quite possibly to the point of losing both. But her position was that she loved this man and still felt that she had to find out if her happiness lay with him.

Well, whoopsie! Her happiness, your happiness, my happiness, the milkman's happiness lies within that individual's own self and it can't be found by chasing stuff outside of that self. I don't doubt the woman might have had great sex with her colleague but great sex is not happiness; it's great sex and that's all it is. Fleeting and often very very messy in more than one sense of the word and rarely worth what it would have cost her in the long run.

I don't know exactly what happened in this particular case but the client returned to see me a couple of years later and she was no longer married nor was she with her work colleague. I didn't pry. I just laid out the cards again for her and read what was in them.


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