Spirituality is all about the unseen, the unknowable and the energies that swirl around us all the time. Just take a peek at any major religion or spiritual practice and the one thing they all have in common is a big ask; they ask you to believe in something intangible and unknowable. This can be hard for many people; it is very, very hard for me to believe past my five senses. If I can’t perceive it; then does it actually exist? I struggle with this question all the time. Am I limited to my own perception of existence? If someone else observes a tree and we both agree on the physical features of that tree, it would make sense that we are both perceiving that tree in the same way and that it exists similarly for both of us. But then we get stuff like the “Gold or Blue Dress Debate” and it calls into question how we actually perceive the world. When my 8 year old tells me that she ‘can’t imagine in color’ and all the things she sees inside her mind are black and white, that seems like a very different way that she perceives the world than I do. Is that simply physiology or is it something more? How do you know the unknowable?
The Page of Wands is at a good moment in the journey toward spiritual enlightenment. In the Nicolas Bruno Somnia deck I drew from for this reflection, the Page has his head covered with a sack indicating that progress has been made but mastery has not yet been reached; there is still much he cannot perceive. A candle hovers in front of his face indicating he does have the light of knowledge, of spiritual kindling, but he has not yet accepted that there are things in this world that he cannot know. The Page wants to know. He has his books and his tools and his ink blotter; he has studied the books and read the articles and done the research…and yet, much still eludes him.
For me, I think about the things I ignore everyday. My good friend Tyler Lyle often speaks about the idea of ‘the sacred resting upon the mundane’; I love this phrase. The secret of the universe is there in your cup of morning coffee, in the breeze that rouses your hair for a moment and in the recently noticed sun beam warming your hard as you type. Whatever forces control this sacred/mundane existence, there are many we cannot perceive. And yet, they call us to kindle the flame of perception and work to know the unknowable. To accept that we cannot rely on our physical senses all the time, that there are some energies that swirl around us like a sea squall, churning up the strange ephemera below. We just need to take a moment and try to sense them; what secrets might they dredge up?
Thanks for reading with me today. What energies are you ignoring in your own life and how can you work to get that hood off of your eyes?