spiritual awareness
Life Lessons From Spirit That Make Us Stronger
As we wander through life, we often face many roadblocks, many stumbling blocks and many disappointments. There are many questions that arise as we walk our path and at times it feels like the entire world is against us, as we progress on our journey.
Many people blame God, Source, Spirit, the Divine, or other people for the situations they are in, and cannot get past. This simply an illusion that we create in our humanness. Spirit does not want us to fail in life. Spirit does not want us to be unhappy. Spirit does not want us to live a pauper’s life.
It is time to sit down, take a look at all what has happened to you and discover two things about each situation. Why did it happen, and what was the lesson you learned from it? As you look at the examples of pain, suffering or disappointment in your life, what do you see? Were they life lessons from spirit?
For example, you have been with the love of your life for many years. One day your your beloved unexpectedly abandons you for another person. What could you have done to prevent this? What could you have done differently? Why were you not enough? You were in love, totally and unconditionally devoted to this person, and you thought they felt the same way about you. Why did they do this to you?
In almost all cases where this happens, there is nothing you could have done to prevent this. It was not you who walked out of the relationship or marriage; it was your partner. And all people have free will and free choice. This was not your decision to make.
Follow Your Passion And Truth
In Native American tradition, human existence and well-being is based on the Medicine Wheel, also known as the Sacred Hoop, that consists of the Four Directions, Father Sky, Mother Earth, and the Spirit Tree. Together these ‘spokes’ of the wheel honor all aspects of human existence, growth, balance, and well-being: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.
In each lifetime, we are destined to achieve progress in one or more of these areas until, finally, after many incarnations, all the ‘spokes’ of our wheel are complete – all the way from the inner hub to the outer rim. At that point, we have completed our various missions through many incarnations in a myriad of schoolrooms, and we finally achieve ascended mastery.
When all our spokes are complete, we leave this dense, earthly dimension and arrive at the highest plane of existence, the realm of the Great Spirit, traditionally known as the ‘Hunting Grounds of the Ancestors,’ and since the arrival of Christianity, as ‘Heaven.’
In this state we never need to descend again, and will remain infinitely in the higher dimension. We are liberated from the endless cycle of rebirth and reach a new level of consciousness and enlightened existence, known as nirvana in Buddhism, moksha in Hindusim, and eternal life in Christianity.
As a result, from a spiritual stand-point, we are offered a smorgasbord of options and choices that we may need for our particular journey in this lifetime. The enthusiasm and passion we feel when we are guided to a particular path is spirit directing us toward the ‘curriculum’ we need to complete in order to achieve our ultimate goal of transcendence in one or more spokes of our wheel.
The True Meaning Of Judgment
Judgment is card 20 in the Tarot’s Major Arcana. Arcana means “hidden things, mysteries,” from the Latin arcanum meaning “a secret, a mystery” and arcanus meaning “secret, hidden, private, concealed.” Arcana are therefore “pieces of mysterious knowledge or information.”
In a standard Tarot deck, there are 21 Major Arcana cards. They define The Fool’s journey (the first card) through life and all of the life lessons we encounter along the way. As one of the final stages in The Fool’s journey, the Judgment card represents having learned sufficient lessons to now awaken from the illusion and limited perceptions.
The most well-known tarot deck is the Rider–Waite. Pamela Coleman Smith, aka “Pixie,” was a British artist who illustrated the deck. She deserves much credit for the brilliant way she captured advanced spiritual concepts in the deck’s artwork.
The Rider–Waite Judgment card depicts three resurrected figures, a woman, man, and child, reaching up to an Archangel overhead blowing a trumpet as a wake-up call. The scene is based on Christian imagery representing the Resurrection and Last Judgment. The flag of St. George hangs from the trumpet, which references 1 Corinthians 15 in The Bible.
The Judgment card reminds us that no matter what our background may be, we can rise up and transcend any trauma or adversity in life, regardless how challenging the situation. We also have the power to see through the illusion of life and wake up to the truth.