Oracle Wisdom

9/5/2025

I’m sitting here on a Friday evening pondering all of the things that happened over this last week. Tiny wonders. Tiny miracles. Heated discussions and projected catastrophes…and I ask spirit: what were the lessons? What am I supposed to take away from all of this?

Oracle Deck: Divination of the Ancients

Card Name: ARROW, FOCUS

Summary of the Card text:

Declutter your thoughts. Become the arrow, shooting straight and to the point. Clarify your goal and prioritize what’s important. Plan how you will get there, work out a schedule and then FOCUS! Walk away from anything that distracts you and rely on meditation to help maintain clarity of thought.

Since the time of the Chaldeans, arrows have been used for divination purposes. The King of Babylon would stop at the fork on a road and seek an omen by firing arrows engraved with written messages. The one that travelled the farthest would have the answer. The Native Americans believe that you should speak like an arrow, direct and focused.

My mind is like an arrow in flight.

It’s focused and sharp, so that I might

Hit the mark and reach my goal,

To free my dreams and feed my soul.

— Barbara Meiklejohn-Free and Flavia Kate Peters

The tools humans use to tap into spirit can be quietly practical or wildly exciting. The exciting bits and the confusing bits and the mystical bits and the inspiring bits are fun, and waiting for these moments to authentically rise up makes me want to keep going.

But quiet practicality is what helps shape the daily rhythms of my life.

I love sitting with tarot and oracle cards, pulling what feels like messages straight from the Gods. This is not the first message I’ve received this week…or this month…or this year…to focus. It’s not that I haven’t been focused, it’s more that there has been so much to focus on. I have been scattered, yes, but I have also been focused, and hyper focused, or completely disengaged depending on what was happening in any given moment. At THIS point, during THIS week, I know exactly what spirit wants me to focus on but that doesn’t stop every other part of life from marching forward, intent on marching right over me and anything in its way if we don’t either play along or handle our marching orders. In pulling this card, I wonder if the best course of action is just to let those other parts of life march on by without marching along with them after all.

The message about words, both written and spoken is poignantly relevant, for me. As I worked through a major life decision over this past week and a half, I made some moves that were very unusual and out of the norm, for me. On paper, they were not smart decisions. If I’m being honest, I told myself off quite a few times—mainly because I knew I had to do what I did but my whole human self did NOT agree with it because ON PAPER IT WAS THE LEAST SMART DECISION ONE COULD POSSIBLY MAKE!!! And also? I felt compelled to move in these unusual ways in a way I’ve never felt compelled to move before, so I know it was the right thing to do.

Looking in from a different perspective, they were lessons from spirit. Seeking answers in words…burrowing into the indigenous ways of speaking with clarity and directness…I did that to the best of my ability to reach a resolution that was beneficial to all. The outcome was not what I had hoped. In my efforts to be direct, I was not heard, misinterpreted and misunderstood. Worse, I was talked over and pushed towards making a decision that was never in alignment with my intent, even though I had been very clear on my intent and hopes and desires from the beginning of this very compelling, very unintelligent situation of my own making. What was different this time though, was that I am no longer willing to betray myself in order to save someone else—and I even communicated THAT to everyone involved so that we could all clearly see our boundaries and work together towards solutions because the days of self-betrayal? Gone.

Early this morning, before I started work and before I pulled any cards, I made the decision to let go of what I was holding onto so tightly. All of it. Over the last ten days, just like I have been programmed to do my whole life, I had been twisting and turning myself into knots to try and make a hard situation work for everyone. A person sat to my right with a hard boundary around their goal; a person sat to my left with a huge desire to get what they truly needed; and I sat in the middle trying to translate all of those things into something useful for all of us while holding all the realistic pieces of the puzzle in a bucket—carrying the weight of the rules and regulations and legalities that impacted all of us, trying to find a way around that was both legal and moral.

There was something there. It could have worked, had we all listened and worked together to find solutions that benefited the group more than the self because in the end, benefitting the group offered all of us exactly what we needed. It could have worked, had all of us had some flexibility and calmed down enough to take in the issues that needed solving. Instead, I was met with ultimatums, one side full of audacity, and the other—understandably belligerent but filled with a harsh inflexibility that was neither consistently nor directly stated, the outcome of a relationship that had always been toxic.

It took far too much of my time and my brain and my research and my trying to figure things out on my own. It was draining to listen to—on repeat—one side say “this can’t possibly work” and the other side say, “it will work if you make decisions that benefit me even if they leave you completely unprotected”. It interfered with my work and my enjoyment of daily life. It caused pain, because I’m attached, and attachment causes suffering and the only way to move on is to let go. Of all of it—the people, the objects, the things and anything around the periphery.

It’s got to go.

And this is a big thing to let go of. It’s a scary thing to let go of. It’s the ground beneath my feet, and I do not know how I will recover.

But I know I will, because once all of the clutter falls away, I will be able to see again, and breathe deeply, and stop distracting myself from the things I need to do—from the things I’m scared to do but know HAVE to be done. I made a very silly, very unintelligent decision because I needed to learn to NEVER DO THAT SHIT AGAIN. I made a very bad decision because I let my heart lead me into the traps of my past, determined to make it work out this time.

For me, letting go is a scary, scary thing. That pit in my stomach that says I might need this thing in the future, or it might become more valuable to me in the future, or that I’ll never have anything quite this amazing in the future, keeps me in the throes of holding on to all the things tight, in a death grip. Only that’s not true and never has been. Life is abundant and there is always more than enough for all of us, no matter what lies this world may want us to believe. Nothing is scarce. There is a way through for each of us, if we stop looking backwards and holding on to what is no longer useful or beneficial to hold on to.

So here and now, I release the death grip on all the things. Even the ground underneath my feet.

I can stand on the rubble and rebuild. And on top of that rubble, I will have a vantage point from which I can focus.

This, my friends, is why I love tarot and oracle cards. They make me think. They point me in the direction I should travel. Many times, I already know I’m supposed to head that way; sometimes—like ten days ago—they point me in a direction that is confusing, but too compelling to ignore, and I follow. And I learn.

I’ll see you atop the rubble.