This is the information that came through for the last issue of Boho Tarot Journal:

On Mindfulness

Mindfulness is much easier than you think, but it takes some commitment. One must be willing to practice, and able to hold without judgment, awareness of What Is, as witnessed Here and Now.

It is not a special thing. Mindfulness is innate to all beings. Humans, however, are particularly distractable, and so have often lost the key to orienting themselves in this way. You have developed a situation – society, culture, family, workplace, etc. – in which it is more supported to be unaware than aware. Therefore, what do you do with your awareness?

When you have awareness but no tools for digesting it, you learn to suppress it. Mindfulness therefore is as much about how to handle awareness as how to develop it.

Mindfulness without kindness to oneself and one’s awareness turns easily to criticism and self-loathing. Mindfulness without compassion for others turns easily to nitpicking and continued entitlement to judge. True mindfulness is intentionally married to an open heart, so that whatever is observed – both the phenomena and one’s response to it – are held, lightly and without the need to act or to defend.

Therefore mindfulness is as much the practice of unconditional love as anything else.

When you exist in circumstances with no outlet and no tools to manage awareness, when, for instance, you experience things you are taught to repress or deny or project, then awareness becomes the enemy and you’d better not have too much of it. Some of you then become addicts to whatever can dull your senses. Most of you eventually can no longer hold the mask and find yourselves being the “oversensitive one” in your life.

This practice of mindfulness, and incorporating it with your practice of tarot, would then involve letting yourself off the hook for anything and everything you perceive. The tarot piece is to help you discern your path forward, while owning who you are and what you experience. This does not mean you never strive to right injustices. It does not imply a passive approach to life.

It means that when you are in the movie theater and you sit next to someone wearing strong perfume, and it brings an allergic reaction, you act on it. But you act without increasing the suffering. You don’t need to yell at the smelly person. You don’t need to apologize tearfully to your friend when you ask to move seats. You don’t need to feel bad and you don’t need to make anyone wrong. Just move. And maybe you later go in search of some remedies that can help with your allergies, or maybe you write letters to the editor with a loving plea for less perfume in public spaces, or maybe you start a website to help other chemical sensitives.

Anything is possible.

Mindfulness means you accept yourself as you are and you remember to take your remedies with you when you leave the house. It means you own your sensitivities and let your friends know you might need to move or switch seats. It means you are calm and loving with yourself and don’t torture yourself or anyone else with your sorrow about being one of those coal mine canary people. Remember you are here for a purpose, but that does not always mean you will enjoy the purpose you serve.