Gently Letting Go, with Lindsay Mack
What does it mean to die while we live? How can attuning to our own inner cycles of life, death, and rebirth help us to access more joy, truer work, and a deeper trust in how things unfold? I talk about all of this in today’s podcast episode with my guest, Lindsay Mack, founder of Tarot for the Wild Soul.
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Megan: Welcome to A Wild New Work, a podcast about how to divest from capitalism and the norms of modern work and step into the soulful calling of these times we live in, which includes the call to rekindle our relationship with the earth. I'm Megan Leatherman, a mother to two small kids, coach, writer, and amateur ecologist living in the Pacific Northwest, and I'm your host today.
Hi friend and welcome. I'm so honored that you're here. If you have been listening for a little while, I want to say thank you. I'm so glad that you're back and if this is your first time, welcome. So glad that you're here. We are moving deeper and deeper into the fall season now. We shift into the central autumn period, the mid autumn time, Scorpio season on October 22nd or 23rd, depending on your time zone.
And so that's really the heart of this dark time, and after that, of course, we'll shift into the bridge into winter with Sagittarius and the sort of downslope into the darkest point, the winter solstice. And so right now I'm wondering and thinking a lot about what it means to die while we live. How can we prepare for the larger death at the end of our lives? How can we drink in the wisdom of death and enjoy our lives more and find some deeper Music or rhythm or pulse to guide us, and I think that's a lot more available when we keep death close.
And today's guest, Lindsay Mack, is someone who I think moves through these transitions with a lot of insight and grace, and I have learned a lot from their teaching, their podcasts, and I think you're going to find our conversation really grounding and gentle and encouraging.
Courage being the operative part of that word, really enabling you to access new courage so that you can very gently, with a lot of bravery, let go of whatever in your life is dying or is dead already and to do that work and become wise in the midst of it. I want to give a little shout out to Desiree and Ginny and Megan, all of you, for chipping in at my new link where you can support me financially one time or monthly.
Thank You to you three for Helping to support this work and this show. If you're listening and you would like to pitch in either once or monthly, I would be so honored. You can find the link in the show notes. It's also just buymeacoffee. com slash Megan Leatherman. So Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I'll also share that one free resource that's coming up is my seasonal snapshot for the mid autumn. I wrote one for the early autumn period and was delighted to hear that it was helpful to many of you, and so I'll be sharing another summary of the major themes of mid autumn, some astrology information, a Samhain ritual suggestion, suggested readings for the mid autumn Scorpio time, and a few other things to help you really sync up with what the rest of the natural world is doing right now, so that you can drink in your own medicine and wisdom in this time. And the link for that is in the show notes, and if you're already on my newsletter list, you will get that on October 24th.
Also, We're coming down toward the end of me letting you know about my autumn workshop, Ancestorspeak. If you are at a crossroads in your working life, if you're feeling worn down or just feeling the nudge to go deeper this autumn, then I want to encourage you to check it out and maybe join us. It's on Saturday, October 28th.
It's an all day workshop in an old growth forest here outside of Portland, Oregon. And it will be... specifically focused on land and ancestor communication. So we will be talking about experiencing, experimenting with having conversations with the land, with our ancestors, and a deeper conversation with one another about how we can do our good work in the world and meet our needs materially, but also be really awakened and attuned to what the other than, more than human world is trying to show us right now.
Registration closes Wednesday, October 25th. It's $333. You can pay it once or over 5 months. And the link for that is in the show notes or at wildnewwork. com slash ancestor dash speak.
All right, I'd like to introduce Lindsay to you properly now. Lindsay Mack is the founder of Tarot for the Wild Soul and the host of the popular podcast Tarot for the Wild Soul, which has been downloaded over 8 million times since it launched in 2017.
They are the creator of Soul Tarot, a radical reinterpretation and intentional utilization of the tarot as a helping tool, one that can assist us in differentiating the noise of our thinking mind from the truth of our soul. Through their workshops, retreats, and online tarot courses through Soul Tarot School, Lindsay has had the profound honor of teaching Soul Tarot to tens of thousands of people from all around the world.
Myself included! I took Lindsay's course in 2019 and that was how I really got grounded in the tarot and made sense of it and really supported my professional practice and I read tarot professionally for about four years before taking a break this May. So I'm not reading right now, but my personal practice and what I have done professionally has been so blessed and informed by Lindsay's teaching and perspective.
So let me take us into our opening invocation and then we can dive into this conversation. So wherever you are, you can just notice your body and time and space. I'm noticing that my spine wants to elongate a little bit, feel a little more spacious between those vertebrae. You can take a deep breath into your belly.
May each of us be blessed and emboldened to do the work we're meant to do on this planet. May our work honor our ancestors, known and unknown, and may it be in harmony with all creatures that we share this earth with. I express gratitude for all of the technologies and gifts that have made this possible, and I'm grateful to the Cowlitz and Clackamas tribes, among many others, who are the original stewards of the land that I'm on.
All right. Well, Lindsay, thank you so much for being here with us today.
Lindsay: Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for having me. It's a joy to be here.
Megan: Hopefully this isn't just like a projection onto you, but my perception from learning from you for like, gosh, at least five years now, maybe six, is that you're someone who has died a lot in your life.
You have like had death of identities and stories and family patterns and projects that you started and then knew they needed to go. You talk about the cycles of life, death, and rebirth a lot in your work, and I wanted to hear a little bit about one, if that feels true for you, and two, how, you know that you're about to approach another death cycle and what are some of the signs you get that that might be what's happening?
Lindsay: So first of all, thank you for seeing me and sometimes, unfortunately, I would say that's just a very deep truth and is definitely, I think, a part of all of our lives, but it does seem to be a part of what I am meant to talk about and teach and dive into a lot. So again, it feels good to be witnessed in that way.
How you know, what a wonderful question. If you'll permit me, I'll just really touch in on that. I think you know in a couple of different ways, or at least I do. I think that there's a twofold process. I think that one of them, and I think The twofold process can pretty much be summed up around like deaths that we are ready for and deaths that we resist.
And sometimes they're one in the same. When I am ready for a death and the death is ready for me, I have the feeling of being tired of doing something, the feeling of being so complete with doing something, like I'm ready. In fact, a lot of the time for the ready deaths, my work is to not cut the cord before it's time.
So there can be a sense of dread. Sometimes there's a sense of, uh, like wishing that I could get out of something and that usually means, you know, it's multifaceted. Sometimes it means I've done absolutely everything I was supposed to do like around this particular thing and like, it's just time sometimes like I'm learning. I stopped doing guided courses in 2020, cause I was just completely complete with them.
And I think they were completely complete with me for awhile and now they're creeping back in and It's made me realize, I could never have known this without the time, like the permission to, I think that honestly, the biggest thing that made guided courses very difficult for me is because my boundaries just needed to get a lot cleaner.
I think I totally did the best I could just with time, with age, with experience. Even in those three years, you learn a lot. The deaths that you're not ready for, I think that there's, it's a similar experience. There's something that changes energetically about something. It's not moving as it was.
It feels dead in my experience. It feels like the juice and the life has gone from it. Sometimes again, there can be similar experiences where something is, is, um, like we may not be ready. And yet when we sit down to do something, there's a sense of like, Oh my God, or just there's nothing left.
The well is dry. You know, the well is dry when you're making money from something like that. That is an extremely confronting and difficult thing to navigate. There have been times in my life where I've had to acknowledge this is really dead and I can't really afford to change this right now. So I'm wondering if the format could be changed. If like, I could show up inside of it as ethically and in, like, in as great of integrity as I can, knowing that, like, I really have outgrown this.
And then when I'm able and ready, there can be some sort of shift. But, I mean, it's, it is hard to navigate, but I think overall that feeling of just being complete with something, like having done everything that you're meant to do with it.
I think when we're doing this about like loss of a beloved or loss of someone that we know, this is an entirely more complex issue. I would never put such a fine point on it, but when it comes to creative projects or identities, we need to be allowed to grieve number one, and remembering that a part of the soul of that project, that that's ready to go. And part of it is respecting that I think is, I don't know that I've become very good at it, but I definitely have experienced it enough to know like, you're ready. Like, you don't want to be this anymore, and I'm not going to force you to be.
So it's hard, you know, like, it's hard. There's a lot harder things in the world but it is a tricky process.
Megan: Thank you. Thanks for speaking to that. One of the things that comes up in my work with people a lot is that is how frightening the death of something like a way of working or a source of income can be when you can't see the other thing coming, you know, we can't see the spring yet.
Have you found any helpful ways in your own practice or through the tarot or whatever lens you want to bring for just like tending that part that is terrified of letting go of something that is maybe like good enough or really good on paper, like the main way you earn a living when you can't see what's going to come in its stead?
Lindsay: I think you just so eloquently named it. I think for me, remembering that there is never not a spring is very helpful and I will say that it is a practice and one that the more you do it, the more it, it does really, I mean we could say like the neural pathways literally get grooved where you do it enough where you understand that either I can go back to it in a different form.
I'm always allowed to go back. If I wanted to take a detour and come back in some other way, that's okay. But there's really, I think something to be gained from the inevitable place that I think most of us go to, which is to, we understand something has died away and we immediately try to not have it be true.
We try to deny it. We try to make it work in whatever way we can. I think that is really essential so that when we leave it, there's no stone left unturned. I think those are really painful detractors to be like, I could have done that. So I think letting ourselves go through our process is an important part of the grief cycle.
But I do think there is never not a spring ever, like the soul and the fruit of our, of what we're here to create, what we're here to make, what we're here to, how we're here to serve is utterly unseparated from that. So that, that is what I hold, that is what I hold in those moments where I'm like, wow, this is a disaster.
Like, what the fuck are we going to do? You know, there's always something, you know? So I think that is quite literally, that's like my strongest metaphor, my biggest anchor.
Megan: Yeah. So I'm thinking of like big journeys that people make in life where there's like a larger death in their life. Like maybe, I don't know if you'd equate it to like sort of moving through the Tower or like everything non essential is kind of falling away. It's not just the job. It's also the relationship or the house and like there's this sense that like you're in a bigger cycle. What do you notice about, how do we know when one of those is sort of complete for a time, like what, what are we looking for?
Are there any signs that we can look to that tell us like that we've done enough or the work and like that the ground has, you know, been made fertile enough maybe by that experience?
Lindsay: So I think in my own sort of humble Opinion and experience that we can look around and know that we're in one of those big big deaths Because we see it all happening. But also we feel it. Not to pathologize something like this, but I think for most of us it does feel like a Trauma, right? When so much is getting unearthed, when so much is being pulled up by the root and by the socket, or when it's being just swept away so fast.
I know so many people are going through that. I do think that there is a point in time where we go through a season where things are tight, where we are more in fight flight than usual. Where we might be really angry, we might feel like we want to lash out and blame - self blame or blame around others, even when, you know, it doesn't seem completely obvious that anyone's to blame, you know, and I think that with time, there is a slow shift from that place of survival to one of, I wouldn't even say healing or, you know, but one of more stability, one of more stasis.
And then I think you know, I do think that there is a feeling when the river has thawed enough that you're starting to think about certain things, you're starting to make plans for certain things, certain ideas start to come back in, certain feeling states start to happen, we're able to rest, we're able to take like a nap, we're able to feel like we can like, um, everybody is different, you know, everybody has like different markers, but I know for me, When I'm able to rest and kind of be like, Oh, I can take a break, you know, or when there's a lot more space.
I think that the feeling of spaciousness around our thinking, around our ability to sleep, around the deregulation process. I do think that's when we know, but I don't know that it's a step by step immediate thing. I think it ultimately is right. The journey from like tower to star where we really, if I could correct myself, I think it's more of the journey from the tower to the sun where we're in tower, stars sort of a built in, like, Ooh, there's been a scar on the earth here. The only thing to do is heal that we're not even thinking about, like, kind of what's going to be in its place. We're just focused on healing. The moon, which comes after the stars, kind of that space where we don't know. We really don't know. It's that void that naturally comes after that. It's that winter that follows that time. And then the sun, which is not necessarily a card of any happy feeling or any good, is that is the representation of that moment of hindsight where we look back and we go, Oh my God. Wow. Like we're not in that anymore.
I think that it comes up as spontaneously as that. I wonder about your experience because you were sharing with me you have two kiddos. My child is about one and a half and she has always been spectacular. My love for her has always been really clear and there were things around postpartum that had nothing to do with her that were incredibly difficult and I would say like it took about a year where all of a sudden I was like, we're not in that anymore. Like, we're not in that, everyone's good, we're so lucky to be good, things are still weird here, they're tighter here, but like, overall, there is a bigger sense of spaciousness that wasn't there before. But I think time, you know, and reflection, but that sense of space, to me, seems to be the indicator.
Like I noticed that that's my awareness before anything else personally is like, Oh, I feel like I can take a break, take a breath. Like I'm regulated enough to go off and do this thing. Whereas when I'm not in that place, I feel like that's not even an option personally, but to another person, it might be different.
What do you think?
Megan: Yeah, that's all really helpful. I feel similarly. We didn't have the same postpartum experience, obviously, but, um, yeah, I do feel like, especially the last three years, my son was born like the very beginning of COVID and it was such, it kind of felt like I was in someone's grip, like I was literally being squeezed, and yeah, it has felt the last six months or so, like I can start to breathe a little and it's sort of interesting because I feel like I'm in a new death cycle as a result of that. Like there was almost enough space that then I could like shed other things that needed to be shed, not just the like that sense of survival from those three years.
And I'm curious, you know, we, so we're going through these things personally, and then we can also add on the sort of collective layer of death that's happening. I don't know how you feel about collapse or like capitalism, or, I mean, I know I have some sense, but to me, it sort of feels like we're also in this cultural death or dying, something that is happening. How do you sort of interface with that? And so you have your own sort of personal cycles, and then this is coming in as sort of an over layer on top.
How are you finding, like, the space or stability when it's there, even though it might look like they're sort of rapid decline everywhere else. Does that make sense? Like, how are you sort of navigating that?
Lindsay: Well, I, I know that there are people out there who are able to speak so much more eloquently about this than me, but I'm going to give it, I'm going to give it my best shot.
In my opinion and experience, and we're not separate from the slow collapse that's happening due to a million factors. Pretty much every system in the Western world, especially in this country, is built on incredibly broken structures. They've been broken for a long time. They were built to be breaking really.
So for a million reasons, the collapse we're in is both heart wrenching and also absolutely necessary. And we're not separate from that. And so as we start to understand how much of our plans and hopes and dreams and ideals for ourselves and pressures that we place on ourselves are born of late stage capitalism, of white supremacy, of like ... there's a really powerful book that I want to get the title of it right.
I think it's right on my, where is it? Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price. And that book is really powerful and is basically, tracks historically how that's like the idea of anti laziness really came from Puritans, which is just born of colonialism.
I think the biggest piece of radical activism, speaking from a white person who is here to be learning and constantly undoing any harm I bring to a space, so again, I say that with humility, is opting for gentleness, actually, and gentleness doesn't mean we opt out. Gentleness doesn't mean we bypass.
It means that we're tender with ourselves. It also means we live in an incredibly death phobic culture, especially in the Western part of the world. Death is not talked about. The rawness of death is not acknowledged every bit. I think over culturally, my experience as somebody who was pregnant and had a child, and also somebody who's had an abortion... everybody's in it for the pregnancy. Everybody's here for the birth. And very few people really roll up for postpartum, you know, and that's really where the rubber hits, meets the road. I'd say that's where you are unbraided and you are getting rebraided with this new energy in your family.
It is raw and it is nothing if not a death process after this very powerful birth process. So, you know, I think cross culturally, I think there is a pretty big emphasis on, like, birth and what we're growing and, you know, everything is dying. It's necessary to be dying.
And it's very indirect answer to your question, circling back to it, because I'm getting off track. I think that, for me, And I know everybody's different, but for me, I'm a Virgo rising. I'm about like practical care. I know what it is to go through crisis, to go through real, um, other people have gone through so much worse than I have, but I've been through real horrors in my life.
And I know what it is to feel alone through that. So that motivation to be of service in whatever way I can, in the very small ways I can, feels motivating. I think my work is meaningful. I believe in my work. And I believe in the impact of what it means to be as regulated as I can for my child, for the people who listen to me, like I take that as a huge responsibility.
So I think it is a, a both and where it's not separate to me. It's not over there. I think that I am Extremely privileged that a lot of the stuff happening in the world right now is not at my door and yet it's around us. It's happening around us. It's happening within us too. We're not separate from that. So I think yeah, it's not Separate for me Where I can be going through something really personal and also acknowledge that there's just so much happening in the world around us, too.
I don't know if that was a very eloquent answer. It's probably the best one I have right now, today. Like just, I think it's, um, it's just an incredibly complex thing. I think it's Because things are breaking down so much that I feel empowered to help and work through things.
I think the other thing that I would say is, I do think it's important for anybody feeling like they're going through a personal death to remember that they are not alone in it, you know, and that we're all collectively experiencing something really, really big. Does that help? I don't know if that quite got to the heart of your question, but feel free to adjust me and to ask a follow up if need be, but it was a wonderful question.
Megan: I think it, you answered it beautifully. Yeah. I really appreciate the reminder that it's not different or separate. I agree that we're being asked to be really gentle and tender here. And yeah, I want to bring in some of the, you sort of mentioned this death phobic culture, and I know that you are on your way into death doula training and you're doing that.
And I wanted to hear more about how you entered into that pathway and anything you're, I guess, I'm just really curious about what it's like and what, how you might weave it into the rest of your work. Anything you want to share about that new pathway would be great.
Lindsay: Sure. I'd be honored.
So I am currently halfway through a death doula training with an incredible school called Going with Grace , which is run by Alua Arthur. I feel really, really blessed and privileged and lucky to be moving through it. So I've wanted to, and have been interested in death doula work, um, end of life work, for probably... about four or five years. And there was never time. Now, there's less time now. So I don't know what I was thinking, but I signed up to do one through a different school in 2020, and we all know how that went. And, um, You know, then it was like pandemic, it wasn't the right time, I got pregnant, I had a kid, like, blah, blah, blah.
And I couldn't find the right school. Even the school I signed up with, it just wasn't really my first choice, and Going with Grace was exactly what I was looking for. And I signed up. Again, I'm halfway through, and um, I will tell you the truth. There's a two fold realization that I have every time I do it.
One is which there's not actually that much of a difference between what I do now and that work, which isn't to say that helping someone, I don't help people with advanced directives or wills, or I don't help people find low cost funeral homes now with my work. So that part isn't in there, and I'm not sitting bedside with people, which is not, not every death doula does that.
But I am helping to provide non medical mentorship, witnessing, and support, and that's exactly what Death doulas do. We're just here to be of non medical support to the dying and the families of the dying. I am learning so far that a lot in the culture of the way we die, the way we're told about our own dying, is very, very broken and keeps us at a real arm's length from that death and from our permission to kind of grapple with it and make sense of it.
There's not really a whole lot of support, I think, for people who are traveling that path, both for the families. And so it seems so far, um, so it really does seem like death doula work is just a real powerful way to be of service. And the other thing that I'm learning is like, I used to feel this way about taxes, like my partner and I were talking about, like, I cannot believe that we are not taught how to do, how to understand taxes in like, The American school system.
I'm sure some wonderful schools maybe have that. My school did not. I can't believe we're all not taught about death. The things that I'm learning about like palliative care and hospice and the difference between the two when you need one versus the other. The things that we can like the different options for burial. Like, yeah, the basic blueprint of what happens to the body when it dies. This week is how to, um, like how long can you have a body in your home and how can you tend to that body and take care of the body if that's something that you want to do. I mean, every single time I watch the material, I engage with any part of it, I always think, well, I have a lot in my toolbox to support my family and friends with if that's like as far as this goes, but I also will die one day and I would have had absolutely no idea about these systems, how to navigate them, what to ask for, how to advocate for myself. And I think Alua who is the facilitator is just, I mean, just genius beyond genius.
And so the way that things are framed up are great. And, um, yeah, it's heartbreaking. It's incredibly moving. And I am loving it. And I don't really know what that means, because I don't have the intentions to stop doing my work, but there is something about this work that powerfully calls to me. And every week there's like more, like I'm doing a medical aid in dying for doulas training. Here in Oregon, uh, and in Washington and a couple of other states, we are a death with dignity state. So if somebody has a terminal illness and chooses to end their life in order to mitigate their suffering, Oregon is a state in which you can legally do that.
And you can train to be a doula who holds space - again, completely non medically - in that kind of environment. I've always been interested in that for real for years, like, and I'm interested in being an abortion doula and that's sort of down the road. So, um, I don't really know how it fits in yet.
But honestly, I, the themes, as you mentioned, of death and dying and of working through staying present and feeling like the tarot can be an anchor to us through these deaths have been what I've been talking about for years. And so I just feel like in some ways I'm coming home to something that's been in the wash for a while.
So, yeah, it's an amazing thing to be doing.
Megan: Cool. Thank you. I love hearing about that. I'm curious, and maybe it's hard for you to see because it sounds like you already embody this so much, but what do you think it takes to be someone who could be at a death next to someone who is dying and just hold that space without trying to fix it or pretend it's not happening?
Like, what does it take to be, be that person for another?
Lindsay: Well, I don't know because I've never done it. So I, I don't know. And from what I'm, from what I'm learning, not everybody who is a death doula has ever been bedside with anyone. Like some people learn this work and their work is to, again, help people through like the advanced directive process, but they never are actually in a hospital setting, like anything like that.
One big thing that we have been learning and, and invited pretty rigorously to start noticing from like week one of the course is like our judgments, our shortcomings. Our, for lack of a better word, like weakness around this work. Like, are we fixers? Are we, is something just absolutely too much?
Do we have trouble letting things be? Everybody's, I'm learning, everybody's got something around that, a need to speak to something, a need to not to speak to something like, it's even been interesting in this death doula training, like, there's an advocation also for like coming in potentially agnostic, like from a non denominational place and as somebody who has a pretty rooted practice and also is an intuitive, you would think that would be very helpful across the board.
Some people would not want that. Some people do not want that. And so I assume the question is, I don't know whether or not I'm the doula for them, but Yeah, I don't know yet. We'll see. I mean, I defer to the folks who've been doing this for a while, who I'm learning from right now, you know? Yeah.
I do know in a completely different way that when I have the privilege of serving somebody who's going through just an incredibly, I mean, just awful time, everything's falling apart, they can't feel God in anything. They're just like, how could this have happened to me? And they're looking for a reading.
It's really tricky because I can't tell them the I don't know that things will get better. The only thing that I can, I can call in are just anchors to be with what's showing up. And so while I don't know if that skill is transferable, that's something that I'm anchoring into myself, which is like, okay, I know from my experience through like, understanding the pressure from someone to be like, everything's going to be okay.
You'll understand this is going to go away, which I don't do and can't do. So like how can there be bolstering even inside those times when there is no, there's no real comfort to be offered. There's just presence and just witnessing just validation. So I'll let you know if, and when I have the privilege of doing that.
Megan: Thank you. Yeah. I like hearing about how those threads are already present and alive for you. Some of that, what it will take is already, it sounds like you've practiced for a very long time. It'll be really cool to see how that might translate into this next realm.
I'm curious if you're open to saying a little bit about what it means for you, what being an intuitive looks like for you in your life and practice right now. And that might segue nicely into letting people know about the course that you're doing next. Can you tell us a little bit about what that, what that means to you?
Lindsay: Yeah, I'd be delighted.
Being an intuitive for me right now looks extremely different than it has Previously. I've been a very navel gazing intuitive for most of my life, meaning like there's a lot of time focused on like is it this or this or that or that? What exactly would you...
I have a child now. My priorities are different now. I don't have the time. I've been burned down to nothing and totally reborn from the last three years. And my attitude, I, I just don't have the privilege of that time. So there's honestly not that much of a practice. The practice is more lived now.
You know, my, my sense of intuition personally, and this is just a real homage to my own teacher, Michelle, who, while not a tarot teacher, has just been a wonderful space holder for a long time. We're not really working together much anymore, but there were many years where we were and everything's still fine, but totally bowing to her cause she was such a powerful space holder and teacher around intuitive stuff.
Basically that all of us are having a dual experience at all moments. There's kind of two radio stations going at once. One of those radio stations is broadcasting... and I think that there's a round robin of potential different titles for this. The nervous system, the brain, the mind, the inner critic, the part of us that we inherited from our animal ancestors, that is designed effectively to keep us in what is safe and comfortable and known and familiar.
And we may have areas where we're comfortable edging out of that zone. Where we're a little more comfortable pushing the bounds of it.
We may have areas where we're not. That voice is really predictable and pretty universal in all of us. It might not say exactly the same thing from person to person, but for the most part, its job is to judge and weigh risk versus reward and to ultimately keep us in what will feel and look the safest.
If we've had trauma, that's going to feel even more loud and persistent that we not variate or cross that line, that we stay safe no matter what.
The channel that we refer to as the intuitive channel that I believe is a channel that exists within us that is independent of a belief in spirit... it is just a cord of instinctive, deep wisdom that sometimes gets mistaken for a desire from the mind, but it's a pool of wisdom and knowing, an inner compass that is very powerful and that really doesn't steer us wrong. And the whole mechanism of it is quite different. It's a lot more of a whisper and a lot more of a open invitation than it is a demand or a threat. And the demand or the threat is typically the voice of the mind. Like if you don't do this, X will happen or X might happen.
That's Brain and can sometimes just be so persuasive that we assume it's a gut feeling and spirit. But that inner channel never talks like that. They just don't talk like that. So that cord is kind of the walkie talkie that spirit speaks through.
That's a part of just our inborn birthright connection to source. And I guess my job and my work as an intuitive, albeit a lot less - I've always been a pretty practically minded person when it comes to intuitive work - but, there's a lot less time spent in drop ins and much more like I'm going to try this and if it doesn't work, I'm going to know pretty quickly.
And if it does work, like, I'll, I'll do my best and, navigating what I know now are pretty predictable bumpy areas that I will always hit if I'm moving into something that's really soul led, there's typically a lot of contraction that comes up around that. So that's the other thing, the way these two channels speak to each other is because the brain is so primed to be focused and committed to safety.
Very often when we're starting to listen to that inner whisper and follow that, the brain's going to have a lot to say about that because it doesn't know that. There's no file folder, there's no comp for that, for that intuitive part of us. So it's really challenging. That's why we've really been, I think most of us sold a pretty big bill of goods around like, if something's intuitively led, you're going to feel it in your heart.
You're going to take that brave leap and you're just going to go from point A to point B. Honestly, I think that the presentation is like, intuitive is often like on social media stuff, like seem very calm and collected when that is not my experience. And that is not the experience of most people I know who are willing to be really, uh, just a little bit more holographically honest about what the work looks like.
And so no disrespect to that. I'm sure there are some people out there who really are like, they just don't have a gene of doubt or contraction or they're uncomfortable sharing it. But that is the evolutionary work that's possible when we listen to that deep whisper while honoring and respecting the brain's attempts to protect we're not pushing anything away. Both can coexist. In fact, we get good the more we practice and this is I mean years it can take - Acknowledging like my brain is screaming and I can also feel that whisper at the same time, and I can hold both.
And it also lets me know the more my brain screams, the bigger the expansion around whatever it is that I'm being called into. So because I understand that very intimately, it's pretty easy for me to follow that without necessarily needing to always be tuning in about every detail. Because I'm like, oh, there's an enormous amount of resistance around this one thing right here.
And I've kind of done everything but that one thing. So, that's probably what needs my attention. I probably need to look at why, the stories around why, etc. Really all of that is at the heart of the course I'm doing, which is brand new, and it's called Intuition as a Spiral.
The construction of the course is a five week course with prerecorded, like, super robust and thorough and I think really beautifully laid out lesson modules. It weaves in a little bit of tarot. You don't have to be reading tarot. You don't have to understand tarot. Just apply certain cards that I think can root in the medicine, help us kind of anchor to different ways and methodologies for starting to integrate some of these things.
There's guided meditations. There's live calls for four of those five weeks, where you can ask questions of me. Get coaching from me so that if any bumps or snags come up, you have someplace to take them. And basically the course is a love letter. I believe that everybody is born intuitive. I believe that everyone is born intuitive.
In fact, it's a birthright. And I think most of us assume if we're intuitive, it's going to look a certain way. We'll know. It will appear as something we actually have quite a bit of comparison and imposter syndrome around because there's a lot of like one specific kind of intuitive embodiment that's sort of touted and written about in media and sort of in movies and in books.
And if we're over here with like a gift in another way, we might feel like, well, that's not enough. Or this person's a real intuitive and I'm over here and blah, blah, blah. And intuition isn't linear. It doesn't look one way. It's very spiraling. It's really soft. So the whole course is again, this love letter to everyone, helping everyone to sense into and come home to the specific way that their intuition looks, feels, operates out of how it flows, what it feels like, um, some ABC things like quite literally a bunch of different ways to quote tune in and a bunch of different ways to potentially be open to receiving a response in turn. Not everybody is ready to just ask a question and have it float down and in.
That's not how everyone's intuition works. Period.
There's also a lot in this course, I think about like, When we're in the hospital, intuition's gonna feel really different than when we're, like, at home. So, talking about, like, how to feel like you can take it with you through everything, and how to not worry that you've lost anything, because it really does behave differently from season to season.
It's kind of everything I've ever wanted an intuition course to be for myself. So I am just making it . That was long, sorry, but in a nutshell, that's what it is.
Megan: No, that's great. Thank you. Yeah. I've gotten so much from you over the years about brain chemistry and the intuition and have just benefited so much from the metaphors you use and the way that you talk about it and teach about it.
I just learned so much about your reframing of the swords is like really about brain chemistry and like, I think about that all the time still in readings and, yeah, so I will put the link to that course in the show notes for sure. I highly, highly recommend the work that you do and the teaching you do.
Lindsay: Thank you. And there's a little discount for people who listen to this podcast.
Megan: Yea, I will put that in the show notes. Is there anything else on your heart today about Death and dying in the autumn season that we're in, or anything else you might want to share before we wrap up?
Lindsay: Yeah, I do. I just want to - Maybe you've been talking a lot about this on your pod - but 2023 is a chariot year So why is that significant in a very very very short way?
Chariot is, I think, one of the great death cards of the tarot because it does help to move us from one container, one identity state, one way of living, working, being in relationship, whatever it might be to another much more expanded place. The perfect analogy is like a bird who has been in an egg and now that egg is starting to crack and hatch open because they've gotten too big for it.
And that is precisely chariot. Chariot also, unfortunately or fortunately, is ruled by cancer. And so the process is just completely liminal. We're in the dark. We're underwater. We understand things are getting cleared out. But we may feel stuck and we don't know why, so if anybody has just been feeling like nothing's sticking, nothing's really making sense, everything's foggy, everything's hazy... there is a part of my heart, and it's so funny, we were just talking about like, not wanting to fix anything, and yet here I am... that wants to say that there's something of that that's going to lift in 2024.
So I do think we are getting into a place where a lot of people have like, had enough, like with regard to how foggy and hazy it's been. So I'll say just for better or worse, really, like, With the eclipses coming this month, like really making a commitment to let, if there's anything that wants to go, if there are any last pushes, really being willing to bow them away, let them go, let yourself have the grief that you're having and understand that 2024 is an entirely different year where things will, again, for better or worse, be moving at a pretty quick pace. So to trust in the dying process that we're in, I guess, know that it's not forever.
Megan: Thank you so much for bringing that in. Yeah, I think you have mentioned this and I also heard it just recently on Amanda Yates Garcia's podcast, I know you know that - Between the Worlds - that the, the energy, the archetype of the year, Can sort of increase in intensity at this time as we sort of get to the end.
Lindsay: Yeah, you better believe it!
Megan: Can you say a little bit about what the Strength year might you know, 2024 being a strength year, like what that transition from cancer or chariot to strength might feel like?
Lindsay: Yeah, I'd be happy to.
So first of all, just really tipping my cap to that because, basically since June, I've been since like on my podcast, I have like a monthly medicine and I'm like, I really do think starting around the middle of the year the archetype of the year starts to get a little bit more concentrated.
And then when we get to like October, November, December, it can be like almost excruciating because it just wants to squeeze every bit out. So love that Amanda and I are seeing eye to eye on that one. I'm sure we're not alone.
So chariot is Cardinal water. And cancer is all about the difference between the shell we present to the world and like the flesh within, right?
So there are aspects of that shell that we're shedding. There's a call to bring some of the fleshy parts more forward, but because it's cardinal water, it's all about like within. We're in the world, we're not in the world. There's a lot that we can feel, but we can't see all of that.
Strength is ruled by Leo, which is connected to fixed fire.
So this is a steady flame. This is a flame that builds. And while chariot was all about the internal, like deep processing, deep release, deep shedding, strength work is all about, there's multiple levels to this, right? Strength at its core tells the story of the kind of flowering open and transformation that can happen when we unconditionally regard something from from the heart rather than the head.
So when we show up in whatever way feels safe to do so, undefended, open, curious, when we're willing to offer someone our gaze, because Leo is so about like, Seeing others and being seen, there is a massive transformation process that can take place, but only when we're willing to let ourselves be seen and when we're willing to witness others.
So where a lot of us have just sort of felt more cocooned, I think that 2024 will be kind of a blasting out of that, not in a like a violent way or any, you know, non consenting way, but really a way that is a healing. In a way that I think many of us are ready for. So, whether it be like a very subtle thing, whether it be a very overt thing, my sense is that 2024 is going to be a very big year for us to come up and out of that shell, you know, in a really strong way.
I'm very curious about it because 2024 feels like a really big year in many ways and I did not have that feeling I have not had that feeling the last three years. I remember in my threshold offering, Which is like my channel download for the year to come, the one that I did for 2020, I was like, I don't know what's happening, but there's something massive happening in 2020. So here is kind of what you can root to in the midst of that. 2021, two and three, a lot of the threshold readings were the same, like this is going to be a hard year. It's a year of like, just kind of figuring out the knots and kind of me getting through. It's just hard.
2024 doesn't feel like that. It feels challenging, but not in the same way. So I'm very curious to see, uh, in terms of specifics, like What this year is bringing to us. Strength is all about coming forward. Chariot is all about going in. Like we want to go out in chariot years.
And the other kind of nice analogy to draw, sorry if I'm going on too long about it, but Chariot is number seven in the majors and strength is number eight in certain schools of thought. Sometimes it's 11, but I acknowledge it as eight. The sevens very broadly are kind of about like seven years are when we have the assumption or the belief that if something external just changed, we would be okay, but really it's an inside job.
So that's the hardest part of the work is when we're like, but if I only had that, and if I only had this and we.... seven years kind of, because sometimes that's true, right? Like if we just had this basic need met, like, absolutely, but seven work comes up around the things that are not actually ever going to be resolved through any kind of, we, we have a whole kind of reframing in seven years about like learning how to be with what is in certain areas where that's necessary.
Whereas eights are total years of transformation. Sevens are too. Eights are way more external. Like we leave the thing. We say yes to the thing. There isn't, there is typically in eight years, a profound move from where we start the year to where we end the year. So it's where it's visible.
So I'm excited for that. You know, I think that's really cool.
Megan: Yeah, it sounds exciting. I'll take it. Thank you. I feel like that puts this current year in some good perspective and yeah. Yeah. That'll be really curious to see what unfolds. I have heard that from a few people that there's some, I don't know, sort of energy around this upcoming year.
So yeah. Yeah.
Lindsay: Thank God. Yeah.
Megan: Thank you so much, Lindsay. This has been really, really nice and I've already learned a lot just in this hour together.
Lindsay: Thank you so much. It's been such a joy. Thank you for having me.
Megan: Well, I'll put all the links in the show notes. How about in addition to the course, where can people just connect with you in general to learn more?
Lindsay: Okay, so the best place is on my website, tarotforthewildsoul.com. I have a podcast called Tarot for the Wild Soul, and you can find me wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm not really on Instagram, but if you wanna check it out, I'm on there at Wild Soul Healing. And I will be on Substack starting on Halloween.
Megan: Ooh, that's fun! All right, I'll put all those in the show notes. Thank you so much.
Okay, my friend, I hope that you really enjoyed that conversation and that it left you feeling enlivened. I encourage you to check out Lindsay's course. The discount code is in the show notes for you.
And if you're not already on my newsletter list and you'd like to receive next week's seasonal snapshot for the mid autumn, you can sign up at the link in the show notes.
And finally, a reminder that my in person autumn workshop, Ancestors Speak, closes for registration on October 25th. If you're in the Portland area and would like to meet and go way deep for one very potent day, I'd love to have you. I will be back with you with a new episode on Tuesday, Samhain, October 31st, the Witches New Year, aka Halloween, and we'll be diving into All of that goodness and richness that is there and what it might mean for you and your life right now.
So I hope you take such good care, and I will see you on the other side.
Show Notes:
To connect with Lindsay’s work, visit: https://www.tarotforthewildsoul.com/
To learn more about Lindsay’s upcoming course, Intuition as a Spiral, visit: https://www.tarotforthewildsoul.com/intuition-as-a-spiral Listeners can use the code DEATH at checkout to receive 5% off of enrollment!
For more information about Ancestor Speak, click here: https://awildnewwork.com/ancestor-speak
To receive the Mid Autumn Seasonal Snapshot on October 25th (or to get future ones), click here: http://eepurl.com/hy8wbT
If you enjoyed this episode, please help get it to others by subscribing, rating the show, or sharing it with a friend! You can also pitch in to support the show once or monthly at: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/meganleatherman
Resources mentioned on the show:
Going with Grace, with Alua Arthur
Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price