Temperance — Spiritual Message of the Day

“Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.” — Pema Chödrön

An important aspect of this card’s meaning of alchemical transformation may be beautifully summed up in the Nichiren Buddhist term hendoku-iyaku—“changing poison into medicine.” This is the process by which we transform our problems—anything from our base desires to our troubles and afflictions—into strength, joy, and enlightenment. We can do this by viewing these difficulties with compassion, by learning from them, and by releasing them to a higher power. Specifically, though, let’s consider our problems in light of Pema Chödrön’s words.

The wounds we carry in our hearts may seem like obstacles in our lives, but through our experience of them, they can make us more sensitive to the problems and shortcomings of others. As we become more sensitized in this way, our compassion increases, which may be the highest lesson we can learn from adversity.

On one level, experiencing a specific problem may show us the way to be more compassionate toward others who are suffering that same problem. For example, recovered alcoholics often help people new to Alcoholics Anonymous. On a higher level, though, we should generalize our lessons and use our problems to develop a universal “compassion for all beings.”

To explain this better, let me describe several different types of people. First, there are those remarkable individuals who act with compassion in a given circumstance just because they are filled with compassion for all. Their wounds have already taught them that everyone has their own problems and we should have empathy for them. Then there are those who act compassionately in specific circumstances where they have been personally touched by the problem. They have not generalized their empathy, but they have learned enough from their tribulations to have specific compassion. Next, there are those who have not experienced the problem and consequently lack compassion for those who are suffering it. For example, this includes wealthy people who lack sympathy and charity for the poor. Unfortunately, there are also people who have been touched by the problem but have not learned from it. They still fail to act with compassion, and in rejecting the learning opportunity, the poison remains poison.

One final comment here is this: Not only should we use the difficulties we experience as grist for the mill in our spiritual journey, but we should also give thanks for them since they actually will improve and enrich us if we allow them to. As Julia Cameron famously said, “Bless not only the road but the bumps on the road. They are all part of a higher journey.”

If you enjoy these words of spiritual advice from the cards, you will love my book, The Soul’s Journey: Finding Spiritual Messages in the Tarot. 
The image on this post is a card from my RWS 2.0 Tarot deck. 

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