And On We Go…

Space, Meaning, Intention

We are provide meaning from all different directions. We usually are of course, from media news, neighbors, and hanging around the water cooler at work. Some sources we assign credibility to more than others, and I suppose some sources are in fact more credible than others. What we don’t seem to pay that much attention to is how much of our experience is interjected, is actually at its core an emotional response to information we are fed, and in fact, is very subjective. This is difficult, because we have the categories of subjective and reality narrowed down to the point that it is simply not that useful.

Another way to say the same thing is that most of what we consider reality is in fact a filter that we have applied to our psyches that carefully screens and informs what our reaction will be according to our intention. Even the most skeptical of us will find and be able to easily observe how much of what we experience as reality is really not that at all, but the emotional jolt that we get from whatever information is filtered through these filters.

Yes, but that doesn’t make it easy to manipulate…

No, not at all, in fact I am not implying that it can or should be manipulated. We rush to find the secret key to changing our reality, to mastering the external events in our lives, whether that is more money, better relationships, or more exciting vocations. And that is how it should be, after all, we live our lives out in the material world, and who doesn’t want the best life here on earth, whatever that means to you. However, whether we can actively change most or all of our external situations, we should go into the battle armed with the actual facts of what that reality is. From there we can be pleasantly surprised at how many options we do have when it comes to facing whatever life situation is giving us difficulty. Conversely, when reality gives us a few happy bumps or sustainable joy, we have a map that can locate how we did that, how we appreciated it, and strive to move our heavily laden filters around in such a way as to allow more of it through.

The Tarot is a master teacher of reality

Off hand, I can think of no other spiritual/emotional system better equipped to reveal the actual metaphysical underpinnings of the matrix  we move through every day. As a Tarot enthusiast and devotee, I am certain that I am biased and have no intention of changing that bias, based on my direct experience of what the Tarot has taught me. More than the day to day information that it gives, and the joy of being able to read for others and thereby help them navigate through some of the obstacles in their lives (helping others, as everyone knows who has authentically tried it, crosses and obliterates that tired line of selfish and selfless), I have found that the Tarot consistently points and redirects me to an underlying sense of spirituality that seems to infinitely satisfy the conditions of how I actually experience my life on earth. There is so much depth to The Stream that the Tarot indicates is there, by virtue of the fact that it works, that it constantly drives me to find ways to join and align myself with that spirituality. To begin to move into the spirituality that the Tarot implies, involves developing the skill of looking at the process that the Tarot moves you through and not so much the information that it gives you. This involves a paradigm shift of some magnitude, as we really have only been taught to look directly at the Tarot and the information it does give in a reading, and that in my mind is sufficiently wonderful as to throw people off of looking at anything else. But once this skill of looking behind the cards is developed, whole vistas open up and the person becomes less concerned about reading the cards correctly, and more enthralled with where the process will take you. Okay Tarot, what do you have for me today?

This of course, will have the additional bonus of increasing your reading abilities a thousand fold, whatever that might mean for you, and if that is all a person wants to do, that is quite fine, but it is also a nice bonus that to get to that you have to receive the other, and that is a gentle gift that the Tarot offers.

Space

The first process implication, and maybe one of the strongest to this day, at least for me, was the identification of how much space we don’t have between the experience itself and the meaning we assign to it. Most of us have none. We see a frown on someone’s face, and that has meaning for us. We get fired, and that has meaning. We have an altercation with the boss at work, or with a friend, and that has meaning. Specifically, we filter the experience through our already in place immovable and seemingly permanent filter that we call our personality, and experience the emotional jolt that moves us into a subsequent reaction, and the collection of all of this activity happens so blindingly fast that we don’t often break it down into its component parts, and simply experience the cycle as reality. This is understandable, and again, there may not be much that we want or can do against it without a great deal of work, and even then we many times try to change our reality without really being aware of our intention, and this leads us most of the time into another version of the same problem. But we should consider breaking this down, whether or not we can change it, if for no other reason than to get to know our internal world. Since most of reality takes place inside of our head, it is worth looking at in other words.

Does that mean that whatever we think about becomes our reality? I think that it is way more complicated than that, and both sides of the story need to be consistently experimented with for all of it to be of practical value. Bad things happen, jobs change, people are sick and die, economic factors influence our choices, and to imply that all of that is inside of our head or under our control is not only impractical, it is condescending and most of the time, aggravating and mean.

So, when we look at the space between the reality of what happened in the external world, and the meaning we assign to it, we are not doing so to imply “and therefore you have control over it” but rather as a chemist would begin to learn the periodic tables. It might not lead to experiments, it is just learning the building blocks according to a theoretical model that the Tarot implies as part of the information that may one day lead to a fuller experience or mastery over this complex set of external events and internal firings that we call reality. That’s all.

The tricky thing with the Tarot is that it forces us into a reverse process and that is hard to understand. In other words, in our daily life, something happens, we assign meaning to it, and then experience it, all at the drop of a hat. With the Tarot, we ask a question, spread the cards, and then scramble to assign meaning to things that we may or may not have experienced. It is the reverse of the process, and this is important to know because it shows that the way that we experience reality in our daily lives is not as set in stone as we might have imagined. It can’t be if we can reverse the process with a simple pack of 78 cards. Right?

Meaning

When we ask a question or make an inquiry, we are focusing on our intention. We are open to how it might look in the spread, and then we make our predictions etc. What if we were as easily able to do that with our lives in general? What if we became aware of the space between the event and the meaning we assigned to it? What if we were able to separate those process into their individual parts, and not let them run on automatic as if we had no control over them? For example, your spouse comes home and sets something that normally would trigger an argument, but it doesn’t because you are used to being curious and controlling the meaning that you assign to the normal triggers? What if instead of knowing for sure what he or she meant by it, you honestly experienced, that just like with a Tarot card, you might be honing in on one possible meaning, but probably not, and you took it in the context of the situation just like you trained yourself to do with a card spread, and assigned other meanings to it? What if instead of your spouse controlling the intention, you already had an intention when it comes to her, and filtered most every kind of contact with her through that filter? What would the results look like now? How much of the relationship is actually experienced through the meaning you assigned, and how much of that is actually subject to your change?

Intention

Of course, treading onto this territory sounds a lot like ignoring reality and putting blinders on, and so at first it is wise not to experiment to often. You may inadvertently use the information to further avoid or displace yourself with whatever you want to call reality, and that is not the goal when you first start to study. Just continue to observe, become increasingly curious, and don’t worry about how much seems to be under your control, and how much seems not to be. Remember, the reality we experience is so individual that rushing to conclusions about it right off will only have the effect of ceasing study, and you need to get a feel for it. So do I, it is a never-ending process. Intention is a powerful filter, and can route most of your experience around your reality in a way that truly feels magical, and this knowledge is perhaps one of the greatest things the Tarot teaches us.

Of course, the Tower teaches us that no matter how good we become at finding, sustaining, and manipulating the meaning we assign to reality, there are truly things that happen in our external world that are out of our control. That is a subject for a different time.

I look forward to your feedback.

Jeff