Ladies and Gentlemen.....A Toast.

5 of Waters.  Osho Zen Tarot.

I love working with the Osho Zen Tarot.  It is a deck that helps guide me along on my spiritual path like a Rough Guide Handbook, pointing out the good places and not so good and takes you off the beaten track to those little areas not everyone has discovered.

I drew the 5 of Water (equivalent to Cups in RWS) in response to a question my daughter asked.  The gist of which, was, why did everything in her life keep turning out crappy.

Its sad, she is a beautiful young woman, with a gorgeous little boy.  She works hard at her job and at being a mum.  She's warm, friendly,funny, honest and touchingly niave, but she seems to keep hitting brick walls. 

As a child she was quiet and well behaved, but due to having to wear glasses form under the age of one, was bullied and ridiculed throughout her early school years.  As she got further through school, she had to wear braces on her teeth, so as kids do, she was yet again singled out and ridiculed.

However, as I kept telling her, my little 'ugly duckling' became the swan (she has a killer smile and te most beautiful eyes) but the damage was done, her self image was distorted and her confidence shattered.  It has taken many years to just begin to re-build what her school years took away.

So the 5 of Water Clinging to the Past seemed appropriate even though my daughter tells me she doesn't cling to the past, she says 'It's there, but filed away.'  So I began to tell her exactly how I see it.

She carries it around, frozen, part of her past that she doesn't want to deal with fully, so it is in the 'freezer compartment' of her memories.  Neatly stored in little parcels, every insult, every 'joke', every jibe, easily within reach on that special little shelf made for the ice cube trays.

The glass, behind the figure on the card, is waiting to be filled with all the good things, the experiences and events in life that we long to drink in.  Every time the promise of filling that glass comes up, like an automatic response, out come the ice cubes.   

Ice cubes made of shit, (not recommended but hey, its a metaphor) containing all the hard, cutting, hurtful things we have experienced in life, once dropped into that glass of hope and promise they aren't going to make the experience nice, it becomes tainted. 

It makes no difference how expensive the champagne, how good the quality of it, once that ice cube gets dropped in and starts to mix in, your champagne isn't going to taste good.  In fact it's going to taste of the same old shit that was held in the ice.

Maybe we need to check our 'freezer compartments' and acknowledge that there is some crap in there,  better still deal with one cube at a time, defrost it, check for any diamonds of clarity and pearls of wisdom we may have put in there by mistake that can be of some value,  and then flush the rest away, even ice has a use by date. 

We need to stop thinking our glasses need the ice cube, if you stop using ice, there is more room for champagne. 

Dealing with it one by one is possible, we all deserve to be able to raise our glasses up and savor the crisp, fresh taste of the delicious champagne that is our life.