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[0:13] Introduction to Episode & Poetry Reading of Back To Love

Aloha and welcome to Your Heart magic and illuminating space where psychology spirituality and heart wisdom meet. Here's your host, Dr. BethAnne Kapansky. Wright, the clinical psychologist with a mystic mind

Hello, hi, everybody. Welcome to Your Heart magic. This is Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright. And today we are continuing our archetypes of the Tarot series, and we are talking about the card, the lovers, and we will be looking at what does the card mean? And how can we understand the archetype of the lovers? Something that all of us can relate to? What kinds of things might this reflect in our own journeys and our own lives? And how can we channel inspiration from the wisdom of this car to support us and living with more empowerment and more inspiration.
 
So I thought I would begin with a poem today, which is called back to love just to kind of set the stage for the lovers. So this is called back to love. It is from my poetry, book, cranberry dusk, a journey of becoming, we may not always know where we're going. But we can learn to trust that we're getting somewhere.

And we can learn to lean into life and know there is no right or wrong when it comes to the journey of your soul. There is simply a gentle spiral that brings you back around to your truth again and again. And there is love, whether we are running from it, or hiding from it, or opening ourselves up to it, or knocking down each barrier that keeps us from standing and the grace of our own light, there is love. You see, no matter which direction you are headed, the universe is always conspiring in eternal effort to bring us back to the place where it all started. Love.

I think that, to me just kind of sets the tone for what the card the lovers is all about. I mean, it's got love in the title. How could this card, not even if you don't know what the Tarot is, you know, the lover sounds so much like what the name of the card is, it's about love, it is about choice, it is about relationship, it is about choosing loving relationships with others with ourselves with the world around us.

The Lovers is such an interesting card, because like any of the archetypes in the deck, it's multi dimensional, there is kind of the superficial meaning and the superficial story that it might offer more of a one dimensional Meaning of You know, you hear the lovers. And often, if you knew nothing about it, you would probably think about having a lover or having a relationship being in love. But the complexity of this card is that it's really less about that that's just one potential aspect of it. And it's really more about the fool who's on this journey, and is having all these life experiences being presented with a choice. And through that choice, learning more about love learning more about

his own value system, her own value system, how they experienced themselves, what their experiences with another, integrating those values and to them as they go on their journey, and ultimately continuing to spiral deeper into their relationship with themselves, their relationship with the world around them. And through all that their relationship with spirit, their relationship with the mysteries, their relationship with the divine.

And since love is the heartbeat of all of that it's truly about spiraling deeper into their relationship with love. And I wrote that poem years ago. I'm almost positive. I actually wrote it when I was in Oregon on Cannon Beach, and I was there for my wedding. So I actually was quite inspired by Union at that time.

But what I was thinking about when I wrote it was really less about that specific event occurring in my life. And more about no matter where we're out on the path the unit Verse is always conspiring to help us better understand our relationship with love our relationship with our heart, our relationship to how our choices can potentially empower us to grow and deepen and authenticity, and compassion, and making choices from the heart. That's really what your heart magic is all about. So how can I not love this card?

[5:27] The Symbolism and Meaning of the Lovers Archetype in Tarot

Before we dive into some ways today to better understand the lovers and how we can be inspired by them, I thought I would just give a little bit of an overview of kind of what this card means and some of the multitude of meanings that I already mentioned. So just for our reference point, remember, the Tarot is really about the Fool's Journey. The Fool is the archetype of each of us who has kind of struck out on this journey of life. And in the tarot, the fool is this optimistic, innocent young person who is collecting life experiences as they go.

And first, it starts with the magician and learning about well and personal power and how to be a personal Alchemist. By utilizing the ingredients that are presented to us our will what's in our heart, what our talents are, the magician is very much an active card, there's some masculine energy to it. And then the full comes to the high priestess who is the feminine counterpart of the magician, it is the feminine energies of being receptive, of conscious allowance of knowing that sometimes you can attract into you what you need, as opposed to always efforting and trying and making things happen.

And so the High Priestess teaches the fool about intuition, and about going inwards, and listening to the subconscious listening to intuition, learning how to take a rite of passage into the more soulful nature of ourselves. And as the fool bops along on their journey, then they meet the Empress who's the mother figure.

And it's all about creativity and abundance, and compassionate love, and nurturing and all of those things. And then they carry on, and now they're going to meet the Emperor, which is a little bit more like the father figure. And that is about learning lessons with structure and why a firm foundation can support any of us and living better and why having systems in place can be helpful.

And there's these more masculine type energies of authority, and again, structure and discipline, and then the fool runs into the hierophant. And the hierophant is the wise teacher, the hierophant teaches the fool about traditions, maybe about spirituality, about values.

So so far, the fool on this journey has been collecting wisdom, from various aspects of life experience various aspects of wisdom, tradition, various energies of both masculine and feminine, active receptive. And at this point on the fool's journey, the full beacons to think about hmm, I'm a little bit lonely doing this by myself. What would it be like to be with another for a while, so the lover kind of represents that sense of feeling like the fool wants to open up for relationship and wants to open up to seeking out some sort of relationship, some sort of encounter.

And depending on what deck you might be using for this, there's all these interpretations of what the lovers mean and the deck. For some, this is just about a choice and maybe like the full house is gonna hook up for a little while for others. However, their deck and their stories being told this is more of a soulmate relationship. There's so many meanings to how this is represented and various interpretations of the Tarot, which is part of what makes it so fun.

And for those who might collect the stacks and really be into these archetypes, it's fun to see how different creators might put their spin on understanding the archetype of the lovers. But the lovers is about relationships.

[9:50] The Choice: Understanding The Fool's Journey

It's about choice. And what's really fun is in my book, it's called the taro by Sylvie Simon, and it's really big fun Pics. or book and there's all this old lore collected from the history of tarot. And in the lover section that I was just looking at before I hopped on here, the card that they use is actually where the fool who in the old school tarot deck was typically a male comes upon two women.

And one of them is kind of young and innocent and very pure looking. The kind of girl that you would take home to your father, if this was a movie that was set in like the 1960s, or something like that, and the other one is a little bit of an older woman, she is seductive, she essential, she definitely is rocking a different vibe than the purity one, they've got like the one woman in white, and she's blonde. And I think she's got a little bit of blue one.

And then the other is like dark haired, and she's wearing red, and she's very sensuous. And the fool has to make a choice, the fool is ready to have a relationship encounter, and is going to choose between kind of the younger virtuous one, which might be more of the appropriate choice. If you were to look at it, like from a very old school point of view, very sort of moralistic point of view.

But secretly, the fool is attracted to the older woman, and the sensuality and kind of what she suggests and what she offers. And so in that particular depiction, it's all about being presented with a choice of kind of innocence, and naivete, and simple pleasures versus worldly pleasures and feeling tempted. Sometimes I've seen this card sort of, with more of the metaphor of Adam and Eve, you know, and here's the snake and the apple and the temptation story. And the idea behind it is a testing of values, a testing of what will you choose? Sometimes this card can mean temptation.

Sometimes it means kind of feeling pulled in two different directions. Do I do what I think is right? Or do what I do? Do I do what feels more intriguing, to me feels more interesting, maybe feels a little bit more seductive? And perhaps a little bit darker? How do I choose? And when I make this choice, what values might this be reflecting on me? And how does this align with what I purport to value? And depending on which direction I go in this, what do I then learn about myself? And what do I learn about my value system? If I go in this direction, what happens when I choose my own adventure, and on my choosing of the adventure, you know, I go right, instead of left or left instead of right.

Now, that's ultimately what this card represents. And the idea is in an integrated fool's journey is that whatever choice the fool makes, they're able to integrate that into themselves, and move on to the next major arcana card that's coming up, kind of having learned the lesson of what the lovers had to teach. This card talks a lot about do you decide something for yourself? Based on what you believe? And if you do, do you really believe that? Or were you just taught this is the way things should be? Or do you decide something for yourself based on a paradigm shift where you say this is a choice really contrary to what I was taught?

But this feels more true to me right now? This feels more true to who I am. And how do you make that decision? And again, coming back to what does that reflect about you? What does that reflect about your beliefs? So this is really a card of wisdom. It's a card of moving from a less experienced space into more of wisdom space, through choice through experiences, potentially with another person potentially through a relationship.

[14:25] Choice and Growth in Challenging Times

But I also think that this card can represent any time we have gone through an experience where we had two choices. And we were really torn between which way do I go and so we followed our heart or at least what we thought our heart was heating us to do, for better or for worse, you know, we follow it into the choice. And sometimes that choice works out and we congratulate ourselves on making the right choice.

Sometimes the choice doesn't work out, and we are stuck with feeling like perhaps we made the wrong choice, but then there's these profound lessons that can come from that. And what's so ironic about this journey is that I think many of us have this very perfectionistic type teach our thinking, or maybe a better way to think about it is we want to minimize and mitigate creating ill effects in our life. Like we don't want stress.

So we want to make the right choice, we feel like if I make the right choice, better things are likely to happen. If I make the wrong choice, bad things could happen. I don't want the bad things, you know, so many of us are kind of drawn to trying to make a choice that reduces the risk of something negative happening to us, which is not necessarily a bad thing. But we're drawn, you know, often to that choice. But what's ironic about it is that we try and choose what will keep things simpler or easier for us. And really, the nitty gritty of life. And when things get messy and complicated is where the deepest soul growth often comes from.

So there's this interesting tension and paradox, I think that we are often drawn to trying to choose a path where we keep things as stable as possible. And again, minimize something, minimize the risk of what might come to us. And yet, oftentimes, it's when things get really complicated, that we grow the most, and we learn the most. And that's what supports us on our journey.

So that doesn't mean that we go out and make a bunch of choices that we know are contrary to who we are, and are going to land us in a heap of trouble. It's more an invitation to think about choice a little bit differently. And when you're trying to make a choice, know that if you are listening to your heart, and you're doing the best that you know how you don't have to know the outcome, you just have to follow and trust that and go into it.

And trust that you will learn whatever you need to learn from that experience. I want to read a poem before I say what our first talking point is. And it is called choices. The choices and our today's determine the whose will become tomorrow will be be dark or light, fear or love. Big and hole and brave, are scared and split and small. Don't forget that trying to stop the turn of tide is like trying to hold the Big Bang inside of your fist, the universe will find a way to explode and dynamic motion anyways, and sweep us along in its ways of change. Fear not my dear one, for this star still like the way in anywhere where love is found, will never be torn asunder.

The Lovers empowers us to make a choice, and grow through that choice. And that poem I read, I actually wrote a day or two after the 2016 election in the United States of America. And I was watching this big Fallout happen on social media, and people were really weighing in with feelings around the election results. And there was a lot of upheaval going on in this country at this time.

And I was also watching this, the attitudes that people were starting to take towards each other. And I was watching this divide that I already was seeing, feeling sensing. And really seeing what was happening with that. And the splits that were happening with people and their belief systems and how they looked at things. And people who got along just fine might find out that they believe differently. And all of a sudden, there's kind of all this mudslinging going back and forth. And I remember just sitting down and trying to get to a place of truth, and get to a place of higher wisdom and understanding my experience of what I was seeing.

And that poem is what came out of it. And it's really simple poem. It's not really particularly profound or well worded or anything like that. But I think at the time, I was really tapping into this idea that we have a choice right now, with how we want to navigate where things are going. We have a choice with how we want to navigate our relationships with each other.

We have a choice about what narratives and directions we want to continue to grow within ourselves and in so doing grow within our communities grow within our bigger systems, and we have a choice about how we act how we treat one another how we might receive one or another, how we might choose to listen to another or completely shut down and just regard another. All I saw was all these choices. And I was trying to kind of separate out my own personal feelings and reactions from this higher wisdom.

And at the time, I just remember thinking, you have a choice right now BethAnne, about how you want to move through this. And as a writer, as a psychologist, as somebody who cares a lot about this world, how I think about this world about my spiritual connection, about heart wisdom, you know, you have a choice about how you want to digest and take in some of what you're seeing, and develop perspectives around that, that are in alignment with what you say you believe spiritually, and what you feel that your purpose is, if you're here to teach heart wisdom, that's not changed.

So how can you get a bigger perspective to take in what you're seeing happening in the world right now, and grow with it, as opposed to shutting down around it, you know, there's a lot of anger and a lot of hatred happening at the time and a lot of people turning against people. And we have seen a continuation of some of that, I mean, much of that, none of that changed, I think it's just a lot more evident now. And it grieves my heart often to see some of the divisive pneus of where things are at.

And for me, that poem was a bridge that wasn't controversial. It wasn't anything other than, hey, let's all take a deep breath. And like, really think about, no matter kind of what you believe around this, let's think about like, who we want to become as an individual.

[21:45] The Lovers Archetype Supports Our Personal Growth & Autonomy

And really, that is what the lovers empowers us to do it is to listen to our heart, and to choose and accordance with that. It encourages us to think about the importance of our decision making, and that we have choices around almost everything in our life. We have choices around how we think about something, we have choices around how we speak about something, we have choices around how we structure our day, we have choices around who we choose to be.

That's the biggest choice of all, what direction are we pointing ourselves and, and when we're pointing ourselves in a direction that aligns with our heart magic, our heart wisdom, our heart values, even if we make choices that might not always be in concordance with that, it creates a fluid map for us to keep coming back to a compass point that we can kind of touch base with and say, How am I doing with this, and if we're getting off track, we can re navigate ourselves and get ourselves back on track and keep moving in that direction.

And ultimately, all choices that we make when we keep our hearts open lead to potential growth. They lead to understanding ourselves, and understanding lessons about love lessons about the world, lessons about how we might interact with each other, what others might reflect back in us what they might trigger in us what we still need to heal in ourselves what we might need to work on, and our own inner journey.

We are invited to think about how our choices and form our experience of self and how our experience of self can potentially support us, and being self directed in this world where we are making choices that come from our truth, our being as opposed to doing what somebody else tells us to do, or what's been chosen for us.

 Part of what is so beautiful about the lovers is that the fool is really presented with the choice of do I do what I've been told I should do here's sort of the right thing. Or do I do what's really intriguing and interesting to me. And I think that part of maturity and our psychological development and spiritual development is to really work on our autonomy, and to really work on owning that autonomy, that soul sovereignty and saying, I want to make choices that reflect who I am not who others expect me to be, not who I've been taught to be.

Now sometimes we've been taught to be something and it feels right for us to continue on that path because we really believe it that those true for our hearts. There's nothing wrong with that. We don't have to live some rebellious, contrarian life that's like f this system to everything, just to prove somehow that we are not, you know, thinking like everybody else, we're not part of the crowd.

That's an interesting path. There's definitely those who take it and some who that's absolutely right for. But I think often, the harder testing is figuring out, there's all these things we've been taught and that some of them are there for a reason. There's wisdom in them. Remember, in the tarot, the fool is just been hanging out with the hierophant.

And the hierophant imparted a lot of wisdom. And a lot of that wisdom is based in tradition, it's based and this not only this is the way it's always been done. But this is the way it's always been done, for good reason. Like, here's these reasons, here's this collection of wisdom that has come before you were others who have walked this path have sort of tested these methods and said, these are wisdoms that will support you on your journey.

And so the hierophant some part of this to the fool, and the fool gets to decide, is this stuff right for me? And so the fool might make a decision that says, yeah, it is. So I'm going to choose to go in this direction. And maybe the fool says, I don't know, I don't know if that's right. For me, I'm gonna go in this different direction entirely.

And maybe through doing that learns something new and realizes, nope, I'm making my own tradition now, or maybe kind of wraps back around and says, Well, these pieces of it hold true for me that this other stuff didn't. And so now I've got a more mature relationship with these values, because I tested them out, I tried them out. And I really helped figure out what was right for me, and what wasn't. So I have a more nuanced sense of my values.

[26:56] Values and Their Evolution Through Personal Experience

And that really leads me to my second talking point for today, which is the lovers potentially teaches us to understand our values through experience, values are a really interesting thing. Where do they come from, you know, often they're taught in a family system, they can be taught in schools, spiritual traditions, religious traditions, other types of traditions that exist.

And I think there's things that perhaps our heart just knows to be true, whether or not they're taught, sometimes somebody wasn't taught anything, but it's just right in their heart, and they know it. And so that feels like a personal value to them. But part of how we really deepen our relationship with our values often is testing those values. It is putting them to the test and seeing did this support me? Does this still align with how we see the world, just this align with my experiences? Does this still add up in the face of what I'm seeing now, value systems continue to grow and evolve as we grow and evolve on our journey.

And what many of us will run into is that we'll have a certain value system in place. And there's times that we might go through some sort of an awakening process and the whole thing falls apart. And we have to start over again. But oftentimes, even if we go through some kind of awakening process, where we really kind of toss out a lot of how we were taught to do it and decide to write our own script, we retain some of what we were originally taught, we retain a foundation of those things.

And as we grow psychologically, we continue to get bigger. We continue to grow, how we understand our perspectives, how we understand our values. There are truisms and things sometimes that people say that can feel really trite. Let's go with grief. A lot of times if somebody's suffered loss, and somebody says to them, even if they're really well intentioned, well, everything happens for a reason, or they've gone to a better place or something like that.

That's this kind of just truism, it's something that you might read in a fortune cookie, and it has no debt. It has no substance for the person grieving. There might be truth and what that person said, The Griever might disagree. And they might say that doesn't feel true at all. I don't feel like there was a reason this happened that doesn't hold true for me at all. I feel like this was really random. I'm really angry at life. And I don't know what to do with that. I'm in crisis over this my value systems and crisis, how I think about the world is in crisis.

My heart is broken and I'm being broken open. Because all the stuff that I was taught all the stuff that I believe saved about life or believed about God believed about spirit, believed about maybe being a good person and living a certain way, none of that feels true right now. So don't come at me with your little aphorisms over there. So this person who's going through the grief is going through a real crisis of self. And this is perhaps a little bit of an extreme example.

But potentially, they go through a refining process. In this crisis of self, they've been broken open their previous shell of what they'd created for how they understand the world, it's just been cracked now. And there's a lot of disillusionment that can happen in that space. There is psychological deterioration, and disorganization and disorientation that can happen in that space.

There is, I think, a lot of spiritual questioning, and assessment and evaluation that can happen in that space. And essentially, if we think about values is something foundational to understanding our worldview, understanding what we value in life, kind of what structure we're, we're building ourselves on, that goes through this major shake up and this major testing. And as this person goes through their grief journey, they might discover that some things they believe still hold true for them.

But they see it a little bit differently now, because they had to encompass this experience somehow into that belief system, they might go through a process where they don't believe any of it, because it just didn't fit. And they have to reconstruct and come up with a new way of seeing things, they maybe go through a huge paradigm shift.

And perhaps some of that shifts some of their core values. So the lovers is an invitation to understand that through the act of choice, we gain experience. And that is how we test our values and part of testing values, is becoming who we're really meant to be. That is experiences that we gain in life that allow us to become more authentic, to become more true to who we are, to become more again, self directed, to have a greater sense of autonomy and soul sovereignty and truly knowing who am I in this world? Not all the stuff people told me to be but who am I?

So this is an invitation when we work with the lovers archetype to really think about not only what do I believe, but how does this work for me when I test it out? And what did I learn from this? How did I grow from this? To this helped me expand this helped me get bigger? Or did this help me shrink? Do I feel like I lost a part of myself? And if I lost some part of myself making this choice? How do I come back to who I am? Or how can I grow through that? If I lost a part of myself? What did I gain instead? Part of I think understanding this card and working with it constructively is one being able to create that core touchstone of what does our heart say?

And being able to come back to our heart and look at how would my heart guide me and this choice. I think the other part, though, of working with this card is developing a perspective on choice and understanding that, again, if you take the right and wrong out of choices, within reason, let's just kind of ascribe to the practice of do no harm here. You know, for the most part, though, if we're making the best choices that we know how, then even if we make a choice that ends up feeling like it didn't work out for us, and we think oh my gosh, that was such a bad choice.

Maybe we could flip that narrative and say, Well, how did I grow from that choice? If it was a bad choice? Then what was the growth that was potentially gained? What did I learn that perhaps circles me back into my heart or back into who I want to be in this world? So there's so much growth that can come from these experiences, we don't need to be afraid of it. We need to know that as long as we stay in our hearts, we can work with anything in our life constructively. And we can find the growth through it. We can find the experience we can find the wisdom through that.

[34:33] The Lovers Archetype and Balancing Energies

Something else that the lovers invites us to do is to really balance opposites in our life. It's interesting since this card is about choice, and the choices are like should I go right should I go left? You know should the fool and this old deck that was represented in the book I referred to just he choose the young innocent, naive, age appropriate relationship Um, or just seek out with Mrs. Robinson, you know, does he go with the older woman that is really more alluring to him at that point on his journey?

What does he choose? And when we look at it metaphorically, when we look at this archetype, symbolically, it's really about learning about duality. It's learning about choice, it's learning about two sides of an issue, to potentially come into balance with it. Sometimes I one of the interpretations I see for this card is the balancing the union of masculine and feminine.

And that's being represented through the picture that's often on the card, which is the lovers. And you know, two people who are kind of soulmates who found one another, but the metaphor for that is really learning how to balance our divine masculine energy, our active, directed willful energy, our creativity, our inspired energy, our leadership energy, with our feminine energy, which is our receptive energy, that is our intuitive energy, that is our energy that knows that.

Being passive is not always about not having a backbone or not having a voice, that sometimes we wait for something to come to us, or we practice patients in a situation because it's not yet time to act. So it's sort of this active passivity, with the divine feminine, and then all this creativity and abundance and growth and the ability to alchemize anything, when we take it into us, and we allow ourselves to go through this growing process, deconstructing whatever experience has happened, and allowing that to help us grow into a bigger version of self.

So that side of ourselves is really more about a intuitive process. It is more about this creative process that's not necessarily linear. But it is about working with our processes in a way where we trust our process. And we trust that even if we're not always actively trying to force things to grow or change things, figure things out that we're gonna get there anyways, whereas the masculine process is more effort filled, it is more, there's a little bit more of an intentionality there, there is a little bit more action oriented, and the lovers potentially, is about the union between both of those, it is about learning how to work with those energies inside of ourselves, and learning how to find our own balance. And when we talk about coming into balance coming into harmony, this is going to live differently for everybody. There's not some right way to do this.

There's not some like report card out there by your guardian angel that's like, Hey, you're getting an A plus on the balancing of your masculine, divine masculine and divine feminine, like you've really got that 5050 Right now, good job. Like that's not what it's about. It is more about learning to play with these energies, learning to understand your relationship with the energies, learning that you might have tendencies, where one of them comes more easily to you than another.

And so learning and different situations in your life, when do you maybe step forward with more of the masculine energies in you? When might you step forward with more of the feminine energy? When do you need a little bit of both? This is a very fluid concept. This is a fluid kind of balance. It is one that changes and it changes in accordance with the requirements of our own life and where we're at on the palette.

[38:57] Balance, Harmony, and Choice in Relationships

Other things that I think this card represents balancing is the self versus others. This is a card about relationship. The Fool is seeking out a partner for the first time in the tarot journey. And so this is about understanding ourselves in relationship to just ourselves and understanding ourselves in relationship to somebody else. Whether that is a romantic partnership, or another kind of partnership, it could be a friend partnership, it potentially could be a spiritual partnership. There's many different forms of partnership that are out there.

But from a very basic level, this is really about the self versus partnerships that are often more in the romantic sense. And it's that balance between Who am I when I'm just like hanging out on my own, doing my own thing, and who am I when I'm in union with another and I'm connected to somebody else, and how am I understand my Self differently, and how do I find balance and harmony between not compromising the core parts of myself, so I retain my individuality, and yet also being permeable enough to invite somebody else in, if that's your choice, and be able to form your own organism, your own ecosystem with that person.

So there's a balancing a harmonization that's going on there. And then the other one that I think is really relevant to this card, when we're talking about balancing energies, is balancing our relationship to wonder to innocence to this very pure part of ourselves, and balancing that with more worldly knowledge, wisdom, complexity, Simplicity vs. Complexity, wonder versus hard earned wisdom that maybe came from tough experiences that didn't feel innocent, didn't feel peer and didn't feel wonderfilled.

And I really think that part of being whole and part of being in harmony with ourselves is potentially working with the question of how do we retain our sense of wonder and astonishment at the world and our ability to really engage with life's most simple gifts, and let those fill us and at the same time, find the wisdom we need to live effectively in this world. And that is a balancing act, that is about choices. It's about the growth that we learn through our choices.

And again, coming back to that untouched place, that no matter what we choose, we can always come back to our heart, we can always come back to that purity of wisdom and our heart and kind of check in and say, Does this choice still feel like I'm moving in the direction of love? Am I still in accordance with what my heart wants me to do with this? And ultimately, that is what the lovers invites us to do. It invites us to consider the question of like, what does my heart say about this?

What would love choose? In this situation? If you have made choices that you don't like, and you don't like the direction your life is going? How do you come back into your heart and say, What would love have to say about this? How can I love myself in this moment, I don't love my choices. I don't love the direction that it's taken me. How can I offer compassion or grace, maybe it's tough love to yourself, and move myself in a new direction. So I feel more aligned with who I really am.

One of the most beautiful things about working with our hearts is that the heart like doesn't throw anything away. The journey of the heart is never about, oh, you got it wrong, like go back to start, you really blew it. The journey of the heart is about composting, it takes anything on our path, and it allows us to find the value in it. It allows us to find the growth in it.

It allows us to find a way to move deeper into that spiral love thatI was talking about at the beginning of this podcast when I read this, or that poem, it allows us to know that we can always come back into our heart and say what direction is love telling me to move right now what feels most true for my heart at this point in time, and to me, that is really the heart of the lovers. It is about being in that heart centered place and living life in a way that is in accordance with our hearts. And it's about learning how do we choose love in different situations? And how do we what can we learn about love in different situations, sometimes part of how we learn about love is we learn what love isn't.

But I've always said that love has a million faces. And there are so many lessons of love that are so in in like every stitch in this world, every little piece of fabric that weaves together this world. Ultimately, it does go back to love when we're learning about hope when we're learning about being self directed, when we're learning about how to be a better leader, how to shine our light, how to forgive ourselves, how to forgive somebody else, how to set boundaries, everything that we talk about on this podcast. Ultimately all of that has to do with the choice of choosing love. When you understand that all of those things rings are an invitation that potentially moves us deeper into our relationship with our hearts, our relationship with authenticity, our relationship with our spiritual connection, and that is all about love. That is all about being heart directed.

[45:15] An Invitation to Choose Love

So ultimately, that is what the lovers is all about. How do I choose love in this situation, and making this really simple. Let's say you had a bad day. And it just wasn't a great day. Let's say you're not feeling particularly connected to spirit. Maybe you're really stressed out, maybe you've been in a bad mood. It's been really hard out there in the world right now, people are really struggling with hope.

They are struggling with their mental well being, they are struggling with perspective, they are struggling with what they believe, you know, a lot of people are struggling right now there's a lot of pain going on. There's a lot of grief going on. Sometimes it is really hard to be in a space of finding higher perspective when those very hard human energies are pulling at you. Even in that moment. At the end of the day, if it was a bad day, and you're not in a good place, you can still ask yourself the question, what would love to tell me right now? How can I choose love in this moment? And maybe the answer is, it's to go to bed early tonight.

And it's to try and just forgive myself for where I'm at. And just kind of forgive life for how hard it is right now. Maybe love would tell you to take a little bit of time and go read some poetry or go be in nature, or go be kind to your family, or do something nice for somebody else, because that's one act of good that you can see it in this world. And you might not have control over a lot of things. But we know that small acts of love get bigger when they leave us that when we do something loving towards somebody else, they're more likely to do something loving towards somebody else. We change the energy and ourselves and we choose to do a small act of love.

We change the energy with whoever or whatever it is that we just seeded lovin, and potentially that changes the energy, we know that the world can be changed through small acts of love. And so maybe that's all you do is figure out what's one small act of love I can do right now. There are so many ways to choose love. There are so many ways to ask the question, How can I love myself in this moment, and come up with a different answer.

There's so many ways to practice self compassion, self grace, forgiveness, acceptance, kinder self talk, self empathy, we always have a choice. Even when it looks like we don't have a choice, we always have a choice. I am going to end today with a another piece of writing that is called choose love. I thought it was an appropriate piece to end on. I wrote this as an essay A few years back when I was feeling extra inspired by the idea that we're talking about today, which is choosing love, and what a powerful choice that actually

[48:37] We Are The Revolution: Choosing Love One Act at A Time

Choose love. It is the only choice you will make that will change your life for the better forever. Because love is the origin of every good thing.

And so each time we choose love, we open ourselves up to that nucleus of goodness. Everything else beautiful flows from there. Learn to embody loves universal energy inside of yourself. Wrap it around you like a psychic shield, which gently radiates presence and protection wherever you go. Pretend you are the ocean who holds space for all who inhabit her streams.

Go be with nature and take in the energy of the trees. Let yourself be like them feeling as kind and grounded and accepting as they think about the Earth and how she makes a place for all of us, offering unconditional acceptance no matter who we are. Imagine you are as big as the Earth.

Choose love. Forgive yourself when you had a bad day and stress or judgment or fatigue cost the better of you. So you were less than your most desired sel. Send out the energy a soft pink light to anyone who may have been affected. Start with yourself. Trust the universe to support and guide them on their path. Ha, just as you two are being supported and guided on yours, look for opportunities to help somebody in a practical way.

Think the person who serves your coffee with as much more and sincerity as you can let somebody in during traffic, smile. Release imaginary lanterns of peace into the sky, picture their light shining down on humanity. Be kind to animals, eat a cookie and delight in it.

Do whatever you can with joy. Fostering love isn't about perfection. It's about developing an eye for opportunities to do so. Realize each of us is doing the best we can on any given day, even if we don't always understand each other's best.

Remember, we don't know somebody's soul path, why they are here at this point in time, what lessons they have to learn, or how they need to grow their heart. Then remember that each of us is in the process of discovering these truths for ourselves.

So keep getting down to the business of finding out what these things mean for you. Choose love. Make loving yourself a priority. get support from a friend or a book or a therapist or healer or whatever calls to you if you need help and don't know where to start. Practice saying this truth daily. I am enough.

Remember that none of us have mastered this and we are all students continually learning how to be complete enough and whole. Notice your thoughts. Try not to judge them. If you find something you don't like, work on changing it and finding a new perspective. Remember, you are not your thoughts. Your thoughts are malleable materials here to help you. So work on learning to shape them in a way that supports you. Notice your body try not to judge it. If you find something you don't like work on thinking it for holding you, giving you structure and agreeing to be the canvas which contains the art of your soul.

Remember, you are not your body. Your body is a beautiful temple here to help you. So work on learning to love it in a way that support you. Notice your heart. thank it for beating for you. thank it for neatly knowing how to love. Picture it warm and glowing with love. Picture that energy traveling out into the world. Practice this whenever you can. Remember, we are connected to the whole when we love. Choose love. Don't be perfect, be beautifully and wonderfully you and be okay with making a mess from time to time.

Don't shortcut your humanity and spiritually dissociate by pretending it's all love and light if it's not, say all the bad words if you need to. And be tenderly honest with wherever you are at. Learn to face yourself and know all parts of you are valuable. Realize in the eyes of the universe, there is nothing we can do that will make us more or less deserving of love.

Try and work on living this truth, because it will revolutionize your life if you let it and, and began to integrate the idea that there is nothing you can do or not do to increase or diminish your innate value worth or lovability in the eyes of life.

Which means you are just as loved when you're at your worst as you are when you're at your best. Love is a blind all giving equal opportunist. Savor this and swallow it whole. Let it seeps into your heart and bones and cells and skin. let it consume you and nourish you sit with your enoughness revel in it. laugh about it. Be relieved that you don't have to try so hard.

Then notice how much more grace you naturally extend to others because of the amount of grace flowing through you. Do whatever it is that calls you to love and no it is enough.

Choose love. Make a list of what that means to you write it down, share your list with others. Let's transform the energy of this world in as many ways as we can then see how love multiplies, magnifies and rises up when we become its catalyst of change.

[54:44] Wrap Up & Coming Up Next Week

I think I'll leave us with that bonus assignment. If you want to do it. Make a list of what that means for you to perhaps integrate the beautiful lessons of the lovers archetype. And what does choosing love mean for you make your own list. Write it down. See how you feel afterwards, I'm guessing your heart will feel lighter and brighter. 

All right. Thank you so much for joining me for today's podcast. That wraps up our illuminating the lovers archetypes of the taros episode. Next week we are going to be, I'm starting a new series. And it's one that I'm just going to be doing periodically called talk story and talk story.
 
And Hawaii on the islands is just a slang term for an informal dialogue and chat. And my idea behind this and from time to time, I want to do a wildcard topic where I just gather some of my books and I'm going to be reading some selected passages from some of my personal essays and poems and using that as a jumping off point to talk story. And to share a little bit more about my own journey. 

And kind of where I've been some of the spiritual truths I've learned along the way and hopefully offer some takeaways that will help apply to your life as well. So we will be doing storytime next week on a topic yet to be determined. TBD. In the meantime, have an amazing week. Be well be love you and be magic.

You've been listening to your heart magic with Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright. Tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your life