Image via WikipediaHighly successful people are successful because they use their intuition.

Why not try using the Tarot cards and other esoteric symbol systems to help you to focus your intuition, and to make it work for you?

If our conscious mind makes up 10% of our mental abilities, our subconscious makes up the other 90%. Our subconscious is also the gate to the collective unconscious. The Buddha says that we live in a mental world, and the physicist is saying the same thing.

So if our total mind contains such wonders, how do you get in touch with the whole thing? How can you communicate with the other 90% of you which is normally closed off to you?

You use the Tarot, or a similar symbol system, through which to focus your intuition. This is not complex or difficult. Forget anything you may have heard about developing ‘psychic’ powers. You’re not developing any supernatural ability at all. You’re simply bringing your true knowledge into awareness.

Think of yourself of two people. There’s you, and your subconscious mind, whom we’ll call Fred. In the movie Drop Dead Fred, the Fred who caused such havoc was an aspect of the heroine’s subconscious mind.

You have your own “Fred”. Your Fred knows and understands much more than you do, but he has no way of communicating with you, other than through emotions, memories and symbols.

For example, let’s say you get to work this morning, and a memory pops into your mind. The memory involves a trick you played on an old girlfriend, twenty years ago. Being slightly more mature now than you were when you were seventeen, the memory makes you squirm.

Beyond the embarrassment, wrapped around the memory is a feeling of vague discomfort, a tightening in your stomach muscles. You couldn’t call this mix of emotions real anxiety, but it’s close. At ten o’clock you’re due to sign a contract with a new supplier. You don’t connect the memory of the old girlfriend and the trick you played on her with the signing. Six months later, when it turns out that the plastic conduit the supplier sold you was shoddy, costing your company big bucks, you still don’t make the connection.

Tarot helps you to focus your intuition, and to make connections.

Image via WikipediaIntuition is vital to our life. Unfortunately, many of us have been hypnotized to imagine that our intuition doesn’t exist. This makes as much sense as going through life blindfolded, which is what we do, when we don’t use our intuition. The more you trust and use your intuition, the more smoothly your life will flow. Our intuition is part of everything we so, and a signal that our intuition is working properly, is when synchronicity emerges into our life.

Often, when I am writing, I will get an impulse to pick up a certain book. There is no discernible reason why I should pick up this book, except the strong feeling that I should. Invariably, when I pick up the book, it refers to something that I am working on at the moment: something that is exactly appropriate to my work. In fact, I know that my work is going well, because synchronicity happens with such regularity.

No one really knows why and how Tarot works, but Carl Jung believed that it worked through synchronicity.

From Wikipedia:

Jung coined the word to describe what he called “temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events.” Jung variously described synchronicity as an “‘acausal connecting principle’” (i.e., a pattern of connection that cannot be explained by conventional, efficient causality), “meaningful coincidence” and “acausal parallelism”…

It was a principle that Jung felt gave conclusive evidence for his concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious, in that it was descriptive of a governing dynamic that underlay the whole of human experience and history — social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual. Events that happen which appear at first to be coincidence, but are later found to be causally related are termed as “incoincident”.

Jung believed that many experiences perceived as coincidence were not merely due to chance but, instead, suggested the manifestation of parallel events or circumstances reflecting this governing dynamic.

One of Jung’s favourite quotes on synchronicity was from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, in which the White Queen says to Alice: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards”.

Image via WikipediaMy friend Jenny is a fan of Julia Cameron, and her Morning Pages system. She uses her daily card as a jumping off point in her daily journal. She describes the image on the card, and then just goes on from there.

You can also draw the card. I find this helpful. I draw a rough sketch of the complete card, and then, if I have time, I color it in. If I’m pressed for time, I only draw a symbol from the card. This seems to help by impressing on my subconscious that I really want help with this.

You can ask yourself questions about the card. For example, what is the person in the card doing? How does this relate to my business concerns today?

The effect of using the cards is that you activate your subconscious mind: your daily activities will be an expression of yourself.

Another effect of using a tool for intuition is that you will come into better control of your emotions. If fear or anger have always been a problem for you, you will understand why. You will see that your emotions flow through you. They don’t necessarily demand a response from you.

Here’s how to decide whether you will use the cards face up or facedown: if you want inspiration, use them face up, if you want guidance, use them facedown.

There are NO NEGATIVE CARDS. Each card, and every symbol in every card, is an expression of yourself. See the card items as symbols and tools which are there you to use in any way you wish to use them.

Initially, when you begin working with the cards, and they seem to foretell the future, you can become quite spooked by this. It seems—psychic. The cards seem to predict the future.

How do you come to terms with this aspect of the cards? I can only tell you that sooner, rather than later, you will grow beyond this wonderment. You will come to expect it. You can certainly use the cards to predict whether a stock will rise or fall, or whether you should invest in a new development. Remember that you’re using your intuition, and the cards are helping you to focus that intuition.

You should pay attention to any feelings which come up as you use the cards. For example, let’s say that you draw a card, and a picture of a certain intersection of roads into your area pops into your mind. You get a definite feeling that you should be extra careful next time you drive through this intersection. Take your intuition’s advice. Be careful.

Image via WikipediaLet’s say you’re starting a business, or you’ve already done so. When you own your own business, you’re lonely, because you’re betting on yourself. There’s always the chance that you’ll blow all your money and go broke. The Tarot cards can guide you. They can give you access to all of you, not just the part that happens to be wearing a suit of clothes and that you think of as ‘you’.

Begin by using the cards in a simple way. Just familiarize yourself with them. For example, when you first walk into your office in the morning, draw a card for the day. This will activate your subconscious mind. When you’re first learning the cards, draw a card from the major arcana: the triumphs. Look on it as asking yourself how you will triumph today. This is your touchstone, the card that will bring you success today.

What if this card is one of your least favorite cards? Later, in your work with the cards, you can  stick with this card, knowing that it is a part of you as are all the other cards, and even 13 Death will let you feel cheerful and optimistic—Death means a change for the better, most of the time. However, if you turn up a card and you don’t like it, just pick up another card. Or, you can pick from the majors all face up—choose the card which will give you most inspiration today.

When you’ve chosen your card, whichever method you’ve used, sit for a moment and look at the card. Don’t strain, just take in the card. Close your eyes, and  see if you can image the card clearly. If not, open your eyes, have another look, and then close them again. There is no need to spend more than five minutes on this exercise, but if you do it every day, you will soon find that you are learning all the cards, and are enjoying working with them.

Keep the card where you can see it during the day. If you have a couple of moments, doodle the design of the card. Even if you think to yourself “I can’t draw”, tell yourself that this is not for anyone else to look at. It’s simply another way of connecting with the cards. This is enjoyable, and relaxing. You can be like me, and keep a tin of colored pencils on your desk, so that anytime you are pressed for inspiration, you can doodle the design of one of the cards: you will soon find that you’re relaxed, and the idea that you’ve been waiting for will come to you, without any effort on your part.