Telling Fortunes and Obedience

     I recently met “Mildred,” a woman who was visibly upset by the idea of card readings. Sixty years ago, as a girl of twelve, Mildred and her adult sister visited a fairground Fortune Teller, excited about ‘knowing the future’.
     The reader had delighted them with visions of a handsome husband and a happy life, then delivered the information that one day ‘half of your children will die in a fire.’
      Even as a great-grandmother Mildred grew emotional telling me this story, then she became triumphant as she told me she had not expanded her family after the birth of her third child. ‘That way there is no half,’ she concluded, and happily there was never a fatal fire.
     I cannot begin to imagine a situation where I would predict the deaths of children to anyone, least of all to a child. My process is individual to me, and I rarely receive such unequivocally negative information.
     What I learnt from Mildred was a lesson about surrendering personal power.
     Every culture socializes its members to promote and continue the way things “should be” and I come from a culture that used threats of punishment for disobedience as its main tool.
     I was taught to comply with the instructions I was given. I was to behave only in ways that would aid in the perpetuation of a system that kept people silenced and subservient. Then I was expected to raise children in the exactly same way.  
     Like the people around me, was completely absorbed in simply navigating how best to comply. I had no understanding of personal identity. There was not even a concept of a Self that might have needs or desires. Even though the family was part of a church community, I had no understanding of connexion to anything greater than my immediate surroundings.
     Most behaviour was proscribed and prescribed and performed by rote. Success meant avoiding negative attention: remaining unnoticed in order to be unpunished. I think that if I had met Mildred’s Fortune Teller, I would have been quite prepared to believe what I was told, knowing that external forces were ready to unleash maltreatment for no other reason than because they could.
     Today I will attend the ninth birthday celebration of my granddaughter. She is not obedient. She is courteous and polite. She is very loving and caring. She also knows her own mind, and can articulate her opinions. She expects to have input into what will happen to her and with her and even around her. Sometimes I am envious of her composure; sometimes I am impatient with her questions; always I am thrilled to see how our society has evolved in the last half-century.
     I do not ‘tell fortunes’ or make predictions.
     I have, in my evolution away from obedience, learnt to connect with Spirit, and to allow synchronicity to reveal Unseen truths to whomever seeks. As a result, my clients choose their own cards. They see the back of a deck of 30 or 50 or 70 cards, each with the same design and colours and shapes. Somehow they locate those specific few which reveal the information they need.
     I have not heard a specific vocabulary for how this happens: guided by angels; detecting a vibration; just knowing.
      Modern card reading is about connecting to the divine memory which resides with our Higher Selves or our Deeper Selves. Within us, not with any outside person of influence. Cards can be a reminder of plans we have forgotten, or of situations we are ignoring. They expand our awareness into the Cosmic Wisdom which lies within us.
      We are not present in Human Experience to be told what to do by some external ‘authority’. We are here to remember what we intended when we manifested in physical form. There are manifold routes to our goals. We get to choose whether and how we comply, the way my granddaughter chooses.
     We live in a wonderful, changing time. It is good.

 

     Jo Leath has been supporting clients through change and growth since the 1980s.
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