WHO’S IN CHARGE OF YOUR LIFE?
By Geraldine Amaral
Each of us who seeks dimension will have to construct his own mosaic; will have to build his own myth, slowly . . . piece by piece. - Joe McGinn
Is your approach to life proactive or reactive? Who is the causative agent in your life – you or your life experiences? In today’s chaotic world, it is hard not to feel powerless – there is terrorism, natural catastrophes, the threat of nuclear war, biological war, road rage, random shootings, and so on. How do we cope with all this? And what about our personal relationships and interactions? How do we cope with rejection, disapproval and disappointment?
Stephen R. Covey, in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, states that “Reactive people are affected by their social environment, by the ‘social weather.’ When people treat them well, they feel well, when people don’t, they become defensive or protective. Reactive people build their emotional lives around the behavior of others, empowering the weaknesses of other people to control them.” Covey stresses the importance of making a “paradigm shift” in order to become more proactive. He explains this proactive paradigm shift to mean that “as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.” This is a powerful and effective idea, and he provides specific techniques, language building and other activities that can help achieve this paradigm shift. In this vein, I have some similar ideas and techniques using Tarot.
Within the 78 Tarot cards there are countless lessons about life. An adept practitioner of the Tarot is often able to use these lessons and truths to provide guidance for a more productive, satisfying life as well as tools to help resolve earthly problems. The twenty-two Major Arcana cards, in particular, present the most profound mysteries or big “secrets” of the Tarot deck.
Key #7 in the Tarot’s Major Arcana is the Chariot card which depicts a person holding the reins of a chariot, led by two animal figures. This image is a wonderful depiction of Covey’s proactive/reactive dichotomy. This card explores the way in which you “drive” your chariot, which serves as a symbol for yourself and how you conduct your life. Consequently, the Chariot is about the way you animate yourself, how you feel about yourself, how you “harness” your life – your presentation, your personality, your speech, your ideology. The imagery tells us that these traits are in your own hands. Ultimately this card is about taking responsibility for your life; it is the quintessential “proactive” card.
Are you proactive or reactive?
If the Charioteer could speak, he or she might say, “If it’s going to be, it’s up to me.” This is not the speech of a victim. Rather, the Charioteer presents the opposite -- the promise of success through self-determination. By meditating on the card and allowing the symbol to be absorbed into your unconscious mind, you may achieve the confidence and will power to take control over the circumstances of your life. At the same time, you reinforce the notion that your response to your life circumstances is wholly in your own hands. This card symbolically puts you in the driver’s seat and therefore, poses questions regarding what “drives” you. Are you motivated by an inner force, a force based on your belief in your intrinsic worth? Or is an external need for conformity or approval your “driver?”
Thus, this driver's seat analogy depicted in the Chariot card can provide a clear model of personal power, an image that can be absorbed into the unconscious mind. The Chariot's message underscores a powerful lesson about life: You can be in charge of your life if you choose to. You and only you have the power to move forward, to overcome obstacles and to achieve what you seek. Your success and worth does not depend on outside circumstances or forces. Perhaps we cannot control what happens to us, but we can control how we respond to life events.
The Morgan Greer Tarot deck (see image) clearly shows that the driver has the reins in his hands. This doesn’t mean the driver always rides right over obstacles; sometimes he/she will choose to drive around, or over, or down a different path. The point is that the driver makes the choice – not the obstacle. Whatever adversity might come along in your life, use it as a challenge or stepping stone to finding other ways to accomplish what you seek. Each rejection, each misstep, each disappointment has a lesson in it on how to do it better next time (provided you let it). In the process, you insure that you will succeed. If you have challenges around personal responsibility, if your life is filled with drama and struggle, imagine yourself as the Chariot, true to your path, unwilling to let mistakes and failures keep you from your success. As Winston Churchill said, "Never, never, never, never give up."
There are many many ways to use a Tarot image to help us change our attitudes and belief systems, to eliminate self-sabotaging patterns, to build self-esteem, and to practice new behaviors. You can carry it around with you, you can have an imaginary dialogue with the image in the card, you can hang it on your bathroom mirror or any strategic place in your home. You can even put it under your pillow at night when your unconscious mind is more accessible. However you choose to use a Tarot image, the goal is to allow the imagery to “impregnate” your psyche. Indeed, simply gazing at the card will help raise your awareness to achieve the energy of the card.
Your unconscious mind is actually quite accommodating and will reproduce whatever you feed it. In other words, what you focus on expands: By rehashing past failures, decisions and mistakes, by blaming others for your problems, you reinforce these feelings and sabotage your ability to succeed in the present. By focusing on lower vibrations, such as anger, regret and sadness, you become established in that vibrational pattern. Likewise, by concentrating on higher vibrations, such as love, kindness, compassion and personal responsibility, you can establish yourself in that higher consciousness. The state of your consciousness, the vibration of your personal energy, is self-fulfilling and self reinforcing. If you focus your attention on how badly things are going, on how many obstacles stand before you, or how others have wronged you, you will feel powerless. Perhaps you currently cannot see a way out of your predicament, but the metaphorical implications of the Chariot encourage you to persevere, to stop blaming others and to be creative in your problem-solving.
Are you proactive or reactive?
The Chariot's invitation is to perceive life's events and experiences in a broader continuum of events and to allow that knowledge to sustain you in current situations. For example, you may realize that losing your job a year ago was the key factor that prompted you to establish your own business. Or the breakup that caused you great pain made room for you to meet the person you would eventually marry. The more you are able to apply the "big picture" philosophy to your past experiences, the more likely you will be to view current situations in a similar context. This broader scope of vision enables you to view your life as a sequence of interconnected events, flowing together and spurring you onward to your greater purpose. The Chariot challenges you to perceive every obstacle as a stepping stone that will lead you to a greater self or a greater good. The Chariot helps one to see the flow and wholeness of life events and where they are in the greater pattern of life. All the pieces of your life, all your past experiences are part of a design and, therefore, have value in a larger context. Everything in your present is part of the same design and is similarly promoting your onward development. You never know how today's adversity/obstacles may lead you on a different course of action that will bring an even greater success than originally planned. Miracles can be born out of the disappointments you encounter each day. A belief that Spirit is flowing through your setbacks and difficulties will bring an expanded life, a greater self or a greater good. Your job is to keep going and to keep looking for creative ways to rise above any adversity. Think of yourself as the Chariot. You are in the driver's seat. Learn to be resourceful. T
he Chariot card is also about breaking habits, about achieving control over health and financial problems or about developing a positive self-image. It can guide you in improving aspects of yourself, especially the ways in which you present yourself to others – for example, determining what to say and what not to say. This is important as sometimes the most confident appearing people are terrified on the inside, but they have the self-belief to not show it. Meditation on this card may also help you focus on aspects of your personality and approach to life that need reshaping or refining.
When this card appears in a Tarot reading in response to a project, it suggests that the self-confidence is rightly placed and encourages full speed ahead: Your project is headed for success if you choose to continue on your current confident path. The general meanings of the card, therefore, include perseverance, success, triumph over adversity and great accomplishment, with emphasis on personal responsibility; staying true to one's chosen path.
Are you proactive or reactive?
The Chariot card conveys success and victory, but only through diligence and the ability to overcome adversity through personal responsibility. Yes, success and victory are possible, even probable, but they come through hard work and through the acceptance of full responsibility for outcomes. The Chariot represents someone who achieves success because of fierce determination, an individual who stays on course and who is true to his or her purpose, a person with an unswerving commitment to whatever path or goal has been set. Such an individual never blames others for his fate, nor does he feel shame or guilt for his own failings or shortcomings. Maybe we can’t do much about terrorism, road rage and threats of nuclear war. But then again, maybe we can. Mother Teresa said, “Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.” Margaret Meade once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.” Maybe one small step is to assume responsibility for our own lives, to stop blaming others. If we want to make a paradigm shift to being more proactive, we can begin by examining the times in our lives in which we think that the problem is “out there.”
The Covey paradigm and the Chariot’s message are one and the same: shifting one’s point of reference from the “outside-in” to “inside out.” The dynamics of life, the influences of life work both ways – the events of the world impact our lives, but we also impact the events of the world. Our own individual acts and accomplishments – such as small acts of kindness, voting, forgiving the driver who cut us off, recycling our newspapers, giving up blaming others for our problems, volunteering at a soup kitchen, teaching an adult to read, buying free trade coffee (really the list is endless) can start a circle of change that can affect the world. It is still true: none of us is an island and even a little action, like remembering the Chariot that resides within, can impact the world in a positive way.