Honesty

 I wanted to start out my Tarot teaching blog by,  you know, teaching Tarot.

However, when I was setting up to do just that, I was being haunted by a conversation that I had with a dear friend the other day. I was actually being tormented by something that she wholeheartedly believed. 

You see, we were talking about shadow work and how hard it can be. How you need so much compassion for yourself and how important raw honesty is. She was practically in tears as she asked me "how am I supposed to do both of those at the same time?!" A few confused minutes later and she laid out that she believed that "being honest" literally meant making lists about what was wrong with you, basically tearing yourself apart with no compassion for yourself and no time to see the good things too.

I was shook. 

This is a kind, loving, smart person. Someone who has been studying mysticism for more than 2 decades. Someone who I just assumed knew better.

I tried to explain what I mean by "be honest" when dealing with shadow work, but I don't know if I really communicated it. I was just too fucked up by the realization that she didn't know how to tell herself the truth about herself without turning it into a checklist of all of her mistakes and most awful traits. There's no way that anyone would want to do any sort of self work if the first thing they think they have to do is tear themselves apart.

The longer I thought about this, the more I realized that this idea is deeply rooted in our culture. I'm sure we've all heard (or gods help us, said) "I'm just being honest, but..." And the next words out of that supposedly well-meaning mouth were something harsh, hurtful, maybe even hateful. They're telling us that we're selfish, unpleasant to be around, arrogant, our hair is awful, whatever. Something that we can't argue with because they're "just being honest."

I could spit nails thinking about it.

Because that innocuous phrase has weaponized the idea of honesty. It has taken something that is supposed to be a virtue and turned it nuclear. It's something that we all dread hearing, we all dread having to face. 

And then we want to improve, to become our best selves through shadow work, and the first thing that nearly every book, podcast, teacher, mentor, pamphlet, docu-drama, and fortune cookie tells us is that we must learn to 'be honest'. 

It's no wonder we're all fucking terrified of shadow work.

When talking about honesty, I've started substituting the words "be honest" with "tell the technical truth." It's not a big difference, and it doesn't necessarily take away the charge that goes along with the fear we have around "being honest." But it helps reset the dialogue somewhat.

And what I mean by "technical truth" is just to tell things like they are without the added baggage of shame. It's not as easy as i make it sound, but it can be done with practice.

We are trained from birth to be ashamed about just about everything, especially if it is something that makes us different. And when you start digging into shadow work, that shame training jumps right to the front of the line and makes sure that you are running everything about yourself through that particular programming. So you have to start thinking about what you're doing as talking about someone who isn't you (at least that's what I've seen to be the quickest way to get where you need to go.) If you were talking about friend, or a celebrity, or someone that you respected, and were asked to tell the truth about them, what would it sound like?

Chances are, it would be something you say without the attachment of shame or other emotions. You could say that they are brilliant at math with the same non-emotional, non-shaming tone as you could say that they are rubbish at matching their socks.

That's what we want to accomplish with ourselves when we start telling technical truths. No charge, no shame, no telling stories about why things are this way, or making excuses or trying to justify why it's OK or not OK or whatever. Just fucking tell it like it is when you are answering shadow work questions. Because there's just as many treasures in those shadows that you are exposing as there are monsters. You just can't tell the difference while you're "being honest" and shaming yourself for all of it like everything about you is a sin against nature.

I've seen too many people who run screaming from Shadow work because they can't handle the abuse they put themselves through in the "be honest" phase. And I've seen people who do the work, but never get honest, never learn to tell the truth so all the hours they put in mean nothing. They don't change from where they were when they started. I've seen everything in between. Fuck, I've been to nearly every point on that spectrum myself. Some of that is part of the process.

And what does this have to do with Tarot?

Well, my lovelies, the short answer is everything.

The long answer is that Tarot is a tool with many uses. It can be a party trick, a game you play with your girlfriends on wine night. But it also can be a highly effective tool of self-discovery and self-improvement. It can be a way to help other people who have blocked their own intuition to figure things out. 

You can't accomplish any of that without at least a little shadow work.

This is true for 2 major reasons.

Firstly, if you are working with the Tarot as a tool for self-work, you desperately need to be able to be honest about the messages coming through. You need to be comfortable with technical truth and asking yourself hard questions. You simply cannot read Tarot for yourself without being able to work with your shadows and tell yourself the truth. It is too easy to get caught in spirals of self-deception where you tell yourself what you want to hear, or what you expect to hear. Neither of which will do you any good in your quest to expand and grow as a person.  Being able to understand yourself, your good and bad repressed traits, your dreams that you abandoned, your nasty bits that you don't like to look at, the hidden motivations to your self-sabotage, is integral to using the Tarot as a self-work tool (and really it's the same with any tool of self-development, not just Tarot.)

The second reason comes into play when you are reading for other people. They are coming to you for real help because their intuition is blocked (in an ideal situation, at least. We can't ignore that there are people who will ask you to read for them "just for fun" and that's up to you how you handle these situations and I'll probably get into this in a later blog.)

If you are not at least aware of your prejudices, the filter that you have because of your own situations and experiences, you won't be able to guide them and help them. Because your job as a Tarot reader is to hear the messages that they aren't getting. It's what they are trusting you to do. If you are hearing everything through a filter of what you expect to hear, through the filter of your own damage, then you won't give them honest answers. 

For example, I used to know a reader who had a penchant for bailing on relationships when they got too hard. Sticking it out, working it out, making it work, just weren't in her vocabulary. (It was probably from a fear of commitment because of the broken family she came from that she had never confronted in herself.) But that reader almost always advised people that the best option in any difficult relationship was to get out. Leave and don't look back. And she also would always point out that it was the man's fault (no matter which party she was reading for).  Having her do a reading for me during a particularly sticky time in my relationship was one of the most uncomfortable interactions I've ever had. Firstly because she had somehow missed that I was queer. There was no man in the relationship in question so as she started pointing to King and Knight cards to assign blame, there was no one for her to focus on. And being told to leave because of the issues that we were having was so jarring, so counter to what I had actually asked her (hey, can you do a reading for me to help me figure out how to work this out with my girl?) that I never asked for a reading from her again.

As a side note, I have just celebrated my 20th anniversary with that partner, so "work it out" was the right answer.

But were I not a reader myself, I would never have gone to another. Not ever. And if you are learning to read Tarot, you don't want to become the reader that makes someone never trust Tarot readers again. No one wants that. 

So, in conclusion, learn to be honest. Learn to tell your technical truth. Do some shadow work. 

And for fuck's sake, have some compassion for yourself as you work your way through the darkness. Honesty isn't easy. Technical truths aren't always pretty. We're all just humans out here, flailing around and being human. We're going to fall on our asses at some point. We're going to make mistakes and we're going to have triumphs. Welcome to being human.

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Dani Hermit is a long time Tarot Reader with over 25 years of experience with the cards. They are a font of unsolicited advice about everything from reading Tarot to baking cookies. If you have questions about Tarot, cookies, shadow work, or their cats, feel free to contact Dani through their facebook page and they will select from these questions when the mood strikes to do a new blog entry (usually 2X a month).