VI. Making everything mean something is exhausting.

Humans are meaning makers.

But before people set out on their healing journey or their spiritual journey, I’d love it if they could appreciate the genuine dangers of making everything they see in the world and everything that happens in their life mean something.

I am speaking here of meaning that we make on a very conscious level: delving into tarot cards or oracles, animal or plant symbolism, looking back at our lives and seeing patterns...

I feel compelled to say these things because there’s this thing that happens when people get into the metaphysical world, or the intuitive world, or the self-healing process world for the first time whereby they make every fucking thing mean something. “I was called to come see you today. I saw a family of racoons crossing my path and your name popped into my head.” “Yesterday I saw three crows, I guess that means I wasn’t really meant to stay with that partner…”

I don’t know how to put a measure to this, but I would say that it is useful up to a point. If it helps you to come more fully into the realisation that this is your life and you need to be in it with interest and attention, then ok, go for it. But it can easily, like really, really easily, get totally out of hand and into the mockable realm of ridiculousness and contribute to the perception of these paths as flaky, as well as getting in the way of you creating genuine meaning out of your life experiences.

The things in your life mean something to the degree that you give them meaning. But it works best if you have access to the internal measure of “what is my life and how do I want it to look?”, which takes some time to grow if you haven’t got it already, since you’ve likely been taught to clamp down on or disregard your gut knowing.

When we are leaning too much on every damn thing meaning something, then we are more likely to fall into the clutches of a charlatan, that is, a healer or a guru who hasn’t done their own work and is in it for some kind of hugely ego-based thing. I think this is because we are actively looking for a “sign” out there instead of asking our own guts if the healer is a good fit.