How Tarot Cards Contribute to Big Picture Thinking (Hint: It Has Nothing to Do with Divination)

If you've been reading this blog, it's already pretty clear that I like deriving meaning from dreams, tarot, and astrological charting (haven't done much with the I Ching). Those of you who fear or loathe these tools or practices can leave now.

For the rest of you who are slightly more open, perhaps with a tinge of skepticism, here is how tarot cards contribute to Big Picture thinking.

A single tarot card has several layers of meaning. Available to bring into any interpretation are:

• symbols
• numbers
• colors
• assigned names
• traditional associations of positive/negative cast (e.g., death, devil, lovers)
• classes (major, minor, court)
• characters
• scene
• foreground/background perspectives
• upright or reversed nature of card

A set of tarot cards, organized into a "spread," also has several layers of meaning. Elements contributing to the overall interpretation include:

• the question posed by the querent/client
• cards within assigned card positions
• card incidence (e.g., concentration of reversals, majors, courts; no concentration of any one type of card)
• card sequence from right to left (e.g., do smaller-numbered cards tend to appear at the left?)
• card juxtapositions (e.g., card pairs)
• card characters in relationship across cards (facing toward or away)
• "flying" cards - those that fling themselves out or upright during a face-down card shuffle

My most favorite readings are those comprehensive, wholistic tarot readings that don't come from a brute force computation of all of these attributes. They evoke a big picture and then draw in the details.

It's that learning how to do this that is the challenge.

Let me illustrate by sharing an anecdote.

Truth be told, I started learning how to read tarot cards because I thought it would be good exercise in data analysis.

As a research analyst, I draw conclusions and derive recommendations from many datapoints. I put data into tables, look up and down and across data, synthesize, draw conclusions, and derive recommendations. I need to take into account other factors as well, such as who was invited to provide input, what was asked, how was it asked, what was said, who said what, and what happened within the organization, when, that could color the input.

Tarot cards have pictures and color, I thought, unlike means and standard deviations. They're sure prettier to look at. Should make it easier, no?

I read the books, took several classes, and learned many meanings. Armed with all this possibility, I discovered my brain, even with its experience in reading and processing data, couldn't compute all of the information the cards provided fast enough, and tuckered out before producing a fat, layered cohesive story. So I gave up.

I picked up the cards again several years later because I became interested in dreamwork as a self-discovery, self-growth kind of practice, and sometimes in dreamwork, we draw tarot cards to see what connects.

I got back to being curious instead of dejected - and was bound and determined not to go back to the exhaustive - and exhausting - computational tarot reading method.

Instead of working across a spread, card by card, I jot down first impressions of the what the whole spread means in the context of the question - without thinking! - then work from there to the next level, which for me is card concentrations. This is one of my exercises with the cards - the freeweights and fitness ball for that Big Picture muscle.

Benefits of Dreams to Coaching #2

Dreams are indicators.

Over time, changes in dream material can signal that change is possible in waking life.

Sometimes waking life shifts precede shifts in dream material.

A recurring dream in particular is a sort of alert system, a "yoo hoo."

When a recurring dream changes, it's a signal that whatever needed to be attended to or resolved was attended to or resolved, growth is occuring, forward progress is being made.

Benefits of Dreams to Coaching

Dreams stimulate flexibility and openness in a coaching conversation.

Here are four reasons why:

1. Dreams are not bound by the laws of physics. Nuisances like time, space, and location are no longer restraints.
2. Dream characters, objects, places can also possess language, introspection, and problem solving skills
3. The dream plotline is not cast in stone or wax
4. The dream ending is not either

When presented with dream material, a coach can invite the client to:

1. re-enter the dream landscape and do more investigation
2. approach characters, objects, places and ask questions, solicit assistance
3. play the dream forward ("what happens next") or back ("what got your dream character into the current situation")

Coaches: Go with what comes up.

When Dreams are Not Your Friends

And as I fall asleep, sometimes I'm afraid—because my dreams are not my friends. My dreams are wild like bracken or sudden hot winds that sweep down into the parched valleys of Galilee.
Anne Rice, in "Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana,"

I've been rolling along, talking about how dreams can be your friends ... or at least interesting, potentially beneficial, acquaintances.

It hit me that for some, at some times, dreams might NOT seem like friend material.

Is this true for you?

I'm not going to deny or deflect - it has certainly been true for me.

I've had dreams too vivid, dreams with disturbing plotlines or images, dreams with awful body sensations - like falling or flying too high (out of control) or propelling too fast.

Sometimes I have to put those dreams on a shelf for a while.

I think - no, I believe - once I get the courage to speak those dreams, something positive will come of them.

Just not yet.

What to Do Next When You Dream of Dick Cheney

Same dream: "I'm wearing an construction-orange tunic with a big black "x" on the back. The tunic is admired by Dick Cheney, and I give it to him. It's almost like a mantle-passing."

Different day, new direction. With dreams, anything goes.

What's the orange vest?
"Protection, makes me seen. Makes me a target as well: "X marks the spot." Flimsy, plastic mesh, not of natural fibers. The topmost layer - a superficial topmost layer, easily removed. I don't lose anything by removing it and giving it to Cheney, who seems to want it."

How do you feel when you give the construction tunic to Cheney?
"Free. I didn't want it anyway. "

Powerful Question: What superficial layer in your life have you given up that didn't suit you anyway? What's that "eX" tunic?

What to Do When You Dream of Dick Cheney

The dream: "The night of the inauguration balls, with Michelle Obama glittering in her one-shouldered Jason Wu, I dream I'm wearing an construction-orange tunic with a big black "x" on the back. The tunic is admired by Dick Cheney, and I give it to him. It's almost like a mantle-passing."

Two questions came to me to ask, one right after the other.

The first: pretend I'm a man from Mars, and you were describing Dick Cheney to me. What's Dick Cheney like?*

The response: "Dick Cheney was the vice president of the U.S. under George W. Bush. To me he was cunning and leering. He was the real holder of power in the administration."

The second: characters or objects in dreams can reflect different parts of the self, so ... let's take a look at the Dick Cheney part of you. Let's give the Dick Cheney part of you a voice and let him speak for himself.

The response: "To be honest, I don't really want to think about a "Dick Cheney part of me" - but maybe that's precisely what I need to be looking at, especially now that I look at how I just described him ... the real holder of power in the administration ... huh ... whatever this is in me, this Dick Cheney part, is the one that holds all the cards. "

*This comes from Gayle Delaney's interview method of dreamwork.

Why Are Dreams Useful To Coaching?

Dream material contains a lot of elements - elements from present or past waking life, like current concerns; text, spoken word, and images; characters, places, and events; memories, emotions, and physical sensations.

Regardless of where these elements come from, be it an undigested bit of beef or the Divine,
they are strung together in unpredictable and potentially evocative ways.

For example*:
A client comes to the coaching session feeling down and unmotivated. He has brought a recent dream to the session and is invited by the coach to share.

Client: "I'm in a place with a swimming pool, the room is vast and echoey, and a bit scary. The scene shifts to an outdoor shallow pool. Three gifts wrapped in blue paper and blue ribbon fall from I don't know where but fall into the pool and float."

The coach could begin with asking the client what feels most meaningful to him. In this case, though, the client seems to invite feedback

The coach could go many places with this dream in light of the client's presented issue of feeling down and unmotivated (for instance maybe the goal needs to be scaled back from a "vast" level to a more manageable "shallow" level, and/or changed from indoors (enclosing) to outdoors (more open)).

Here, the coach senses significance and opportunity in the gifts, and asks: "What do you think about those wrapped gifts?"

Client: "They seem to be mine."

Coach: "Do you have any sense what's inside them?"

Client: "It wasn't clear to me in the dream."

Coach: "Would you be willing to go back into the dream and check out what those gifts that are yours might be?"

That last question is a powerful one, that uses the client's own words and own dream content. The awkward construction is purposeful, to emphasize the fact that the gifts belong to the client.

A next step could be investigating the "why this dream, now?" question, connecting the client's uncovered gifts to the presenting issue of feeling down and unmotivated.

Notice the coach does not do any sort of interpretive work at this time - e.g., "water in dreams means x, y, z;" the coach maintains a presence of authentic curiosity and respect for the client's dream material as uniquely and wholly theirs to work out.

(*names, details changed to preserve confidentiality)

Teleclass: Dancing in the Moment with Dreams

This past week, a colleague and I led a teleclass for coaches on inviting dream material into coaching.

There is a place for dreamwork in the ICF competencies. Dream material brought by the client into a coaching session can enhance coaching presence and effective communication, specifically by making it easier to:

1. support client self-expression
2. be present and flexible during the coaching process
3. access intuition and trust one's inner knowing
4. shift perspectives and experiment with new possibilities for action
5. generate questions that create greater clarity, possibility or new learning
6. generate powerful questions that evoke discovery, insight, commitment or action

A good deal of the teleclass was spent on ways of working with dreams, plus examples.

I wanted to share here, though, the importance of a coach setting the stage to invite dreams into coaching sessions, by making sure the client knows that his or her dreams are invited, and by making it clear that a coaching session is a safe place to share dreams.

If you would like to hear more about the teleclass, please contact me at suz@dreamcurrent.com.

Do Dreams Work Like Wordle?

From the site, Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide.

Dreams are, in a way, image and emotion clouds from material stored in memory, no? Maybe...