Would you keep reading tarot if all it ever told you is that you are going to fail, no matter what you do? Out of all the tarot readings I've done or had done for me over the years, I can count on two fingers the times the spreads have come out positively, even when I ask how to avoid a bad outcome. And I'm talking Ace of Swords Reversed kinds of outcomes, or Ace of Wands Reversed, or Lovers Reversed. I'd love to know the thoughts of other readers out there: if you basically never got any good news would you keep reading? Do you think it's better to not even ask?
Thank you.
The way I see it, Tarot is a tool to help us live our best lives, to comfort us, to encournage us, to help us solve problems and to see the positive side of life and embrace it.
That is what Tarot IS and what it is meant to do. If this is not happening, then something is wrong.
First if you have had readings done by others which have left you feeling negative, something is wrong there. NOT with you, but with the skills of the reader(s).
The readers were not good readers if this happened. A reading that does not help you feel better in some way, or at the very least give you hope by telling you HOW to improve things, is a failed reading in my eyes. That means the readers you went to were not good readers and for that reason I would not trust what they said.
It looks to me like you have been to some readers who were not very competent. If the result was that they made you feel negative and worse, then disregard what they said. They did not know how to give the message in the right way. That does not mean that readings can't be something more in the hands of a better reader.
Next issue you mentioned, is that this is happening even when you read for yourself. That might mean that you have a fear of seeing something negative come up as you feel it has so often in the past. And that might have left you in a place where you consciously or unconscioulsy have expectations or worries that this may happen again. Thus you LOOK for it in the cards, hoping it will not come up this time.
If this happens, and you go in with expectations, it means that you can't maintain the objectivity needed to read fore yourself. We need to have a clear mind to read for ourselves with no expectations of what we want or don't want to come up. And just look for truth. If there is something you don't want to come up that can predispose you to look for and then see it, even if it is not the actual answer.
What I would suggest is to try to believe that this is not what Tarot is or how it is supposed to work. It has nothing to do with you. A good reader can find ways to inspire the querent, no matter who the reading is for. There are always good uplifting aspects to ANY situation in our lives, even the hard ones.
You just likely had a number of bad readings done, and not surprisingly it worried you. That concern could carry on to your readings you do for yourself, coloring them and making it hard for you to be objective enough to read accurately for yourself.
So first thing I would say is to realize that your experiences are not typical of a good Tarot reading. That is not the way it is supposed to go. There are always positive sides to any situation and the reader is supposed to show them and be helpful.
That said, maybe it would be helpful to you to ask your cards HOW you can get better and better at seeing the positive side of the issues you ask about in your readings. ALL situations have two sides to them. Even the hardest situation has a positive side too. To just give the hardships and to not show the good means that readings is unbalanced, in my eyes. It's about striving to create that balance and remembering WHY you are doing the reading:to help, inspire, comfort, ...the querent. If that is the goal of a reading, then a good reading should achieve that.
And btw, also, a lot of what comes up has to do with the question asked. Readings do NOT have to be predictive and tell us what will happen. We have the power to create the future we want and Tarot can help us do it.
Eg,instead of asking if you would succeed at "X", you could ask "What can I do now to help ensure that I succeed at "X"?" OR "What steps can I take not to help me succeed at "X"? " OR "What do I need to know/understand now that if I got it I would succeed at "X"?" Then you can follow the advice, do it, and then succeed. Just to give you some ideas. We don't have to ask about the future as if it was destined and we can't change it We can ask HOW to create the future we want and then set about creating it. Which to me is a much better use of the cards.
Those are my beliefs on that,
Babs