4. Tarot - Heightens Your Understanding of Experience

The title for this morning's talk, Tarot Heightens Your Understanding of Experience.

Now, those of you who have been coming each Sunday morning, I hope are remembering that we've been discussing to quite a large degree the principle involved in terms of patterns that we form, the basic kind of images that become more or less habitual in our nature, and our responses to these patterns or these images that we hold in our minds and hearts.

And the reason we have such problems when we attempt any new undertaking when we attempt any new response to life experiences the reason we have these problems I hope we've all come to understand that every habit pattern although it may have served a great good for a previous period we do come to a point where that pattern has to be smashed it has to be broken it has to be transmuted and the energy used renewed into the next step or the next area or the next necessity in life because if we could not break ourselves of the patterns of yesterday and we could not really evolve at all we'd be stuck in one particular pattern one way of response only one reaction and we would get so bored with ourselves and each other that it certainly would not only wouldn't be funny because we'd be incapable of seeing either the funny side of it or the lack of humor in as much as we'd be so frozen therefore the ability or the capacity to have a complex type of consciousness the ability or the capacity to be many things the ability the capacity to respond to innumerable elements in life is dependent on our ability to dissolve patterns of yesterday and reform new patterns not to get rid of all of them because if you got rid of all of them you wouldn't be a consciousness don't you see we tried to point out to you that just like learning how to play a musical instrument requires the formation of habit patterns before you can fully give yourself to the creativity of it.

Learning how to be a more or less safe driver on the freeway, and I'm afraid it's usually less. Nevertheless, the principle is there. Also depends on proper habit patterns so that we do not have to think about driving. All we have to do is think about avoiding the maniacs, and it's much easier to do that. I'm sure you will all agree when we don't have to think about what foot has to go on what pedal and just which direction the steering must go towards in order to get away from or get towards any specific spot. So habit patterns are an essential aspect of the ability to put into the subconscious part of our consciousness those things we have already learned how to do.

And the older we are as souls, the older we are as centers of expression for the divine will of course the more habit patterns have we formed and because of the ability to have formed more and more complex habit patterns we now have that magnificent something we call the subconscious level of mind which can run the body he beat the heart do the breathing blink the eyes they do the myriad and one things necessary digest the food so we don't have to think about it if we did you know what trouble we'd be in and when we do think about it we usually become hypochondriac and everything stops cold because there's some elements that has been developed and remember always they have been developed because Because there was a time when consciousness was self-conscious about that development.

Otherwise, we could not have formed that habit pattern. And so we call that level the knowledge of nature. And the knowledge of nature holds all the various habit patterns that have survived, that have been constructive in bringing about more and more complex developments in the growth of vehicles or forms.

Both in the smallest and largest creatures. Now, because this is a knowledge that we say resides in nature and in which we share as child of God, therefore child of the feminine substance and growing aspect of God, which we may call nature, this doesn't mean that we should do do ala ala to nature and say nature is always right because after all nature is the thing that receives each growing creative development and once it has become a habit pattern it goes into the subconscious mind and therefore within this mind of nature the part of the mind we share incidentally not only with each other but with all creatures below man qabalah calls it the vital soul also the animal soul it is within this area which entire and the Tarot key we have symbolized in many ways but the high priestess is in itself most symbolic of the principle involved because this is the subconscious receptivity of the substance of God's mind or consciousness and it receives the patterns and from the receipt of these patterns the impact from our consciousness it flows then into expression and the flowing into expression actually is done because the habit patterns have been formed and have developed and have become successful though occasionally some of them are not so successful or they are successful only for a certain period like take the dinosaurs now this was an extraordinarily successful habit pattern that was formed within nature for the survival of this type of creature during a history within the evolution of life on this planet nevertheless when changes came this habit pattern developed by these creatures the dinosaurs and their relatives these were so fixed they were so set that they could not survive change what did survive it that which nature again had just begun creating more and more the kind of vehicle that was more complex that could adapt to both cold and climate and warm climate the kind that could carry its internal temperature with it and therefore be more free so we had new habit patterns developed while those creatures which were of God which were not a mistake some scientists seem to feel but just because a certain type of creature filled its purpose and then became extinct that this is one of the indications of the failure of God or At least the failure of nature. Well In Qabalah, we do not call this a failure We say that each phase requires a certain amount of knowledge Each phase has within this knowledge Therefore those habit patterns which make it easier for the center of consciousness that's evolving to move into newer areas of experience. Therefore, always, habit patterns of yesterday or that which resides within the nature mind or nature or subconsciousness, always there will be some part of these patterns that must be dissolved or destroyed in order to bring about the next development or the next evolution. Now, if we are to understand experience at all we have to understand that otherwise we are going to miss the whole idea entirely we have to understand then that when we hear from the Bible when I was a child I thought as a child I spake as a child and when I became a man it shouldn't have been man when I became a man and or a woman, I put away childish things. When we realize that this has to do with being able to withdraw from one pattern and build a new one, we start to see that everything we have ever done, which means all past experience, has been grist for the mill of our higher soul.

That not only has it been that but that all patterns of yesterday were absolute essentials for whatever it is we are now that no matter what we have done this is experience and there's only one way we learn anything and it's through experience how often have those of you who are parents tried to save your children heartache and tears by giving your children of your wisdom your knowledge and found that all that happened is that they decided you were either a square or an old fogey or a freak or words to that effect. And you have to sit quietly then, those of you who've had children who reach that stage, and in a way weep silently, knowing that the child is going to have to get in there and make the mistakes. And if the child has the capacity, has achieved the evolutionary level then this child would take the experience and grow its own wisdom its own understanding out of this experience and then how many of us if we haven't been parents let's just go back in our minds and think about the time when we were children adolescents and we get the same picture do you remember how you felt about your parents at least at times do you remember how ashamed you were of them well maybe some of you were not ashamed consciously but you were in some way do you remember developing a resentment towards one or both of the parents because of their attempt to say dominate or to control or to advise and do you remember every one of us surely have felt this and I hope we all felt it mightily because the extreme reaction is often very necessary in order to cut the psychological or psychic umbilical cord to our parents and this of course is the reason that no one can learn for someone else when we understand this particular principle then we can start to see that in order to evolve at all we need to certainly understand just what experience is we need to understand what our own thinking and feeling processes are we need to watch our own attitudes and try to understand what gives them to us and then we need to decide if we see certain reactions that are freezing us or keeping us from going into our tomorrow or trying to keep us stuck in that rut. We need to see that here is an area we need to dissolve.

We need to grow if we are going to grow at all. Some of us are very much against growth, you know, at least at certain periods, and we want to stay exactly as we are. The infant in the mother's womb most often is very reluctant to come out of that lovely area. It doesn't have to breathe for itself. It doesn't have to eat for itself. It doesn't have to do any work. It floats in a rapture. Everything is taken care of, and it's a marvelous state of being. And, of course, even our modern psychologists admit that the major trauma that we receive as souls is being kicked out of that heaven and I can well believe it because I have enough of my own inner memories of these levels and experiences to realize how correct they are and perhaps even more than they realize they may be a little materialistic about it I see it from the spiritual level but the material level is a reflection or an expression or manifestation of the spiritual truth. So we have to get kicked out, in other words, we have to get out of one place. We have to get over certain attitudes in order to really be ready for the next stage or to be able to comprehend what the previous stage was. I have often thought that people do not ever really learn from and then overcome their problems. What they actually do, they outgrow their problems. And what do we do when we outgrow our problems? Well, it's again, again the very same idea exists as when we think of the baby who outgrows the problem of walking after it's taking plenty of spills and outgrows the problem of throwing food all over its face and everywhere else after it's learned mental motor coordination well the same principle exists this for us. We outgrow one type of conduct as a result of learning a new way or developing a better understanding of how to do whatever it is we've been attempting to do. So we run into all kinds of misinterpretations of our experience, and this is where we need tarot, and we need tarot desperately up to a certain point we have many aids in growth of course unhappily the major part of humanity is going nowhere fast and actually it seems to be winding up around the back sides more than anything else the way it runs in circles and it's in such a hurry too the breathlessness of it it reminds me of the new york subways the minute they get out there I don't know what it is. It's a psychic something. The minute people get out of their offices and they may have nothing to do, no place to go, they may be going home to the loneliest room you can imagine, but there seems to be this necessity, this absolute necessity to get out there and rush, run, push. If you're going to miss that subway, my God, the heavens are going to fall because if they only run once a minute.

And some people have called it the prize nightmare of the world the subways in new york and one wonders why the people are wonderful wherever we go really but you see they're stuck in a pattern they've been caught in a pattern that they don't need and the energy they waste getting nowhere fast in order to have more time to be miserable in is beyond description. Well, we do the same thing unfortunately in so many other ways and understanding experience is what's going to help us to understand, become aware of the areas in which we do these foolish things, to wake up and of course laughing at ourselves is the first essential as I'm sure you can see because until we can chuckle at the nonsense in ourselves we're going to have to take this nonsense and uh and moan and groan and waste even more energy than the new yorkers do over that subway by tearing our hair or banging our heads against the wall and screaming woe is me that takes a lot of energy too of course it's dramatic and if we want to dramatize that's fine uh still You know, because God is a great dramatist, and we're still being children of the Most High, but I think rather young ones, don't you, when we have that necessity or have that requirement in our attitudes towards our experiences.

But you see, when we can see our reactions and responses as being habit patterns that need attention, as being the clumsy little patterns that we've developed in our yesterday when we were a little bit younger than we are today when we can see it that way we can afford to chuckle at our reactions just like we chuckle at the way the baby falls it's so clumsy and yet isn't it adorable well we can start feeling that way about ourselves and if you think it's not impossible I give you my word of honor it is possible to feel just that way in other words to see your own foolishness to see your own maturity to chuckle and say well this is really immature but there's kind of a charm and perhaps even a lovable-ness about it and of course I therefore I go about insisting that everyone who loves me should love me not in spite of my fault but even because of them so as to make me feel truly loved just like we love a little baby not in spite of the fact that it's clumsy when it's learning how to walk but even because of it it is a growing creature and that's what we are understanding our experience in this way or taking it to heart in more of the hearty way of the smile and the charm reaction gives us a greater ability to get into those patterns and really change them with extraordinary speed of course the more we change these patterns the more joyous and free we become every time we free ourselves of an outworn pattern we have gained this much more freedom for a spirit I mean I don't mean the divine spirit because that is always free I mean the reflected spirit that is a part of that divine and that is being grown into becoming a conscious cooperating part of that one that whole so we take the tarot in our work because we know that some patterns which were fine for the time that we had them have definitely been outgrown and yet we are still hanging on to them just like for instance we hang on to our wisdom teeth and to our appendix uh unconsciously uh in and through mother nature but there are a few people being born here and there who come in without wisdom teeth and without appendix incidentally I just did it halfway the upper wisdom teeth I came without but for some strange reason I was still stuck in the pattern the genetic pattern of nature with the lower wisdom teeth and so those I have but you see the The lack of usage in relation to the wisdom teeth just makes it start to atrophy as an image in the subconscious part of nature for the species homo sapiens.

That means us, you know, people.

And as it starts to weaken this pattern because of non-use, the non-use melts it out and it of that image in the higher self and finally when it reflects into building its vehicles that which is not required anymore is done away with and how has it happened from the gradual dissolution of a hobbit pattern because there was a time when we had larger jaws and we used those wisdom teeth to chew with and all the things one does with teeth especially the teeth that are further back in the mouth. And there was a time in our very early evolution when we were working our way towards being able to grow a physical vehicle that was as complex as this human vehicle, where we had a sort of second stomach. And so the vestige of that is in what we call the appendix. But you see how little by little our species has been giving it up so that it has shrunk.

And it's gotten smaller and smaller until some people now are being born without it at all.

And it's really a matter of a transfer or change or melting down of a pattern. So in tarot we feel that those who have to keep studying themselves and their actions with an eagle eye in order to find and root out all this ugliness and all this evil they're just having a good time being masochists because again they're using this as an excuse to beat themselves over the head and I think just watching how nature evolves as vehicles is a good way to learn how to deal with our own patterns and that means that what we do when we want to learn from experience is to deliberately use whatever means possible with our conscious minds because remember you always have to use the conscious mind to make any change to use our conscious mind with which to form another pattern and that pattern must be such that it is in opposition to the habit pattern that is holding us back in the way we react to people to life to anything so that the the energy gradually gets drained away and that pattern develops the atrophy of non-use whereas the energy enters into the new image. And this is how we change the most vital parts of our nature. And we do it to a degree so much more rapidly than we could in any other way when we use the occult method that it is fantastic beyond belief how some patterns can be changed, where personalities are practically unrecognizable in just a few years.

Now, of course, one of the problems that we have with lots of aspirants is that they aspire beautifully, provided it's going to be given to them in a pill. And it's okay, I've got to be a quickie pill, naturally. Everything has to be faster. You know, we have a greater speed to get around the world in which I'm in favor of of course and we take all this delight and speed and not realizing the inertia that's in our nature we decide that we're for god and man and the angels fine and as in as much as we are for all these things why we have already earned by virtue of being for it are the the great and marvelous privilege of being given in a capsule the formula that's going to deliver us from whatever it is we think is evil yet this is not the way growth works every human being must reach a point sooner or later and I always go on the assumption that anyone one who comes to build as a viaduct of temple has reached that point some to a more intense degree than other but I go on the assumption that this point has been reached and that is that there is an inner recognition even if it hasn't come out into full bloom there's an inner recognition that the way to liberation from the old in order to fulfill our destiny is to get busy and get ready for a long trip to realize that the work of the spirit is a day-by-day, moment-by-moment, second-by-second affair, as a matter of fact.

To think of attaining whatever it is we can attain, not in terms of, ah, magical formula, tomorrow God will put a fairy on my shoulder, Then there'll be an influx of cosmic consciousness and all my troubles will be over The one things I can tell you my darlings is that you could have an influx of cosmic consciousness and your troubles will not be over I'm a living at a station. I'm afraid to this because although certain work Certain abilities and meditation will without doubt bring different degrees of experience in cosmic consciousness It still does not take the personality in a one fell swoop Changes it from the three-month-old stage embryo all full-blown to a newborn baby You still have to go through the stages and only those who have really been through hell Seem to be ready to take these steps not necessarily hell only in this lifetime Usually it involves quite a few lifetimes of quite a bit of health to finally grind the soul down from its patterns of yesterday, from its self-will, to make us, we might say, weary, and I mean really weary, of the incorrect interpretations of life, to make us ready to start looking at a larger picture, more open-minded. In other words, we must come to a point where we're ready to drop everything, where we're ready to give up anything, because as long as we have to hang on to a pattern, then we already know whatever that pattern is and we cannot learn. In that area we're stuck until we manage to overcome that particular pattern.

So it takes the soul who has truly been through the mill. And you know our Eastern brethren tell us there's only one way to overcome desire and they say fulfill it now that sounds very naughty doesn't it well but maybe that's why people are naughty perhaps the inner mind the inner soul knows that the only way to overcome desire is to fulfill it because then when the desires are immature when they're not in accordance with the forward motion they have give you the backwash so to speak the karmic repercussion and then you say oh my god why did I ever want that or him or her whatever the case may be and so we've overcome that desire haven't we through fulfillment and of course many of us know that when we are still immature about what we want to meditate on or concentrate on as our life's goal we know that we're very apt to get it and that which comes with it very often that which comes with it is so god-awful we're going to overcome that desire in a very great hurry and that's very fortunate so we have all these elements that are involved we have the tarot keys which make an impact upon us by giving us in symbolic imagery the patterns of the principles of consciousness and the way consciousness works and in this manner we are using the same thing I mentioned before we're using an image to in order to milk away the energy from a pattern which would be its opposite or a group of patterns which would be its opposite which we've been carrying on for many incarnations for example as you perhaps have heard me say before when we were roaming the forests and had to fight for survival and when the higher soul was just running his vehicle get killed off high white and handsome since after all how was the consciousness going to learn how to be alert how to be quick how to cope with environment so it wasn't going to be in trouble and in danger all the time kind of sounds mean doesn't it and I've had an argument or two with dad about it but you know I haven't got very far with him on that one anyway we we have patterns within us having come through such a long long evolutionary series where we still cling uh not realizing why we do it we still cling to what should be outmoded ways of handling things for instance we still try to knife each other in the back in order to get the upper hand we still cling to this competitiveness in order to prove ourselves he who knows he's one with God doesn't have to compete with his fellow man to know it and he who knows he's one with the divine life doesn't have to compete with his fellow man to prove that he's worth being alive and he who's one with the knowledge of his inevitable destiny certainly doesn't have to lie or cheat or compete or kick or use whatever message necessary to gain the upper hand because you see he who is strong and so automatically has the upper hand in a psychic spiritual way and when you have that you don't need to go in for all this other nonsense Why do you think people are continuously indulging in all this legal murder?

So Humanity is atavistic It is still clinging to ways and methods of survival which it has outgrown and that is why so many thousands of us sort of working at helping to increase and intensify That the teachings to bring extra influx of energy to channel these higher spiritual energies from the higher levels so that we can help this atavistic tendency to melt down more rapidly because this is the most dangerous time and dangerous age here the intelligence the consciousness has already become so highly evolved our forebrain is just magnificent I always hide mine at too high the bangs We've evolved this tremendous ability and capacity for abstract thinking, for solving all sorts of problems on the physical plane, and we're still using atavistic methods, like hitting with a club before somebody hits us with a club, bashing our heads in. Only now we do it much more, in a much more civilized manner, as you surely realize, because we managed to get a hundred, a thousand, a million people at once. We're just getting better all the time in our atavism and so the time has come when this has to be discharged, that energy has to be disrupted. That is the energy towards evil, towards this false competitiveness, towards this killing. We had to once, that's the point, but just because we had to once doesn't mean it remains so and never are these things changed except people like you and I change them first in our own mind, in our own heart. And just doing that alone, incidentally, we emanate our attitude and our response to life, which keeps washing into that nature mind, subconscious mind, because our part or anyone else's part, they're all remembered. They keep having each other's currents and streams.

And so we keep filling the mind with this new image and we keep stirring it with extra power and for every one human being who overcomes some of these atavistic tendencies and really learns how to channel the more intense spiritual energies we have hundreds and I mean literally hundreds who who will respond to the one person because the spiritual energy being of a higher order is naturally more intense and starts affecting that leavening process or that transmuting process in others and those of you who have wondered how can I serve if you only realized that you serve even when you do nothing if you learn to watch your mental emotional processes understand those parts of you that are reacting to the old to the outworn you don't sit in judgment on that outworn or outmoded because then you're wasting your energy how are you going to fix it if you're going to waste your energy condemning it you don't condemn the baby for its mistakes but you recognize what it is and you say aha you little toddler there you're not getting away with that and bring in the positive picture it's a happier way to go by the way it's a much more comfortable way to evolve and with all the discomfort in life anyway I'm against discomfort and under any conditions and so that's probably why god doesn't put more revolution in my care or we might have a whole bunch of infants being held never learning how to walk but we each serve in whatever way we can of course the tarot then is the thing that we use to help bring a group of occurrences uh into expression in within your own consciousness to first of all give you an image that is uh an image of contact with minds and awarenesses higher than ours so that we telepathically get linked through the image or the symbol every one of them with that state of knowing that the highest one already knows through a hierarchy and that promotes then our ability and capacity to start understanding more and more of each stage of our own consciousness each reaction that we have and we start becoming aware of our feeling nature and And we start seeing why it is that we react sometimes with repulsion, sometimes with hatred.

And we start seeing this as just nonsense, childishness. And we start seeing how much more joyous it is and how much more fulfilling to look at another human being and say, my God, you're tremendous, child of God, or whatever way you want to put it. In the modern, I don't know what the modern slang is today. Since my daughter grew up, I've become more square than square used to be in those days even.

But they always every generation always forms its new terminologies which I think is wholesome incidentally because it shows the need for the growing mind to step away from the psychic umbilical cord and go out and make its own mistakes and form its own root of individuality without being overcome overwhelmed and therefore unable to progress as a complete individual away from the influence of the parental types of figures, which are necessary to use with love, with wisdom, but not to be tied to, which of course we have. And we have this going on far more than we realize. In other words, human beings who still have not managed to bring about enough courage in their own psyche or to feel free to think their own thoughts and feel their own emotions and worship their own god whatever that might be or in their own way except it be in the way of the parents but of course in occultism we usually haven't got that problem since everyone in occultism except in the rarest cases has stepped away from the old the outmoded uh searching for the highest in themselves and this alone indicates the rebel, the one that's helping to break old patterns, not only for yourselves, ostensibly, but for all of life.

Tarot, then, keep in mind, tunes you into the higher understanding, gives you a focus for a positive image so that your old habit patterns can softly, subtly be melted down, intensifies your ability to think clearly and your ability to feel profoundly it does all this not overnight as we told you you don't get it as a pill it does it day by day gradually safely miraculously so that your personality is as different from year to year as an infant when it was born is different from the way it is when it's at the 21 year old stage and I am not exaggerating those of you who've worked with it know this is so and this doesn't mean that even that finishes it because then from that point we go on again you will be forming new patterns today which tomorrow you will realize no that was for the understanding I had and needed then now I'll have to knock these patterns down and form some new ones and please don't become weary at the idea or again you'll be missing the message the tarot has for you in understanding experience because it isn't in the fulfillment of what you want that fulfillment lies it isn't and it never will be except in the knowledge of who what you are and that will just be another step towards further growth when you realize and experience that it's in the ecstasy of knowing you're on the way it's in the glory and the miracle of being able to say each day the experiences of today were lived in and through me by my higher soul and are a miraculous inevitable step towards that which I am becoming towards the spiritual goal which it is my destiny to achieve you will be able to look then at each moment at each experience when you look at a loved one you will be able to say I love because the divine loves in me and to the degree the divine lives me to that degree do I personally love with that much more intensity does that mean losing the personal love I know you've read that you must give up personal love well I'm an iconoclast I say the opposite I say love personally but love personally in a new way.

Because how are we going to know we have love unless we have persons and trees and stars and creatures to love? How? This is really interpreting experience as we need to. God would not have had the requirement to grow and devolve individualized centers of itself self were it not for the need to have personal experience in love because we are persons seems to me god has gone through an awful lot of trouble to grow personalities some may say ye gods what for uh but that's if you do you haven't realized how glorious and miraculous and delightful and charming and wonderful and marvelous I can find more if you want me to the personality is and so the ability to understand experience finally comes or develops into the realization that everything you see everything you hear is the divine seeing through me as person when you hear the divine hearing through me as person no one will ever hear anything like I hear last night the mockingbird sang and I've heard people complain as I told you about the mockingbird making a lot of noise and waking him up and I woke up and listened to this these dulcet melodic tones and I thought what a miracle this is I mean how fortunate I am imagine how much that mockingbird must love and how much God is loving in and through it because that's its mating song as well as its announcement to the rest of the males you stay away from here you kid this is my domain the charm of this you know just imagine shouting its song of triumph into the night isn't it worth waking up for well these are the things in other words our response to experience is related to what significance we give to this experience and so if we endow our experience with miracle miracle it is and it permits the fullest divinity to shine in and through us and therefore bring uh the transmuting to the the this pain pain-ridden world to bring the extra charm, the more fulfilling and permeating love.

Please remember then, experience is not something you want to get away from. The only way you will learn is through experience. If you make a mistake, don't try to put psychic daggers into your heart with self-condemnations. Just learn and realize this is something that will give you more understanding about your own motives and just keep reaching through the tarot for extra insight for extra help, for extra perception and when you love don't try to make it only personal love personally to the hilt and bring God into it and realize that your ability and capacity to love no matter what it be, whether you're a little cat or dog or tree or your beloved, know that God is in it or you couldn't love. Therefore it makes it that much more of a miracle. And so the meaning of experience becomes something other and you will start to understand that every pain is not really what it seems. It is that glorious, wondrous growth process bringing you to more capacity to feel more deeply, love more profoundly, have the rapture of livingness more intensely, and to know your own immortality more completely.

Always it is this, and please remember it.