Today's Tarot: The Tower (radical revolutionary change. Get in front of it, if you can)

Yegads, how do I write about the Tower? It’s change. It comes upon you. It often takes you by surprise. It kicks your butt and often, very often, it leaves you bedraggled and exhausted but clinging to a new shore on which you will leave a vastly different and generally better life.

When a client draws this card, I almost always end up saying, “Life will never be the same,” as part of the explanation for what is happening or what will happen.

The best we can do is prepare but even those careful preparations don’t mean a hill of beans compared to the awesome power of the Tower.

I’ll give you an example from my own readings. A client, Marla* came in for a reading. In the slot that represented the immediate future (the next two to four weeks), she pulled The Tower. (As you can see from looking at the image below, the image shows a building that is exploding because it is being struck by lighting.)

“Marla,” I said. “Things are about to change. Life will never be the same. Sometime in the next two to four weeks everything will be different. The key is to try to ride the storm as best you can. Often things are better in the end, but in the moment, it can be daunting if not downright excruciating.”

I was sorry that I had to be so blunt, but I’ve learned not to question what I need to say. As soon as I question it or try to put my own spin on it, I end up being wrong. If I just say what I feel pulled to say, no matter how strange, it ends up being on the right track.

Moving on…

Three weeks later to the day, I got a voicemail from Marla. “Watch the news tonight,” she said. “I’m on it because my house blew up.”

What???

It turns out that there was a gas leak. She and her husband just barely managed to get out okay but they lost everything. They were devastated. And that my friends was the Tower working in their lives, quite literally. Generally, it’s a more metaphorical explosion that leaves everything changed, but I learned that day that sometimes, it’s very, very real.

You might think this is the end of the story. But, remember how I said above that the Tower often leaves you different but better?

Here’s the end.

About eight months later, Marla came back in for a reading. She had a very specific question. “Do you think I am a bad person for not being upset that my house blew up?” She asked as we sat down.

“What? No, absolutely not,” I replied. “If you’ve found a way to be okay with this, that’s a very good thing.”

“Well, see, I’m a packrat,” she continued. “And we’ve been thinking about moving out of the house and into an apartment and I was facing over thirty years of stuff to give away or throw away. But then, the house blew up, and now I get to start completely fresh.”

So, there you have it. In the moment, the Tower wrenched them out of everything they new, everything familiar, everything that had been theirs. It gave them a completely blank slate whether or not they wanted one. In the moment, it destroyed everything. In the long run, it gave them a brand new start.

Today, if something huge changes in your life, I encourage you to look at it like an opportunity. In the moment, it might be blindingly painful, yes. In the long run, you will pick yourself up on the farthest shore, and you will be reborn.

(link to the image: http://api.ning.com/files/pxnq-7mondsTDfdkagvuBZV-TjEgdJcY1DQo7ZSc1HGsqxnkNK3lmr8kzkv4eDZW8f5RgrJqyFs0pAEQaLGFlwbN9BmGgA6F/tarotthetower.jpg)

*Names have been changed.