The Sun: Simple Awareness
Above: ‘Joy’: The equivalent to The Sun in the Sacred She Tarot.
Every now and then, memories appear in my mind from deep, deep childhood, from such young years that I should not be able to remember them. These memories are clear and simple; nothing dramatic happens, their significance is above words. I can’t turn these mundane memories into a clever anecdote or even bother telling my partner about them when they flash into my mind. Just simple memories, random screenshots of early life, usually relating to Nature; moments where I am captivated by life, but too young to label it or complicate it. My bright, child-like mind beams simple awareness onto experience, and all life is joy. Here are a few of them, all related to Nature:
1. I am in the playground in my very (very) early years of school life. Perhaps I am five years old, six at most. I pick up the leaf of a Maple tree. A teacher helps me to explore the changing colours, tracing its veins to each corner of this star-shaped wonder that is bigger than my hand. It is Autumn. Many leaves blow along the concrete ground in the wind, all is a gorgeous mystery.
2. The grass in the back garden of our house. That’s all. Just grass. No separation between me and the colour green, as if I had just been born, as if I were absorbing the garden. No sense of separation.
3. Being pushed in a pram in the rain (I’ve already shared about this one in my main newsletter!). The plastic cover of the pram makes me feel safe and contained, special, as if my lovely Mum were some kind of child-servant, serving my safety and comfort. (Is that not what Mum’s are?!) The smacking of heavy raindrops hit against clear plastic as I am wheeled through the streets, past the fruit shop and the butcher’s. I had never as safe as I felt in that pram, a womb of love all around me, provided by the kindness and softness of my Mum who pushes me and occasionally checks that I am happy. I am.
Above: The Sun from Philippe Vachier Tarot – the oldest complete Marseille Tarot. I have always found the old versions of the Marseille card to be a bit homo-erotic, but maybe that’s just me…
Sometimes I wonder how ‘real’ these memories of mine are. Perhaps some of them came from dreams, some of them even from past lives, or maybe they are everyday imaginings, hallucinations if you like. Even if that’s the case, that’s okay. These visions are teachers for me, either way. They are deeply meaningful. They remind me of the need for utmost simplicity to navigate this world. To quieten the mind, take some deep breaths, and recognise that this is the same Earth that I experienced in these memories/dreams/hallucination, when I was as pure as grass, or sheltered from rain, when I lost myself in a maple leaf.
These kinds of moments can’t just be found when looked for, like a set of lost keys. I find that they come to me when my mind is at its stillest. I have found that more of them have come to me since I began my Zen meditation practice, eight years ago. The more I let go of attachment to active thought (or at least try), the more these visions arise. The trick is not to get hung up on the them, to dig into nostalgia, sadness for missed times. Those moments appear and disappear like bubbles in a stream (to steal a Zen saying): they ask me to notice what is right here, right now, not to hang on to memory. Listen, smell, touch, look up to the sky. Focus on the breath. Be with Nature without judgement. Don’t label this miracle of existence. Shine the simple light of awareness.
Above: The Sun from the beautiful Metanoia Marseille Tarot.
Last year, I went on a series of walks in Liverpool with my brother Chris, following a river near where we grew up, from its source to the sea. We didn’t know of this river’s existence when we grew up in Huyton (Liverpool), so we wanted to make up for that disconnect in adulthood. On the morning of one of our River Alt walks, I pulled the Sun card from the gorgeous Metanoia Marseille. Two little boys, just like we once were, were standing under the bright summer sun; they asked me not to dig into nostalgia on our trip (which could have been so tempting) but to bring to the walk that simple in-the-moment awareness that we had as little boys, simple awe for what is in front of us. For as long as humans are alive, we hold that light of awareness: it is our very consciousness. That card changed my experience of that day, turned it into a precious experience, as pure as any childhood moment we shared. When I found myself getting nostalgic for childhood, for our home area to be like it used to be, I looked again with fresh eyes, as if I had never seen it before.
Don’t make your experience overly clever, The Sun card says. Keep it simple. What is the light shining on right now? Step into it. That’s all.
Do you have any such pure memories? Simple Nature memories from childhood? Please post them in the comments if you do … I’d love to read them :)
That’s all for now, friends. Thank you for being here – and please check out my Therapeutic Tarot Sessions and my courses embracing Tarot and Nature if you’d like us to work together. You can also sign up for the Tarot Blog newsletter (different to my main newsletter) below to receive occasional email updates (roughly monthly) with the latest posts.
Smiles from Scotland,
Stephen
