Dirty Dishes

Tarot of the Spirit written by Pamela Eakins, PH. D. is my favorite Tarot book. The wisdom she conveys is Plutonian; it penetrates to the depths of your soul and initiates a transformational process. I rarely pick up the book any more, but still hear her profound phrases echo in my mind. Many of her words have been etched into my brain.

One such phrase is the following:

“…recognize that all that is good has the potential for evil; all that is evil has the potential for good;…”

What someone is capable of doing says not what they will do.

Well, a thought that popped in the other day was this:

“If it’s powerful enough to hurt, it’s powerful enough to heal.”

OK, I confess, I actually heard it the other way around, but it was not a warning. It was simply an observation. What’s most import is where it took me. I believe I was washing dishes at the time.

These days, I wear rubber gloves when I do dishes. About 4 weeks ago, I injured the tip of a finger. It wasn’t that painful (surprisingly), but I did loose a bit of skin. Because of my wound I had to wear gloves to do the dishes. And since it took a couple of weeks to heal, wearing gloves became a habit. I have continued the habit since because I noticed a few things.

The hot water in my house is very hot. The water heater is not that close to the kitchen, so it can take a few moments. Too often, when I did dishes barehanded, the water would get too hot and nearly scald me. It is annoying playing that dance between the hot and the cold trying to find the right temperature. Gloves solved this problem. The super hot water didn’t hurt any more. In fact, there was something fun about washing with hot, hot water and not hurting. I could feel the heat, but not enough to hurt.

So, doing dishes became easier. But then I noticed that I didn’t drop dishes any more. Rubber gloves grip, even when soapy – hmm, another benefit.

Lastly, I noticed that some subtle resistance went away. I no longer hesitated to do dishes – I just dove in. When I questioned this, I ultimately realized that I simply don’t like to get my hands dirty. Wearing gloves allows me to keep my hands clean while cleaning. In fact, I enjoy cleaning. It is cathartic. It appeals to the fixer in me.

Keep in mind, that all of this awareness developed over time. Every day twice a day I would do dishes and some part of me thought about it.

And then my awareness jumped to another level. I realized that I have a similar resistance to healing work as I do to washing dishes. For years there has always been something holding me back. I would push forward, but then the water got too hot and I would pull back. Sometimes I would even get burned. It was only a month or two ago when I picked up whatever someone came to me with. If I helped your depression, I got depressed. If I worked on a pain in your knee, my knee hurt afterward.

So yesterday, as I’m doing dishes, the ah-ha sets in and I realize that I need healer gloves, but what are they?

Over the past few years, I have had one person after another work with me on this issue – despite my not asking. They would coach me, and beseech me to protect myself. I reluctantly tried one thing and then another. I could never tell if they worked or not, and in every case, got bored. I have developed a process when I do healing work now, but I don’t feel whether it works or not. Something tells me I’m not quite there yet.

My guides said once:

“If you believe you need protection, protect yourself, but know that the greatest protection one could have is knowing they do not need to be protected.”

Striving for the latter too soon means you’re gonna get hurt. Yet we do learn from pain, eventually. If it’s powerful enough to hurt, it’s powerful enough to heal.

These past few days have been very active and full, so much so that meals have been skipped unintentionally. Last evening, I was tired to my core and last night, my sleep was consistently disturbed. Something is up; I feel the heat and it’s almost too hot. My mind is fretting when it should be dreaming. I can’t put my finger on it, but I know that what I am feeling is powerful enough to hurt, and powerful enough to heal.

Until I can figure out how to ensure the energy goes to the right place, I am consciously slowing things down. This too is tricky. It’s like turning up the cold; if you put in too much, it will negate the heat. In the past, slowing simply meant stopping, and then there was that hunk of inertia preventing me from moving forward again.

We live in a fascinating existence where something as mundane as dirty dishes, rubber gloves, and a wounded finger can teach us about something so much more profound. It is this reason why Tarot, Astrology, and Numerology all work. It is not the cards, the planets, and the numbers that teach us; it is the process of contemplation, meditation, and going inside that they inspire, and then the piecing it all together on the way back.