🔮 This is Part 3 of the series Rewriting the Scarcity Story with Tarot.
If you’re just joining, begin with the introductory guide here — it lays the foundation for this journey through scarcity mindset, shadow work, and tarot. Each part includes a themed spread, prompts, and a printable toolkit for deeper integration.
What is abundance, really?
What if abundance was never about having more, but about remembering you were already enough?
In this final part of our Shadow Work with Tarot series, we move beyond the grip of scarcity and fear, and into the gentle, powerful realm of receiving. While earlier we uncovered the roots of our limiting beliefs and gave voice to the inner critic, here we step into the fertile ground left behind—ready to cultivate a new relationship with worth, receptivity, and inner resourcefulness.
Too often, abundance is reduced to numbers in a bank account or achievements on a checklist. But true abundance is not an external metric—it’s an embodied experience. It lives in the breath that slows when you feel safe, the pause you allow before rushing to overgive, the moment you say yes to nourishment without guilt.
And yet, for many of us—especially those shaped by childhood emotional neglect or intergenerational scarcity—receiving can feel unnatural, even dangerous. We may feel more comfortable giving than allowing, more skilled at proving than pausing. We resist, even when life wants to pour goodness into our open hands.
That’s where shadow work comes in. Through the reflective mirror of Tarot, we can meet the subtle ways we still block ease and joy—and begin to open, gently, to the possibility of enough.
In this article, we’ll explore:
- How to recognize internal resistance to abundance
- How worthiness and receptivity are connected in the nervous system
- A Tarot spread to help you integrate abundance on a soul level
- A free downloadable Abundance Integration Workbook with daily practices, affirmations, and journaling prompts to help you embody sufficiency every day
Whether you’re ready to soften into worth or just beginning to imagine life beyond scarcity, this part of your journey invites you to do something radical:
Receive.
Why We Resist Abundance: The Shadows Beneath Receiving
Before we can fully open to abundance, we must be willing to see what keeps us closed.
The idea of “resistance to abundance” can seem counterintuitive. Why would anyone resist something so nourishing, so life-giving? But shadow work teaches us that our inner barriers are often built not from laziness or self-sabotage—but from protection.
Receiving abundance means allowing in rest, joy, visibility, softness, support, and pleasure. But if these states once felt unsafe or unfamiliar, it’s natural that part of us might flinch at the idea.
Here are a few common roots of resistance:
✦ Abundance Wasn’t Modeled
If you grew up in an environment where scarcity was the norm—emotionally, financially, or energetically—you may not have seen what healthy receiving looks like. You may equate “getting more” with guilt, danger, or unpredictability.
“I learned that good things don’t last.”
“In my house, rest meant you were lazy.”
“Every time I had more than I needed, it got taken away.”
✦ Your Worth Was Tied to Productivity
You may have internalized the belief that you must earn love, support, or ease. That your value lies in your usefulness. That receiving without giving back immediately makes you selfish or indulgent.
This belief often lives in the body as hypervigilance, perfectionism, or overgiving—patterns that make true abundance feel foreign or undeserved.
✦ You Fear What Comes With ‘More’
Having more can mean more responsibility, visibility, or vulnerability. For someone with unhealed trauma, “more” might feel unsafe. The nervous system might constrict at the thought of ease or wealth because it doesn’t know how to hold that state without waiting for the other shoe to drop.
✦ You Identify With the Wound
If you’ve spent much of your life surviving, struggling, or proving your worth, you may have formed an identity around lack. Abundance, then, can feel like a threat to who you think you are. Stepping into sufficiency means letting go of old survival narratives—and that can feel like loss.
💭 Shadow Reflection Prompt
Take a quiet moment to sit with this:
What does abundance bring up in my body?
Notice: Do you feel tightness, skepticism, longing, shame, hope? Where do you feel it? What memories or associations arise?
There is no wrong answer. Awareness is the beginning of integration.
🌿 Tarot Spread: Abundance Integration
This spread is not about manifesting more things. It’s about integrating sufficiency as a way of being. Each card is an invitation to meet yourself more gently, more honestly, more fully.
✦ Card 1: What part of me still resists abundance?
✦ Card 2: What part is ready to receive?
✦ Card 3: What resource lives within me?
✦ Card 4: How can I nurture my sense of enoughness?
🕯️ Setting the Space
Begin by anchoring your body. Breathe into your belly. Light a candle, touch your heart, or place your hands on your lap in receiving posture—palms open. Shuffle your deck with the clear intention:
“I am ready to see what is true and kind beneath my resistance.”
💬 Example Reading
Let’s walk through an example to bring the spread to life. Imagine you’ve drawn:
- Card 1: Five of Pentacles
- Card 2: Nine of Cups
- Card 3: Strength
- Card 4: Queen of Pentacles
✦ Card 1: What part of me still resists abundance?
🃏 Five of Pentacles
This card reveals an inner wound around exclusion and deprivation—perhaps a core fear of being “left out in the cold.” This part of you may believe that there isn’t enough, or that you’ll be punished for needing more. It might whisper:
“I’m not worthy of support. I must stay small to be safe.”
Journal Prompt:
When have I felt there wasn’t enough for me? Who taught me that asking for more was unsafe or selfish?
✦ Card 2: What part is ready to receive?
🃏 Nine of Cups
This part of you dares to desire. It believes in joy without guilt, in simple pleasures, in contentment that bubbles from within. It says:
“I’ve tasted enoughness, and I want more of that gentle satisfaction.”
Journal Prompt:
When have I felt at peace, even briefly? What would it feel like to allow myself to want—without shame?
✦ Card 3: What resource lives within me?
🃏 Strength
You hold quiet, grounded resilience. You know how to hold fear without collapsing into it. Your inner resource is not dominance, but tender endurance. You can tame the scarcity voice—not by silencing it, but by meeting it with love.
Journal Prompt:
What strengths have carried me through without harshness? Where am I more powerful than I realize?
✦ Card 4: How can I nurture my sense of enoughness?
🃏 Queen of Pentacles
This queen reminds you to root into the body: cook yourself nourishing meals, say no to overwork, cultivate a sensory-rich life. Enoughness lives in daily care and grounded presence, not distant achievement.
Journal Prompt:
What small act of care would remind me I am enough today?
🌾 Integration Tip:
Place the “receiving” card (Card 2) somewhere visible this week—your altar, desk, or journal. Let it anchor you in the truth that your capacity to receive is already awakening.
🌱 From Insight to Embodiment: Practicing Enoughness
Tarot shows us what is. But it’s through practice—small, ordinary actions—that we shift from knowing to being. Receiving isn’t a mindset you force. It’s a state your body remembers with care, repetition, and softness.
✦ Receiving Isn’t Passive—It’s Relational
Many of us unconsciously treat abundance as something “out there”—something that must be earned, attracted, or deserved. But true receiving begins with presence. With letting the body feel held, safe, and connected.
Abundance can be:
– A warm cup of tea made slowly
– A nap without guilt
– A friend’s compliment that you let in
– The sun warming your skin while you pause to notice
These are not flashy. They are sacred. And they are enough.
🌼 A Daily Practice: Tracking What Nourishes
This week, gently track abundance as it already exists. Not to prove anything—just to remind your system that it’s allowed to notice.
Each day, ask:
“Today, I noticed abundance in…”
Some days it might be tangible: an unexpected payment, a home-cooked meal, a generous gesture. Other days it might be subtle: a deep breath, the way your child looked at you, the light falling across your floor.
There is no right answer. There is only returning.
🌿 7 Small Acts to Embody Abundance
You don’t have to overhaul your life to reclaim sufficiency. Try one small gesture each day to build your capacity to receive, rest, and remember your worth:
- Say no to something that drains you
- Make yourself a meal as if you were your own beloved
- Receive a compliment without deflecting
- Let yourself rest before you’re exhausted
- Give something away with no expectation of return
- Take up space—physically, emotionally, creatively
- Pause to notice beauty without rushing to capture it
Let these be invitations, not obligations. You are not behind. You are returning.
🌺 You Are the Source
Reclaiming abundance is not about pretending scarcity doesn’t exist. It’s about remembering that your worth is not defined by output, income, or productivity. That you are already enough, even as you heal.
Shadow work shows us what we’ve hidden. But it also shows us what’s waiting: joy, gentleness, and deep belonging. As you meet the parts of you that resist, don’t forget the part that longs to receive.
She is already within you. And she’s ready.
Was this post nourishing or healing in some way? If so, I invite you to offer a small gift in return — whatever feels right.
🌟 Free Download: “Receiving from Within: Abundance Integration Workbook”
If you’re ready to take this work deeper and let your body, not just your mind, remember what enoughness feels like—this free workbook was made for you.
Inside you’ll find:
✧ A printable tarot spread guide with space to reflect
✧ Daily abundance tracking pages to reconnect with everyday sufficiency
✧ A body-based prompt to help you locate abundance within
✧ A 7-day invitation to embody sufficiency through small, doable acts
This isn’t about changing your life overnight. It’s about creating a daily rhythm of soft receiving—the kind that builds safety, self-trust, and joy.
💌 Loved this Series? Share & Comment
If this series has supported your journey, please share it with someone who may be struggling with scarcity or self-worth. These words were written to remind us we’re not alone.
I’d love to hear how this work has landed for you—feel free to leave a comment or reach out with your reflections. Your presence here is a gift.
Would you like to revisit a previous part?
Rewriting The Scarcity Story With Tarot: Exploring The Roots (Part 1 of 3)
Rewriting the Scarcity Story With Tarot: Meeting the Shadow (Part 2 of 3)
🔮 Continue the Journey: Tarot for Shadow Work — Deep Dive Series
I invite you to check out my free 6-part in-depth series exploring shadow work with tarot. Choose whatever chapter resonates the most:
Tarot for Shadow Work? A Beginner’s Guide (Part 1 of 6) + free PDF
Tarot for Shadow Work: The Major Arcana as a Roadmap to Your Hidden Self (Part 2 of 6) + free PDF
Tarot for Shadow Work: The Minor Arcana as a Mirror for Everyday Struggles (Part 3 of 6) + free PDF
Tarot for Shadow Work: Practical Techniques & Spreads (Part 4 of 6) + free PDF
Tarot for Shadow Work: The Symbolic Power of Tarot in Psychology & Myth (Part 5 of 6) + free PDF
Tarot for Shadow Work: Making Tarot Shadow Work a Regular Practice (Part 6 of 6) + free PDF
The deeper journey is just beginning.
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