Umbrae
God knows how it started, whether it was the magic of a strange city, the loneliness of being away from our spouses, chemistry or the drink…one minute we’re talking about the weather, and the next – we’ve broached the forbidden subject.
It was the moment…
There’s a spot I go to when I meditate. It’s a place I can tell you about, but you’d go to a different place – we each go to a unique, quiet, spot.
I think of it as an internal garden.
Meditation – it’s not what you think…
I have different meditative ‘places’ where I go. I have one for when I go shooting – I squeeze the trigger, the hammer hits the primer, the cartridge fires, as the bullet leaves the barrel there’s a strong recoil that tries to jerk the hand up and to the right, a simultaneous loud report and before the bullet passes through the paper target I know where the hole will appear. There is a Zen quality to the moment. A quieting within before the trigger is squeezed.
In a shooting range, with gunfire going off all around you, it’s a difficult place to get to. It requires practice, and patience.
Control of breath…
You squeeze the trigger – you ‘know’ – there’s a bang and your hand jumps and the paper fly’s…but you ‘know’.
It’s the moment.
So there we were. It was a convention after all, everybody knows what happens at conventions…and she’s sitting across the table from me (keenly beautiful), those huge eyes, and I don’t know how it happened….
I used to cook in a retirement hotel in San Francisco years and years ago. The staff got used to the fact that I’d have everything ready, and just start cooking…I’d get to this place where I knew what the waiters were going to order before they dropped off their orders. Nothing sat under the heat lamps keeping warm…they knew to drop off the orders, and bang bang bang the orders were ready. Sometimes I’d have to remind them, “Don’t drop off unless you wanna pick up – pick ‘em up!.” I’d get ‘in the zone.’
Reading is kind of like that.
There’s a place I go to inside my head when I read. It’s place – a moment that takes up space – that’s not really a place and not really a time sequence as ‘moment’ would appear to describe.
It’s a place…a moment - stretched out.
So we’re sitting there, doing that verbal dance that people do when they are in a moment between stranger – friend. A spoken pas de deux, exploring boundaries…and it just happened.
I don’t remember if it was in response to a question, but she just said it – and that moment was one of such…trust.
I’ve tried to explain in previous posts about getting to that place – that moment that stretches beyond time. Somebody once got P.O’d at me (understandable) and stated something to the effect of “I suppose now you’re going to link us that old ‘Blank Spot’ post and talk about “extra-ocular vision mode” whatever that is…” and yeah…there’s this spot I go to – this time beyond time…a time/place of Zen, without the meditation. Extra-Ocular vision is one way to describe it. Seeing without the eyes…yet with…
But here’s the kicker…does it help in reading Tarot? Especially reading Tarot face-to-face? Will it improve your accuracy? Will it improve your ability to communicate and develop rapport? Does it help you focus and ground?
I think so. But how do we get ‘there’? I suppose one method is to mediate daily, just sit…perhaps contemplate the ‘card ‘o the day’. Nothing strenuous, maybe twenty minutes a day.
The problem with shooting is that it is loud, and hey…it’s firearms…dangerous stuff. I don’t recommend that folks go out and start buying firearms. It ain’t for everybody – even IF the skills that one can learn from the discipline are transferable skills, with beneficial results (the focus under adverse high stress dangerous situations).
Perhaps it was the excitement of the convention, magic of a strange city, the separation from our spouses, chemistry or the drink…she shook her hair back, gave that half-smile…. It was a moment of honesty. She chose to tip the scales, to tread to different waters…
I could be wrong, I know it’s not a guy thing per se, but it’s looked at that way. We all try to throw knives as kids, or all my friends and I did. I remember buying a set back when I was about eighteen. I never took the time to learn to throw them. They disappeared…
After my father died, going through the ‘stuff’, I come across a cheap throwing knife (what was my dad doing with it? And why did he have it stored carefully in with his gun-cleaning kits?), and an old cheap knife without a handle that’s wonderfully balanced. Both are light.
Throwing knives is a skill set. Experts agree, that for offensive or defensive purposes, knife throwing is useless. However as a skill, it teaches transferable skills.
Knife throwing requires physical balance, body awareness, mental focus, visualization, practice, patience, and breath control.
She was wearing a white sweater, tight jeans, and a black leather jacket. I may have asked, “So what else do you do?” or “What do you do for a hobby?” Hands resting on the table, relaxed…seriously, she gave a half-winsome smile, looked into my eyes – almost daring me – and said…
There’s one skill set for throwing cheap knives. They’re light and tend to float – twisting and turning in the air in addition to the expected and planned rotation – in the plane of flight between your hand and the target. It is easy to injure your shoulder from trying to over-throw light knives, to keep them from floating.
More expensive knives have enough weight to keep them from floating. They rotate in a predictable manner.
Both types of knives require mental focus, and a blending between the physical and the mental functions. Throwing well requires a meditative state – to learn how each muscle feels during the presentation, the back swing, the throw, and the follow thru. Then there is that Zen-like state where you stop thought and feel yourself do it – as opposed to thinking about it.
This is a transferable skill. I’m not talking about throwing tarot cards…I’m talking about that state you can get into when reading Tarot for others.
I suppose that to learn, one could paste all 78 Tarots around a large target. In the morning you throw three knives, and you get your reading. You could place The World in the middle, so as you improved, you could get a Triple World reading – that’d be cool.
I’m new at this knife-throwing thing. Since eye surgery I can’t go shooting (it can take up to 3-months to get your vision to where it’s supposed to be) and just for the record, I don’t throw well. Yet. But I practice daily.
Another ‘Thrower’ friend tells me, “Sometimes when I find myself throwing off, I consciously sort of shake myself off, and lower my center of gravity in my stance to feel more in contact with the ground and then refocus again - and breathe!”
Raking lawns – that’s another one I like to do. It is an act that lets me just ‘go away’.
I think that any activity that makes time stand still for you should be an important part of your life. Do it often.
I believe that in ‘live reading for a stranger’ situations, the ability to shut down all the external noise (visual and/or audio) is important. There are a ton of posts, where new readers are told, ‘ground yourself’. They ask, ‘How’, and are told to carry some stone…
Sure Onyx, or Hematite work well IMO, but…holding a stone may partially ground you. But….
To really ground…really and truly ground, requires more focus, more effort. You want to have a place/moment that you can ‘turn on’ and ‘go to’.
There was cigarette smoke in the air…it may have began to move funny, air currents shifting unnaturally. Little eddys opening holes, our vision clearing….
You will also find that hydration is important. Can’t shift your Ki? Keeps moving up? Hydrate. When that center of balance refuses to stay down…hydrate. Feel sick after reading? Hydrate and ground.
A discipline is a study that teaches you these transferable skills…
I don’t know how it started. It could have been the convention, the magic of a strange city, the loneliness, chemistry or the drink…one minute we’re talking about the weather, and the next, Nic kind of pulled her head back, shook her dark mane, created the moment, and with that daring half-smile said, “I throw knives…”
It was the moment…
There’s a spot I go to when I meditate. It’s a place I can tell you about, but you’d go to a different place – we each go to a unique, quiet, spot.
I think of it as an internal garden.
Meditation – it’s not what you think…
I have different meditative ‘places’ where I go. I have one for when I go shooting – I squeeze the trigger, the hammer hits the primer, the cartridge fires, as the bullet leaves the barrel there’s a strong recoil that tries to jerk the hand up and to the right, a simultaneous loud report and before the bullet passes through the paper target I know where the hole will appear. There is a Zen quality to the moment. A quieting within before the trigger is squeezed.
In a shooting range, with gunfire going off all around you, it’s a difficult place to get to. It requires practice, and patience.
Control of breath…
You squeeze the trigger – you ‘know’ – there’s a bang and your hand jumps and the paper fly’s…but you ‘know’.
It’s the moment.
So there we were. It was a convention after all, everybody knows what happens at conventions…and she’s sitting across the table from me (keenly beautiful), those huge eyes, and I don’t know how it happened….
I used to cook in a retirement hotel in San Francisco years and years ago. The staff got used to the fact that I’d have everything ready, and just start cooking…I’d get to this place where I knew what the waiters were going to order before they dropped off their orders. Nothing sat under the heat lamps keeping warm…they knew to drop off the orders, and bang bang bang the orders were ready. Sometimes I’d have to remind them, “Don’t drop off unless you wanna pick up – pick ‘em up!.” I’d get ‘in the zone.’
Reading is kind of like that.
There’s a place I go to inside my head when I read. It’s place – a moment that takes up space – that’s not really a place and not really a time sequence as ‘moment’ would appear to describe.
It’s a place…a moment - stretched out.
So we’re sitting there, doing that verbal dance that people do when they are in a moment between stranger – friend. A spoken pas de deux, exploring boundaries…and it just happened.
I don’t remember if it was in response to a question, but she just said it – and that moment was one of such…trust.
I’ve tried to explain in previous posts about getting to that place – that moment that stretches beyond time. Somebody once got P.O’d at me (understandable) and stated something to the effect of “I suppose now you’re going to link us that old ‘Blank Spot’ post and talk about “extra-ocular vision mode” whatever that is…” and yeah…there’s this spot I go to – this time beyond time…a time/place of Zen, without the meditation. Extra-Ocular vision is one way to describe it. Seeing without the eyes…yet with…
But here’s the kicker…does it help in reading Tarot? Especially reading Tarot face-to-face? Will it improve your accuracy? Will it improve your ability to communicate and develop rapport? Does it help you focus and ground?
I think so. But how do we get ‘there’? I suppose one method is to mediate daily, just sit…perhaps contemplate the ‘card ‘o the day’. Nothing strenuous, maybe twenty minutes a day.
The problem with shooting is that it is loud, and hey…it’s firearms…dangerous stuff. I don’t recommend that folks go out and start buying firearms. It ain’t for everybody – even IF the skills that one can learn from the discipline are transferable skills, with beneficial results (the focus under adverse high stress dangerous situations).
Perhaps it was the excitement of the convention, magic of a strange city, the separation from our spouses, chemistry or the drink…she shook her hair back, gave that half-smile…. It was a moment of honesty. She chose to tip the scales, to tread to different waters…
I could be wrong, I know it’s not a guy thing per se, but it’s looked at that way. We all try to throw knives as kids, or all my friends and I did. I remember buying a set back when I was about eighteen. I never took the time to learn to throw them. They disappeared…
After my father died, going through the ‘stuff’, I come across a cheap throwing knife (what was my dad doing with it? And why did he have it stored carefully in with his gun-cleaning kits?), and an old cheap knife without a handle that’s wonderfully balanced. Both are light.
Throwing knives is a skill set. Experts agree, that for offensive or defensive purposes, knife throwing is useless. However as a skill, it teaches transferable skills.
Knife throwing requires physical balance, body awareness, mental focus, visualization, practice, patience, and breath control.
She was wearing a white sweater, tight jeans, and a black leather jacket. I may have asked, “So what else do you do?” or “What do you do for a hobby?” Hands resting on the table, relaxed…seriously, she gave a half-winsome smile, looked into my eyes – almost daring me – and said…
There’s one skill set for throwing cheap knives. They’re light and tend to float – twisting and turning in the air in addition to the expected and planned rotation – in the plane of flight between your hand and the target. It is easy to injure your shoulder from trying to over-throw light knives, to keep them from floating.
More expensive knives have enough weight to keep them from floating. They rotate in a predictable manner.
Both types of knives require mental focus, and a blending between the physical and the mental functions. Throwing well requires a meditative state – to learn how each muscle feels during the presentation, the back swing, the throw, and the follow thru. Then there is that Zen-like state where you stop thought and feel yourself do it – as opposed to thinking about it.
This is a transferable skill. I’m not talking about throwing tarot cards…I’m talking about that state you can get into when reading Tarot for others.
I suppose that to learn, one could paste all 78 Tarots around a large target. In the morning you throw three knives, and you get your reading. You could place The World in the middle, so as you improved, you could get a Triple World reading – that’d be cool.
I’m new at this knife-throwing thing. Since eye surgery I can’t go shooting (it can take up to 3-months to get your vision to where it’s supposed to be) and just for the record, I don’t throw well. Yet. But I practice daily.
Another ‘Thrower’ friend tells me, “Sometimes when I find myself throwing off, I consciously sort of shake myself off, and lower my center of gravity in my stance to feel more in contact with the ground and then refocus again - and breathe!”
Raking lawns – that’s another one I like to do. It is an act that lets me just ‘go away’.
I think that any activity that makes time stand still for you should be an important part of your life. Do it often.
I believe that in ‘live reading for a stranger’ situations, the ability to shut down all the external noise (visual and/or audio) is important. There are a ton of posts, where new readers are told, ‘ground yourself’. They ask, ‘How’, and are told to carry some stone…
Sure Onyx, or Hematite work well IMO, but…holding a stone may partially ground you. But….
To really ground…really and truly ground, requires more focus, more effort. You want to have a place/moment that you can ‘turn on’ and ‘go to’.
There was cigarette smoke in the air…it may have began to move funny, air currents shifting unnaturally. Little eddys opening holes, our vision clearing….
You will also find that hydration is important. Can’t shift your Ki? Keeps moving up? Hydrate. When that center of balance refuses to stay down…hydrate. Feel sick after reading? Hydrate and ground.
A discipline is a study that teaches you these transferable skills…
I don’t know how it started. It could have been the convention, the magic of a strange city, the loneliness, chemistry or the drink…one minute we’re talking about the weather, and the next, Nic kind of pulled her head back, shook her dark mane, created the moment, and with that daring half-smile said, “I throw knives…”
