Mindy Hope Sommers – Brilliance In Sight Blog

Continuing our month-long theme of festive COLOURS, this week’s card comes to us from the “Dreaming In Color Luman Deck” deck by Mindy Hope Sommers. Inspiration!

Take a look at the colours in this card… the spark of creativity is represented in creamy peach and orange melds with flickers of yellow for focus, black and deep purple, almost indigo, dance across the middle and represent spiritual connection to creativity, focus and balance. All good ingredients when inspiration comes knocking.

You never know how, or why, you’ll be inspired. Sometimes it’s something that wakes you up in the middle of the night in a flurry of “AHA!!!” … but it might just nudge into your mind gently, subtly, between bites of toast and marmalade in the morning. It may be an inner inspiration, or a dawning realisation or it could be an event or happening that inspires you. However it arrives, it’s here to give you a burst of new life, new meaning, new understanding and new ideas.

For some of us, there have been signs of things “triggering” some of the funny-bone issues or insecurities that most pluck on our heart-strings. Maybe a relative says something that picks up on an old feeling of insecurity, or an old postcard crosses your desk and causes you to think back on your past-self unkindly. Sometimes these events are inspiring us to look at the ways we think about these old “triggers” or issues. Are we seeing things accurately when we feel triggered? Or are we using the event to see ourselves through how we imagine someone else to have seen us, or how we imagine someone else to be seeing us now? The decisions we make about that, whether that’s painful or not says a lot about how we view ourselves right now. The way we imagine other people’s view of us often reflects what we think of ourselves. Use those inspirations accordingly. If something is tickling a memory, or nudging something forward for you to look at… maybe it’s an inspiration!

The word “inspiration” comes from the Latin root inspirationem/spirare — “to blow, breathe, inhale” …. (think about the word “respiration”) … and the word “Spirit” is based on this root as well, “Breathing the breath of God, the force of life” … this week your spirit is breathing some much needed inspiration into your life and you’ll be calling on this spark to help you contain and use the passionate energies within you. Projects might get a huge boost of inspiration, problems might find that one nagging solution, your great new amazing invention or idea can breathe new life into what you wish to accomplish this week.

You can also greatly INSPIRE and motivate others.. not because (just as with last week) you’re ramming your ideas down someone else’s throat or forcing your will, or trying hard…. but because you’re grooving to your OWN inspirations and dreams and, without even trying, lighting the path for others to follow

Have a wonderful week of inspiration!

About this deck: Dreaming In Color Luman Deck by Mindy Hope Sommers is published by Dreaming in Color is a deck of ethereal fractal images and colours with keywords. It could be used for meditation, inspiration or divination.

This week’s card asks us to examine our relationship to “withdrawal” and, because there is always positive and negative expression of any energy, there’s a balanced way to be in withdrawal and an imbalanced one. As we learned from last week’s card “Drop it” — there’s a benefit to withdrawal and it’s a handy emotional tool to have as Mercury goes retrograde.

Balanced withdrawal allows you to move into safety and to withdraw your efforts so that you can regenerate, gather resources, retain well-being, research and plan solutions. It allows you to have a retreat, but it also allows you to ACT and connect to life when the time is right. Balanced withdrawal is always in your empowerment and active choice and it’s designed to help you MOVE forward with success. It helps you know when and how to get what you need safely.

Imbalanced withdrawal, on the other hand, keeps you feeling stuck. Forever trying to avoid some situation of conflict or pain instead of dealing with things head-on. Imbalanced withdrawal has the character of disempowerment, avoidance, fear, isolation, and is a continuous loop of anxiety. Imbalanced withdrawal keeps you from life and from the next steps that would bring you success. It might seek to “prevent” worse pain, but isolation or avoidance only increases whatever problems there are and makes them worse, compounding them with guilt, pain and feelings of worthlessness.

Withdrawal, applied with the right intention can be a positive, balancing, productive and active tool to restore success. In the same way you can’t make a nice cake and beat the batter for 20 hours, or cook the cake for 5 days, there are times when withdrawing your effort is important!

How to spot Imbalanced Withdrawal :

“I want to be alone.” A breather from social engagements, me-time and downtime is essential to wellbeing, but your “downtime” is constant and you find yourself avoiding others on a continuing basis. You’re no longer taking a breather; you’re avoiding and you don’t feel confident in yourself.
“I need to figure everything out.” Thinking things over is often necessary, but your urge to pull away or self-examine has taken over your life and inhibited you in connecting to life in a way that causes you to feel stuck and un-satisfied.
“I don’t want to deal with it.” You find that you are withdrawing instead of dealing with issues or problems more than the time it takes for calmer-heads to prevail and for logical steps to emerge. Instead of dealing, you dump it and “later” never comes.
“I need to do it on my own.” In a relationship, imbalanced withdrawal is any persisting, chronic habit where you want to isolate and work on your own in situations where honesty, communication, listening or compassion could bring both healing and progress.

GET BACK IN BALANCE

This week, consider the role of withdrawal has in your life. Are you withdrawing or avoiding too much? In what areas are you out of balance? Are you waiting for something to step in or are you willing to take steps for yourself? Are you not withdrawing when you need to? Is there some situation that requires you to step back into safety and assess your next moves? Is there a dynamic in your life that is not healthy or good for you?

This is a perfect week to be reflective, to think twice before reacting and to go into “planning” mode – but it’s just as important to intend to get into the swing of things, to open that stack of mail and to make the decision to get on with life. A stunningly filmed, and gorgeously acted recent movie examines “withdrawal” (both positive and negative forms) in a very clever way: lost-in-space thriller GRAVITY starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Can you think of the different examples of ‘withdrawal’ in that film?

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: Imbalanced withdrawal, fear or avoidance is something every person experiences from time to time. However, if your system of withdrawal is persistent, severe or interferes with your life and you have other qualities of sadness, loss-of-interest, hopelessness, or physical/emotional symptoms, you may be suffering from depression. There is help and balance out there for you, please talk to your doctor or seek help.

About this deck: This week’s deck is the “DREAMING in COLOUR: LUMAN DECK” by and self-published by Mindy Hope Sommers. This 60 card deck, illustrated with colourful, digital, fractal images, while seemingly all about colour, is anything but. Many clients and friends love this intuitive, meditative deck, and use it to encourage their own intuitive response. I admit it’s not one of my personal favourites yet (some of the colours are muted in the deck I received and some of the tones and shapes fail to relate to the keyword on the card for me either literally or intuitively) – still, I’m glad to have gotten it in a trade and it has many teaching possibilities.