Forgiveness Is In the Cards

My husband and I did a tarot reading for the U.S. for 2020. We do one every year, and it’s always interesting. This year was no different. There were a lot of great insights, but the biggest takeaway for me was our collective difficulty with forgiveness. We’ve become a culture of revenge. Forgiveness is seen as being weak. The thing is it takes a great deal of strength and courage to truly forgive.

To forgive is to let go and that was the overall sense of the reading. We must let go, of everything and let what is waiting to be born come through. But we can’t seem let go. We can’t forgive even ourselves because of fear. We are caught in a trap of our own making.

And it’s not just about forgiving our enemies. It’s about forgiving ourselves for the perception of so many fellow Americans as the enemy. We’re stuck in “us against them thinking.” It’s become the lens through which we view everything. Everywhere we turn, there is someone out to get us, take away our freedoms, tell us what to do…and on and on.

I’m not talking about letting go of all boundaries we set to live healthy, productive lives. I’m talking about emptying out and letting go of all our concepts and expectations. It’s the only way the new can emerge. From this place we can make true boundaries that give us and others the space to be who we really are.

And we don’t have to forget to forgive. To let go is not about forgetting. It’s being able to let the past into our heart and let it be what it was. To wish it were some other way is to be stuck in a time that didn’t exist, a limbo, a kind of purgatory where nothing moves forward and so cannot transform.

Not only do we wish the past was different, we also have a tendency to hold onto the idea that the way it is is the way it will always be. We lock ourselves into a life that doesn’t have to exist. It’s time to let everything go. Even the idea that this is what we must do.

Let us collectively take this next breath, this next step off the proverbial cliff together. The sacred feminine has been nudging us for years to do this. She has spiraled through our bodies, our minds and our lives reminding us of who we are individually and collectively. She is the dark mother who has pulled the veil over us and brought the darkness that is full of potential.

We are being giving the chance to be reborn. It is in the dark we grow. Like an embryo or seed. We need the dark, the messy. In the unknown something else can be born.

It seems dark right now in the negative sense because so many are afraid of her healing womb of uncertainty. Many are reacting badly to this and have been for a very long time. We’ve gone in and out of dark times and always they are filled with potential. They can be times of healing and transformation if we let them be.

We can rend the veil when we finally let go of the world we have created. It needs to die. It no longer is working for most and in the end for no one...I don’t think it ever did. We created something in our hubris, thinking we were the masters of the Universe. And we won’t know how truly powerful we are until we let go of this false sense of power.

Our power lies in the dark deep within us. It is She who is the dark energy that spirals and spins and forms the dark matter, the foundation of all that exists. She gives birth to the light emanating in all directions from this dark center of being. We are that light, and we are the dark from which it comes.

We are and we are becoming…always. The dance never ends. She never stops giving birth and transforming and no matter what we choose (the reading we did ends with a card about restriction) She will transform it all anyway. We may not be ready to do the work of truly letting go just yet, and that will have its consequences.

But She is infinite potential and that lives within us. Therein lies our hope. Death throes aren’t the end of the story. The death of one thing is the birth of another.

Forgiveness is the key to our freedom. The word forgive means to give up the desire to punish. We’ve lived in a space of vengeance and hate for too long. To forgive in the greatest sense is to allow, to become open, to become free. Freedom was the desire of our ancestors in this country. Let us be rid of the sense that we need to punish, get rid of others in order to experience freedom. She is giving us the opportunity to open up and experience true freedom. We need only become the fool our reading began with and take a chance, step out into the unknown and begin again.