ILLUMINATION PROJECT: THE ORACLE SPEAKS
Courage: Allowing Your Authentic Voice to be Heard
Guidance from the Archangels & Doreen Virtue

As I begin to write this post, I can’t help but notice the Leadership card pictured to the left in the image above. That is not the card I’m here to write about today. I sat down to write about courage. It was the Courage card, from Doreen Virtue’s Archangel Oracle deck that I pulled last week when asking for guidance around my current process with writing.
But, as is often the case with oracles, there’s more at work here than at first meets the eye. My request for guidance was answered with a directive to have the courage necessary to stand up for my convictions — to really dive in and say what is authentically mine to say — but it has also been answered with a directive to take leadership in doing so.
Clearly, the two cards go hand-in-hand. I simply threw together the above card deck layout in the photo so that I could snap a pic to display for this article — but there are no wasted coincidences because there are no accidents in God’s Universe. I am being en-couraged to step into a place of leadership.
I am led by Light… and so I will lead with Light.
Processes of enlightenment are not final destinations. They are doorways into greater expansions of awareness. It takes courage to step over a familiar threshold into unknown territory. And it takes even greater courage to accept the responsibility of an increased domain of awareness.
Once you become aware of something, you are now responsible for what you know. The avoidance of responsibility drives most people into playing small. but staying small won’t make us happy because none of us was put here for that. We have within us the potential to become. And that potential is seeking its fulfillment.
Your greater potential won’t stop whispering to you about what you really are until you allow it to be fully realized through you. It is the same for all of us. It is this I am coming to terms with about myself. It is this these two cards about courage and leadership are pointing to.
Honoring our potential is a matter of acknowledging what is calling to each of us from deep inside. It is a matter of trusting what we feel, hear, and see there.
There is nothing more important than cultivating Self-trust. I’ve capitalized that “S” on purpose — it is the bigger, wiser Self that I am referring to. Self-trust will lead a person to take risks they would never take otherwise — the leaps of faith that hurl us over the cliffs of change when we aren’t even sure where our wings are, or if we’ll be able to navigate the rushing rapids below.

The Archangel Ariel is depicted on this Courage Card. Her name means “lioness of God.” In Doreen Virtue’s commentary, she says that Ariel reflects the qualities of “bravery, courage, focus, and elegant movements,” like the movements observed in a lion or lioness.
Lions do not move disjointedly or doubtfully. They move through the plains of Africa like the Lords they are. They do not wait for life to tell them what they are. They know what they are — absolute Self-trust.
My challenge as a writer has been thus: how to reconcile my professional nature and academic skills with my spiritual nature — with its rather radical mystical inclinations. I’m moved to write on certain things that bear both a clinical science perspective as well as a psychospiritual understanding, while simultaneously, I’m seeing the integrated reality of a mystically endowed, energetic substance “spiriting” its way through all of it.
These are the “unseen” things best not talked about.
I have moments when I am made aware that all levels of understanding are orchestrated into one grand continuous symphony — everything, all aspects of being — rhythmically creating life in concert — and how it appears to each of us, has to do with where our receptivity and perception land within the symphonic scale.
Are we fully open to receiving life, and thus seeing it and experiencing it from the really high notes? Or are we weighted down by the dregs of life and experiencing the mud pits of the really low notes? Perhaps you find yourself somewhere in between — ringing true within a mid-way frequency. Perhaps that is the appropriate resting place for your soul today.
I don’t know. I only know that from my perspective, all of these spaces or dimensions of experience are fine and true. And not one cancels out the others. All are true according to their frequency — their tone — the note they ring out — and it’s right, good and fine for them all to exist — right here — all at once — and together.
This inclusive nature feels like a vast single field, which is the greater reality that underlies all the rest. Oneness is the ground of being from which all aspects arise. The more in touch with this I am, the more all-inclusive I become in heart and mind. The more I respond to life from this state of inclusivity, the more I find the seed of love within everything and everyone.
I’m beginning to realize that it doesn’t matter what language I use, or what terms I describe something in, as long as I get the message across that Self-trust is paramount to embodying our potential — and that embodying our potential is paramount to living in a loving universe.
That Love will guide us to do right by one another, whether we’re accessing the same realities or not in our awareness, if we can learn to love right where we are — no matter where it is — then we can find harmony through that love and live in brotherhood (or sisterhood) right where we are.
Human beings have been working so hard to get others to be the same — to get you to be more like me. But that’s not the kind of sameness we need. We need togetherness in the intention to work toward the same desire for peace, safety, love, and honor. These qualities define the inner-sanctum — the universal spiritual home that we all share in the core of who we are.
That core is the place in me that needs to know and understand you. It’s the place in me that makes space for you, so you can be yourself in my presence. My courage not to hide can offer you the chance to come out, as your courage must surely do the same for me… and on and on we go, making way for each other until there are no more barriers to love.
The Courage Card reads: “In this situation, you need to act upon your convictions, even if others disagree… as you stand up for your beliefs, you are a role model for others…to also stand up for their own principles.”
We are further encouraged to call upon the help of Archangel Ariel, the Lioness of God, for help and protection during our process of “coming out” as loving warriors of light.
Thanks to Infiniti for The Oracle Speaks project! Learn more about it here:
Other Oracle Speaks Contributors, Infiniti and Chris Hedges:
More on Symbolic Meanings:
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