2. How Tarot Symbolism Can Change Habit Patterns

Now, the title for this morning's talk is How Tarot Symbolism Contains Habit Patterns. Last Sunday morning, we were discussing the... I better read the title because I never remember the names of the titles, you know. We were discussing Tarot as a link between self and subconscious states of mind. And be pointed out to you that in actuality the Subconscious mind or the subconscious part of the mind is not something that is in any way Separate from the conscious mind. It is just a certain phase or state of receptivity It's a state of suggestibility Which we took up the week before that is in more detail than usual it's a state of suggestibility which is just part of the way consciousness is now we also explain to you and we feel we should recapitulate it because those of you who were here last Sunday morning will I think appreciate being reminded of one of the most important and primary points that were brought out and those who were not will then be familiar with this particular aspect that was discussed us. We pointed out to you that the powers residing in consciousness are so fantastic that we have a tendency to separate some of the phenomena which occur, thinking that they are not a part of everyday activity of consciousness itself. And we showed you how under the state of hypnosis a person could be touched with the end of a pencil and be told this is a burning cigarette and instantly and obligingly raise a blister. In other words, the subconscious part of the mind, anybody, as soon as it receives an image, and this image, the receiving of the image, is really the suggestion. As soon as it receives an image, acts appropriately to this image in order to respond and bring about protection for the organism, for the vehicle which it is running at all times so that the development of a blister from the point of a pencil just because one is told this is a lighted cigarette is not any different a phenomenon as we reminded you than that which is called stigmata in the more orthodox religious circles or also in the psychic circles Stigmata, if you recall, we pointed out that those people who have experienced this have usually, in some religious areas, been sainted.

And it has been decided that these are far beyond any other level of evolution which we think of in terms of the normal or average human being, inasmuch as they were saintly enough to develop the stigmata of the bleeding from the thorns on the head the bleeding of the hands, the feet and the side that is the stigmata which is reproducing the so-called suffering of Jesus of Nazareth under the crucifixion but we tried to show you and I hope you were able to see this and I hope that you are going to remember this because when you can see it in this way it's going to help you in innumerable other ways to understand your consciousness and its powers and the powers of consciousness in all areas really we wanted you to try to realize to understand that when consciousness fastens itself upon an image and identifies itself with this image it will immediately reproduce reproduce the phenomena which is part of that particular image so that those who develop stigmata they may be called saints they may be called other lovely names but in essence what they have done is responded to a hypnotic suggestion either given to themselves or received from others or combined and added upon until it's become intense and strong so that they have identified themselves with an image a picture of the bleeding of the hands of the feet of the side and so on and this to them uh is supposed to be so inspiring that they even have ecstasy well I hope I'm not annoying anyone or upsetting anyone when I say to me this is the ecstasy of masochism and not what I consider the true ecstasy because you know sadism is that which has extraordinary ecstasy and rapture because of the ability or power to inflict pain and masochism is that which receives ecstasy because of the ability to receive pain and it in some way in some strange way makes the personality feel that it is being fulfilled because of its response to this pain now these These are of course extreme cases, but what we showed you was that our own reactions to everyday life are in no way different.

We give you an extreme only to show you that this principle functions at all times. If it didn't function at all times, it wouldn't be a basic principle. We tried to show you then that all pain is really the self-infliction because of the power of the image we that we have held that it is indeed an inevitable part of growth as we're going to point out in the subject that we're going to expand on this morning but that it goes off into its unbalanced phases and expressions and that therefore our suggestibility that is that which we permit ourselves to receive in terms of images these are the most potent factors in our consciousness and the only thing we can really work on intensely enough to change because this is in the area of control there's what images we choose to identify ourselves with or to receive as being correct or what images we choose to receive as indicating spiritual or what images we choose to receive to indicate something that is supposed to be unspiritual and never forget never forget how the cannibal chief threw the head of our United States forces off the island or just about did that when he was asked for help in order to get rid of those very evil people, the Japs as they were called by the forces from a particular island how the cannibal chief ordered the head of our forces away with our men and told him that he had given his people strict orders not to have anything to do with our people, with the Americans, because of the horrible immorality of the Americans who killed far more than they could possibly eat.

Realizing this, you can see that what we choose to accept as an image for good could be pretty ridiculous because, you see, the sad thing is the cannibal was so right.

It's probably far more moral to eat a person and kill only as many as you can eat than to just go killing in this insane manner if we're going to choose between the two but of course in occultism we're going to try to learn and most of us have learned that the whole need to kill or the use of this particular violent phase of personality is something that we are at this point attempting to outgrow it's part of a back evolution it's part of a habit pattern that we have had which perhaps we needed in fact we must have needed it so this brings us to the habit patterns and the overcoming of habit patterns because then tying up what we've just now recapitulated of course in a very condensed manner from last week tying this up then to what we are going to have to say this morning we can then realize at least we hope we can realize that the suggestions we've received have always been on what we may call the hypnotic order and that they form on the whole what we may call habit patterns this is the point let's try to define a little more clearly what we mean by habit patterns because you see in essence the true occultist is going to attain to liberation from all the nonsense of the world from poverty from fear from loneliness from ignorance the true occultist has to be able to understand the phases of consciousness and of course we haven't got any drive to even remotely approach the disciplines that we require in order to learn these phases until we achieve a state of evolution where we have the capacity to know what is being said an ability to start making our own consciousness something objective to ourselves up to a certain certain point in our evolution our consciousness is not objective and of course we can see this quite readily when we see immature human beings who react with violent emotion to so many things. If a person happens to be particularly tied up, say, in a specific religious area, and this person hears something said that he or she may think is tearing down that belief, this person will feel personally affronted. In other words, he or she is personally insulted, takes it personally. You can see there then that there is no ability for being objective about consciousness, since everything is being taken in this, shall we say, egotistical manner. Now the egotistical element, you see, the interesting thing about it is this. We all have it, and those of us who say we haven't, perhaps are the worst offenders because then we're egotistical about not being egotistical just like the people who are so proud of the humility therefore let's also understand what we mean by that particular term and then we can bring together the ideas of egotistical habit patterns and just what we can do about them once we understand what they are and whether we really want to get rid of them or whether we want to learn how to discriminate between them etc. I mean ad infinitum I think you can realize.

All right then, if as taught in Qabalah the I that is that in you which says I see, I hear, I feel, I hope, I yearn, I react to whatever. If that in you which has that sense of I is definitely an aspect of the shall we say all I or the I am as Moses referred to it or the cosmic life which is the total I or livingness of the universe if that in you which gives you the sense of I is an aspect of that therefore the sense of I-ness definitely would have to give you a special feeling of importance or at least it should you see I'm not one who says don't feel important I don't know anything is more boring or do you then those people who meekly try to hang their head and say nothing because they're they're going to be expressing a sort of spiritual what they think the spiritual type of personality all they are then are just nuisances on the whole taking up a lot of room without a real surge of interrelationship you know the vitality of living that exists between us so let's think of this idea of I for moments first and to realize that in as much as we have a sense of I this very sense of I would inevitably give us an uplift or give us a feeling of importance in as much as the having of this sense of I although we may not know it consciously is the indication that we are an expressing I-ness, I with a dash, n-e-s-s, of the most high. All right, now then, according to the evolutionary level of the individual, this sense of importance of the I would be expressed in certain ways, wouldn't it? And where a person is very young or immature as a soul, it is quite natural that such to an individual would be pretty self-centered because this part of the eye is just being developed don't you see into something strong and really it needs to be self-centered it needs to be selfish now I'm not recommending that you go out and be selfish or self-centered in that way nevertheless we do have to understand the workings of evolution and the workings of the evolution of our consciousness if we're going to become the masters instead of the slaves of forces that are on the immature levels of expression and this is what I certainly hope and pray all of us are after when we gather here together because this is the only hope of the world reaching consciously at this point towards those realizations now then this sense of I also it's important for it to be able to not only build a physical vehicle but to remain in it as long as possible in order to gather all the impressions that we get through that amazing miraculous experience of what we call incarnating in and through a body and if you will think back to what conditions were just a very short time ago, so few thousands of years ago and even so few hundreds of years ago in other ways, you can see that in order for this evolving maturing I, that sense of your own identity, to continue to be able to survive within a specific environment, it had to be very paranoia, shall we say, suspicious. It had to figure that practically everything is an enemy because it was. All kinds of wild beasts might come thundering down or all kinds of other tribes everybody has a need for a certain amount of clothing that means the fur from the beasts, certain amount of food especially during the wild during the ice ages the this part of it was particularly important and then those who were agriculturally able to express because of the different climatic developments even they had to feel that enemies were converging because say a herd came thundering down when you're just learning or how to grow a garden you know then they're enemies they're enemies as far as your survival is concerned as an individual and so a habit pattern develops the habit pattern of looking upon others as interferences with that which is going to keep you alive. It stems from something miraculous and wondrous, like the eternal livingness of the One I AM, which you are an eternal part of. But in the compression or the condensing down or the limitation of you as a specific center of this, in evolving an ability to consciously know who and what you are, to develop the depth of I that can remain an inviolate individualized I even though it is at the same time at one with all things it still has to know itself as something unique in and with the one the development of that during the earlier phases of your evolution and this involves every one of you it involves all of us all growth of consciousness goes through this particular development you can see that through incarnation The need to become something more actually made us, in some ways, very barbaric.

Far more barbaric than any creature could ever be. Why?

Because the human soul has been developing its own integral selfhood so that it can consciously be at one with that total I, or the all-self. So that it can consciously function as a co-creator in with and for that one whereas with the creatures who have not yet evolved to the level of that strong sense of I we have a different situation we have them acting only in terms of what is called instinct and we shouldn't say only because what is instinct? Instinct is the knowledge that the divine life on the level of its subconscious memory has formed through painful and I repeat through painful experiment that is through painful workings and growings within a certain sphere because remember in essence you the creature the blade of grass is an eternal part of an eternal livingness you always have been and you always will be but there is a difference between the all-encompassing unaware of personal individualized or unique selfhood of an all-encompassing ecstasy or rapture there's a difference between that and the rapture that one can have as a conscious center you might say as an actual living creative center in the mind of god this is very different than the various creatures that that deity or the life power has evolved within this range of vibrations which we call the physical universe it has been done through what through the use of habit patterns you see we haven't gotten away from that subject at all we've just been trying to show you and how do we mean it has done it through habit patterns all right now suppose a certain center the will of god which pushes as desire and as intention therefore pushes from with a center of itself to manage to gain a control into a livingness of a part of its substance that finally becomes what we may call living matter as against what we call inner organic matter but that too is livingness it's just livingness on so much lower a scale of consciousness as we could interpret it that we put a division there because it's really in a sense a division of a kingdom of consciousness So the primal will, the divine will, that central selfhood of divinity pushing its own concentrating, solidifying, an act of attention.

Now you know how hard it is to keep yourself concentrated in an act of attention on any one thing for very long, don't you?

And you know how all schools of thought have said the secret of attainment is concentration and it's only through concentration you finally achieve what is called meditation which is really a more advanced form of concentration actually so concentration is the key and concentration is what forms habit patterns and without habit patterns we couldn't have evolution at all because look if you didn't have the habit pattern developed in you of being able to drive your car without thinking consciously uh the mess we have on the freeways and on the roads would be something very difficult to even remotely describe wouldn't it we have a mess now but think what it would be if those of you who drive had not developed a habit pattern that is you don't have to consciously think of steering that wheel or stepping on this pedal or that pedal you do it without thinking while you tell somebody about what he did or she did or they did or what you hope or calling somebody names for not doing what you think they should do or whatever it amounts to your attention couldn't be free to do those things if you didn't have this habit pattern development what do you therefore and how did you get that habit pattern you concentrated when you were learning how to drive you concentrated and you may have given yourself some nervous indigestion and some people might have even given themselves ulcers they concentrated with such emotional disturbance and that happens far more than we realize though we have the amazing power to heal ourselves some of the effects of our attempts at learning how to deal with this cosmic substance in which we abide and to learn how to rule it in all the various ways. So you see, if you enjoy driving a car or if you enjoy driving it next to someone else, so you're still enjoying it, it's because of the ability to form a habit pattern in the same way. Suppose, like you notice how the little baby has to concentrate on every step, learning to walk. We had to concentrate on that all the time we'd never get anywhere would we we'd never get as far as getting a car we couldn't learn to handle a car we had to be concentrating on every step trembling motion why to learn how to gain control of a certain pattern or group of substances and what is it then a habit pattern is formed the minute you have the habit pattern is the freedom then you can not only walk you can run you can dance you can jump you can kick people and some people do a lot of pleasure out of that as well as they are doing whatever else we do with our feet but habit pattern gives us the power to do this enjoy the walking or to even misuse it and even the misuse brings its repercussions it's still a part of growth so you see and then speaking now if you had to think of how to pronounce every word. Would we ever communicate with each other? It had to become a habit pattern, didn't it? So something takes over. Practicing the scales on the piano or organ, no one even remotely starts to become a musician until first they've developed a habit pattern. So they do not have to think about what finger hits what note. Or then something even more complex, what group of fingers is hit what groups of notes then the various motions until there's an intricacy that is so miraculous there are so many trillions upon unnumbered trillions of motions take place in just lifting an arm and do you think it just came about from nothing no at some period in your evolution billions of years ago squadrillions of light years ago when did you learn each thing that is did you use conscious attention concentrate in order to develop a habit pattern so that a certain so that that ability is something that you have from then on you do not lose it all right the fact that you have the kind of body you have the fact that and remember the habit pattern is brought about through the image remember the power of the image it's always the holding of the image and pouring the force of the desire and the emotion into it that gives us these abilities and each time we have gained a new ability it's every time it's become habitual we can go on to the next thing well the fact that your central eye your beingness your individual selfhood is able to form itself, a body.

All this isn't anything it learned to do. It's a concentration. Remember, it's an image. And it says in occultism, God meditates the universe. Well, God meditates the universe, and that center in you, which is eternally one with God, meditates its own body, its own vehicles, not just the physical, but it all comes through the other bodies, but that isn't our subject for this morning. So you see, habit patterns are marvelous things.

Habit patterns are really the basic laws, the basic powers that have been received by the subconscious part of your creative mind. However, in the act of developing all these very extraordinarily wonderful habit patterns, because of our lack of awareness, because of our youth, because of our immaturity. We have also taken into ourselves habit patterns that are not quite so beautiful from a further point of view. I remind you again of our cannibal chief with the head of the American forces. We have taken on and we have deep-seated within us the various habit patterns like the need to survive, which has been very important for us to utilize because this is what has helped us to develop more and more of a brain and more and more of a mentality to have more and more of a vehicle in and through which our higher soul can express more and more complex states of awareness and power.

So the need to immediately jump and throw a spear, for example, at one time, we grant that this was necessary. Barbaric yes but the infants are barbaric at least I always comfort myself by reminding myself that the physical vehicle is an end result I don't say only an end result because we shouldn't say only to such a miracle still it is an end result and it isn't the essence of the being and so the process if we in order to achieve our human kind of consciousness have done this so will will those who have had such activities done to them or suffered from them, so will they in time, it seems to be something we need to go through, and then go out of, and that's, here's where the problem comes in. Getting from one kingdom to the next, or getting perfected into the highest part of a kingdom, so we can go into the next, and I'm talking the kingdom of consciousness, this is where we start to meet some of the most the stubborn kinds of habit patterns that interfere with the process.

So this is why occultism does and must keep hammering, that is true occultism, on the fact that every one of us has to become aware of how our consciousness works. We all have to watch to see how we assimilate and absorb the suggestions of others which are what? Remember what we said, hypnotic states, which we immediately react to and whatever in us has already developed a habit pattern that is sympathetic to that idea. Or if we have not yet developed a habit pattern that stands guard against the idea we are not living from our higher centers of self-government but we are also reacting on spheres of barbarism which it is time we outgrew so the egotism which was important at one time has to become a higher form of egotism now this is where tarot comes in I'm sure that all of us know that just like St. Paul said the good that I would I do not and the evil that I would not this I do I'm sure we've all found this true of ourselves more than once and also the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak you remember we mentioned that last Sunday morning I think now why is this?

Again I point out these are the habit patterns not just from this incarnation incarnations. We have brought them over not only from a few incarnations. We have some of them still with us from before we were even human. And some of them are, and in fact most of them, are things we certainly want to keep permanently.

Because would you like to have to consciously concentrate on how to run your body?

Wouldn't we be in a mess? Like the centipede asked which leg comes after which? Became helpless. That's exactly what would happen to us if we didn't have these marvelous, miraculous habit patterns, which is our share of the knowledge of the universal life for nature, and it is in and through our subconsciousness that this knowledge resides. All right then, the first necessity is to at least be able to recognize what for this time and for for this period is a positive habit pattern and which or what is a negative to first learn how to differentiate. Now a lot of our modern psychologists seem to think that the moment you tell someone, oh the only reason you have trouble is for instance maybe you have an Oedipus complex or an Electra complex, this is going to cure everything. Or to say, oh it's only because your Aunt Minnie kicked you or a dog growled at you and frightened you that you have this or that phobia.

You uh the minute you you're aware of it this is supposed to cure everything but have you found it so when you've become aware of something in you that may have been uh the charge the first charge that started the development of a of a habit pattern from suggestion did you find that knowing what it was stopped it suppose uh you're addicted to um alcohol and say oh the reason I'm an alcoholic I hope you're not the reason I'm I'm an alcoholic is because I felt insecure I didn't feel strong enough because my mother pampered me is that going to cure the alcoholism if it were even the true reason but of course we find some extraordinary reasons for things that's part of the creative imagination in our consciousness which makes us so interesting you know I'm always fascinated with the reasons people find for things and I think it's very good I'm not against this it's part of the development of our whole creative development the whole creative part of the personality but the thing is to be aware of what it is is most vital at the first step anyway so we need this first step that is the awareness of what focused a charge what what brought enough of an emotional charge to make an imprint into a further feeding of a habit pattern or the development of a new habit pattern.

Well, when we come to tarot then, we come to a way to handle these things. You can say from now till doomsday, I'm not going to get angry, I'm not going to get angry. Next time that this thing occurs, you're going to get angry. If you can hold it off one tenth of one one half of one percent of a second mathematical you'll be doing good so just making up your mind I am going to or not going to that way it doesn't really help very much of course making up your mind in the area in an area where you have not got a habit pattern for or against does make it easier to do something they're not very much easier because you haven't yet formed a habit pattern. A habit pattern is something that makes the energies go just like you have a channel. The waters flow.

And the waters will flow to whatever area you are channeling it to. As we make channels or rivers, the water will go to whatever area the rivers flow from and to. I mean, the connections there. Well, our habit patterns are that way. It's taking the basic living energy of our beingness, which really in essence is the desire nature. It is the vital living flow of life.

And channeling it. And as we channel it, at first it's just very thin, you know, and that's where you keep getting floods. But you keep working on that channeling and you dig a deeper and deeper groove until you have a very good strong flow of that river.

And that's how you develop a habit, any kind of habit pattern. Both your good ones and your bad ones. You use the same force, you use the same methods.

Right now with tarot, what we do is work on the real essence of the problem. Because certainly we don't want to get rid of our habit patterns, and we can't, even if we wanted to. We've reached a stage where they're a substratum of our entire being. But we do want to discover what habit patterns are interfering with our ability to live fully, to rule our environment, to make proper and happy relationships, to experience divinity, to know the meaning of ourselves in life, to know what our relationship is to the Lord of the universe and to each other. These are the things, but we have habit patterns that interfere with this knowing, because we have habit patterns that say, I am a different, I am separated, for example. Now this habit pattern of feeling that we are I am a separate being naturally instantly blocks off the energy flow that will help you experience the unity you have with others so you see here is a habit pattern needs to be changed all right some of you will say well what do we do then change it so we become an amorphous nothing well you can't but the idea is to change a sense of identity That isn't all of it. That's just the first part of it As long as you identify with that portion of your being which dr. Case always called the personality and that means the intellectual emotional responses in and through The body of this time as long as you identify with that Your reactions are going to be in terms of all the habit patterns you have formed through many incarnations as well as this one So your first job is to pull away, that is to take that concentration, because remember it's only concentration that builds new habit patterns, to take that power of yours, concentration, which is the basic living force of the universe, your full desire nature, and to switch to make a new channel for energy flow in order to realign your self-identification with what it really is, which is yourself as an eternal immortal individualized center of expression for the one divine life individualized and yet at for it in it of it with it to develop that sense of that you know like Jesus said that my father doeth the works this is the first thing well that alone will not change the habit pattern because that's only having taken the first steps.

One of the greatest weaknesses in our mystical types is that having managed to switch this sense of identification, then they go off into the glorious ecstasies and raptures, which definitely come when they succeed in getting the channel widened through concentration, and they say, ah, this is it, and they want to float in their mystical ecstasy forever. Well this isn't what the Lord of life intends or the Lord of life wouldn't have gone through so much trouble forming all these habit patterns and although we may decide is it wasn't worth the trouble and although we may feel like arguing with God about the ways it's been done at times the fact still remains has been an extraordinary amount of universal energy concentrated in extraordinary ways to bring about the ability for special very complex images to be held and concentrated and meditated on to for the functioning of the energy functioning of a body of soul and the interrelationships that exist in the whole universal life therefore the first step is brought about in working with tarot in the only way that subconsciousness will respond quickly, intensely, and positively without the negativeness of the hypnotic state.

Because remember what I said about hypnotism. Under hypnotism, you have the extra concentration that's taking place. That's one reason it happens so rapidly. The person who's hypnotized takes his consciousness away. Way he gives it up his self-consciousness the direction to the one who is doing the hypnotizing and because of that he's got his attention so focused that any suggestion comes in and you have that extra energy to react like for instance raising a blister does this mean that it is a positive state or the way it should be done no the reason for this is it's surface for one thing you hypnotize a person tell them that they can't stand smoking anymore and they're going to hate it and this is work quite often with a good subject but you know what happens then if there's that steeper something that's causing that secondary habit pattern they'll go off they become drug addicts or alcoholics isn't it better to be a nicotine addict than a drug addict or alcoholic or they may go off into some other phase not having that as an expression for the concentration concentration of certain energy tensions They may just develop a complete emotional Emptiness Because in other words they've blocked a release of energy flow and it flows right back It's sort of like a backwash that makes them a true still still stagnant pool instead of active. So that you see sometimes secondary bad habits, and we're not saying it's a good habit, secondary bad habits are the way your inner self, you might say, keeps letting off excess so there won't be floods that could be damaging to the psyche because of its handling a certain amount of such intensive energy. Therefore the hypnotic method certainly is not the method it has been shown that although it does very good a great deal of good in a temporary way for things like anesthetic purposes during an operation and things like that it definitely is not the way to try to change habit patterns because all it does is switch the energy from one to something worse on account of it having gathered force and then going to the other so tarot achieves the change of habit patterns for you not by itself you have to do it but the principle of tarot involves using the one thing that subconsciousness responds to that is the suggestible receptivity of that part of you being that we call that by presenting it with an image every tarot key is not only one image it is a composite group of symbols within an image so that there is the impact of an image and each one has an image that deals with a certain state of your consciousness that has to do with all your evolution the evolution from the very beginningless beginningless times of beginnings down to whatever is going to be it deals with the whole principle of the evolution of consciousness yours so each tarot key is taken and where we receive the image of for instance somebody says to you oh I see you have bad liver or because maybe somebody looks a little yellow on the day they're giving them a negative suggestion they're immediately giving them an image you know that's black magic we have no right to give people negative images and we don't learn better why it rebounds on us in other ways so but even when it said what is it that does the work it is the image that's been presented to a person and if that person is receptive or suggestible and everybody is unless they have guards up with counter habit patterns that stop it and immediately discharge that flow into another area then there is another impact of problems to ourselves therefore working with the tarot we have we do something that is more than than of what it appears on the surface We are not only presenting images to subconsciousness which have a positive focus, but we are helping the subconsciousness in receiving these positive images to, shall we say, strain off all the energy that made up the old habit pattern into the new image, which is doing two things, changing the identification of the I and selfhood and the center of it from the little changing personality level to its true higher self level and along with that bringing a weakening of the habit patterns that are not in harmony with the positive line of the evolution of this principle towards attaining the higher goals so you see that this double element is involved and the miracle that it works I think most of you already know and it is my hope it is my prayer that all of you will know this and know it shortly and remember it does depend on you it depends on your wanting to put your attention on into the area of images which will make you something far beyond anything even your remotest desires could begin to dream about they are so fantastically more glorious it will make this earth a real heaven for you not by taking you away from understanding not by taking you away from perception of what is but by giving you that other to hold on to and to be able to give you the ability and capacity to permeate all these lower habit pattern levels with your force and your knowledge and therefore also make you another one of the servers of the light passing on this light to the various places you go the people you know and into the very air that you breathe and share with your fellow man