Playing the Hand You've been Dealt
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Birong Christmas Eve party
Card URL: http://www.zaporacle.com/card/playing-the-hand-youve-been-dealt/
"The fates guide him who will; him who won't, they drag." — Ancient Greeks

Play the cards you've been dealt with impeccability. Skillful play involves acceptance of the cards you have at the moment, a focus that is easily lost if you are fantasizing about the cards you would have preferred being dealt. Our incarnation supplies us with long-term cards and a more dynamic flow of short-term cards. Long-term cards recognized by the Hindus (the key incarnation attributes they felt were determined by karma) were: intelligence, physical strength, physical beauty and social position (the family you were born into).

The fact that you are reading this indicates that you were dealt into incarnation; you received a set of cards and you get dealt new ones all the time. The cards represent resources (inner and outer), opportunities and problematic situations. Joker or wild cards appear all the time as shocks and unexpected events. The unconscious person interprets the cards they are being dealt as good luck or bad luck. If they get a run of cards they like, they presume upon their luck and gamble disastrously. If they get a run of cards they don't like, they indulge self-pity, curse their fate, and look to be rescued by new cards. The Warrior has a more consistent focus on playing skillfully with whatever the hand is at the moment. A Warrior with a capital "W" seeks to play the present hand so as to promote core values such as the development of greater awareness and service to others.

Depending on how this card occurs in your reading, it may also be a message about relating to the oracle. If you've been given cards that tell you what you need to know, but not necessarily what you want to hear, then don't keep picking new cards to look for answers that are more to your liking. If you already know the answer, then don't abuse your relationship to the oracle by seeking repeated confirmations. Hexgram # 4 of the I Ching, "Youthful Folly," says:

"It is not I who seek the young fool;
The young fool seeks me.
At the first oracle I inform him.
If he asks two or three times, it is importunity.
If he importunes, I give him no information."