The Garuda

I was doing a reading on relationships -- specifically with Emily, since she threw an email-fit this evening -- and setting boundaries. She asked me to do her a big favor, trying to downplay the size of the favor in her email; I refused (reasonably, I thought); she got snippy. Alison advised me not to answer again, or try to argue, or justify my position: I was in the right and I should simply act that way. I felt she was right. In doing the meditation, I felt called to think about what I really wanted from relationships in the future. Messages in the past have indicated that I have been too accommodating, self-esteem too low.

Cards:

Garuda of Double Vajras -> 10 Jewels (Cock) -> 9 Lotus (Sacrifice)

The Garuda is an animal guide of healing, destroying evil monsters and the like. The double vajras are water, but the Garuda is obviously a creature of the air. ... The 10 of Jewels is about the 'cockiness' or greed that comes from material satiety; and the Sacrifice is cutting away something that is of value.

In meditation, I felt drawn to the Forest of the Horned God. At the base of the World Tree, wooden steps rose in a spiral around the trunk and ended at a sort of tree house poised right above the tallest branches of the surrounding forest. The tree house -- the residence of the Garuda -- was semicircular, rather like one of those huge flat fungi you see growing out of the sides of trees. Structurally it was basically a big semicircular porch with a wooden home in the center of it. I didn't see much of the house (though it seemed to echo Odin's World Tree home in some ways -- wood and glass and brass, elegance and comfort, airiness. The porch appeared to be of some kind of stone, decorated with precious metals and stones in some kind of astrological pattern, like an astro chart carved into the porch.

The Garuda was tall and dressed elegantly in red, and looked like a man with vaguely animal features -- a beaklike nose, deep eyes, and a sense of profound comfort in his own skin. He offered me tea (a nod to the watery associations of the Double Vajra, he said). I asked him about my issues, and he said that as I get closer to my ideals of life and profession (10 Jewels), my relationships will change profoundly; and I'm going to have to give some of them up (9 Lotus). As in today's fracas, it's going to be a matter of me not acting the way I used to, and that rubbing some people the wrong way. There's going to be uncertainty about the right thing to do. But there is always a source of guidance: the Earth -- and in particular, calas, stone. He reminded me that when I first got the question from Emily about the favor, I immediately felt like it would be wrong to say yes. I wanted to help her, I wanted to help Fiona, but these desires were operating against my intuition. This intuition is my rock, my connection with the Earth.

When Mara cried to the Buddha and said, "What gives you the right? Who are you to claim this mantle of enlightenment?" the Buddha touched the Earth, his mother, and the Earth spoke up for him. In the same way, if I keep one hand on the Earth, I will not go wrong, even if my universe of friends is upended.