a kind of general reading

I wanted to try giving reading with the Master another go before setting it aside for now, but nothing in particular to read on with it, so let's call this a general reflective reading exercise...just drawing cards and trying interpret.

So what comes to mind, looking at these cards, is the idea that well....there are all kinds of scenarios where the lessons of strength should be applied - inner fortitude, the ability to overcome your own base instincts, to do what is right, to be both firm and gentle with yourself. See, it's easy to make choices and decisions that are perhaps less than good for you, especially when doing so allows you to hear what you want to hear, or see what you want to see. People have a rather strong tendency to hear what they want to hear, the rose-colored glasses or the opposite, everything terrible, depending on their general outlook/approach to life.  Look at that cupid, pointing his arrow right at the Strength woman's head or heart - surely not the right place to aim, but he in blindfolded and the organs are impeding his hearing and so he is, essentially, senseless, confused, turned upside-down.

It is easy to be on guard against things that are obviously painful, things that we have been trained to know are dangerous, but organ music? Sweet, nice organ music that happens to be just what we want to hear, which allows us to indulge in whatever it is we would most like to indulge in - laziness, avoidance, some kind of bad habit or vice. It can be hard to step away from that, especially if we have already started to go down that path, already let the first few mis-aimed arrows fly...but that is a fallacy, of course, the fallacy of sunk costs: better to keep going because we have already lost this and this much, time, whatever. Reading about ethnic war and partition right now for a class, and same idea there too....misunderstandings that spiral out of control, security dilemma, escalation escalation and it gets to the point where even physical separation and redrawn borders are sometimes not enough to fully stop the violence and the music, the propaganda on both sides playing so loudly, saying forward, forward go, we must continue on. And heartbreak, how much heartbreak on large scale and tiny, individual, stemming from bad decisions, unrequited love, taking encouragement in gestures that weren't meant the way you take them...?

Sometimes we need strength to take the blindfold off, even if it means seeing difficult things, and strength to ignore the sound of the organs. Strength to step back, to say - no, this is easy but it is also wrong, and I will not do it anymore. Strength for harder decisions, for facing the less pleasant things.