Polishing the Jewel: The Five of Wands
Blue Sash Test, Portland, 2012
In my late thirties I studied an Indonesian form of Kung Fu for a few years. To earn my first sash (aka belt), I had to demonstrate a series of forms, complete 108 Judo-style holds by repeatedly throwing two attackers in under six minutes, and fight with advanced students.
One of my fighters was a man who was at least a foot taller and fifty pounds heavier than me. And yet, instead of using the kicks and punches we had practiced so assiduously, I tried to wrestle the guy. Wrestle him!
It didn’t work. I was pinned to the ground and ready to claim full defeat a few moments into our fight until I remembered I had legs that were short, yes, but powerful and capable of strong kicks in close range. I also remembered that I had elbows that could deliver a pointed blow when I was too close for him to reach with his longer arms.
Once my body remembered what it could do, the direction of the fight shifted and I emerged from his grasp, rose from the ground, and danced-sparred with him until the next fighter tagged him out.
I clearly still had a lot to learn about fighting after that test, but by following my lead to the ground and challenging me to find another way out, my teammate helped me contact my personal power in a way that would have been impossible without the external pressure he imposed.
from The Gentle Tarot
While that and every following martial arts fight scared me in the moment, they never scared me as much as much as interpersonal conflict has. I mean, we were all paying good money to learn how to fight and defend ourselves against one another and potential bad guys, and that consensual container made me feel emotionally and physically safe. But real life, outside-the-studio conflict is another whole story.
I have always had a conflict with conflict. That is to say, I have historically hated, dreaded, and been terrified by it. I am intentionally writing in the past-ish tense because, while I still have a belly-turning aversion to it, I am trying to change my narrative about my relationship with conflict, and the way I talk about it is an important part of that change.
Through many years of community living and committed partnership, I now accept that conflict is an inherent part of being in close relationship with other humans and is not the catastrophic event I once believed it to be. It helps that my community and marriage are overtly committed to showing up for conflict as a means of living honestly, healing deep wounds and patterns, and growing into our best selves.
Living this way is kind of like inhabiting a martial arts studio for the soul. (BTW, have you ever noticed that martial arts is just a pair of switched letters away from marital arts?)
Like martial arts students, we spend most of our community time together in ease and delight while cultivating practices that help us prevent messy conflict——healthy boundaries, clear and conscious communication, and shared meditation, meals, work, games, and gratitude. Lately, we’ve also been role-playing scenarios to help us develop and embody the skills we’ll need when conflict does emerge. And it will emerge.
This lifestyle is not everyone’s cup of tea, and understandably, but it addresses my deep hunger to know and be known fully, to live as close to my center as possible. And the more dance-cum-sparring partners I have to do that with, the closer I get to my core power, which is love… unyielding love for myself, others, and the wonder of this life.
The tagline for my martial arts school was “Balanced, Compassionate Action,” and it confused me. In effort to understand the relationship between the fierce training we got and that gentle tagline, I interviewed many of the black belts in the school, and our head teacher’s words struck me the most: “We give each other the hardest fight possible without hurting one another because it polishes the jewel of our being.”
Something clicked for me. I suddenly understood that being challenged to the edge of our capacity demanded an intensive sloughing of our self-perceived limitations and uncovered the powerful crystalline core that lies inside us all.
***
When I was 23 I was hit by a drunk driver on my bicycle and left alone in a ditch with a compound fracture as the sky grew new-moon-in-the-country dark. When I shared the essay I wrote about it with my writing class a couple years later someone asked, “Where’s the anger in this essay?” I was dumbstruck. It had never occurred to me to feel angry. Or recognize it if I did.
When I was 27 I applied for a summer camp job. The directors asked me in the interview what made me angry. The only things I could think of were large-scale injustice, mass incarceration, environmental destruction, and the war in Iraq. I couldn’t think of any triggers for personal anger. I was proud of that fact. I know now that my anger had been hiding in the shadows, but at the time I thought it was evidence of how emotionally mature I was, how peaceful and evolved.
And then, last year, at 47 years of age, I told my husband I was angry with him. It was the first time in my life I had told anybody I was angry with them. I did not yell or cry or stomp or pout. He simply asked how I felt after he shared the ways I frustrated him, and I felt mad! Unjustly evaluated! And, thanks to the space he created for me to share my feelings, I was able to finally name it. “I feel pissed and unseen,” I said.
from The Wandering Star
And then I proceeded to tell him why, listing all of the ways I felt unappreciated by him with a calm fierceness that felt brand new to me. It may not seem like a big deal for someone to stand up for themself in this way, but for me it was monumental.
As I spoke, I realized that, while I thought my biggest fear in life was someone else being mad at me, it was really expressing anger toward someone else that scared me the most. Some quiet, hidden part of me was convinced that I had no right to be angry at another person, and that our relationship would be mortally threatened if I become so.
Instead, my husband listened with a soft, open face. There was even a bit of a smile. And when I finished speaking, do you know what he said? He said, “Thank you. Thank you for saying all of that. I wanted to stop you partway through because I immediately realized all the things I was not seeing, but I wanted you to have the experience of naming them, of feeling those words move through you.”
Holy shit! Not only had I expressed my anger, but my husband was grateful to me for doing so.
THIS is what my teacher meant about polishing the jewel. In stepping into partnership with Seth seven years ago, I agreed to show up for both ease and hardship by trusting the container of our commitments to hold us, just as I had trusted my martial arts teammates to challenge——but not harm——me every time we bowed toward each other before a fight. Though it was the scariest thing in the world for me to express my anger to my husband, I felt safe enough to name it and advocate for myself. And in doing so, I burned through the embedded story that there is no place for my own fiery feelings in relationships. Deep within that untruth, I found the jewel of my own self-love and respect. I found my voice.
***
THIS is the vibe of Five of Wands.
Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot
All of the fives in the tarot are transition cards, so they all express some form of dynamic tension. In the suit of wands, which corresponds to the fire element, the tension is spicy. Each person in the battle is wielding a wand that represents their Life Force Energy, their deepest yearnings, and their innermost strengths, and they are all in competition with one another. The conflict between these opposing forces may be one of the hardest things ever, but it is exactly what each individual needs to connect with their inner gifts and core powers.
If you get this card in a reading, or are going through a capacity-stretching challenge right now, consider the ways in which it is revealing your deepest held values, your strongest yearnings, and the source of your Life Force Energy.
The challenge represented by this card may be an inner conflict between different parts of yourself, or it may be between you and others. It might spark anger, fear, sadness, grief, or overwhelm, and bringing presence and compassion to those difficult feelings may be exactly what you need to clear away the sediments obscuring your deepest gifts and powers.
The Five of Wands may not be fun to experience, but once you’ve dance-sparred your way through its discomforts, you will know it was worth it. For the the multifaceted, polished jewel of your essence will finally be free to illuminate the path toward your own shimmering version of success.
