Posts Tagged tarot

The S(piritual)-Curve of ‘Dragon Steps’

Posted by Doctapaul in Healing, Life's Changes, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Self Development, Tarot on January 22, 2013

Most us have to take many steps to find, open, become and express our true nature. In my book, Defrag your Soul, I refer to these as spiritual steps. According to ancient Chinese and Druidic wisdom, though we may take many spiritual steps in our lives, there are fundamentally 7 key levels of consciousness development, known by the Chinese as dragon steps. These are the major steps we take to increase our vibration to the highest level a human can attain – Level 7. (I ain’t there – yet!)

Towards the end of each of these dragon steps we meet the most resistance – in the form of shame, anger, sadness/hurt and most of all fear. The most negative of these emotions often dwell in our subconscious. In his insightful book, The Missing Secret, Joe Vitale calls such negative emotions, subconscious counter intentions. They form the lowest parts of the aggregate vibration we project out into the world.

We operate in an elastic bandwidth. What stops us increasing our consciousness (wisdom of truth) is the lowest part of our vibration. We can only climb as high as the lowest part of our vibration permits (or stretches).

(picture courtesy of Rogue Christianity)

Let us stay with the ‘elastic band’ metaphor. Counter intentions pull us down and enabling intentions pull us upwards. As the ‘elastic band’ stretches we meet resistance. Our lowest vibration stops us pulling ourselves upwards (and vice versa).

As we climb, resistance increases, we slow down. Our climb begins to level off as if we are approaching the end of an S-bend in our consciousness expansion. The levelling off means we really have to stretch ourselves to make the last ‘few yards’ to ‘step up’ from one ‘S’ to the next. When the ‘elastic-band’ (our pysche) is fully stretched – and we must be sure not to snap it – we can only pull ourselves upwards (raise our consciousness) by releasing pressure (negative emotions) from the downward pull.

Upon approaching the uppermost part of the S-bend in this leg of our journey we slow down, we cast out that which no longer serves a purpose. (Picture courtesy of X-Ray Delta.) Sometimes though we cling on – either through fear or ignorance. That which we don’t let go of drains our energy. We are now at the highest part of this leg of our climb – AND the air is thin. Our negative emotional baggage (which was always going to be the heaviest part to unload anyway) thus feels a lot heavier. If we are not careful, we can drain our very life force until we are on reserves and then running on empty. Yet somehow we keep going and THEN…

We let go. We may panic. BUT we also realise there’s no useful reason for going back – we have passed the step up point of no return. We can allow ourselves to slow down, take a breather. Take baby steps as we make our way forward.

We’ve achieved self mastery of the last dragon step. We are both Magician (self master) at the last level and Fool (as in the Tarot) at the next. So we put trust in ourselves – listen carefully to our intuition and start the next step.

Like the fool, who is naive as to what they are about to face, we trundle along gaily until we start the next stretch of our climb.

Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr

Ancient Wisdom, Chakras, consciousness, courage, daily thought, druid, druidism, druidry, EFT, fear, fool, Gnostic, Gnosticism, guilt, karma, law of attraction, law of consequence, Law of Reversibility, life purpose, love, magician, metaphysical, pagan, paganism, responsibility, sadness, self help, spiritual, tarot, true self, Truth, warrior, words of wisdom

Temperance

Posted by Doctapaul in Healing, Life's Changes, Love, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Self Development, Soundbytes of Wisdom on December 19, 2012

…does not mean ‘do without or prohibit’.

It means balance.

Temperance: Major Arcana card no 14, from the Ancient Tarot Deck of Marseilles by Jean Dodal, 1718.

Remove balance in life and you limit your perspective. The workaholic might not give themselves the time to enjoy a healthy personal life. The addict can’t see outside the control of their habit. The drunkard inebriates themselves from sobriety. In all three cases, the protagonist lives their life in denial.

Should you avoid temperance, not only do you limit your learning, you can do yourself harm – physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. As such, you harm the environment you live in and those nearest and dearest to you. Lack of temperance, by definition, means an excess of, or gluttony for, one thing over another. Be it work, alcohol, drugs, mindless TV or computer games – the excess means that you deny yourself health, which has consequences.

Have you ever watched downhill tobogganing on TV? The more often a sleigh hits the wall, the more it slows down through friction. And when it bounces off sideways the team are using their energy laterally to get back on track. Whilst it’s traversing it has to travel farther than a direct descent down the middle of the run. The middle way is the fastest and smoothest.

Study the Temperance card, from the 18th Century, Ancient Tarot Deck of Marseilles, by Jean Dodal. You observe a grounded female angel clad evenly in red (fire, hot, male) and blue (water, cool, female). Her arms are dressed in red, to signify strength and power of Mars. Her blue covered torso signifies the love and beauty of Venus. Water from the higher cup flows into and cleanses that of the lower. Not a drop is spilt or wasted; the flow is steady and harmonious. Her wings reveal she is an angel who may advise, guide and protect us. Her work embraces the harmony of opposites.

The Angel of Temperance teaches us that life’s direction leads eventually to the middle path. We do not need to swing extremely and continually between feast and famine, peace and war, love and hate, mercy and severity, prosperity and poverty, abundance and scarcity, riches and debt, victory and defeat, mine and yours, property and theft. When we embrace both aspects of duality as one, we create oneness. Something is only good for one, when it is good for all. There is no us and them, there is no me without not me. There is only us, together we become oneness.

When we bring temperance into our lives, we exemplify oneness.

(extract from my forthcoming book, from Defrag your Soul, due out next week.)

Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr

accountability, Ancient Wisdom, anger, balance, Chakras, consciousness, courage, daily thought, druid, druidism, druidry, Gnostic, Gnosticism, karma, law of attraction, law of consequence, Law of Reversibility, life purpose, love, pagan, paganism, relationship problems, relationships, responsibility, self help, tarot, temperance, tip for the day, Truth, words of wisdom

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When our will and wishes become one

Posted by Doctapaul in Astrology, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Self Development, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Uncategorized, Visions and Dreams on October 25, 2011

If you were to ask yourself “In my heart of hearts, my very soul, what do I seek more than anything else in life?” Would you really know the answer? After years I’m still getting some semblance.

I had to evolve a very focused state to answer the question without my emotions, petty desires and false-ego getting in the way. Even then, I would question myself “Do I really mean this?” And when the answer is “yes,” there arrives a second question, “Do I have the will to go for it?”

Knowing what you want is one thing. Going for it, 100%, is another. It takes determination, resilience and above all courage.

“Courage is a decision, not a trait. We all have it. We don’t all choose it.”

We need to focus on the here and now, in the present tense, and choose courage.

The point, the present tense, no matter how short a space in time, is infinitely small. As soon as we’ve thought of “it,” an infinite number of moments have already passed by. “It”, is/was already the past tense. What if we were to experience “it” right now? No thought, only now, (an) eternity (of moment by moments), when the mind stills completely. We vibrate.

We project our latent desires and fears (desires to avoid things) out into the universe. We broadcast our vibration. We make our own law of attraction. We attempt to attract that which we wish for. But who is that makes the wish? Is it the real “I”? Or is it a supplication of the false ego, “me?”

Is it some external trophy: a partner, money, a job, health or safety from harm, I attach a state of increased happiness to? Will what I seek truly complete me? Or will its energy be subsumed by the unlit darkness of the shadows that lurks within? Is it to fill a dark void I feel inside myself, with the light of a false sun?

Or is my desire to find and become my true self and fulfil my contract (if I were to know it) for this life, in harmony or resonant with all that exists?

This, I suggest, is the true art or science of discernment. To discern my truth (that which takes me down the path I’ve contracted to follow) from false-egotistical fantasy.

When we will ourselves to take the path to our truth, passionately and genuinely, the universe resonates. We attract that which we seek, that which we wish for. Our will and wishes become one. But…

When we seek to placate our false ego, we deviate from our path. We allow the shadows to remain hidden. The universe responds. It disrupts our flow. It tells us there’s something we’ve chosen not to learn about ourselves. We ignore the glory to be found amongst our shadows. Consider the following symbolism.

Astrologers, ancient and modern, symbolise the sun in charts as a dot in a circle:

The dot (or point) symbolises the here and right now, the present tense. The universe/infinity is represented by the circle, a never ending stream of cycles in which we return continually to our starting place.

The point in (time) the centre of the circle thus represents the vibrations we send out into the universe. They are a product of all the information we possess (from the past) and its impression on our thoughts, words and deeds to create a better future, our will and our wishes. What returns to us in the future is a product of our will and wishes right now.

Imagine a pebble tossed into a circular pool, as an expression of what we will to happen. Everything we give birth to, all our thoughts, words spoken and deeds go out to the edge (of infinity) to return to us. On their return they meet the waves we project right now.

When the returning waves are coherent with those outgoing, we observe a series of standing waves. We experience our individual wave formation resonate coherently with the universe. We tune into the greater good.

This is not the end of the journey. It is a major milestone that tells us we’re well on our way. It’s important that we acknowledge ourselves.

Acknowledge = Accept + Congratulate + Reward + Consolidate Learning

We are not all equal in power and spiritual development. But we are all equal in honour. It’s important that we acknowledge our power humbly and we don’t over-laud ourselves. Our false ego reclaims lost darkness when we put ourselves above others who haven’t travelled this far.

Please note, our law for attraction is what we will to attract NOT what we wish to happen. Willpower takes courage. Wishing is a relatively simple task but care needs to be taken that what we wish for suits the passion for our life’s journey.

Inserted image sourced from art-prints-on-demand.com

When the returning waves lack coherence, we create choppy waters. In extreme conditions we manifest dark stormy seas. Such is karma. It’s not about right or wrong. It’s feedback that tells us we’ve things to learn from the shadows within us still.

When the returning waves counter-balance the outgoing waves, the pool becomes still. We become equally knowledgeable with what goes on above the surface (the known world) and below, the unknown. We become one with all that is, non-duality. We live completely in the present tense, outside of time and space.

We discover that the opposite of life is not death, but not-life, an illusion. It doesn’t exist. Birth is the opposite of death. Life is eternal.

Derived from The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle

Summary:

Take care and time to focus on that which you really wish for. Make sure it meets the following criteria:

It is not borne out of anger, sadness, fear or guilt.
It feels in line with your life’s journey, purpose and contract.
When it is complete, it will give you a real sense of fulfillment.
Is it ecological. Does it flow (give to and receive from) with nature and at very least does little harm to its balance.
You feel passionate about the journey more than the outcome.