Key 2 - The High Priestess

The subject of our talk relates to Tarot Key Number Two, the High Priestess.

Now there is absolutely no way to really talk about Tarot Key Number Two, the High Priestess, without also talking about Tarot Key Number One, the Magician, for the simple reason that inasmuch as the High Priestess represents subconsciousness.

Subconsciousness being that portion of the mind stuff the universal mind stuff which we see the impression from the magician that is from that portion of consciousness which is focusing upon or concentrating on or paying attention to an idea an attitude a form an image now all images remember are in essence the way creation takes place even that which we look upon as something physical is what we might call a divine image being experienced in a specialized way by ourselves in other words what we call physical is one specialized even limited manner of experiencing the self creativeness of consciousness as a whole and each of us bear in mind every single one of us are the unique or extra specialized ways that God utilizes this overall universal capacity this ability to pay attention and to make images now in man we have this capacity consciously consciously directed once man discovers that he has this ability and capacity and learns how to use it in ways other than the average person who permits the images to sort of run him.

You know, it's easy to see examples like that. We look out at the world and what we see out there, we take in as an impression. That's the attention part of ourselves. Now whatever impression we take in from what we see actually though has to do with how much we have been able to see. In other words, there are some people look at something or pay attention to something in such a surface manner that they don't see the whole thing. Or some people are so busily looking for something negative wherever they are like you know the terribleness of life that their attention extracts from the total that which is negative it's always there we find everything that we are looking for basically and this looking for something remember Remember that's always and still super consciousness which is the fool.

Now of course the centers of consciousness which are not fully developed, what they look for aren't exactly the sort of things that we would consider exceptionally beautiful or spiritual or any of these areas, but neither would we experience the efforts of a child as being that which we would have or approve of if the child was making an effort, say, a child of two making an effort to give us a musical composition on the organ. What we get is an awful lot of noise and yet that child is just as human in the same way what human beings look for extract or even what they do therefore which is still part of the process of response has to do with their ability, their capacity, to utilize this mind stuff effectively. And the mind stuff deals with that fluidic material you see flowing from the high priestess. In other words, this Tarot key is symbolically representing the more than one idea that relates relates to seeing the universal mind stuff accurately and therefore to learn how to utilize it in more effective ways, in ways that will bring us happiness, fulfillment, and in the final analysis, the most important one, spiritual illumination of varying kinds as we work for them as we learn how to understand this mind stuff and just what it does.

So we see here the representation of this universal mind stuff as a fluidic-like material. And in essence, everyone who experiences that level does describe it in that manner. I certainly am one of many who can bear witness to that. It's a type of fluidic stuff that is not stopped by anything physical it flows through us as though what we think of as being physical weren't even there and yet we can feel it or experience it that is flowing through us and it is what has been referred to as the universal mind stuff because it does it's always experienced in this manner of a flowing fluidic kind of substance subtle but real very real and when we think that the outside of our bodies or that which we experience as our our bodies stops this mind stuff we are in the greatest delusion of all that's one of the reasons it's called the universal mind stuff and it's another reason that kabbalistically this tarot key is referred to when it is given its intelligence or its function of consciousness it is called the the intelligence of unity, unity, saying in essence that this is the substance that really keeps us all unified, or we are all in a unified expression within, is universal, all-inclusive, all-pervading mind stuff, which is what you might in a way call the divine subconscious beingness or the divine subconscious memory or the universal record which is basically God's and that record incidentally is not something that is just somewhere else the idea is it flows through us our Our ability, for example, to groan our bodies from the one little bit of so-called apparent physical stuff when we were first conceived in the mother's womb, this actually is a memory.

No one taught your mother or your father how to bring about the creation of your body.

They responded to drives that are part of the universal drive. And the universal memory contained both in the genetic sense as well as in the all-inclusive, all-life sense.

This is what knew because it remembered. In other words, we share in the memory of God even when we're not consciously aware of it. Otherwise, we could not have grown this vehicle. And when we say we remember, each one of us are an aspect of God or the universal mind utilizing universal memory even though we're not consciously aware that this is what we're doing.

So the entire impact of this key, when we know, especially when we know its meaning, but even when we don't, just looking at it, there's a stirring of the universal memory that has to come in and through us because everything pervades us and we pervade it and it interacts. And indeed, we could say that each one of us are in a sense like a whirlpool within the ocean is a universal ocean of consciousness and that whirlpool remember takes in all the rest of the ocean and also sends it out and in the same manner what we think and feel what we pay attention to is what we're taking in and sending out automatically it's a continuous that's why why the moon is shown as the headdress of the high priestess. Because it's a periodic intaking, outtaking, just like the waxing and waning of the moon. And remember, that's the crown of the high priestess. The intaking and outtaking crown everything for us, the success, even when we think it's failure, incidentally.

As we have tried to point out to you previously, when we are having a miserable time, what we don't seem to realize is that we have been very successfully concluding or experiencing a series of intaking and outtaking, that is thinking, feeling, the choice of what we pay attention to and how we utilize this experience. This intaking and outtaking makes it inevitable that we experience in what appears to be the outside, and it is outside from our little whirlpool in a way, although it isn't outside of the mind stuff of which we're a part. So So we actually never really fail in anything. And when we say, I am a failure, all we're doing is very successfully making more images charged with power to experience our next success.

In other words, you can't fail. You've got it made.

Just think.

Isn't that marvelous?

Well, you don't seem to think it's quite that wonderful for some strange reason.

You see, the reason you don't is because another attribution is very important to understand, or related to this key, has to do with just that idea. It is related to the pair of opposites peace and strife.

And the powers that we have, now mind you, you don't have to get these powers. You're part of the universal substance and you've got them.

You have the power of this Tarot key and all the Tarot keys. What we have to do is learn how to utilize them positively and that's what we're here for with all of the various levels of our work, to teach you. So we have to understand this aspect of peace and strife also in order to to come to recognize the more positive ways of dealing with this power utilizing it properly and therefore changing that which has been a source of pain despair and apparent failure changing this into its opposite Is the peace or the strife? It all indeed depends, again, on what we have been paying attention to and how well and accurately we've been paying attention. So if you will look again at key one, the magician, I want you to notice the entire attitude of attention, concentration. But here remember the magician is giving you the positive suggestion the magician is saying receive from the above that is from the divine will learn how to bring in to your little apparent private whirlpool or your little Bay the the proper knowledge the accurate impression the the accurate uh goals that you are setting for yourself bring that in that's the raised arm you know with the magic wand and then you plant into your subconsciousness and please bear in mind that garden below is another symbol to subconsciousness which this is the principle Tarot key number two, the high priestess.

So that the planting of the seeds in the garden and the lilies, which are knowledge, remember, and the roses, desire. The knowledge and the desire that grows up out of our garden from previous plantings of attention has to do with the principles shown here in the high priestess. The principle indicating the fact that we have here the various laws being represented in other words the high priestess is shown number one as a virgin now a high priestess obviously has to be a virgin and what is a virgin a virgin is something that is pure in other words the mind stuff in itself itself universally speaking is pure purity has to do with not permitting things to mix in together that have no place mixing but basically virgin substance means unused unused substance and unused also has to do with not getting mixed or polluted with other things now what we pay attention to incidentally is usually not done with that focus purity in other words when we want to pay attention to something something special, often what we'll find is the mind will wander and will bring in all sorts of extraneous things.

That is what you might call mixing up the power of attention, keeping it from being focused, one-pointed. Remember, the magician is number one.

So the secret, or one of the secrets of getting clear, clear images implanted into the subconscious conscious mind stuff, our subconscious mind stuff, is to learn how to pay attention without all of the mixtures.

In other words, to keep it one-pointed. Now, we're not going to be able to keep our attention one-pointed unless it really has meaning for us. In other words, unless we really care enough to want to focus on something, everything Everything we pay attention to is going to manifest, even if it has manifested a thousand times before, it's going to manifest all over again.

Now what does this indicate? Now what we pay attention to is what we give life to. It must manifest, and it manifests in and through the principles of the high priesthood, because our subconsciousness receives everything the subconsciousness does not reject anything we all have within us this subconsciousness which receives whatever impressions are given it we all have a consciousness that can't help looking at things that is paying attention to things it It could be to people. It could be just idly paying attention, but it's still paying attention. And while we're paying attention, there's that part of the awareness that's paying attention that's always having a sort of expectation. Now, that's the fool inside of us. And I'm afraid we do it in a really foolish manner, which may be one of the reasons that that tarot key is called the fool. Where those of us who learned how to be positive with Tarot keys learn how to have that positive anticipation but we learn to have the positive anticipation also and only because we have learned to pay attention properly you see the magician has to be looking with all of the self all of the self as we pointed pointed out when we were talking about it, only to the degree that we train ourselves to pay attention completely with accuracy, only to that degree are we going to have the results, that is the impressions that are put into subconsciousness, only to that degree will we be able to have final futures, the next, shall we say, cycle of projections and therefore experience come out properly we need more than just holding positive anticipation ideas we have to be prepared we have to see what is we have to know how to pay attention completely so we see what is in other words that's one of the ways of saying we have to be able to read the divine plan or we have to see with the higher the deeper the more all-inclusive mind instead of just seeing partially what we have to learn to do is to pay attention accurately first to ourselves then to what we see around us and usually both because the one and the other are inextricably woven whatever we see inside we're going to see outside we look at all of life through the mirror of ourselves we reflect ourselves to ourselves as it says in the book of tokens and let me tell you that a universal mind does this and you and I do it and that's why we find ourselves though we may not recognize it consciously we find ourselves expecting from others uh things that have to do with our own being and this is again one of the reasons we do not see others like they are honest people have a way of expecting other people to be honest you know and people who are cheats, thieves, expect others to be cheats and thieves. You realize this. People who are loving really expect other people to be loving. And people who are full of hate expect other people to be full of hate. People who are revengeful expect other people to be revengeful. And if other people occasionally here and there do not act this out, they're quite sure they do, but they're hiding it. I mean, that's something that a person will find. So to rationalize it all away. Faith, really enlightened faith, comes from the realization that as we work upon ourselves, as these tarot keys all help to indicate, we can and do gain control of our environment. And we do.

But again, I'd like to remind you the control of our environment comes because of learning how to accurately evaluate what's required.

Then as we do this, the gates of our consciousness are able to open up more and more to the universal knowledge. Now, that's actually inside of this high priestess you know. In other words, it's inside this ocean. And when we utilize our memories and our images properly accurately what happens is the when we need to know when we have learned how to use the magician with fullness of livingness and desire to get things straight things as they are when we are happy to have things as they are in order to to learn how to change them in accordance with our heart's desire, then the entire universal power opens to us and there are things registered in the universal mind that come to us, just like we didn't have to consciously remember how to grow our bodies.

We actually develop expansion of consciousness is very much involved with being able to receive from the recorded universal memory all the knowledge that we need for a particular thing but that receiving of this knowledge has to do with knowledge of what to do and how to go about it everything that you want really want is already in this total mind stuff foreordained to become yours as you learn how to bring it about consciously with the divine mind your desire to have your life faithful filled with love this is absolute and inevitably going to be yours but remember what you have to do is learn how to evaluate your own love nature with the magician and the other person's love nature. And you have to learn what to do with your own love nature as well as how to recognize the other person's capacity with theirs. If you're going to go into business with anyone, you're going to have to only to the degree you can evaluate your own ability or capacity or what you have to learn, Are you going to be able to evaluate the other person's ability or capacity?

To the degree you can be honest with yourself, to that degree are you going to be able to evaluate whether others are going to be able to be honest with you? And in that manner, you open up the larger areas.

My darlings, I cannot begin to tell you what rapture and beauty are there waiting for you and knocking right now, all of you. There is a peace that passes understanding that comes from the very same substance out of which the strife was suffered before. There's a security when we learn to have faith, this is the real faith, to have faith in the divine guidance that is teaching us how to recognize, understand, and use these powers. These powers are knocking, knocking for positive expression, and you are being embraced in them. You're going to find yourself more and more able not only to see reality, but to say, thank you God, song of gratitude for the power to see my neighbor as he is and love him, but not expect him to be other than he is. I thank thee Lord of the universe thou song of melody for giving me the ability to hear the anger underneath the other person's heart and yet not be angry back at them this is how you'll sing you will not expect from them what they're not ready to give and you will therefore have fulfillment and you will be preparing yourself for love, fulfillment, immeasurable.