The card I pulled today is contrary Dragonfly, from the Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams and David Carson, and illustrated by Angela Werneke. In this deck, Dragonfly is about Illusion. In the contrary (upside down) position, Dragonfly is specifically about the illusion of power we experience when we are trying to prove ourselves to others, even if it means eschewing our authentic selves. When we do this, we may feel an initial rush of recognition and approval from others, but over time, if our actions are out of alignment with our true selves, we feel resentment and frustration and our self-esteem suffers. This card asks us to do some psycho-spiritual backtracking and think about when it was we started to feel bad about ourselves and why.
There’s a difference between proving yourself from a place of established self-worth and proving yourself from a place of not feeling good or confident about who you are. In the first instance, you feel good about yourself, and if you aren’t noticed or you don’t get what you want, your self-esteem doesn’t come crumbling down. But in the second instance, when you are acting from a place of low self-worth, and as such, are looking for validation for your value as a human being, things start to run amok. You could puff yourself up, only to experience the deflation of negative feedback, which might send you seeking the inflation of outside approval once again.
The solution? Sit in stillness until you experience your center. Feel in your body the quiet energy of your sense of self. Perhaps it is a warm glow in your tummy or just an overall sense of relaxation and peacefulness. From this place, try moving your body, feeling what it is like to move from your center. After a few minutes, return to stillness. Ask yourself what you need to do, if anything, in order to move forward with a situation. Perhaps you don’t need to put up that social media
post, or compete for the promotion, or write the email to put someone in their place. Perhaps today it’s enough to simply Be.
