The Tower

Looking inward is a difficult and emotional process. One reason people fear looking inward is because they have a slight awareness that once you discover the "real" self, you can no longer pretend to the world or to yourself any longer. An honest encounter with your "real" self breaks open the defenses you have been hiding behind. Symbolic of the Tower card in the Tarot deck, the barriers of a false persona and social facades begin to crumble and fall away. Our towers must fall when we change. Change and crisis can shake our very foundation and helps us to release the bondage of outdated beliefs, facades, and confining fears. This is the year of towers falling down to make way for recreating yourself. It is a time of economic crisis, confusion and seeing things more clearly. Many people have been living "false" lives for years and going through the motions. Many are or were living life over extended financially, hiding in big houses, fancy cars and designer labels. Others live life with other facades in unhappy marriages, miserable jobs and such, but denying their real feelings nonetheless. The tower must fall! Often people end up in therapy while their towers are falling. Many want their "old" lives back, even though their old lives were denying them opportunities to reveal their true selves. The tower becomes constricting and needs to fall away periodically to help you grow and shift. The shift does not need to be devastating. The more you fight the inevitable, as the tower is beginning to fall, the more painful the process will be. I have been clear about my process emotionally. As I was going through my own dark night of the soul, my tower was falling. Now as I look around me, my own process has caused other people's towers to fall. We all affect each other profoundly. When you shift, you cause those around you to shift as well. Some will resent you for it, while others will embrace the gift. Either way, growth is necessary and ultimately part of your life plan and fate. I embrace my growth, but have been trying to learn to navigate myself through the mine fields of emotions erupting all around me. When I help people in their own lives, I have witnessed how one person's growth sets off a chain reaction of blame, resentment and fear all around them. When you change, those closest to you often feel "off balance" and try to get you to change back. After that, the emotions tend to escalate as Pandora's box has been opened and those things that have been unsaid or underlying everything begin to erupt. Never allow the fury of the emotional tidal waves to back you up into the old tower. Once the tower has fallen, the old structure can never be the same anyway. The emotional fury is a test and helps you to know that you are on the right path. Just know that it is perfectly normal and that change was necessary, even if the process is trying, painful and exhausting. The journey is not always easy, but as you become more confident in your new self, the emotional bombs others may throw at you, become easier to dodge. "Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream"...(Paulo Coelho). "You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen".... (Paulo Coelho).