Jun
Burdens
The pictorial Tarot deck is a vast collection of symbolism. There are twenty-two Major cards and four Minor suits, each with four face cards and ten numbered cards. It matters not if you work with Tarot or not. The imagery itself is interesting, especially when the deck is designed by a gifted artist. While much of the art is peculiar to Tarot itself, some has a wider application.
In many of the pictorial decks, the Ten of Wands depicts a man carrying a heavy burden. On his shoulder he bears a bundle of wooden staves. His back is bent by the weight. In a word, the card’s meaning is Burdens. In practice, it can be the weight of a burden, taking up a burden, or letting go a burden.
Burdens are something we all know. If you have ever marched with a full pack and gear, lugged sacks of concrete or tried to wrestle bags of groceries from your car’s trunk to the kitchen, you know a burden. It is the bulk and weight that presses down. It adds a dimension of discomfort to what might otherwise be a walk from one point to another.
You know what it is to take up a burden. You know the relief you feel when you set it down.
For many of us, there are burdens of the mind as well as physical burdens. Many people bear burdens of past guilt, past anger, past shame, past fears and past relationships. Many are burdened by second guessing their past decisions. We might call that a debilitating case of the “what ifs.” Any of these burdens are enough to slow us down, even if the original event occurred far in the past. Many a life has been slowed by their weight.
For what?
The burdens are memories that have been wrapped around emotions. They are nothing more than thoughts. Old thoughts. They are thoughts that have been allowed to become heavier than a ninety-pound sack of gravel.
Release those thoughts. It is easy. Think of the feeling of letting go a burden. Think of how it feels to slip off that pack, drop that sack, and set the packages down. Think of how easy it is to let it go. Look at your mental burdens in the same spirit. You do not fight with them. You do not argue with them. You merely slip out from under them and let them fall of their own weight. The fighting and fretting and arguing only prolong their existence. Without you to prop them up, your burdens will dissolve into their own nothingness.
It can be as easy as letting a sack fall off your shoulder!
Try it. Let those old burdens slip away into nothing. The result will be a freedom and lightness you have not felt in years.
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The Rune of Burdens is Naud. Letting go of such burdens is called “slipping the Naud.” It is a feeling of slipping out from under the weight.
