5. Improve Your Relationship with Others Through Tarot

Our title for this morning's talk, Improve Your Relationships with Others Through Tarot. I think that's a very good talk to be giving our newlyweds, or about to be really spiritually newlywed, because that which relates to people who must live intimately together really relates in other ways to everyone. And I think when we discover a way to truly improve our relationships with each other, there's no question about what happens to us then in our relationships with the more intimate kind of familiarity, which often, as they say in the various books, breeds contempt, except when understanding and wisdom comes. Now then, let's discuss a little the idea of what we mean by relationships, and find out where we fall down on the job and actually having relationships, and where they really fulfill themselves. You know, it isn't often understood, but man is basically a social creature. By social creature, we don't mean a butterfly that flips around dancing the walls at parties, or whatever.

We mean a need for the intercommunication, for the company of, the companionship of other people. We do have a few of these rare souls who like to go out on mountaintops and sit and meditate on certain peculiar parts of their anatomy like the navel for example. Most, it seems to me, uninspiring area to choose but I mean this is part of the charm of human consciousness that it can be that it can be delighted with of any elements that are involved, and I'm not against it whatsoever, believe me.

Nevertheless, I think that if we can constructively accomplish anything that way, by all means, we ought to go out and find out whether we are in that category, and then we will know.

However, as I said, there are these few rare souls, and when I say rare, I don't mean I necessarily approve of them, nor do I necessarily disapprove of them. By rare, let us say, I mean rather unusual, who enjoy the mountaintop and who say, in order to reach God, let me get away from it all. And by it all, they really mean those you-know-what humans, because the rest of the creatures don't upset them that much. And, of course, I cannot see how anyone can touch God who has to run away from his fellow man. I cannot see how any human being can really accomplish a true relationship or unification with the divine.

He hasn't first learned how to do it at home with his own, in his immediate family, friends, in the marital relationship, in all the inter-correlated relationships that exist on this plane. And that is why it has been the contention of the Western occult school of Qabalistic training that although our Eastern teachings are fine our Eastern brethren certainly walk with us we each have a very a specific path which is required for a specific time in our growth but when the time comes that we have to learn how to really get along with each other in other words when the time comes for all these beautiful ideas of unity that come so easily when you don't have to practice them you know except with the wind and star and the tree and they don't fight back uh when it comes to a time when we really have to express and live uh this teaching of the oneness between the divinity and ourselves then we are thrown right into the heart of a sort of hell and it is in many ways you know like western culture where everyone is apparently trying to cut everyone else's throat or he tries to be careful to do it legally so you know there's such a thing as legal murder and legal stealing and then there's illegal murder and illegal stealing We have to be very careful. We do it legally. That means we're so clever. We've gotten away with it. It's a game But we need to be thrown into these situations in order to discover when for instance our opponent may be a little more clever perish the thought and Therefore be the winner and of course if the opponent is the winner we have to scream foul foul, you know, he didn't play fair This is inevitable it helps us to discover what we really like and practicing love or unity or understanding really has to do more than we could even remotely dream of but how we get along with each other so whenever anyone tells me I have no friends at all I mean if I were the suspicious type and if I were I wouldn't tell you I would become most suspicious by not of that person as a beautiful soul because all of us are beautiful souls not of that person's aspiration we all have aspiration or we wouldn't be sitting here but I'd be most suspicious of just what prisons this particular personality is still held in and therefore what and how much capacity that individual has for achieving any of the truly higher goals in this particular incarnation in any case because the idea of wanting unity with God certainly must and should according to all Western occult training include the complete realization of the unity of life if we haven't got that we can keep screaming for god from now till doomsday if there were such a day and we could beat our chest and we could say I am sacrificing all and we could give up everything thing we could give up the nicotine and we could give up the alcohol oh I don't know why we should need to give up the alcohol jesus thought it was a good idea to have at a wedding feast depends on whether you can handle it if you can't handle liquor you have no right to touch it not even the first smell but if you can handle it that one drink is helpful in other words god made these things for us and if they don't own us this is the important element but no matter how much we may scream about giving up this for God or that for God it were though what is God is God some kind of monster that says prove you love me by suffering first prove you love me by not doing this then prove you love me by not doing that then prove you love me by giving up male female companionship and love and marriage prove you love me by giving up friendship and sitting on a mountaintop is this proving love for god I ask you I mean this sounds ridiculous to me and as a matter of fact it was the one thing that took me out of the eastern thought which I was in for years before uh the boss put me into dr case's clutches for which I thank god it was the one thing that bothered me very much the idea of having to withdraw say to monasteries or mountaintops and to give up this or that and yet right in the Eastern thought in the deeper Eastern thought with the wiser teachers you have the truth being given because right in these very same books if you know how to look and read carefully enough you will hear things like you overcome desire only when you have become satiated it. Therefore, a person who still has this mad need, say, for material things, he isn't going to lose this need for material things by denying it and just pounding his chest and saying, down you devils and evils, I go to God, because he's just going to be burying a poison that's going to come up like a volcano and explode we have to find out through many many many incarnations what is worthwhile and what is not worthwhile and it takes many incarnations to reach the point we stand at today more than I could even remotely tell you about and changing our sense of values and values do not change just merely by saying yes that sounds all right they change because the heart cannot find its fulfillment in the nonsense because they change due to the fact that having had riches in one or a dozen incarnations we discover that though there's nothing wrong about being rich there's something very wrong about making that a goal or a part of the necessity for happiness because we discover the material physical thing doesn't bring this happiness we find that we do not get it by giving up whatever it is it's decided we ought to give up if one a group of religious uh teachings say the way to get to heaven is to give up playing cards and cussing I think and dancing and then another group will say well the way to achieve the highest spiritual state is to just make sure you confess all the naughty things you did and then get yourself washed clean you can start on a new round but trying to do better naturally you're not being invited to repeat and then other groups of teachings as we told you try to say the way you achieve it is by just washing your hands of the whole affair and going off to mountaintops or monasteries. But you see, you do not know who you are or what you are except through your relationships. And it's in your relationships that everything you are shows up. Everything.

And therefore your higher self puts its personality through all the various testings, which doesn't mean it's putting it through tests to make it suffer. Some of the tests are delightful. I mean, beyond description. Like, look at the delightful test our nice newly married couple are going to be given now. They're going to be able to test the depth of their love. Is there anything wrong or bad or miserable about that? No, it's to see how much we really are, how much we really love, how wise and discriminating we actually are, how well we can handle a group of situations and conditions with the wisdom and the knowledge involved therein. And you cannot prove anything of it out in monasteries or mountaintops, as we said, only when you're out in the world. That doesn't mean that you are of the world, but you are of it in a certain sense always even there because as a part of life as a part of the all when we have to say I have to get away from this or that we are saying in essence that that which God created is bad that that which the one life has created has an evil in it and we try to think then when we get this idea of all the various experiences we are entering into as attempts of the devil to really drag us down it's just like in one way is one woman I knew who poor soul she was nothing that could charm any pair of eyes as far as material books were concerned but she also had the peculiar ability of being unable to see what she was like from a physical point of view and with great earnestness to a great a large party she announced that one of her greatest problems is keeping men away from her they chase her so much and this poor woman was suffering from delusions because it was very obvious that this was what you might call an unconscious desire.

And it was sad. It was truly sad. Now here is the other side of a situation where people can be in the world and not see what's around them, either in themselves or outside. Now beauty, of course, is something that glows from the heart and the soul. It has nothing to do with the physical features, as I hope you have all discovered.

And where a person has this beauty from within it will shine from the day they're born till the day they die and it will shine beyond that even more strongly because they don't die and it will have been shining even before they were born or shall we say born in the so-called physical sense into a particular incarnation but the very need to announce to a group such a situation in itself indicated that this poor woman didn't know how to love or feel natural towards a man and she was therefore reversing it now in our relationships with others we fall into this trap all the time in other ways and that's why we need Tarot so desperately to help us because just as it says over the or it did say over the halls of the great oracles man know thyself from the Greek temples man know thyself is what Tarot calls out to you to do and it is in knowing yourself that you will know how to do and what to do and even when to do.

And what does it mean when it says, man know thyself? Well of course in our 22 major Tarot keys we go through the 22 principles of the expression of consciousness as related in its symbolic imagery. And these images do have this impact upon the deeper parts of our mind of our hearts of our psyche so that they stir awarenesses and subtleties to which we were not awake before in other words the awakening and the stirring of energies in relation to our own selfhood takes place so that for example where we may have had a condition or a situation let's just take a marital situation at the moment I know a case where the man came to me and said I am desperate I don't know what to do my wife rejects me she says she can't help it she's just cold and I I don't understand it. I'm full of love. I'm full of warmth. And he proceeded to tell me how wonderful he was.

And so I listened for this quite a little while and then he was really very unhappy. And I tried to get a word in edgewise and believe me even I couldn't.

He was so completely immersed in his whole picture of grievances.

Then he suddenly turned at me. I shouldn't tell this, I'm sure, but I will.

He suddenly turned to me. He looked at me. He said, now, you wouldn't be that way. You would understand a man, wouldn't you?

I said, yes, I certainly would.

Well, the point is, I had to see that man at least four or five times before I was able to get a half a dozen words in edgewise to help him start to look at himself.

He was so determined that he had done everything. He had showered her with attention.

He'd done everything to make the marriage work. He had been a good provider. He had always thought first of the family, but a lot of questions brought out the fact that this was just about one of the most fantastically, excuse me for using slang language, I must lousy husbands that I'd ever heard of.

He was selfish. He was self-centered.

He was unaware of all the subtleties and requirements requirement of his wife and she poor thing just said I can't help it I'm cold I met her she wasn't cold at all she was full of warmth and lovingness but this man was unable to form a relationship with another human being because he was too immersed in his own images both of of himself, incorrect ones, by the way, and of the other person. So when he married the woman, he really married an image. He never married her.

You know, I think there should be a law against that, but we'd have to find ways to...

Sounds to me most immoral.

But he never knew her. He never really... And they had a lot of problems. They had several children together. He thought he was a good father and that his family came first I spoke to his children all grown up and each of them told me secretly that they never even know what he's talking about that he goes off into long rambling discourses on the various things that he does to try to show them the true ideas or principles about various things and every one of them not with each other because they would have influenced each other I took them separately told me that their father is very brilliant because they never understood what he said and this was his biggest eye-opener of all because they didn't understand what he was saying they all assumed he was brilliant because he had told himself just like he told me what a model husband he was and the truth of the matter was that he had no ability or capacity to have a real relationship. Now, we, of course, don't do anything like that, I know. I cherish this thought. Nevertheless, the complete requirement that we have as aspiring souls, really and truly, is to become aware of our own real thinking and feeling, our real thinking and feeling, and therefore to be able to become aware of the other person's thinking and feeling so that we could fulfill their needs. How many people really fulfill the needs of the other when you think about it two people get together and as you may have heard me mention before they meet at a party and they're each just working like not hades like heaven uh to influence each other to make a good impression so they sparkle and twinkle and all about saying telling things about themselves the other one can hardly wait not hearing a word you You know, he wants to get his turn to start sparkling and showing how magnificent he is.

And then naturally she isn't listening because she's already dreaming up what she's going to say to make the impression from this end. So they're so busy working out impressions on each other they never met.

And then, this happens all the time, my darlings, you know that. I hope you know it. If you didn't, know it. Man, know thyself.

Relationships. So then what happens? I mean, if each gave the other a fair turn, without hearing what the other said, you go away saying, my God, I met the most wonderful person.

This one might really become a friend, maybe even a soulmate.

And yet they may never have met each other in the slightest iota.

And this is what happens all the time. People may have lived together for 40 and 50 years.

And they may be familiar enough with each other to know each other's habit patterns.

So that just because of knowing that B follows A, through habit patterns they'll be pretty well able to prognosticate what a person might do, but they will not understand why or what, what the thoughts are, what the needs are, and why. Because they didn't really care. Care. They didn't really care. And this is the tragedy. We are so busy caring about being understood ourselves. We are so eager to be loved from outside in. We are so, we yearn so to be understood. Well thank God we're not understood really a good part of the time because if we were understood in the truest sense most people haven't evolved to the point where they can still love us enough it now now the human being who can love the other and truly love the other is the human being who has had the ability to look into his or her own heart and have seen all the darkness, all the potential that reside therein, and to say, yes, under such and such conditions I could do that, yes, under such and such conditions I might even do that, yes. Sad, I'm sorry, but I'm a growing flower. I'm not a finished plant. I can see where under certain conditions, much as I am against killing I might even lose my head and kill one might be able to say yes I can see or under certain conditions of need and feeling of rejection I might even break out in a passion of violent jealousy yes I can see where it could be when we can look into our own hearts and see yes there isn't anything that's in the lowest of the low of humanity that hasn't got its little spot in me somewhere if it was hit off correctly we can also then say there isn't anything in the highest to divinity and christhood itself that isn't also in me and then that gives us the ability to have relationship with another.

Only to the degree that we know ourselves can we know another. Only to the degree that we know our own yearning can we know what another one yearns for. I mean, honestly, another. Only to the degree that we can see our own poignantly charming, pathetic vanities.

Notice I said charming, pathetic vanities.

Are we able to see and recognize it in the other and help to sort of assuage or lift or give that little touch that little bit of comfort in these conditions so what we have to say basically then in terms of improving our relationship through tarot is that the most important thing you have to do in this or any incarnation now or later you might as well start now is to use the method that it is your privilege to have presented to you to help awaken your own self-awareness as to what all these subtle thinkings and feelings and desires are like and as you do this you will be able to then project this realization to another that if your friend or your lover or your husband or your wife or sister or brother just through a touch or a look or an expression looks or says something everything in you will rush out to fulfill that other because it knows the sorrow and it knows the loneliness and And it knows the hurt.

And it knows the fear of the insecurity of aloneness.

And it knows its need or desire to be understood. So then we can stop working at being understood.

Work at understanding the other, the beloved, whether it be the child or lover or husband or friend.

Work at bringing that other into fuller expression so that that other can be relaxed and be able to let out from the depth of the soul which has been frozen because of the fears and the rejections how else can we be when we are really living in a forest of wild beasts amongst our humans who unable to recognize their own shall we say animal creatures in their soul have to project it out and try to attack others for having it it's just like the preachers who have the greatest sex frustration scream against sex from the pulpits it's the ones who have the greatest hatred in their own souls, scream about the burning of hell from the pulpit and so on. We project it out to others whether it be to a group or whether it be to the one, either or both. And when we start to realize that we all share the same hopes, we all have the same yearning, we all want the same things we all pray for the same fulfillment when we realize this we'll be so busily trying to understand the different variations in the other person trying to fulfill the beloved that we'll discover a fulfillment beyond anything we ever knew because that's the only fulfillment there really is and that is is an experience tarot brings when we achieve that state of consciousness by going through the various states of awakening.

May this be yours in ever greater measure now and forever more. And now we should proceed with our...