I wanted to share with you all a moment that I will not soon forget, or ever. I was at the Conscious Life Expo in LA at the beginning of this month, and I had the absolute pleasure of meeting Ellie Shoja, the creator of this deck. She was actually one of our booth neighbors, and we had met her the day before the expo started while we were all setting up and getting our booths ready. The next day, when she was back with her decks and books, I walked over to check it out – being a deck junkie and all. She asked me to pull a card and she would read what she had written in the book for it. Immediately, I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and my eyes started welling up. THIS is what I was missing. It was the beginning of an activation, signs and synchronicities that are still shocking me every single day. My lesson here is that YES, I can still be of service to others and nurture my face off (’cause that’s what I do), but now I realize that if I’m not shining my own light (ignoring my needs), there’s no connection.
Here is what Ellie wrote about this card:
Have you lost yourself in service to others? Have you compromised so much that you no longer recognize your own needs?
In your desire to serve, you’ve prioritized other people’s demands. You’ve thought that by losing yourself, you can help them be found. But the blind cannot lead the blind into light. Your disconnection from your Source gives birth to disconnection in them.
This card reminds you that you cannot show others the way if you are lost yourself. It is when you find yourself that you become a beacon, guiding others home.
To find yourself, you must be in service to love, not in service to them. Love does not engage in outrage. It does not make some people wrong and others right. Love does not exclude or condemn. Love does not ask for sacrifice. It does not require the forsaking of needs.
Today, stop all your efforts and sit in stillness instead. Feel the energy of love swell up within your heart. Your only task today is to connect with this fountainhead of love. You know that you’ve found love by the clarity it provides. You know you’ve found yourself by the joy you feel.
~Aimee
Deck Credit – Your Heart Knows the Way
Ellie Shoja (IG: @braveellie)
Art by: Chris Dellorco