Sunday, July 15, 2012

When the bear eats cherries from the Tree of Life

Quand l'ours cueille et goûte avec plaisir les cerises à l'arbre de vie, avec délice, comme un enfant.

I chuckled and smacked my lips as I read these words, written in sky-blue ink on an index card. I attempted a translation:

"When the bear gathers and tastes with pleasure the cherries from the Tree of Life, with delight, like a child."

We were playing my coincidence card game, during my last workshop in southern France, in  a big, sunny room in a restored farm house in the Ardèche. In its simplest form, used as an impromptu oracle, the game works like this.

- Everyone in the group is asked to write something on one side of an index card. You write whatever comes to you: a memory, something you observed in the world around you, a summary of a dream, a thought that is in your mind.

- The cards are collected and turned into a deck. We are getting ready to play a card game. We have made a one-time deck that will now become a divination tool.

- Next, the players are asked to formulate a theme for guidance. To get this clear and simple, they are encouraged to fill in the blank in the following sentence: "I would like guidance on -----"

- Now the deck is shuffled and each player is invited to draw a card at random.

- When the players read what is written on their cards, they are invited to receive this as a response from the oracle to their questions. The message might be vague or ambiguous; that is how oracles stay in business long-term. If a player can't fathom the message, others might make some suggestions ("if it were my card").

When we play this game in my groups, I am often content to set a modest theme, like guidance on the week ahead, or on the workshop I am currently leading. My intention that day was simply, "I would like guidance on my next travels."
     I smiled again, remembering the taste of the early-ripe cherries I had been plucking from a tree in front of the farm house before breakfast.
    "I was watching you," laughed Emmanuelle, who identified herself as the author of the card I had drawn. "I saw the bear and the child in you."
     Lovely encouragement for the travels before me. I promised to feed and play with the bear and the child in me. 


For more on the coincidence card game, and other synchronicity games, please see The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence and Imagination (New World Library)

4 comments:

  1. Hi Robert,

    I like the nature of this card game, and I think I'd like to try it myself the next time I'm in a group of people open-minded enough to give it a chance.

    I think a spirit of play in these matters is always valid, as everything in the outer world is ultimately our Mirror anyway, the reflection of the energy and consciousness within.

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  2. Hi Robert,

    This is one of the most delightful messages that I have read in a long time. Not only is the value of recognizing coincidence very important, but the message you received when you played the coincidence game inspires me very much. I love it.

    And there is coincidence there, too. I am pondering refinements to the theme of another of the little books that I like to write. What refinements should I make? Consider more emphasis on the tree of life and the inner child whom we all have.

    Thank you for the inspiration :-)

    PS: "The Three Only Things" is one of my most favorite of your books.

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  3. Oracles can be amazingly down to earth! They stay in business not because of offering up vague impressions, but by offering up solutions to problems. Coming from the right place within, they can help on a profound level. And Spirit always offers on a profound level...more ambiguous alas. ;) I guess we have to do the work ourselves.

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  4. Thanks for this, Robert. I used it in my circle of readers and healers this past weekend and we were all moved by the magic of the synchronicities revealed.

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