3. Balance your Mind and Emotions through Tarot

This morning the title of our talk is Balance Your Mind and Emotions Through Tarot. And it's the third of the series we're giving through this month each Sunday morning, which has as its primary title, Preparing the Personality for Initiation Through Tarot. So this morning we're going to talk about balancing the mind and the emotions. You will recall when we spoke about the mind in itself, we pointed out that our intellect, though it is the latest evolution instrument-wise on this planet, because of the forebrain being the most recent development, that this same intellect is the very thing that gives us the ability and the capacity to become completely individualized and not only individualized but to become conscious individualized unique centered for the one life for the one god we want to remind you that in terms of the intellect we pointed out to you that if you would think of a microscope and look at various items through this microscope in order to become aware of the details, just what little elements it is made up out of.

In a sense, you could say that the intellect of man, or the total consciousness of man, which includes, of course, the other part of the mind, is really, in a way, God's microscope. It is the way God can experience the magic of the difference in the design of each snowflake, the difference in the design of each tree, to be aware of tree and flower. And we again remind you that if you wanted to spread your wings, I hope you haven't got the horns and tail instead, if you want to spread your wings and get up around three miles high, you'll discover that although there are glorious vistas, you cannot experience and enjoy and be entranced by the infinitesimally small from that point of view, the shape of a flower and of a petal and the expression in the eyes of a loved one or, alas, even a hated one. It's still a miracle to be able to see the expression, isn't it? The awareness.

So the consciousness of man the evolution of the vehicle which has the intellect as its base of operations for the ability to control the attention this is what makes us individualized sons and daughters of the most high with powers to know on a detailed scale and remember that to be able to sweep the heavens with our eyes and see all these amazing little points of twinkling jewels is exactly a part of the same power which also gives us the ability to do all the things and be all the things which is such a problem to us at this point in our evolution which we have not yet evolved out of. In other words, when we say people are small-minded, and alas, many people are, maybe all of us are at times, still the very ability to be small-minded also has within it that quality which transmuted becomes the way the divine can experience the glory of the different aspects or parts of its own one being so our intellect is an instrument for becoming aware of the parts and how the parts work that is the parts of the universe and the first universe that we have anything to do with in terms of learning how to control that particular aspect of life is our own private universe isn't it that is our body with its personality with its environmental factors and relationships this is our universe within the one universe it's our plot of ground that we are tilling it is our little garden in which we are growing the flowers or the weeds or both carefully or haphazardly depending on all the circumstances of our own attentiveness now remember that the in what we pointed out to you that the emotions actually are the elements in us which make us surge with livingness without emotions we could not love without emotions we could not desire without emotions is true we could not hate without emotions we could not aspire that it is from the it is through our emotions therefore that the livingness and push of evolution comes that whole drive towards the divine and where people feel they have a drive towards the opposite end of course they'll have a little trouble and they'll still in the final analysis after reaping the repercussions of their nonsense come about and start going in the direction they're supposed to go towards since all things abide within the one life and eventually must become a fully developed aspect of that one life and recall that we also pointed out to you that in a way we cannot really separate the mind from the emotions we have to in order to try to see how the different parts of ourselves work and yet meet none of them work alone in other words how could you be attentive to something that is using the intellect unless something in you was interested and interest is immediately an emotional thing isn't it we are bored or not bored we are driven to want to know you see all of that connotates what desire want emotion so that you cannot really divide mind and emotion as people try to do you cannot separate them this has been one of the tragedies in the development of so many these schools of occultism that some of them try to shall we say propagandize us into destroying if we can or if we could the emotions as being something low and animal-like and beneath us and to live in the pure abstract mind whatever they mean by that and then other schools of thought say oh get rid of the mind it's the slayer of the real just live in your emotions in the love of God well classically these are the higher emotions and yet is it balanced I mean and could one really do it the fact that we can be aware is an indication that there is that something in us which is a part of God and the way the one divine life is aware in terms of its specializations and that has to do with intellect as we pointed out and the fact that we can yearn and care and drive and try and make effort this inevitably again has to do with emotions and they cannot come separately at all they're like the two sides of the coin you know it reminds me of the story which a few of you may have heard of the two knights who met in front of a tavern that way back in the middle ages and they greeted each other and said what one looked up and said isn't this a beautiful golden sign and the other one said the sign is beautiful indeed sir but it isn't golden it is silver and the first one said you accuse me of lying and the other one said you accuse me of lying and without further ado they went at each other's other with their lances in order to protect their integrity whatever that means and both of them had pretty good aims because they got the edge of the lance in a very vital spot and so they each fell off their horse and as they fell they fell into the position which the other one had held and so the one who had said the sign was gold fell fell over to the other side and saw on one side it was silver, indeed.

The one who said it was silver discovered as he fell that the other side was gold. You see, they'd both been right, and they killed each other over a lot of nonsense.

Well, in the same way, in occultism, if we want to truly attain to something stable, something real, we must realize that there's no such thing as saying, I've got to get rid of my emotions or get my emotions out of the way or I've got to get my mind out of the way What we have to do is perfect The mind and the emotions because they're two sides of one coin without the drive and urge of What we experience as emotions there'd be no evolution There'd be no no response to anything in terms of beauty there'd be no knowledge of beauty the emotions that experience the beauty or at least that drive the mind to become aware of the beauty therefore we have to see that mind is vital emotions are vital and that these have to be made partners partners in such a way that one does not uh take precedence over the other you know in the eastern schools of thought uh they have all the all varied separations for growth you know they have what they call bhakti yoga and they say this is especially prepared for the devotional nature the one that goes the way of love and then they have janani yoga and they say this is especially the way of wisdom, the one who searches for wisdom.

And then they have Raja Yoga, and they say this is a way of attainment for those who are the intellectual type and need to do the scientific experimentation. And then they have Mantra Yoga. They say these are the ones who want to attain their liberation through the use of the control of the power of sound and vibration. That's part of what we do in our intonations. And they have Hatha Yoga, and they say this is for those who attain liberation by gaining complete control of their physical vehicle and its functions, and so on. I mean, I've just named a few.

So they say there's a way for every type to achieve liberation. Well, you know, this isn't really true.

They think it is. Up to a certain point in evolution it is true we have to go certain paths because this is a spot in us that still has a hole it's still undeveloped and so because of that we may have to go through certain areas and be specialized in certain trainings in order to fill out the perceptions, the understanding, the emotions. However, there's really no such thing as attaining complete liberation from one of the specialized paths, because even those who attain to what we may call cosmic consciousness through going along with the various disciplines or teachings of a particular path that is supposed to be for a particular type these people will have to come back in another incarnation to round out their souls to round out their nature because a perfect child of god is a perfect child of god means has all the abilities doesn't just walk on his hands he can also walk on his feet doesn't just stand on his head also stands on sweet and so on. It doesn't just eat cheese, it also likes to eat nuts. And that's what most of us usually are, because we get all involved in propaganda from the various people who have something to sell.

And even in terms of religion this is what's so sad because in spiritual work in uh in attainment are to put it on a sale basis and saying only this way canst thou come otherwise you doomed uh this is a tragedy of tragedy you know what we have said to you always that there is no such such thing as only one person or only one way towards God, that anyone who tries to make you feel that only through that individual or that group can you attain the highest, you should run like heaven.

Because you are here to develop discrimination, understanding, perception, and a rounded ability to guide yourself so you can be a channel for the Most High and when we listen to others in that way what we're doing is merely returning to that infantile state you know where mama and papa tells us what to do and then we don't have to worry we haven't taken on any extra responsibility because we can always say well mother mother's fault or father's fault because mother and father told me what to do. We therefore are always very careful to make sure that you realize you are free to go out and make your mistakes and fall and get bruised, though we hope and pray you don't need to do it as often as you did and that you are outgrowing that necessity more and more. But the The point is achieving a balanced mental emotional nature. It really involves having reached a point in your evolution, in your growth, where you are ready to integrate all the other paths, shall we say, that you have been treading down through God alone knows how many incarnations.

And integrating these paths means you cannot go the way of being only a mystic nor can you go the way of being only an occultist this is the reason that the Qabalistic training is so tremendously vital and effective because in the Qabalah we have what you might say all of the yogas right in the whole Tarot Qabalistic method There isn't a single aspect of yoga which is supposed to be for just one type, which isn't included. And this is why the tarot, the Qabalistic way does not appeal to everybody, because not everybody has the capacity to start working at integrating all of the, shall we say, methods and tendencies into one. Because it becomes, one is starting then, a total integration.

When one is working with all the parts of the nature. Because notice what we do with tarot, how and why it is that tarot and Qabalah perfect us and prepare us for the highest kinds of development.

First of all, those who have a tendency, say, to require scientific verification, they get it. Because our teaching from beginning to end says, do not accept what we say because we say it try it test it and if it works then it's really yours and you know it and that way also we get you to be working on your own transmutations you see so that those who need to verify various elements uh this is certainly present in the work of the tarot disciplines and when I say disciplines it sounds so harsh and hard it's really the easiest thing there is you know because instead of banging our heads against the wall we train our consciousness to reach for a tarot key with a symbol to help keep our emotions and our thoughts directed in a specific way and isn't it much easier than uh ranting or raving or banging the head against the wall abusing ourselves in various ways but nevertheless it is a discipline one and so as we pointed out the one who needs the scientific verification certainly he's going to receive it and of course the farther he goes in this particular training the more he's going to be able to receive certain kinds of verifications the one who is strong on the intellect but weak on expressing the emotions is going to have that emotional nature automatically more intensified because the tarot does this automatically and so do the various things that we work with in terms of our intonational types of intensification of powers you see when we're reaching for the highest when we're intoning the divine words and syllables of power this in itself is like dropping the water on the brick at a much more rapid rate and there's a lot more water in order to wear away the stone into the proper groove whatever groove we want it to be in so if we're very strong on intellect but we said weak on the emotional nature the tarot starts stimulating emotional responses because we start becoming more alive as most of you who've been working with the tarot at home have already recognized so many of you I think more of you mentioned that to me than almost any one thing the fact that your perceptions have become so much more alive after a certain length of time with your tarot work especially when you've gone in for the coloring of the tarot that the aliveness is in terms of your reacting with more aliveness to the beauty of nature to the beauty of music the beauty of sound to the awareness of touch you know the miracles of it the and to the awareness of color and the and the subtleties of color all of these things have to do with a more delicately evolved emotional emotional nature you realize that helps to open up then to the higher kind of emotional perception That is contact in various degrees with God with the self with the Christ and so on now those who are very strong on the emotions more completely mystically inclined but fairly weak on the intellect when we say weak on the intellect we don't mean weak-minded anyone who really hasn't got a mind wouldn't be sitting here because we know that the work of tarot and qabalah is the most profound occult training there is and it takes a certain amount of mental evolution to even remotely comprehend the work of the Tarot the the ideas that are involved but when we say weak in the mind or weak in the head what we mean basically is that we let our emotions run away with our thought processes and therefore we let the emotions rule the situation rather than forcing ourselves to use our intellect and our attention to become more abstract about the situation and through the intellect getting the emotions into a control or control direction.

People who get angry suddenly, you know, who flare up with no control, they haven't yet learned how to use their marvelous instrument, the intellect, to keep the emotions within certain bounds or certain directions. I know a man who is one of the most extraordinary souls. He is an extraordinary soul, but he has one very profound weakness in his nature. He still has not gotten over bursting loose in what he calls real hatred over all sorts of situations that arise so that he gets his blood pressure up this man is a very handicapped man too and it's amazing when one sees the patience that he has with so many things the greatness that he shows in so many areas when he He deals with a certain kind of ineffectualness. He says his blood boils, and it literally boils. It does boil.

This blood pressure goes up, and then he suffers terrible pain in that area of his head where he has this handicap. Terrible pain. So that his higher self is forcing him to start using his mind more and more to control that emotional surge and yet this man mind you is kind he's generous he's good and he's loving he just gets into this madness and even though it mightn't last it does terrible things to him and his higher self isn't going to put up with it anymore so he's starting to suffer tremendous physical of repercussions almost instantly and uh I pointed out to him not very long ago that if he would do a little more with the tarot and start grabbing tarot key number 14 for example when this starts coming up and handing all that madness that steam because you know in tarot key number 14 we have that angel and it's pouring water on the lion the lion is a fire symbol and it's pouring fire on the eagle and the eagle is a water symbol so it's making steam in either case so you see there's a there's a full head of steam there and the idea is of course we let the steam run away with ourselves and temper outbursts or other kinds of outbursts self-pity or what have you because we can go into all kinds of emotional unbalances or we hand that steam over to the higher self that angel is making it to begin with to be used for transmutation for healing for growth and when I suggested this to him he said that for the first time he felt he really had something to use that he can hold on to because he's his habit pattern of rushing of rushing into the violence of reaction you see is not just from this incarnation it's a mini incarnational thing because we happen to know the history his incarnational history and we know that this is the one primary thing he still has to overcome in this incarnation you know in order to really have achieved the one of the highest states that man can achieve on this planet not the but one of the highest they see the balancing of the mind and the emotions is an absolutely vital part of the evolution towards becoming truly centered in the one life and being able to be a true channel for the one life. That's why in tarot, in Qabalah, as we pointed out, we bring together all of the different methods. They sit together like jigsaw puzzles.

And so the emotions have a way, there are methods to start directing and controlling them in specialized ways. The mind is able to be sharpened, to be focused, to be brought to more of an attentive state for whatever purposes are required. The habit patterns are more readily transmuted into the kind of habit patterns that help that we use to make steps for ourselves with which to reach upwards. You see, instead of keeping ourselves in the various prisons and the powers that we use in our intonational work and especially in our cabalistic chant by the way it has far more significance than I have even yet told you and when I feel we're ready we'll tell you some more about the power of that cabalistic chant that we do at the end of the service but all of these things are aimed at bringing together an entire person a whole person many of us incidentally have had cosmic consciousness in past incarnations otherwise we wouldn't be here integrating many things many of us have achieved very high stakes and if we had remembered it and we looked at ourselves now we'd say well how did I get this low again then you see that's where we don't understand we haven't gotten low at all evolution is an up and down spiraling an up and down cycle and we can have a state of cosmic consciousness that is on a level say of the emotional area of awareness and yet the intellect be utterly incapable yet of understanding all the elements that go into the manifestation of the vehicles which are the way the vehicles or the way the life power immerses itself for the ability or capacity to bring about further growth.

So that it could easily be that many of us have had very high mystical states in some past incarnations or many incarnations ago and then have come back for the rigid disciplines of getting our intellect more strengthened and developed so that we don't have to be off using mysticism as a sort of narcotic which you know many mystics do I did that myself for a while being a natural mystic way back the beginning of my search and I found that it does not transmute the personality really although it's a beautiful state to be in and as I've often pointed out it costs a lot less than heroin and alcohol and of course it isn't that it's quite that useless because it's a very fine thing to be feel immersed in a certain cosmic love and feel that one can emanate it but you see one doesn't emanate it as well as one thinks if one hasn't also developed the mental abilities and the rounded personality qualities to be able to be a power to emanate the sun is what it is a power it radiates and in order to be a power that radiates we have to have gotten both our emotions and our minds into the most heightened state of development and interrelatedness and we have to have been able to recognize that as was read to us from the bible if we do not love our fellow man we certainly are not loving god whatever we think so often we hear people say well I love god but man you know or most men the noises that they'll make quite interesting. It's pretty much like people who have prejudices against minorities.

You know, they'll say, why I have nothing against this or that minority, why some of my best friends...

And the people who claim to be true aspirants and to love God will often do that same thing. They will say why I love humanity you know it's just the individuals I can't stand so we need to be able to understand our emotions and we will not understand our emotions if we haven't got a well-developed mind that has developed the ability and capacity to watch these emotions of ours and see what our emotions are doing we need also to have very well developed emotions that we will not have the power or the ability to focus our mind to learn to study to meditate to yearn to aspire to love and because of this we need to realize that we have to go a balanced way we cannot permit or any one uh limited method to hold us we must realize that the time has come when our mind emotion body soul and spirit must all become an interrelated integral integral whole. And how is it done? Well, of course, as we pointed out to you, here in the West with our work, first of all, it's done through tarot because the beginnings always have to be in some way with a spiritual self-psychoanalytic method. And tarot is just that, because tarot develops in us the ability to see what's happening inside tarot gives us the ability to lift a part of our consciousness for the higher self so that we can dare to be objective about the way our mind is working and about the way our emotions are working and so that we can call on the higher power to help us to change and transmute the mind and or the emotions of both towards whatever direction we feel is the proper one and that is why the spiritual self psychoanalytical needs really should take first precedence for aspirants because until we have become aware of our emotions and how they work until we have become aware of our thought processes and how they work we are are not able to correlate them together, to be able to differentiate between correct guidance or incorrect guidance, between wisdom or folly.

In other words, we haven't got what it takes to discriminate and therefore take the straight and narrow path. That's why it's so important to work with the spiritual self-psychoanalytical methods of which I feel that certainly tarot is the finest that posterity has ever bequeathed to us, because it does give us a way to develop all of the empty spots in our nature. And then it also gives us a way to retrain our identification with that higher self. Next Sunday, you know, we're going to bring in the aspects of the spiritual in terms of the mind and the emotion by uh which and the talk is entitled the way tarot brings spiritual perception so next sunday morning I'm going to show you how when we get the mind and the emotions working as partners two sides of the coin doesn't mean we have to even be perfected you know because what do we mean by perfected uh what one person considers good another person considers bad as we have often uh pointed out to you the cannibal you remember the cannibal uh considers it very good to eat the liver of the enemy and then other sweet delicious morsels also and this of course that makes him realize that he's going to go straight to one of his highest as God's, whatever it is, that is certain cannibals, and we have therefore ideas or attitudes about what is good, what is bad.

Well, only when we are able to freely understand and to dare to freely accept our mind, our emotions as being that which is still growing, when we can accept the fact that what we consider as right or good today may not be right or good tomorrow, that these things change. It's good for an infant to nurse at its mother's breast, but what would we think of it if it continued trying to do it when it was five and six and seven and eight years old, you see? What's good for one period is not good for another and vice versa. So when we come to see that, we also develop the ability to more objectively be able to accept whatever it is we see as immature in our nature. To not only accept it but even start seeing it as a challenge. Perhaps even as a luck, part of the adventure. You know, like, aha, I've tracked you down, when we suddenly see ourselves reacting with perhaps a little more or less ego than we should in a certain situation. It's an enlightenment. We're able to do this because we are we are not identifying with the mind or the emotions and we balance them thoroughly when we learn how to identify with that higher part of us then we really manipulate them that's what we will talk about next sunday morning of how we accomplish that uh completion you might say and meanwhile remember the fact that you are in a cultism at all shows that you've certainly evolved enough of a mind uh do not be sacrilegious and say to yourself or others I'm dumb I'm stupid I haven't got a mind besides even if you were don't you think it's foolish to give other people material which to hit you back and also do not say to yourself or others oh there's something my emotions are um are all wrong they are warped they're this they're that nonsense I mean even if they are again don't give other people material uh to use against you because everyone is always hunting for the fault elsewhere in order to avoid seeing their own problem their own heart the thing to do is to look into your own emotions when they're acting foolish or immature uh be pleased that you're aware that it's immature this is a tremendous step this is what makes you like a god the fact that you can say am I reacting immaturely do you realize what a miracle this is and when you see that you've done something foolish mentally that there's been a lack of discrimination you can say ah now there I see where if I had kept my attention pointed in a special way I would have been able to to avoid this or that problem.

Do you realize what a miracle you are? That something in you can take and analyze your mind, your emotions, accept what they did or didn't do?

That feel for the exaltation and the joy at your ability to have evolved beyond the point of having to rationalize. And if you do rationalize, do it consciously and cleverly, of course.

Don't fool yourself and you'll find that that balance will interweave more and more and remember that little uh exercise I mentioned in relation to that handicapped man the 14th tarot key the one called temperance when you find your emotions running away with you or your mind running away you know being too cold or logical not that we're against logic but there are places where we shouldn't use it jump up there to that holy guardian angel and hand all the steam over over to that and then relax and say thank god or thank angel or something like that and you'll find the charm of your everyday living and your ability to transmute and balance your mental and emotional facilities will become extraordinarily enhanced and then life will be so much lovelier anyway won't it I guess that is the message for this morning