Uh, Mercury Retrograde... what's my "safeword"?

The end of last week into this weekend was... a lot for me. Basically, it felt a "greatest hits" of some of my trickiest and most tender areas.

It really felt like I would work through one thing -fairly quickly, actually- but then BAM another tender-topic would almost immediately replace it.

Naturally, I went to my Oracle Cards to ask my Guides what was going on and here's where things started to get interesting... 

I grabbed Kim Krans' 71-card Alchemy Deck and immediately pulled the Mercury Card. As is easy to do, I thought, "Okay, okay this has something to do with Mercury Retrograde. Got it, Guides, but can you give me a little more?"

So, I shuffled and pulled the "Mercury" card again...

Now, a pause for some light math(!)

I don't know if this happens to anyone else, so I'm sharing it here because it was an interesting exercise. With a certain amount of regularity, I pull a card, ask for more insight, shuffle and then get the same card.

(Which, I've learn with my Guides means, "Listen, Sugar, you're not really even leaning in on the first note we gave you. Calm your tits and sit with this for a minute.")

So, leaning on my rusty undergrad stats knowledge, I did out the probability of pulling the same card twice in a row from this 71-card deck:

(1/71) * (1/71) = 1/5041 (or approx 0.0198% probability)

I couldn't believe it. Pulling this card twice in a row had less than a .02% chance somehow reinforced in a way with the math side of my brain that my intuitive side wasn't getting... I needed to sit with ol' Mercury for a little bit.

What Mercury had to say, a message for all of us

With that statistical kick in the pants, I really got into a meditative state on this particular Mercury Retrograde. The information that I received was that there was a real emphasis on internal communication with this retrograde.

Like, more how we talk to ourselves... especially around tricky topics. So, if you find yourself in a thought loop this retrograde, try to look neutrally at exactly what it is you are saying to yourself in those moments.

Is it along the lines of, "Ugh! WTF! Why this Again!? Can't I just STOP!"? If so, the message I got was three-fold:

1) First, even just being aware that we are talking to ourselves in a harsh way is a really important step

2) And, secondly if possible, try to see where we can soften that internal messaging. Where can lighten up our language to ourselves?

3) Then -and this is a real tricky bit- not judge ourselves if our internal language hasn't been as kind or light or loving as we'd like it to be (because that's actually also not very nice internal dialogue either)

It's ok to meet tricky things again and again, it doesn't mean that we are broken or getting anything "wrong." In fact, it probably means we've expanded to a place where we can look at these tender areas with a greater perspective and that's why we're meeting them again (maybe just a little bit softer this time).