English Version | Consciousness in motion

I was 14 when I received my first tarot deck. As tradition dictates, it was given to me by a friend; Maria - the same friend who, in high school, would skip lunch in order to buy Vogue. The love of these practices has always lived with me, and my dynamic with the tarot was one of respect and fascination. However, I soon realized that I was entering a toxic relationship - not with a man, not with a friend, but with a deck of cards. Although I wasn't a very experienced reader (and I'm still not, because the funny thing about tarot is that the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know anything), I tried to look for answers everywhere. When these answers didn't match what I expected, I found myself shuffling again and again, looking for what would satisfy me. Having the power to know the outcome of a situation in my hands (or so I thought at the time, now I realize that's not the case) was overwhelming and, although I thought it brought me freedom, it actually limited me and, above all, made me doubt myself and my instincts - which in itself is nonsense, since tarot is deeply rooted in intuition. Basically, I was looking for a sense of control and even validation. As if, if what was outside of me confirmed these expectations, it would mean that I was right.

Over the years and with age, I've come to realize that I was nurturing a bad relationship with myself, with my sense of confidence and ability to make decisions. Almost a decade later, I use this fantastic medium - which, despite these setbacks, is still one of my favorite things in the world - as a form of self-discovery and guidance. I can't say that I don't still feel curious about certain things (about my personal life, because ethics are also important and it's not nice to spy on other people's lives), but now I know how to be different. There is nothing, personally, more wonderful than understanding the true power of our minds, how we all connect in a (sub)conscious way and how deeply vast our inner cosmos is. I understand how tempting it is to get the answers, but that would be to miss out on the human experience and all its beauty, which lies precisely in this journey.

Talking to Pedro Fernandes, a transpersonal therapist, reinforced this perspective, and it was enlightening to hear it from a professional. The therapist works with transpersonal psychology, a school of thought that considers the human being in four visions: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual body, the latter also being called consciousness. It is precisely consciousness that Fernandes works with, using family constellations (a therapy that aims to understand emotional disorders, especially those related to family or relationship dynamics) and clinical hypnosis as tools. “I started this career path at around 27 or 28 years old because there was a transformation in my life and someone recommended that I see a tarot reader. My background is in educational sciences, so it was outside [of what I was used to]. I ended up giving in to the experience and the surprise was that there was no tarot [...], they offered to do reiki, but they only had 10 or 15 minutes and I thought 'perfect, I just want to leave'. And it was an incredible experience,” he says. “I was living in a mental plan, of thinking, of rationality [...] and I couldn't explain what I was feeling. It really took 10 minutes, my body relaxed a lot, I became much calmer, more peaceful and at the time I even thought it must have been the candles or the atmosphere. But there was something inside me. So, the next day [...] I went to buy a book about it - and at the time there were few books on reiki - and I got in touch with this person, who told me that there was a training course where we could learn and do [reiki with] ourselves. So I did. I went to learn from Irene Soares, the reiki master, and my life changed from there,” he tells. “What lies behind spirituality is a different view of the world, nothing against science. The two are complementary [...] so I couldn't explain reiki scientifically, but I also couldn't explain scientifically what I felt while I was doing it. So I surrendered to what I felt and started on my path. I then worked my way through the levels of reiki to Master. I never did anything to be a therapist, that wasn't the aim, the aim was just to get to knowledge, because it gave me a different view of myself. We are a soul living an experience on earth, we are a consciousness in motion trying to know itself.” After this experience, he explains, years of study followed with a postgraduate degree in clinical hypnosis at the Faculty of Medicine in Lisbon, and advanced training at ISPA in transpersonal psychology, which gave him a 360º view of therapies within the field - regressive therapy, family constellations, clinical hypnosis, psychodrama, color therapy, among others. “There was a whole range of disciplines that fascinated me [...] and if we're at ISPA talking about this, then it's no 'la la land' either.” And in truth, as he explains, all the lines cross here and psychology as we traditionally know it has this same goal at its roots: self-knowledge that leads us to explore our infinite inner world.

Today, the therapist works in three ways: “In one, the person comes for a hypnosis session with a specific issue to resolve. In the other, they come for a family constellation with specific themes to work on. They can also go on a kind of journey. So it's not a clinical follow-up, it's a kind of journey - where we use the tools I use, namely astrology, to give a different view of the self.” It was this conversation that led us to reflect on the power that resides within each of us but which we so often choose to ignore. Human beings have a peculiar tendency to rely on an endless number of external tools to discover their inner selves when, in reality, the only answer they need is found in self-exploration. “I think this happens with everything. With tarot, astrology, hypnosis, constellations, psychology, psychiatry, medication - it happens with everything. When I don't take on my personal power, I give it away to the therapist, the tarot, the astrology, and it's none of those things,” explains Pedro Fernandes. “All these tools have a single objective, which is to take us inwards, we are the ones who have the power to decide, and we live in a society where we don't want that, we want the other person to decide. So when someone comes for a consultation, they always have this idea that I'm the one with the solutions.” But that's not the case; quite the opposite, in fact: “I have questions, doubts and more questions.” As he explains, what leads most people to become highly dependent on these types of practices - particularly divinatory practices such as tarot, for example (which, it must be stressed, are not part of the therapist's working tools) - is “not wanting to take responsibility”. For this reason, the job and good practice of any professional is not to give us the answers we need, but to give us back the responsibility for finding them: “I don't have the answer [...] if the life is yours, you have the answer.” A probable cause of this phenomenon, he explains, is the fact that society teaches us to look much more outwards than inwards, even from childhood: “We don't have a subject at school that makes you think about yourself, who you are or what you like and don't like doing. And that's what school should be for too; to understand who I am and what I'm doing here. Everything would be much simpler.” Spirituality thus dictates not only who we are, but everything we can be and should therefore be seen as a means of exploring all our abilities: “The birth chart doesn't say that's who I am. The birth chart says what my potential is, what I'm going to do with my potential is my responsibility,” explains Pedro Fernandes. What most of us end up looking for - often without realizing it - is something or someone to invite us to be honest with what we already know, but perhaps can't admit on our own. And whether we're talking about traditional psychology or alternative therapies, for Pedro Fernandes the logic is simple: “Anything that helps a person get to know themselves better is valid for me. Everything is valid.”

With regard to reconciling different types of approaches, such as psychology and family constellations, ideally it will be something holistic: “What I ask is whether the psychologist is aware and whether the information [acquired in the family constellation sessions] will be taken there, so I'm more relaxed. The information is worked on by the psychologist from a more cognitive point of view and that's fine, things don't have to be separated.” These perspectives can and should be combined and, in the therapist's words, sooner or later this will happen, because “no one is going to take away anyone's space.” After all, if our mind is so vast, it makes perfect sense to use different tools to explore it. Another aspect that the therapist reinforces is the fact that, nowadays, we are confronted with too much information, which sometimes leads us away from the essential: “We are in a very rapid acceleration of knowledge. Nowadays I know everything about everything, but I don't know anything about anything.” “The essential", he stresses, ”is to know ourselves. It seems to me that we're reaching a place where the emptiness is so great, there's a search for something, and that something, in my view, is ourselves. Nothing outside, ever.” The results of this search, he says, will bring us “anguish, uncertainty, problems or challenges”, but it is precisely “the conflict between the rhythm of life and the rhythm I want life to have” that will lead us to productive reflection. In fact, conflict is an indispensable part of the human experience and transformation happens in entropy. We live in a universe governed by laws that often escape our cognizant understanding, but which undeniably influence everything around us. The quest to understand these forces and this unconscious (which is, after all, the highest form of consciousness) is a quest for self-knowledge - and each person will have to make their own. There is no deck of cards or astrological chart that can guide us if this desire for discovery starts from a superficial premise. As for the questions of free will that are always raised when this type of topic arises, Pedro Fernandes' answer is simple: “There is only one free will, and that is to be aligned with the cosmos, with cosmic truth. And for that I need to study, I need to know myself, I need to know the cosmic laws and how they work. The law of gravity works whether we like it or not [...] The law of polarity exists, whether we agree with it or not. The law of gender exists, whether you agree with it or not. The law of correspondence - what's above and what's below - also exists.” Between objectivity and subjectivity, the secret - as in all areas of life - lies in balance and the search for (our) truth.

Originally translated from The Mystery Issue, published October 2024. Full credits and stories are in the print issue.