Zap Oracle Card # - © Jonathan Zap
text and photo © Jonathan Zap
Similarly, different drives within us can personify into inner characters that become the voices of those drives.At first glance the shadows in the photograph look like two different people, but actually they are shadows of a single mannequin created by two track lights pointed at different angles. One of the essential purposes of an oracle is to act as a mirror of the psyche and confront the inquirer with various aspects of themselves. It takes a great deal of moral courage to be willing to face the multiplicity of selves operating within us.
Depending on the position of this card, it could mean that this is a propitious time to strengthen your central witness personality and/or a need to be more aware of the many sides of others. A good rule of thumb with relationships is to realize that if you don’t know someone’s shadow side, then you don’t know the person. Idealization is a state of dangerous blindness that purposefully overlooks various subpersonalities in the other to form a unified but false picture of them. For example, a romantically infatuated person thinks of the beloved as an angel, or a guru-worshiping person thinks of the guru as a god. Such idealizations are likely to turn into equal and opposite states of bitter disillusionment as they inevitably discover that the idol has feet of clay.
Be wary about listening to (or becoming) inner voices that are not calm and compassionate. The same holds true interpersonally. You may have to listen to voices that are carping, anxious, wheedling, self-pitying, angry and so forth, but listen to them with calm, compassionate understanding. This empathy may gain you influence over the subpersonality (or the outer person) and it will certainly limit how much those uncentered voices influence you.
Thomas Jefferson said, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” The real freedom is free will, and free will requires eternal vigilance with our inner process.
and A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler