Okay, getting back on topic...
I wonder if other people who have done the IDS have experienced anything similar to what I'm finding is happening with my tarot practice. (I've skimmed this thread, but its loooong, so I might have missed some of the talk on this subject.)
I'm finding that the simple act of committing to just one deck (or in my case, one deck and one oracle) has helped to focus my tarot practice. I feel like my work with tarot had become diluted from all of the deck multiplicity, deck browsing, and deck buying I had been doing before. But now that I'm locked in to the Triple Goddess Tarot and Tarot of the Four Elements, even in the past week, I have felt my focus improve and my reading practice deepen and become more in tune with my life. My readings have also been spot on amazing.
Now, this could be because of the decks that I've chosen. They are decks that I had not really thought to own in the past; I didn't like the artwork until recently. But they feel like they are exactly what I need right now, and my readings with them are a breath of fresh air.
But I think that it is more than
just the decks I chose and how well I get along with them. I think its also the fact that I've shifted my focus back from decks themselves ("Look at this deck! That deck! Ohhh, that one's so pretty!") to the practice of just plain reading the cards. Choosing to do an IDS has helped me shift my focus from the physical decks that we all love so much to working
with the decks, which I think is a very subtle but vital distinction, at least how it relates to my tarot practice. And I think that distinction and that shift-of-focus would hve been the same no matter what deck I chose.