In drawing this card, you are invited to look a little deeper into yourself. To consider who sits beneath your superficial awareness and how knowing this person may offer insight into what you may truly need.
The words of the card talk about ‘feeding an insatiable appetite’. What does this phrase refer to you from your own experience?
What is the insatiable appetite that we may be tempted to continually feed?
We may have previously ascertained and yet it is worth repeating how our constant outward search for something more appears not to offer complete satisfaction. Once again, consider this from your own experience.
In having and finding what you want – does this satisfy your need to search further?
At best our commonest response may be ‘momentarily’ or ‘for a short while’. Generally, our outward search though extending over the course of our lifetimes does not appear to offer complete satisfaction. So, we arrive at a beautiful question: if we cannot satisfy our hunger for wanting and having something more by outwardly searching – how do we find satisfaction and end our hunger?
What’s your response? Take time to consider this question for yourself.
What these questioning invites of us, is to look towards the source of our hunger more deeply. Are we automatically reacting to a deeper want in us for something more by outwardly seeking? And in doing so do we overlook and neglect that within which truly wants and has needs?
This invites a vital re-orientation, one that many of the other cards that you may have drawn also point towards – that of being able to turn our attention inwards rather than being preoccupied with our outer search.
Let’s try this together if you are willing. Consider something that you have wanted greatly and have been seeking.
Now go a little deeper, look what sits beneath your wanting of this something. Turn your attention inward and explore what aspect of yourself is in need? Who is this part of you that is wanting more? And what is it that this aspect of yours truly needs? Take whatever time you may need to fully respond to these questions for yourself. This line of questioning can be revelatory.
For what we realise is that although our temptation is to search outwardly for our answers and the things that we want to have, what this outer search may cover, and disguise is our true needs. We appear to overlook our inner needs and so react to them rather than attend to them. This may be the source of our real hunger and the insatiable appetite. To end such hunger, we are invited to look deeper beyond our outer reaction and more to discover the part of ourselves that is in need.
Outer seeking in this way can be replaced by inner attending. And what may be quite remarkable is that as we do attend to those aspects of ourselves and consider and respond to their needs – then our hunger to react quiesces, reduces, and may even disappear.
Who would have thought that our outer hunger can be satiated by an inner soothing of those parts of ourselves that need our attention and have been overlooked and forgotten, even neglected?
In this way, the outer search is transformed into a restoration project, whereby we gradually become aware of the parts of ourselves that are needing our inner attention. And in meeting with these parts, we more consciously foster our wholeness, build our self-awareness, and a growing sense of belonging in our own skin.
Such inner work can resolve our outer seeking. Consider this for yourself. What are the key aspects of yourself that you have previously become aware of? If and how have you attended them? And what difference has this made?
We often look outwardly to others to fulfil the needs that we reject. How strange we are and how unrealistic our expectations of others are. When it is we who overlook our needs and are the ones that are called to inwardly attend.
The photograph that accompanies these words marks a moment of complete awe when the Northern Lights quite literally filled the whole sky and ‘rained’ down. It was a moment of revelation for me. That out of the darkness can come so much beauty and light. This is not unlike our inner story whereby the parts of ourselves that we push away to the edge of our consciousness live within our own inner darkness. And as we learn how to attend to them – they bring us light and hope and insight and wholeness. This night when the Lights filled the whole sky made me think about that which truly soothes us. It is within our hands, maybe at times with the help of special others, that we learn how to truly attend to ourselves as a vital aspect of our developmental journey, we can learn how to soothe that which truly hungers and this can reveal that for which we may have endlessly searched.
May you become more aware of that for which you outwardly hunger – the things you outwardly want and seek.
May you learn how to turn yourself inside-out, discover what sits beneath your wanting and seeking – and come to know the parts of you that hunger for more.
May you attend to these parts and transform your outer seeking into an inner soothing.
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