The Mindful Activist – Episode 12 anami – Macroscopic Microscopic Activist
Matt Ready: There we go! We are recording. We’ve got very interesting sunlight shadow on you cutting across your neck.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: So do you want to know what the podcast is about, or do you want me to start asking you questions?
anami: Good question. You can ask questions first and then tell me what it’s about.
Matt Ready: Okay. Well, I’ve often been starting with — Let’s assume for the moment that this video will be seen by millions of people all over the world.
anami: Okay.
Matt Ready: Just keep that in mind. It may not, but that’s the intention so… Would you like to introduce yourself?
anami: I go by the nomenclature anami, even though it’s not a nomenclature, it’s an adjective that I use and I live here in this tiny little town doing Tarot readings. That’s the short version, the extremely short condensed version.
Matt Ready: All right. Do you at all consider yourself an activist?
anami: I definitely do.
Matt Ready: So what does that mean to you?
anami: I think it means exactly what it says, an activist is someone who goes out and does something, like if you see a problem that you’re more concerned with what the solution is rather than concerned with rehashing the problem, I mean unless it serves some purpose to understand it better. I read something the other day, somebody said something about social — what was it? Something where they basically said that socialism and activism is the same things, and I’m like, I don’t really understand that statement, because socialism is like somebody who believes in a certain political government structure of socialism, and an activist is somebody who goes out and is active in making change, and so sometimes you have an activist-socialist and vice versa, but they wouldn’t be mutually exclusive, but that was an interesting — I’m not sure where that, you know, idea could come from.
Matt Ready: Maybe they were saying, the correct activists are socialists, you know, it’s like that’s the correct thing to be activist for or something.
anami: I think it might have just been that in their opinion they view activist, people who are going out and doing protests or whatever, as most of them are socialist, therefore activists are socialists, socialists are activists, right? In my opinion, that’s just their experience. But I think that an activist is — you can’t just sit at home and wish things were different and call yourself and activist. People do, but I don’t think you should because by definition you’re not an activist, but the definition of the word.
Matt Ready: So why do you call yourself an activist? Are there specific issues that you are very active in working on?
anami: There’s issues that I’m actively working on and other issues that either I’m not active in working on, or care less about, but I call myself an activist because I like to try and make change. I like to go out and do things that I think are maybe going to help change the world for the better, you know, be that going to, you know, perform civil disobedience at a protest or something, or if it’s the way I treat people who come into my booth. That’s a form of activism as well, even though there I’m only maybe interacting with one person, the person in my booth, I think that’s just as important or more important as going out and doing something that’s going to get maybe more attention, maybe there will be a picture in the paper, or that kind of activism, you know. Which one’s going to change the world more? I think actually what we’re doing one-on-one with each other is probably going to change the world. Well, I don’t know.
Matt Ready: It’s interesting.
anami: My thoughts aren’t really — [Laughs]
Matt Ready: I’m totally with you there. There’s two — and a lot of people, I get that response a lot, there’s activism on the big macrocosmic scale and then there’s just realizing that every single moment you’re interacting with someone or any part of the planet, is an opportunity to affect people or the planet right now.
anami: Yes.
Matt Ready: That’s why I enjoy the video thing, because we are having a real exchange here, one-on-one in real time, and we’re videotaping —
anami: One-on-one and one-on-one, with you, whoever you are around the world.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Yeah, and this moment of whatever we talk about could be shared and replicated potentially with millions of people. So if we talk about big issues we sort of — they get to be in both worlds.
anami: Yeah.
Matt Ready: The present world and the macroscopic world.
anami: Yeah, and I guess I was kind of steering towards these one-on-one things are more important than going out and doing these big actions and I think that’s why I stopped myself, because I think they’re both equally as important, and I think big actions that give a lot of notice are important.
Matt Ready: Well, for me the question is, which one makes me happy. I mean I’m a — it may sound like a crazy way to put it, but I do kind of believe people do things that makes them happy, and if you are — I believe like if you’re an activist even for big things, like to me if you’re an activist in your country, you’re fighting for democracy in your country that doesn’t have it, I still see that as you’re still doing something to make you happy, it’s just that you see yourself as a part of your identity of the people, so you’re fighting for yourself in that way, and your family and everything. People are — they suffer and take enormous sacrifice for themselves and for people they care about, in countries they care about, and populations they care about.
anami: I don’t know that activism makes me happy, because I’ll fully wallow in the stuff that, you know, like let’s really find a solution to this really complicated complex problem. It doesn’t make me happy, because for a lot of these things there’s no easy answers, there’s not like a, oh! If we do this then it’s all fixed, you know. Sometimes you can do some activism that works out well and something changes, and you see that change, and it’s great and that makes you happy; or you see that it’s going to make positive change and that makes you happy, but a lot of activism doesn’t make me happy but that’s why I’m an activist, because there are a lot of aspects of the world that I am not happy with, and I was always one of those kids, you know, who was like, “That’s not fair!” and they always say, “Well, life’s not fair,” and my response was always like, “But why not?” You know, if it could be, or in the ways that it could be, why would we just say, “Well, it’s not fair, so it’s not going to be fair, let’s not try and make it fair,” you know. I mean if you can equalize or improve the lives around you, or you know, wouldn’t we — as we start making changes, ’cause I think that people all over the world are making these changes, but as we make these changes that make the world a better place — I totally lost my train of thought. It’s so hot in here! [Laughs]
Matt Ready: [Laughs] That’s okay, take a deep breath. It’s totally good. I’m going to edit it, you’re going to sound so eloquent and smooth.
anami: Oh! Good!
Matt Ready: [Laugh]
anami: You’re going to leave this part out. I thought it was just going as a whole chunk.
Matt Ready: No, no, I can’t — once we get passed the 3 minutes, we’re into the — I’m going to do a little edit.
anami: Yeah, because people don’t have so much attention span. But — oh, I forgot what the point of that was.
Matt Ready: Yeah. So the other thread, you know, I’m very tempted. I love talking to you about — but I don’t know if you want to talk about it on the podcast. It’s your more woo-woo [unintelligible 00:07:45] I mean —
anami: I mean, what I’m doing for a living here?
Matt Ready: Yes! What you do. Would you want to do a reading and have that recorded? Would that be cool?
anami: Sure! Yeah, and as far as the woo-woo goes, you know, again it’s all perspective, like I can explain this stuff in very woo-woo terms, which people seem to like a lot, but really anybody who’s read very much about quantum physics and quantum mechanics, this should make a lot of sense, and these really are just little pieces of paper with images on them, and when they’re face down, they’re any image, any card, every card in the deck, and when you flip it over it’s the card that you need it to be, you know, so —
Matt Ready: Yeah, it’s very —
anami: So if you want to get sciency about it, we can take the woo-woo and make it less woo-woo.
Matt Ready: Let’s do that for a moment, ’cause I actually am extremely interested in quantum mechanics and what you said just now, is my understanding, is at the quantum level, is absolutely true that at the quantum level, electrons don’t decide what they’re going to do, unless they have to, unless like the card — at the quantum level, it would be the equivalent of the card doesn’t decide where it’s going to be until it has to decide —
anami: Well, at the quantum level there’s no card. This card is the same thing as this fabric, as the table, as you or me, and that’s kind of the idea, is that the same particles that make this card make you and so if you’re the one inquiring up the card, the particles that are right now taking the form that is you, affect the form that is this card and make it, you know, the card that it needs to be.
Matt Ready: Okay. Well, go for it.
anami: Okay.
Matt Ready: I’ll stop interrupting you [laughs].
anami: So, you’re going to need your hands for this, I’m not sure, maybe I should hold that while you shuffle. [Crosstalk] You going to mix them up, you can either shuffle them or just put them on either side like that. When you feel like they’re ready, put them in to three piles.
Matt Ready: And that you just point wherever you want to record.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Did you say shuffle however I want?
anami: Just as long as you’re touching them you’re doing it right.
Matt Ready: I’m going to put them in to three piles.
anami: Uh-huh.
Matt Ready: Three piles. What do you think I should focus on, the cards or on you as your speaking?
anami: Good question. I don’t know. You’re the videographer, you’ll have to tell me. Wait, you’re going to focus on — okay, you don’t have to tell me, you can just do it.
Matt Ready: [Laughs]
anami: Go ahead and draw one and flip it up. So the card that most represents you at this time is the card of defeat.
Matt Ready: [Laughs] I got you.
anami: This means you have an inherent idea or perspective about yourself, so swords always represent your perspective, the way you’re thinking about, and so this indicates that the way you were thinking about yourself, who you are, what you’re going to do, what’s important to you, some of these things are falling by the wayside, some of these — but more to the point, the entire picture of yourself that you thought you were working towards your whole life, is a defeated idea. That idea is not going to happen. You actually have some new elements, some new information coming in that’s seeding a new you basically. Again, this is swords, so this is the way you’re thinking about it, you’re doing a lot of thinking lately actually, and this is kind of about new concepts and new ideas coming together and they’re creating the seed of enlightenment, so here there’s a Lotus like there is, that represents enlightenment and understanding, it’s in several of the cards. Here it’s a tiny, just a few petals just beginning, because it’s about a new idea. So that the idea you had formerly of yourself is changing, that’s all that really means.
So you’re having your past here. In terms of earthbound things, tangible things, things you can have and hold, you’ve had some sort of worry, worrying about their stability, worrying about their rightness, worrying about their place in your life for better or for worse. The Ace of Swords comes up next, also is a card from your past. This is a new dawning moment, a new a-ha moment, it’s like the way you were thinking about things shifted almost — I want to say [unintelligible 00:13:02] it’s almost as if you’re doing things backwards, but as one would normally, you know, you would work your way up through ideas to the Ace, where you have this new understanding, but for you it’s almost like there was an a-ha moment, like a dawning realization that led you to the beginning of a concept, like you started at the end and then had to restart at the beginning, because what’s led you to this moment is a lot of perspective growth.
The Prince is about moving through things with lots of great action, and so again we’re in swords, we’re in your perspective in the way you think about it. You’ve got a lot of forward motion, a lot of changes in the way you’re thinking about things which just put you in this place now, where there, you know, you’re changing sort of your expectations for yourself. In your foundation, what’s present in everything else is the Card of Art. This is about coming together of different elements to make a new and beautiful whole. So the representation here of the water, which are your emotional experiences, and the fire which is your passion, and those things that are your purpose here on Earth, those things that make you feel charged up and alive, like that’s what you get up for in the morning and you’re really excited, these are careers, or hobbies, or artistic passions, or relationships with other people, those inner fire things that make you really feel fulfilled. So in your foundation you’re finding that some of your emotional experiences, some of the things that you’ve been through emotionally are what are feeding into your passion, and you’re really hoping that that passion takes a place of strength, that it can have a solid foundation that you can work from it, that gives you someplace to come from out in to the world—that’s a really weird way to put that. I’m not sure why it’s put that way.
Matt Ready: [Laughs]
anami: But wanting to have that unity to which you go out in to the world and interact in relation to your passion. So as you go forward into the next week or two, you’ve got some serendipitist stuff coming. So the Science card is a really interesting card because when I started reading tarot cards, there was no internet, we didn’t have cell phones, we didn’t use technology every day, until this card would only come up when you were going to learn from somebody who was really sciency, or you were going to learn about something really sciency, like math or engineering, or some Avenue of the Sciences, something very technological minded, or you were going to go into computers, which at the time when I started reading was like a whole different world of going into computers. Now we use technology for everything we’re on the internet almost every day, taking video as we speak that’s gonna go on the internet. So it gets a little bit more ambiguous at how to read this card, in whether or not it has to do with actual technology, science, math, or if it’s something that’s going to happen via the internet. But again, it’s the Sword, it’s perspective and knowledge, and it’s not really settling to me. Usually as I talk, some of the — when I talk about the different aspects of the card, something feels very smooth and strong, and other things kind of restrict, and none of them did that. [Laughs] So it’s possible that this is on the internet about something vaguely technological that has to do with learning and expansion, and involves other people as well that are also kind of technology minded or sciency minded. It actually feels like all of the aspects of this card are making kind of an appearance, they all have some part to do with this.
In how you see yourself is as The Alchemist, as The Magus, so this is about creating magic, and creating your world, creating your reality, helping the universe let things fall into place. Sometimes when this card comes up it feels like things are falling out of place, but this distinctly feels like you’re drawing things in to make them fall into place, which they are willingly doing, so it’s kind of more on that side rather than that things are going out of place because they’re supposed to be in a different place, kind of backing, that the cards sometimes has. In this case no, it’s like you’re creating your own magical experience of making things exist for yourself.
In relation to someone else there is something that needs to be let go of, so this position is someone else in your life, and it can either be your relationship with them, their relationship with you. It has to do with someone else, and this card specifically is about being ready to move on, and so you let go of things that don’t serve. A lot of times—and cups represent our emotional dreams—so a lot of times this refers to those things that we take away from an experience and they’re not helpful, and they’re not going to help you move forward, and they have no real purpose in your life anymore, but you just get stuck on them, you know, we get stuck on things that traumatized us in our childhood. We can’t change it, it’s not going to do, there’s no [laughs] there’s no reason to keep holding that and dragging it on with us as we go, but we tend to. So this is one of those where it’s just kind of some leftover stuff that you’re so mad about, or frustrated about or… Yeah, it just feels like an old anger that you’ve even think you’re not — sometimes we’re still mad at somebody and we don’t even remember why we’re mad at them we just have been mad at them for so long, you know, and then if you really think about, in hindsight it’s something really trivial, it’s something that, if you really think about it, today you wouldn’t be mad at it at all! But you’re so used to being mad at that person that it’s just sort of held on. And so this feels as if someone from your past that you have some grudge or hold up with that, it’s just — it’s not serving you and if you analyze it you’ll find out that it’s easy to let it go. It’s not even a hard one.
Your subconscious is really ready for this spark, so you have the only place that the wands appear in your reading is in your hopes, in your subconscious desires and in your conscious desires. You’re really wanting this thing that you’re passionate about to begin, to take root, but it’s still — everything still in the thinking stage, it’s still in the planning stage. As humans, we always want to rush ahead the things we like and do away with the things we don’t like, and life doesn’t really work that. Everything has to happen in its time, and in a certain order. You can’t say, “Oh, this hardship I don’t want to go through. I’d like to rush ahead to the next happy time,” because you’re not going to get to that happy time unless you develop through that hardship. So right now, you’re not going through a hardship, but you’re discovering what ideas are going to work and what aren’t going to work, you’re thinking things through, you’re laying groundwork, and you’re getting rid of some old stuff that’s going to get in your way later. It’s just a decent time to work through, so your subconscious — and you’re moving in this direction of your passion, it’s just not time yet, but within the next four to six weeks you’re going to feel like you’re in your place.
The Queen of [unintelligible 00:20:07] is about how what we have sometimes isn’t what we expected, or what we thought we wanted, or what we prepared ourselves for our entire life, but it’s where you need to be, it is what you need to… She’s in her element, she’s in her queendom, even if it’s not the lush forests to pictured as a princess, it is her queendom, and she sits there rightly on her throne looking over her holdings, and very much at one with her place on Earth. So this is what’s coming up for you, is this oneness in your place. Do you have any questions about this or specific questions you wanted to ask?
Matt Ready: That was really interesting [laughs]. I don’t really know what I would ask. If you laid out a magic — if you had a crystal ball, I am not sure that I would have any questions for it, other than, my question is, is there anything that the Universe would like to give me as advice? There’s lots of little — there is lots of advice [crosstalk] in what you were saying.
anami: Yeah! I usually do the general reading because people — stuff will come out, like whatever’s on your mind, what you’re kind of focused on, will come out on its own. You don’t really have to ask, and a lot of times when people — they’re like, “Well, I’m not sure you really fully covered this aspect, can you answer this question?” Then we do and usually will find the same cards will pop up and then I can be like, “Well, as you can see this card came up in relation to this because…” that’s where it already came up in the read, your question was already answered. It’s just a matter of how you can place the cards.
Matt Ready: Well, here is one. Do you feel having the camera rolling, did that affect what was happening while you were doing the reading?
anami: [Unintelligible 00:22:23] I don’t really have a way to know if it affects it. I invite people to record. Usually they audio record though.
Matt Ready: Yeah, ’cause you say a lot. I could see people being like, “Oh, I think she talked about this and that,” and wanting to, you know…
anami: Yeah, I mean once I put my decorations up there will be a sign that says, “Please feel free to record” or whatever. Especially ’cause ideally people would record it and take a picture so they, as things happen, they could refer back ideally, but I usually forget to let people know that they could do that. And sometimes it gets really specific and sometimes people have to attribute.
[Pause]Matt Ready: Yeah. So this won’t be the first time one of your readings gets videotaped and shared online? [Crosstalk]
anami: May be it’s the first time one is shared.
Matt Ready: Oh yeah?
anami: Yeah.
Matt Ready: And are you okay with that if I share it? I mean, if you aren’t I won’t.
anami: I think it’s okay. Like I said, most of the time when I do readings I’m saying things like, “Well, this kind of has to do with your passion, and strength of your passion…” and this kind of stuff. Sometimes they’re really super specific, like talking about specific people in their lives or specific events that are going to happen. Yeah, I’m sitting here trying to think what makes something more specific, ’cause some days it’s just really, really specific, and other days it’s not, because I mean, in addition to it being quantum physics and whatever, I’m an interpreter and I’m also just a human being, so some days I feel really connected and on, and then there’ll be — I’m trying to think about an example without — I don’t like to — so don’t put this part online!
[Laughs]anami: But you know, like I had someone —
[Recording stops abruptly]
