Surrounded By Angels
A friend recently asked me about angel cards. I have several packs in my home and she wanted to know how I use them.
Like many of these things you can use them in whatever way best supports you. Where I live (Forres, Scotland) the Findhorn Angel Cards are used A LOT. They are usually placed faced down in a circle during events, courses and other gatherings. There is even a bowl of Angel cards in the café at the Findhorn Foundation.
At the start of gatherings, courses and events they are often used to bring our focus in. Each participant will take one and it becomes a word or intention that they keep as their personal focus throughout their time within the group or beyond if it resonates with that focus. Sometimes, if a group is working on something together they will take one card as their group focus.
They are included in many of the places I have worked, both as an individual focus and/or as a team focus. I refer to them at home when I am reflecting on something challenging. And I use them at Christmas as part of my seasonal ritual.
How people interpret what they receive is very individual. I have frequently noticed (within myself and in others) that when we receive a word we like, we take it as an affirmation (or a compliment) and when we receive a word that challenges us we take it as a criticism, something that needs to be changed in us. In my social and work groups we support each other in taking the ‘sting’ out of these self criticisms and offer another view point that can support greater insight. When there is no-one to share this process with, it can be a bit more challenging, which is one of the reasons I want to share this with you.
Often what we first interpret as a criticism turns out to be an awareness that we are already on the right track. I believe Angels are always there to support us, they hold us with an awareness that we are already whole, and that we are aspiring to bring this quality of wholeness forward in our physical lives.
So for example with my current word INTENTION, I am reflecting on my relationship with the word and how I currently work with Intention in my life. When things don’t turn out the way I intended. I often I blame myself for failing or making things worse and fall into a spiral of self criticism. So this word reminds me that, even when things go wrong, I need to remember that my Intention was pure and be a little bit more compassionate with myself whilst working through the pain.
FOOTNOTE: I am returning to this post a year later to share with you that I have been holding the focus of this angel card throughout my first year’s training as an Interfaith Minister with OneSpirit Interfaith Foundation. There have been many opportunities for inner reflection over this year, visiting times of transition in our lives as we learn to create rituals and ceremonies for other.
This angel card has supported me tremendously with these processes. Keeping it as my focus has enabled me to gently release self criticism and replace it with a depth of compassion I wasn’t aware could be possible when I first wrote this. There are still moments where I fall on old habits, but they are less frequent and quickly noticed.
