Greetings esteemed Druid, may your animal fat drippings be reasonably priced this day! Apologies for the long post… you have a TSW freaker-outer on your hands…

I recently had a rather unpleasant experience that I believe was a karmic culmination brought on even though I am doing very mild practices, and I’m wondering if
a) that means I have an uncommon amount of baggage
b) the general practice of affirmations pokes at a weirdly personally specific location of baggage
c) it backfired because of the specific affirmation I chose or
d) what I went through *is* mild karmic culmination, and good lord that’s why you don’t try to accelerate it

For the past 4 months, I have been doing the SOP with generic element/nature wording, no gods. It seems to be working well. I recently added weekly hoodoo baths since I am a local politician, and I’ve been doing a daily three card tarot divination for decades, so I’ve kept up with that. Then about two weeks ago I decided to add an affirmation. I chose one that I had hoped would help me feel less of an imposter in my public role. I chose “I am a leader”.

In hindsight, this was obviously a bad idea – while I was thinking that it would help me bring out good leadership qualities in myself, a leader is still someone *chosen* under the will of others, in whatever guise. So it clearly required acting on other’s wills. I felt increasingly unmoored all week, passing it off as an unusually stressful week, which it was, until I got right irate at my colleagues at Council at a meeting on a big, media-saturated item, and made regretable statements. The press was there, and of course I get quoted in the paper the next day sounding like Trump. The video of the meeting of course goes in the town permanent record. My colleagues are professional and good people, so stuck to castigating me individually over the phone the next day, saying absolutely nothing that was not true, but crushing, and worded with decency. It may take the remaining three years in tenure to get close to back to normal with at least one of them, but others will smooth over more quickly. The flipside of course, is that several people I know who read the paper and saw the meeting didn’t think it was a deal at all; so my behaviour cleared “normal expectations”, but not “professional, usually thoughtful person” bar (you know... like a "leader"). The really weird part was how at a conference in the next town over, suddenly, a day later people started backing away from me, like magnets of reverse poles. Nobody had read the incident in my town’s paper, no one knew who I was ahead of time. It was uncanny – just all in a mass, groups would go silent and back up a step, or look at me with a startled look. They didn’t consciously realise it either, if we began speaking, they would seem relieved and move back closer. It was like people jumping at a sinister shape in an alley, then being relieved it was only their friend.

Now – I was also the person who once asked a question that made another poster respond with links about scrupulosity (thanks to that person!), so in some ways I started to feel relief - in all my years feeling socially awkward, I had never had such a thing happen; it was suddenly obvious all my previous fretting was all in my head, this was the *real* deal. And I call this "karmic" because it hit all the buttons on my insecurities about my personality fitness for leadership.

So now I feel I’m in a precarious environment, where landmines may still be strewn about, and I’m not sure how to proceed – if it’s got to work out because of where I am on my spiritual path, and it’s already in motion, then it doesn’t seem there’s much for it, I’m in for it. I cast a series of shield charts asking about whether I should try a new affirmation based on a local Salish teaching (“I am of good mind”) I got LW Rubeus, Judge Populus RW Rubeus, which seems like a clear enough heck no.
So it seems like affirmations, or at least any that occur to me! – are really bad news for me, despite being bunny slope stuff. This is disquieting! What could that mean?

When I asked if I should try adding meditation instead for a gentler way to process my karma, I got LW: Puella Judge Via RW Rubeus, with no way of the points; and asking if simply going back to what I was doing to avoid more public humiliation I got LW Acquisitio Judge Acquisitio RW Populus.
Does my read of the latter two responses seem correct?

I am reading the other options as meditation still gets at the gunk I’ve got to deal with, but seems to be a clear way to integrate it more gently, since Puella is stable and keyword is Harmony; however, the image of mirror for puella is likely particularly apt, and it may still *feel* bad to me to see my insidey parts, even if I act less atrocious. Via indicates an abrupt change from Rubeus.

Sticking with what I’m doing I will successfully get by without another blowout – but I wonder if the imagery of acquisitio also means that it also means I keep the baggage.

I lean toward adding the meditation, as ditching the baggage was kinda my goal - I’m okay with inner turmoil. But, I’d like to not embarrass and insult my colleagues again.

After reading your reply, I wonder how the Lords of Karma don't get consequences from the interesting times they sow and come to frution.

I only can think they are in for the thrill of the ride. Who knows...

Thank you very much.

Oy, it may be even worse than that, as all the leadership positions I'm now in I was asked by community members in some crisis to take,and they essentially fell out of the sky at my feet... There may be higher Wills at work I no longer have the luxury of ignoring!