The Key To Mental Mastery

Our sermon for this afternoon, or for this morning, is Tarot, the Key to Mental Mastery. Now, the first thing we should consider is what do we mean by mental mastery. Of course, we have many very brilliant, trained mentalities in this world today who feel that mental mastery consists in the ability to concentrate in the chosen or specialized field and the ability to utilize this mental mastery or this ability in a chosen field for such things as research.

Well, of course, one of the great problems is that most people misunderstand just what is meant by mind and seem to feel that mind is separated from emotions or that the self-conscious mind is something other than the subconscious part of the mind and here in the gospel which we read I think we were given many hints as to what the true key to mental mastery may be but we will elaborate this in terms of the the principles of the Tarot and Qabalah to show that this is one of the most profound Qabalistic verses, or shall we say chapters, that we have in the Bible, though we have so many of them. Well, for example, in Qabalah, I feel we should all understand that when the word Christ is used. It is assigned on the Tree of Life to the central part of the tree. It is assigned to the ideas of Sun, S-U-N, Sun, S-O-N, the Son of God, Adam, generic humanity, to the the ideas of beauty and of the image-making faculties of consciousness.

Now, when it speaks in the Bible about Christ crucified, for example, this is not to say that we do not feel there was truly a human being who existed some 2,000 years ago by by the name of Jesus, who experienced the many historical things we have been told. We feel that all that which has truth in the spirit and the symbolic evolving consciousness of the one life has its correlates in what we choose to call the physical aspect of the universe. Nevertheless Jesus remember was Jesus of Nazareth until he experienced a certain state of awareness at which time in accordance with Qabalah he was consciously one with the Father now if we remember that in Qabalah that same aspect on the tree of life is called Adam and generic humanity, we certainly then should understand that what was true for Jesus the Christ, if it is not also to be true for us, becomes rather meaningless as a guide, as an aid, and as an inspiration in our lives.

The great exception cannot be the great example.

And so in Qabalah, it is generally recognized that the one and primary job that generic humanity has, and generic humanity is the Son of God, is to work, concentrate, pray, and do anything and everything possible in order to attain the consciousness, the awareness, which was shown forth by He who attained, He who loved, He who who became a complete and true son of God in self-conscious awareness, that is, Jesus the Christ. When, and remember, my darlings, that the Bible was written by Qabalists.

Those who interpret things too literally do so because they are not familiar with the the actual ancient texts, nor are they familiar with the language in which the Bible was originally written. All the great prophets in the Bible were trained in the mystical aspects of the Hebraic religion, and the mystical aspects of the Hebraic religion were and remain Qabalah.

Qabalah in a sense might be called that esoteric training in this manner that when Jesus walked on the earth he spoke to the masses in one way in parables but to the twelve disciples he gave deeper truths and in the same manner in this day and age but so much more extended The masses see and interpret life in one manner, and yet there are always the few who have achieved the evolutionary state, who are able, who have the capacity to learn how to see and deal with the esoteric truths which have been given to us in this magnificent group group of writings by prophets who were trained and rigidly trained in mastery of the mind.

Now let's give a few examples of what mastery of the mind might be, and it will help us to understand how we can more fully utilize some of these principles to help us as we moan and groan in our travail because surely we all realize don't we or do we that we are christ crucified can we be something separate from the one life are we not aspects of this evolving loving, growing consciousness. Do we not weep? Do we not suffer frustrations? Do we not walk around a good deal of the time with hearts that are heavy? Do we not suffer pain and and remorse although truly also we enjoy laughter in so many ways and we could enjoy so much more if we knew how and of course in a work like ours the aim is at learning how so mastery of the mind basically to put it in very simple terms really means learning how to have the same mind in us, which was also in Christ Jesus.

Not that we haven't, but until a thing is self-conscious, it is not ours to utilize and direct.

So how do we use the forces of our minds usually?

Many people say they don't know how to concentrate say or they have a problem with concentration and we remember that Dr. Case used to ask for his classes tell me have any of you ever had any problem with for instance keeping concentrated on worries or anxieties and in all these years this question was asked never once How many months did anyone say that they ever had any difficulty in this kind of concentration? Well, this is utilization of the mind. The mind is pointed. The mind hangs on to an idea. It can't be let go. It is almost like it is hypnotized.

It fears, and it trembles, and it clutches, and it suffers, and then the body becomes quite responsive in what we usually call negative ways. The nerves go to pieces and yet we cling.

It is truly as though we ourselves, and perhaps this is more true than we know, we ourselves use the mental mastery which we have to keep crucifying ourselves for whatever reasons we have and unfortunately most of the time we do not know why it is that we are doing these things and until we do know we're going to continue to do it and even after we know we're going to continue to do it but don't be discouraged because it's pretty much like a muscle strength is not developed merely by understanding the principles of developing muscular power you can sit and become very enamored for hours on end with the marvelous methods of muscular development and calisthenics but your muscles will not develop Even though you might have a wonderful time thinking how right you are to understand the various details and elements that are involved.

We have to practice.

And of course this is difficult, we realize it. Why? Again, in our reading from the Gospel we showed what is meant in Pabbala when it speaks about the carnal mind.

You see, unhappily, exoteric religion has so often misinterpreted this basic idea, and the result is they have learned to despise one of the greatest miracles that we could begin to fathom, the miracle of the physical universe, the glory and beauty of it. They have misinterpreted this idea and in in their minds made the body or physical things synonymous with evil and carnal mindedness and yet this is not what Qabalah meant because anyone who studies Qabalah and I hope that all of you are taking the lessons and becoming familiar with the true principles of consciousness as meant to be understood by those who have written these marvelous wise things for us and left it to us. We certainly hope that an understanding of these basic ideas of Qabalah will help to wash away, and it interpretations we have made of what is meant by carnal mindedness, physical plane, bodies, and so on. Well, in Qabalah, there is a beautiful Hebrew word which means the physical manifestation, and it is called goof. That is the Hebrew word. Now, from this has come the English term goofy incidentally. Dr. Case used to love to bring this out. And the ideas of goofy were really related to the idea of, oh that person thinks he's only a body. You see it isn't that there's anything wrong with body. It is thinking that we are only the physical aspect of the body which gets us into a lot of trouble, though there are other things which we do with our consciousness there are other ways in which we have mastered our minds in reverse for utilization of our problems that is in order to make ourselves as many problems as we can apparently human consciousness is so staggeringly creative that it can consistently and continuously create problems and sorrows, the tears, frustrations, rejections, and so on, can do this continuously.

And it doesn't realize that the very same principle can be made to work in reverse once we understand the principles and learn how to utilize them. So, in a sense, we might say it isn't so much that we must learn mental mastery, because we are tremendous masters, really. What we need to learn is how to redirect the currents of our mental processes by learning to understand the principles and using the devices given to us by those who have gone before us in order to help us become what we all sooner or later are destined to become true conscious co-creators with God minds in us which were and are in Christ Jesus. Well how do we go about such a little chore we might say? It sounds easy to many people and of course when they start exercising they find that it isn't so easy and unfortunately people get discouraged. But the heart and the emotions are not in harmony with the mind. So the first thing we must understand is this. The mind will not go where we direct it unless the emotions are working with the mind.

For instance, if our emotions are bent on feelings, they reject it. Because consciousness is not separate from feeling. They're all of a piece. And this is what we learn when we study tarot and Qabalah and work with the techniques. We discover it by direct perception. First of all then we must recognize that no matter how often we say to ourselves mentally, I wish to do this or I wish to accomplish that or I wish to understand the other. If the heart isn't with it then we're a house divided and we're not supplying the mind with the energy to work the mind works with only one energy in the Eastern thought it's called Kundalini and the Western thought it is called the basic life force in modern psychology which misunderstands it and misinterprets it completely it is called libido there is one energy and this energy when it's functioning in one way is the mental aspect of our livingness and when it's functioning in another way it is the emotional aspect of our livingness and it does not function one or the other way they work together like like twins but not like twins this is a bad analogy they cannot work separately because there's no such thing as separation There's no energy with which to think unless the emotions are feeding the energy to that part of itself which does the thinking.

And of course in tarot, as we bring out in our Thursday night classes, we take each principle and go into it in much more detail in order to show how we could utilize these disciplines a little more effectively.

But if we haven't got our emotions strongly and intensely centered on whatever mental determination we have made nothing is truly going to happen except that we will at least sometimes feel that well whatever other failings we have we at least have a very good mind because because our minds can go click, click, click, click, click, but then that doesn't get us anywhere.

It is well known in modern psychology, for instance, that in order to get to know about a thing, we have to start wooing an interest. And the more interested we become, the more our minds remain focused on that which we want to know about.

And, of course, in relation to the worry, as we were discussing it our emotions do see this mental process why you know because we're interested we're interested and the moment we're interested our energies are being fed into our image making faculties and we do it without do spot we do it without trained disciplines we do it without insight into what it is we are doing. For example, let's take a few amusing examples of the powers of the mind and emotions as they work together and see what happens to us physically. Well, I know someone who had to do a great deal of heavy typing on a very heavy machine that had a heavy carriage and this had to be done hour after hour after hour for weeks and months on end and although she liked the work and loved the work and believed in it still this was kind of hard work and she'd get a little weary and she'd say ah having to do all that typing gives me a pain in the neck Well, this person always had a very strong neck, but not so long. Not so long. Because look at what she was doing with her consciousness. She continuously, and she did it more and more often, she continuously fed an image of hardship, of heaviness, of disability, and of a pain in the neck and she developed a chronic bad neck which of course the world and the doctors and life blamed on her having to work with this machine so long and they called it an occupational disease but my darlings was it or was it the power of the mind with the emotions feeding it because of this, oh, sort of feeling.

You know what we do? Oh, I have to do this, or I have to do that.

And we do not know what magnificently powerful creators we are. We do not realize what it is we are continuously doing. And the point is, even when we realize it, we find ourselves sort of trapped in this hobbit pattern of reaction.

Because if you let a trickle keep running along something, it will deepen and deepen and deepen, and finally you'll have a roaring river.

And this is what we have done with our powers, with our mental masteries. We have made roaring rivers.

Rolling and pouring and bubbling towards results that a part of us does not want. But I'll tell you a secret, a part of us wants it, although it's hard to believe, isn't it? Or we wouldn't be doing it.

And of course the part that wants it is perhaps the part that wants to gain so much insight and understanding into the vagaries of consciousness so that someday after the situation has been reversed there'll be the knowledge and the wisdom and the understanding which is part also of having that mind in us which was in Christ Jesus and taking our attention away from the corruptible into the incorruptible but then we come to the problem we all have patterns that we have set of the way our minds run and the way our emotions feed these meanderings and we come up against this what then shall we do about it there's some of us who still hold these sorrows and anxieties and rejections because when we were little we had certain unhappy experiences there are There are some of us who hold our sorrows and rejections because our husbands or wives or sweethearts betrayed us, or sometimes it's our children or members of our families, and we hold these sorrows in our hearts.

Now everything we hold in our hearts feeds our mental imagery.

Everything. There isn't the slightest detail which can be absent. The universe is all one piece. And so we need, very seriously, to learn how to stop feeding these emotional reactions into the mind. For instance, there are many, many people who, because they feel that basically they're not really as lovable as they want to be, have to sound like they're very important, because they figure since no one... And this is all underneath, you see, in the emotional nature. This is the problem.

That's where the real key to mental mastery comes from.

Although it takes the conscious mind to help redirect it. And so there are many people who because subconsciously feel, well, I'm not really very lovable, they will do things and they will make things seem terribly difficult.

Various things that they do, even though it really isn't. But to them it is because they want to feel it. If they feel they're doing something difficult and they're making sure that everyone around them knows that they're doing very difficult things like sacrificing themselves or working too hard and you know I bet you can think of many examples on your own of these basic principles all right then what they are doing is feeding into themselves and into their environment the basic idea that I must work and labor and be a martyr. I must be a martyr in order to show that I'm worth having around even though I'm not lovable. Now consciously people wouldn't recognize they do this but they do. I know someone it's good examples of how these things work often teach us more than anything else. Although after that we still need the techniques you know so there are there are many and many individuals who keep themselves and everyone around them pretty miserable feeling this is their security not knowing that like job said that which I feared has come upon me is what they're really doing and again here is the key to mental mastery that which I feared have come upon me you see some Some people, for instance, the example that I wanted to give you, I know someone who felt that there was a situation he was in which made him feel utterly helpless.

He couldn't do anything about it. He said, I cannot handle this situation. I am helpless. I cannot handle it.

And you know what? He became helpless in bed.

Well, and for quite a long time until he found out what he had been doing. But the point is, feeling helpless, using our powers and our mental masteries in these negative ways, we do this. You know why? We haven't got faith in God. God. We haven't got faith in Christ, the true and rich and glorious meaning of Christ. We haven't got faith in the very powers we use to destroy ourselves with, even though if we look we will see that we are using them and have used them every single day of our lives. And the problem comes down then to one of faith. And yet, there are many people say they have faith and perhaps some of these are the most deceived because in actuality we do not only carry these mental streams of direction from our own experiences we are part and parcel of humanity and we carry that which is in all of life and the reason we carry it is because after all we're still evolving souls.

We haven't achieved yet that complete perfection.

Nevertheless to be carnally minded is to try to do it with our own personalities and our own personal thinking faculties and our own personal emotions and as long as we do this we may have success for a day or two but if we do it's unusual because again mental mastery what does that consist of well think if we figure we have to do it with our own powers something in us knows that the personality power and when we talking about our own powers we are identified remember with our personalities instead of with our true sense of being. And so we are saying to ourselves subconsciously, we are using our mental abilities with which to say, without knowing that we're doing it, that we have only our own abilities and disciplines and concentrations to work with. Well, that doesn't give us very much to work with. But when we align ourselves, and of course tarot is what helps us to do it, we need help. This is the reason the tarot was given to us by the marvelously wise adept. We need help to retrain the sense of identification. But when we can work at retraining what we mean by I, by feeling the highest self or God or the Lord of life or the Lord of the universe or Christ.

You know, it doesn't matter what term you give it. It's very unimportant what name it's called because, again, it's the emotion. It's the recognition that all the powers of the universe are there to help us change it. If we open ourselves to it and so one of the vital aspects one of the most important things that must be learned in order to master the mind is that one must train one's consciousness to not once in a while but continuously be reaching for the universal powers with which to help modify the old pattern, the old patterns of our thinking and our feeling.

Now of course there are various tarot keys that are utilized for these various redevelopments. I know that with myself there was a period after I had been through the tarot training for quite a while and understood the principles of each one and had tried to work with it I still I became more and more aware of the fact that these old habit patterns of response that this was the thing that had to be changed and of course mastering the mind is so dependent on it and yet the thing is we have to master our mind in one way in order to master it in another.

So what I did was take the 14th Tarot Key, which is a symbol for the higher self, the Holy Guardian Angel, working on the personality. And I put that out in front of me wherever I went. If I washed dishes it was in the kitchen I was working at a typewriter it was by my typewriter if I was sitting on the couch it was up on the mantle in front of me I kept it before my eyes and every in-between moment I kept reminding myself in other words this is developing the spiritual muscles that the higher self is doing thinking and feeling through me and is quite capable of changing changing, all the reactions that require changing in order to truly grow out of being carnal-minded.

You see, we look at physical results, we look at physical things and conditions, and we are so hypnotized by them that we do not realize that what we are looking at is the final effect.

The cause is never in what we see and experience physically. Never. This is always the effect. These things have to be recognized in terms of mastering the things we do with our minds. Causation lies in religious terms, we can say in the will of God, of course. But then if we take the various ways in which we can sort of understand what the will of God implies, causation lies in the level of consciousness which is the thinking-feeling combination of consciousness.

Just like we gave you the example, the person who felt helpless and kept saying he was and of feeding it with the emotions, so became.

The person that kept saying that doing something was a pain in the neck, got a beautiful pain in the neck.

And then what? We do the same thing with people, you know.

You keep telling yourself that some person is a pain in the neck or an annoyance or...

An agony.

And you know, you help that person to become ever more obnoxious towards you.

Now, we don't say, and of course some people make blanket and absolute claims, we do not say that if you consistently see a specific individual acting in certain ways towards yourself that this will be so. You see, this isn't the way the principle works, because like a radio transmission station, people will pick up and transmit back to you only that which they are in tune with.

So that if a person who happens to be obnoxious has a level in his awareness or her awareness that can tune in to your loving expectation, if you can hold it steadily enough, then that level, yes, will start reacting towards you more often. But you do not change other people. All you can do is modify your own mental and emotional processes.

But what does happen is that when we truly refuse to let our mental mastery concentrate on the unhappy, the frustrating, the limiting aspects of our relationship, When we do that, then if a certain individual is so geared, vibrationally speaking, that it cannot come in harmony with your more positive development of your spiritual muscles in that field, life will take them out of your environment sweetly and harmoniously. Or if they can change, if it's in them to respond to that level in you, then they will. And so the same, of course, applies to the various things we do with ourselves, to ourselves, both physically and in other ways. Now if we get up in the morning and we sigh and we say, another day, think what we are creating.

Now, in tarot, we are given as our very first tarot key, what is it? The Fool. And the Fool is assigned to ideas of deity. We mention this very, we strongly and pick it up rather profoundly in our last Thursday night class, which we just started. It. But the fool is the free spirit of life, starting off on its next journey with gaiety.

Therefore, one of the first things we need to train ourselves if we wish to develop true mental mastery, when we wake up in the morning to learn how to catch those first instants of thinking, and to call on the universal powers, whatever we want to call them, whether it's Jesus or Christ or God or Holy Father or Lord of Life, to call on that to help us, to remind us as often as is necessary, not to let our thinking and feeling processes fall into these, oh, now this and now that and now the other, because this is what we'll have. Being joyous is not a state of other conditions. Being joyous can only come from within, and as we develop it from within, it will come to the without ever more, as Jesus said, consider the lilies of the valley. They don't have to toil. We don't have to toil, but we do have to toil in a special way to develop the modifications of the mind as the tangely said in the yoga sutras we have to utilize the opposite and yet as long as we try to cling to just our own personal efforts we're doomed to failure we're being carnal minded we must clean ourselves then first and foremost to continuously crawl on the help of the higher powers the benefits brothers of light to help keep us focused and concentrated therefore wake up in the morning and try to train yourself to remember to remember to call on god to help you hold the mastery of the mind which is more in harmony with true spiritual brotherhood because if we're emanating persecution, martyrdom, boredom, unhappiness, sorrow, oh my darlings, look what we're pouring into the world, and it's got so much of it.

It's up to the few, like ourselves, and there are so few, to start turning the tide a little more. It can only be turned by mastering the mind and the heart into the areas of thinking, feeling, reacting and responding which are more in harmony with the spiritual beingness. And this does not mean that the physical life is not spiritual. But remember, the kingdom of spirit is embodied in my flesh, it says, as the last statement on the pattern on the trestle board. And only as we master our minds. The 2T, the mental mastery, has to do with changing the physical structure of our vehicles and the changes by what we think and feel. Every little cell is a consciousness that is radiating and broadcasting. Every atom in the cell radiates out into infinity like us. Us. We are miracles of power. We do not need to learn how to master our minds as far as learning how to concentrate, as we have mentioned. We do have to learn where to concentrate, and this is a rough job. This is a crucifixion indeed. And yes, there's a resurrection. You You can have no resurrection unless you're willing to crucify the old.

You want to kill off and redirect these energies by killing off, we just mean melt down and redirect these energies where they belong because humanity needs it. It needs us. And remember, even one human being able to emanate out even one more positive thought appealing is adding that much more to the health that the world needs as it moans and groans.

One transmutation of a hate is taking away that much of the conflict and the killings and the aggressions that exist in life. Every little thing is a great accomplishment. Nothing is really little. The key to the mastery of the mind is to develop such a need and an emotional desire and indeed a compulsion to keep bringing God in on everything we're trying to develop. Not in the way that some unhappy aspirants do. They say, well I'll trust God and then they sit down. Now, I mean, this is just escapism.

There are a lot of people who escape truly working with themselves and mastering the directions of the flow by telling themselves they have faith and they trust in God, and that's that. But it isn't that, because we are made in the image and likeness of God, and we are co-creators. And these people who want to sit around and do nothing, who are not willing to go through the disciplines of changing the flow of the mental-emotional imagery, these are the escapists. These are the deadwood. These are the dead that were mentioned in the Gospel. These are the true dead because they are not utilizing their fire and force and flow, the miracle of awareness and consciousness and emotion. They are not utilizing it to become something more.

That is something more in terms of directing in the proper areas so try to wake up in the morning calling on a higher powers of course with you as you work with your tarot you'll find that the insight into what you've been doing with your own personal flow of consciousness will come to you evermore and as you gain this insight the tarot will also help you to recognize in what areas is you need to do some of your primary concentration for redirection and take it step by step it's amazing how strong these mental spiritual muscles can become as we go about it in a proper order proper order indeed so wake up in the morning my darling and call on the higher self In fact, don't just call.

Announce. After all, we're kings.

We don't have to act like groveling non-entities.

We call with assurance on the powers that are there and are ours, that we have been using anyway.

We announce to ourselves that these are the powers we invite to help keep our minds and our thoughts in a direction that goes opposite to those which have learned how to flow negatively and incidentally it helps even more if before we go to sleep at night we tell ourselves that when we wake up in the morning we're going to remember to call on it because when you fall asleep it's uh things can work while we sleep the consciousness never stops so perhaps we should say go to sleep at night telling yourself that when you wake up in the morning the first thought you're going to grasp is I reach out to the higher self I reach out to god I reach out to the the benefic powers. I reach out to the masters of wisdom, to the adepts, to the benefic forces, to help keep me reminded that I wish to direct my thinking, feeling processes in pictures and emotions that are opposite to that which brings sorrow to myself and life. And of course you'll have to pick one by one.

You cannot just do it as a general thing. If you try to do everything at once you get nothing done you need to work with the areas but I think that we've given you at least a partial insight into the tea there's so much more but perhaps this will help us to become a more loving consciously co-creating aspect of the one life helping to lift the flowers and the frustrations in the world the cabalistic