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Uriah
Jul 6, 2006 22:11:27 GMT -5
Post by Kivawolfspeaker on Jul 6, 2006 22:11:27 GMT -5
Card 1: The Issue: King of Clouds: Control
There is a time and a placfe for control, but if we put it in charge of our lives we end up totally rigid. The figure is encased in the angles of pyramid shapes that surround him. Light glitters and glints off his shiny surfaces, but does not penetrate. It's as if he is almost mummified inside this structure he's built up around himself. His fists are clenched, and his stare is blank, almost blind. the lower part of his body beneath the table is a knife point, a cutting edge that divides and separates. His world is ordered and perfect, but it is not alive - he cannot allow any spontaneity or vulnerability to enter it. The image of the King of Clouds reminds us to take a deep breath, loosen our neckties and take it easy. If mistakes happen, it's okay. If things get a little our of hand, it's probably just what the doctor ordered. there is much, much more to life than being 'on top of things'.
Clarifying the Issue: 2 of Rainbows:Moment to Moment
As the figure moves across the stones, he steps lightly and non-seriously, and at the same time absoultely balanced and alert. Behind the swirling, ever-changing waters we can see the shapes of buildings; there appears to be a city in the background. The man is in the marketplace but at the same time outside of it, maintaining his balance and able to watch it from above. This card challenges us to move away from our preoccupations with other spaces and other times, and stay alert to what is happening in the here and now. Life is a great ocean in which you can play if you drop all your judgements, your preferences, and the attachment to the details of your long-term plans. Be available to what comes your way, as it comes. And don't worry if you stumle or fall; just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, have a good laugh, and carry on.
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Uriah
Jul 6, 2006 22:57:48 GMT -5
Post by Kivawolfspeaker on Jul 6, 2006 22:57:48 GMT -5
Card 3:Unconscious Influences: Queen of Water: Receptivity
Listening is one of the basic secrets of entering into the temple of God. Listening means passivity. Listening means forgetting yourself completely - only then can you listen. When you listen attentively to some body, your forgot yourself. If you cannot forget yourself, you never listen. If you are too self-conscious about yourself, you simply pretend that you are listening - you don't listen. You may nod your head; you may sometimes say yes and no - no but you are not listening. When yuou listen you become just a passage, a passivity, a receptivity, a womb, you become feminine. And to arrive one has to become feminine. You cannot reach God as aggressive invaders, conquerors. You can reach God only . . . or it will be better to say God can reach you only when you are receptive, a feminine receptivity. When you become, yin, a receptivity, the door is open. And you wait. Listening is the art for becoming passive.
Card 4: Conscious Influences: The Master
Beyond mind, there is an awareness that is intrinsic, that is not given to you by the outside, and is not an idea - and there is no experiment up to now that has found any center in the brain which corresponds to awareness. The whole work of meditation is to make you aware of all that is "mind" and disidentify yourself from it. That very separation is the greatset revolution that can happen to man. now you canm do and act on only that which makes you more joyous, fulfills you, gives you contentment, makes your life a work of art, a beauty. But this is possible only if the master in you is awake. Right now the master is fast asleep. And the mind, the servant, is your servant; the servant is created by the outside world, it follows the outside world and its laws. Once your awareness becomes a flame, it burns up the whole slavery that the mind has created. There is no blissfulness more precious than freedom, than being a master of your own destiny.
Card 5: Old Ways: Breakthrough
The predominace of red in this card indicates at a glance that its subject is energy, power, and strenght. The brillant glow emanates from the solar plexus, or center of power on the figure, and the posture is one of exuberance and determination. All of us occasionally reach a point when something, anything, even if it later turns out to be a mistake to throw oof the burdens and restrictions thazt are limiting us. If we don't , they threaten to suffocate and cripple our very life energy itself. If you are now feeling that 'enough is enough'. allow yourself to take the risk of shattering the old patterns and limitations that have kept your energy from flowing. In doing so you will be amazed at the vitality and empowerment this Breakthrough can bring to your life.
Card 6: Moving into the New: Transformation
A master of Zen is not simply a teacher. In all the religions there are only teachers. They teach you about subjects which you don't know, and they ask you to believe, because there is no way to bring those expereince into objhective reality. Neither has the teacher known them - he has believed them; he transfers this belief to somebody else. Zen is not a believer's world. It is not for the faithful ones; it is for those daring souls who can drop all belief, unbelief, doubt, reason, mind, and simply enter into their pure existence without boundaries. But it brings a tremendous transformation. Hence, let me say that while others are involved in philosophies, Zen is involved in metamorphosis, in a transformation. It is authetic alchemy: it changes you from base metal into gold. But its language has to be understand, not with your reasoning and intellectual mind but with your loving heart. Or even just listening, not bothering whether it is true or not. And a moment comes suddenly that you see it, which has been eluding you your whole life. Suddenly, what Gautam Buddha called 'eighty-four thousand doors' open.
Card 7: The Self: No-thingness
Being 'in the gap' can be disorienting and even scary. Nothing to hold on to, no sense of direction, not even a hint of what choices and possibilities might lie ahead. But it was just this state of put potential that existed before the universe was created. All you can do now is to relax into this no-thingness... fall into this silence between the words... watch this gap between the outgoing and incoming breath. And treasure each empty moment of the experience. Something sacred is about to be born.
Buddha has chosen one of the really very potential words - shunyata. The English world, the english equivalent, 'nothingness' is not such a beautiful word. that's i would like to make it no-thingness', because the nothing is not just nothing, it is all. It is vibrant with all possibilities. It is potential, absolute potential. It is unmanifest yet, but it contains all. In the begining is nature, in the end is nature, so why in the middle do you make so much fuss? Why, in the middle, becoming so worried, so anxious, ao ambitious - why creat such despair? Nothingness to nothingness is the whole journey!
Card 8: How Others see you: Integration The conflist is in man. Unless it is resolved there, it cannot be resolved anywhere else. The politics is within you; it is between the two parts of the mind. A very small bridge exists. If that bridge is broken through some accident, through some physiological defect or something else, the parson becomes split, the person becomes two persons - and the phonomenon of schizophrenia or split personality happens,. If the bridge is broken - and the bridge is very fagile - then you become tow, you behave like two persons. In the morning you are very loving, very beauriful,; in the evening you are very angry, absolutely different. You don't remember your moring... how can you remember? Another mind was funciton... and the person becomes two persons. If this bridge is strengthened so much the the two minds disappear as two and becomes on, then integration, then crystallization arises. What George Gurdjieff used to call the crystallization of being is nothing but these two minds becoming one, the meeting of the male and the female within, the meeting of yin and yang, the meeting of the left and right, the meeting of logic and illogic, the meeting of Plato and Aristotle.
Card 9: Denial: 4 of Rainbows: The Miser
This woman has created a fortress around herself, and she is clinging to all the possessions she thinks are her treasures. In fact she has accumulated so much stuff with which to adorn herself--including the feathers and furs of living creatures--that she has made herself ugly in the effort. This card challenges us to look at what we are clinging to, and what we feel we possess that is so valuable it needs to be protected by a fortress. It needn't be a big bank balance or a box full of jewels--it could be something as simple as sharing our time with a friend, or taking the risk of expressing our love to another. Like a well that is sealed up and becomes stagnant from disuse, our treasures become tarnished and worthless if we refuse to share them. Whatever you're holding on to, remember that you can't take it with you. Loosen your grip and feel the freedom and expansiveness sharing can bring.
Card 10: Key 10 of Fire: Supression
In Sanskrit the name is alaya vigyan, the house where you go on throwing into the basement things that you want to do but you cannot, because of social conditions, culture, civilization. But they go on collecting there, and they affect your actions, your life, very indirectly. DXirectly, they can not face you - you have forced them into darkness, but from the dark side they go on influencing your behavior. they are dangerous, it is dangerous to keep all those inhibitions inside you. It is possible that these are the things that come to a climz when a person goes insane. Insanity is nothing but all these suppressions coming to a point where you cannot control them anymore. But madness is acceptable, while meditation is not and meditation is the only way to make you absolutely sane.
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Uriah
Jul 7, 2006 12:21:04 GMT -5
Post by Uriah on Jul 7, 2006 12:21:04 GMT -5
I needed to hear this and I need to read through again.
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Uriah
Jul 7, 2006 12:21:30 GMT -5
Post by Uriah on Jul 7, 2006 12:21:30 GMT -5
and thanks Jen
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