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To See The Light

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Interpretation & Meaning

To See The Light - a card from the inclusive oracle deck

Remember when someone’s god said “let there be light” and there was light?

As simple as that.

Truth is, when you open your curtains you’re letting in the room one of the biggest scientific conundrums in the history of the world.

At first we thought light was a wave – a ray – way before Madonna sang it to us. We asked our children to draw yellow spiky lines floating out of suns and let them believe science was on their side.

Then a bunch of party poopers (Planck, Einstein) came up with the idea that light may actually be a particle. Tiny balls smaller than hamster poops bouncing out of stars.

The debate turned into a tug of war that not even the brawniest brains were able to win.

In 1938 Albert Einstein (he/him) took his hands off the increasingly knottier rope and wrote:

It seems as though we must use sometimes the one theory and sometimes the other, while at times we may use either. We are faced with a new kind of difficulty. We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do.

Just like that, the world turned upside down.

In the middle of a battle for definition, Einstein realized that placing light into either the particle bucket or the wave one was not the point. Way more important was knowing when to use one model and when the other, since they were both helpful in certain cases and unreliable in others.

When this card shows up in a reading, it’s time to celebrate complexity and make peace with the alleged contradictions in your life. A person can be smart AND rude, a job boring AND satisfying, a relationship tight AND damaging. Moreover, a person can be a kind parent and a tyrannical boss, a gentleman one day and an asshole the other.

This card wants you to accept life as joyfully convoluted and get used to cognitive dissonance – the voice whispering in your ear that things are categorically one thing or the other.

It’s time to replace binary divisions with Gaussian distributions, categories with spectrums, integer amounts with floating-point numbers.

Stop demanding coherence from the real world and start accepting the complex, multi-layered nature of everything around you. Putting things in buckets has served you well, now it’s time to empty those buckets into the river of your reality and see how the current changes.

Keywords: complexity • multi-layered • nuance • sophistication • subtlety • apparent contradiction • variety • cognitive dissonance

Practical References

Places Science Lab
Work Scientist, Litigator, Engineer, all jobs having to do with understanding complex systems and providing a holistic approach to problems
Activities Puzzles, Strategy Games
Archetypes The Myth-Buster, The Agent of Nuance

Interpretation within the Game of Cracks

The Soil
In the Soil position, this card suggests a situation that is more complex and multi-layered than what it may seem at first glance. The consultant's understanding of what's going on might be limited to superficial experience and the specific lenses through which they are looking at the world
The Knot
As the Knot, this card symbolizes the tension between the immediate satisfaction of simple answers and the hard earned wisdom of complex explanations. In order to advance in your journey, you have to look at life through different lenses and actively seek the shades of grey in a world that sometimes looks black and white
The Eye
When this card shows up as the Eye, it can represent an agent of nuance, someone who looks at situations from every angle and is acutely aware of how bias and cognitive dissonance are able to tilt our reasoning
The Fall
As the Fall, this card warns you against overcomplicating situations. If you're trying your hardest to justify a behavior that ticks you off, maybe this is a lost cause. Remember that understanding doesn't require justifying and that you're entitled to your own moral compass
The Hook
When this card appears as the Hook, it's an invitation to recognize and embrace nuance in the world around you. Empty the buckets of your mind and start seeing the people in your life as multi-layered individuals with complex goals and motivations
The Fruit
In the Fruit position, this card suggests an outcome that manifests itself through a deep understanding of a very complex situation

Homework & Practice

In order to embody the teachings of this card, you can:

  • Pick one of your favorite people (either from your life or a celebrity) and write down 10 flaws they have
  • Pick one of your least favorite people (either from your life or a celebrity) and write down 10 good qualities they possess
  • Pick one controversial position and write down 10 things in favor and 10 things against said position
  • Pick a political opinion of yours and write down 5 things that you think genuinely weaken your opinion
  • Pick a topic you’re unfamiliar with and read 10 long form articles about it
  • Study bias and cognitive dissonance. Read about the heuristics our brain employs to make quick decisions and the reasons why they can be problematic in certain aspects of life.

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