how I learned to stop worrying and love The Tower

The Tower's meaning changes and grows with us.

The Tower: Change is coming, ready or not. 

Of course many of you will recognise the title as a play on the title of Stanley Kubrick's hilariously terrifying satire about war: Dr Strangelove or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb.

With lightning striking at its crumbling rooftop and people leaping from its windows like some medieval 911 scenario, The Tower has a very dodgy reputation as tarot cards go. It forms, along with Death and The Devil, what I call 'The Tripod of Terror'. These are cards that, as a reader, I'm really not that thrilled to see come out in a reading.

But not because they're terrible cards that necessarily mean death and destruction are coming your way. I just hate to see them because too many clients know only just enough about tarot to be scared of them.

I wish I had a dollar for every time I've turned a card to reveal The Tower only to hear my client make a sound as though they'd been punched in the stomach.

OOF!

I stop my very important work of laying out the cards, and look up to see them staring at The Tower as though it's a crime scene photo. I generally laugh then and say, 'Let me guess - you get your cards read a lot, but you don't read yourself?' And I'm generally right.

The surface reading of The Tower - in the little paper booklet that comes with every pack of tarot cards and contains one sentence on each of the 78 cards in your deck- will be something like:

CATASTROPHE! THE SKY IS FALLING! RUN! RUN AWAY! RUN FAR FAR AWAY.

But the reality is far more nuanced and hopeful than that.

Yes, The Tower does indeed usually tell us that it's time to let go of something. But it rarely means that you are going to lose everything without warning - which is how a lot of beginners see it. To me, the main lesson of The Tower is to grasp everything in your life lightly - because it all passes away.

When the time comes to let go of something - be it a job, a location or a relationship - be prepared to let it go. If you don't let go when the time comes to let go, The Universe has a nasty habit of reefing it out of your grasp.

"Give it up gracefully" says Life, "or I'll be forced to take it from you."

That is always the most painful option.

As the old hippie song goes - To everything there is a season, turn turn turn... If you want to see some crazy go-go dancers and hear some of those pretty harmonies from the 1960s, take a moment to listen to The Byrds tweeting out some timeless wisdom. To everything, there is a season...

My own favourite story of The Tower and how it can play out in real life happened like this:

Many years ago, before I'd gotten better acquainted with The Tower, when I was still afraid of that bolt of lightening that would come out of nowhere and lay waste to my life, I laid out some cards regarding a crucial creative grant I'd applied for. My career would be set back by years by failure in this matter!

BAM! Out came The Tower along with several other cards that would normally refer to my creative endeavours.

Dammit. Dammit dammit dammit. I wasn't getting the grant. Obviously. I was so bummed. I felt like I'd already heard the bad news and right away, I began the work of getting over it.

The next day, I had a practice session with my music partners, Dougy and Laurence. I own a beautiful rare old Maton classical guitar, considered one of the best guitars ever made in Australia. I've had it since I was 16 years old when I swapped it for my Yamaha semi-acoustic. Believe me, I got the best side of that deal.

I loved that guitar and couldn't imagine playing anything else. There were problems though, and I'd been thinking of getting another guitar for a while. Since I'd been jamming with Laurence and Dougy, my gentle nylon string was overwhelmed by the sound of their pushy steel strings.

But I held off. I couldn't let go of my Maton.

You know what's coming, don't you?

There I was, standing with my beloved guitar across my belly, slung on its strap around my shoulder. As we talked about what to play next, I rested my crossed arms atop the body, not a care in the world.

Until the guitar strap broke. With the weight of my arms on top of her pushing towards the ground, I didn't have a hope of saving her. She smashed to the floor, totally unplayable. I was inconsolable. That guitar was like my third child.

But we had a gig to play in 2 days time. I didn't have time to grieve her. I had to buy a new guitar.

So, guess what? I loved my new guitar. I should have bought it earlier so that Ms Maton didn't need to be sacrificed to my inability to let go of the old. My musical ability progressed out of sight with an updated tool of trade.

I was able to find someone to patch my first love up. She's playable. I love her still and play her often - but she'll never be the same.

This was vintage Tower action. Like all cards, there are nuances and different interpretations depending on the issue under discussion, but at base, The Tower teaches us to let go and be ready for anything. It can foretell a broken guitar or a car accident - but it can also foretell the love of your life or a lottery win, depending on the cards surrounding it.

Change is coming whether you like it or not. Be flexible.

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how to feel better in 10 minutes a day...

Over and over, I say to the people who come to me for help: The best thing you can do to make your life better is to meditate. 
Over and over, they say back to me: My mind won't stay still long enough to meditate. 
Over and over, I say to back to them: No, it won't, will it? Not till you've practiced meditation for a while! 

So many of us think a calm mind is the normal human state of being and a mind that chatters away at us every waking moment is abnormal. Somehow we think that most other people have it together and we are the only ones whose minds are giving us grief all day every day.

I'm afraid not. It's the nature of the mind to think. That's what it's there for. The mind exists to look for problems and when it finds them, real or imaginary, to turn  possible solutions over and over until it finds one it's happy with. Stupid Mind doesn't care if it's the middle of night. It doesn't care if its solutions are actually helpful. It doesn't care that it's actually only a tool for us to use in order to have a happy life.

The Mind thinks very highly of itself. It thinks it's in charge of our lives. The Mind thinks it's in charge of us. In fact, the Mind thinks it IS us.

It isn't.

It's certainly an important part of us - but many people consider our mind, our thoughts, to be our core Self.

It's not.

Think about a time where you felt peaceful - maybe it was lying on the beach in the middle of your best holiday ever and all you were aware of was the sun on your face and the smell of the sea in your nostrils. Maybe it was climbing a tree when you were a kid and your whole concentration was tied up in where to find your next foothold.  Maybe it was lying in your lover's arms after some mind-blowing sex and all you were aware of was the after-light of the fireworks behind your eyelids.

These experiences generally do not need the words or thoughts that Mind uses to communicate with us - and yet these are the times when we are most our true selves.

The mind is important. In no way am I saying it isn't. It's fun to play with. It's interesting to explore. It's crucial to navigate successfully through life's problems. But it isn't our most essential self. If humans were computers the mind would pretty much be the operating system. Like Windows, with all its problems and glitches. Just as Windows runs the computer, but is not actually the computer, so the mind runs the self, but isn't actually the Self.

I see my job as helping people find their way in a scary world - and the number 1 way to navigate this world is by putting the mind in its place. What we think of as our mind is often more just a constant stream of worrying and negativity. What will happen if I run out of money? What will happen if my lover leaves me? What will happen to me when I'm old?

What's the point of these out of control thoughts? There is none. They don't solve anything. They just make you unhappy. Meditation will teach you to quiet your mind so that you can enjoy the beautiful things in life. It will allow you to control when you let your mind off the leash to apply its logic to actual life problems in the here and now.

There are operations you leave Windows to run automatically on your computer and things that need your direction. Your life is like that. Practising meditation allows us to quiet those unnecessary thoughts and experience what lies beneath them.

What will we find beneath the constant chatter of an out of control mind?

Peace.

In my next entry, I'll give you some pointers on how to get started on the great adventure inward that we call meditation.

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