Archives: Cards

It is an illusion to believe that you are abandoned in the universe without help and must do everything yourself. There are helpers, spiritual allies. Turn the problem over to the cosmos to heal. Don't forget that there are good and evil spirits. There are unseen forces at work -- some of them hinder us, manipulate us toward darker feelings and appetites so that we produce the sort of energy they can harvest. Other spirits watch over us, respecting our free will, embracing us with love if we allow them. You are never alone, not in your body, not on this planet, and not in the spirit realm where your soul and psyche live. Our bodies are a colony of 50 trillion cells working together to allow us a corporeal existence on a planet where there are another six billion of us and myriad other living things. But we are even less alone in the spirit world where location is irrealized, and sympathetic vibration transcends boundaries of space and time. Invisible allies in the spirit world and in the microbiological realm work to keep you alive. As above, so below. In the unseen realm there are watchers and helpers always available. Sometimes we need to tune into their subtle messages, other times to call out for their help, other times merely to allow their ministrations to occur while we are scarcely aware of their help. There are spirit guides available to help us. External spirit guides include guardian entities, human spiritual allies, great books and oracles. The most important spirit guide, however, is your "Self." Jung used the term to refer to the totality of the psyche, of which the conscious ego is a small part. Listen for the quiet, calm, compassionate inner voice. For those willing to read a bit more: The history of human beings reporting interactions with spirit entities is cross-cultural and cross-period. The culture of scientism, of fundamentalist materialism, is the only I know of that rules out such testimony. Any culture that disregards a whole sphere of human testimony is in trouble. For example, reports of child abuse were once disregarded as improbable. When we did come to finally recognize the importance of such testimony we went in the other direction, and some people irresponsibly interpreted all sorts of general symptoms as indications of abuse. It is best to avoid either extreme and to be neither a true believer nor a debunker (a true believer in a negative). In New Age circles there is a dangerous and naïve tendency to almost exclusively emphasize spirits as benign. British paranormal investigator Joe Fisher, who investigated the channeling phenomenon, came to discover that something genuinely paranormal was occurring, but that the apparent entities involved were not who they claimed to be. I've written an extensive study of his work: The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts. Some excerpts follow: Fisher reminds us of the long multi-cultural history of human testimony of entity contact: Socrates, the great Athenian philosopher, spoke in the fifth century B.C.E. of a being whose voice, from time to time, dissuaded him from some undertaking but never directed him as to what he should do. The Bible, of course, mentions "ministering spirits" (Hebrews 1.14) without spelling out their perpetually watchful responsibilities. Robert Louis Stevenson credited the whole of his published fiction to "the single-handed product of some unseen collaborator." Daily experience convinced the poet W.B. Yeats that "there are spiritual intelligences which can warn us and advise us." Napoleon Bonaparte believed that he had a guiding spirit which came to him either as a shining sphere or a dwarf clothed in red who came to warn him. And Henry Miller commented that he was "in the hands of unseen powers" while writing his powerful novel Tropic of Cancer. Someone, he said, "is dictating to me constantly -- and with no regard for my health." Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychoanalyst, regularly encountered a guardian spirit named Philemon, a "force that was not myself" who "seemed quite real, as if he were a living personality." In the same essay I discuss some of my own experience with entities: A fairly well-known person whom I won't name here, a man I consider to be an absolute genius with whom I worked in the Eighties, heard voices who gave him information that seemed to be inspired and of great value. And for most of my life I have been aware of a somewhat androgynous being living alongside me whom I can visualize, but who almost never intrudes into my mind with voice, and instead influences by presence. He seems to be there whenever I cast my attention in his direction, and there is always the sense that he flows through time in a much different way than I do. There is always a great depth of feeling, humility, and compassion for suffering, and if more specific communication is required by me, he allows me to use my mind and word-forming ability to translate his presence and thought forms into words and sentences. He never takes over any part of my body, never claims to be a doctor or to have a specific past-life identity, never raises even the smallest red flag in my ever fault-finding mind or intuition. I have noticed, however, that if I travel, he will tend to be unusually present, as if curiously witnessing a new part of the world alongside of me (but without taking over my senses). -- I readily acknowledge that this being could be a way that I experience what Jung called the "Self." As Fisher points out, an over-arching problem with spirits who work through mediums is that they violate the self-reliance of, at the very least, the mediums they work through, taking control of their bodies and wills. They also encourage a spiritual problem I have referred to as "mislocation of the godhead." (See Casting Precious into the Cracks of Doom...) They encourage those who interact with them to become infatuated and dependent and to look to them for divine guidance. I am reminded of David Bowie's character (Jareth) in the movie Labyrinth who says things like: "I ask for so little. Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave." Many spiritual teachers report that evolved nonphysical entities influence humanity telepathically, without speech or heavy-handed intrusion: "Higher beings are silent -- they simply radiate knowing and love," said The Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche Although I am against one-size-fits-all formulations, this suggests a behavioral distinction between benign and parasitic spirits. The spiritual ally that I have long experienced in my own life communicates in a nondirective telepathic fashion, leaving me to form into words the emanation that is always loving, nonintrusive and that never overrides my will or takes over my body. The influence seems directed toward enhancement of my own self-realization and service, not toward vicarious thrills. (Malign entities often seem to want to vicariously experience physical sensations through a trance medium or someone they possess.) But it should also be emphasized that malign entities are not limited to possession or mediums to exert influence. Subtle, stealthy telepathic influence by disincarnates to promote dark, compulsive thoughts, feelings, and cravings, cannot be ruled out as a possibility, and if it can be done at all, then that allows the possibility that it may be widespread and a major player in human psychology.

Change is our only constant. Something in you and/or the outer situation has to change. Go with the flow of transformation, don't resist it by clinging to the obsolescent structures of the past. Life is change, you must keep moving, changing, adapting, transforming. Woody Allen, in his classic film, Annie Hall, said: "A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark." Your relationship with life, the Tao, must be like a live shark, constant forward movement or else stagnation and death. Embrace the need for continual transformation. Many forces within and without resist change. For those willing to read more, in "Dealing with Shock," the last section of A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler, discusses a philosophy of shock: ...all organisms are conservative. They dial in an equilibrium, what biologists call homeostasis, and they seek to maintain it. This is a crucial life function, because organisms are generally complex, fragile processes, that require relatively narrow parameters of environmental conditions — such as oxygen levels, temperatures, food sources — and, inevitably, the environments in which they occur have destabilizing, chaotic elements that frequently threaten them with death or even extinction. Organisms work indefatigably to try to dial in their niche, to maintain the homeostasis that keeps them going. You don't want your liver enzymes, heart rate or blood sugar to fluctuate wildly -- that would threaten your survival. You want them dialed in, rolling along on an even keel. The human psyche is an organism, the most complex we know of, and complexity often means fragility. What both Freud and Jung recognized, what anybody looking around himself  should recognize, is that the human psyche is also highly conservative. Contra Naturum Development Conservatism can be good for homeostasis, but can also, if it is excessive, put a ceiling on development and evolution. To evolve means to change, and we don't always want to change. Two fairly conscious and compassionate I met recently told me at different times, and without mincing words, "I don't like change." I told them that I could sympathize because change is usually precipitated by shock, often unpleasant shock. But to dislike change is to create inevitable suffering because change is the only constant we have. "It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, 'And this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction." -- Abraham Lincoln, in an address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society in 1859 But when we inwardly resist the passing, the change,  we are more likely to interpret it as an outward shock acting as fate. The conservative tendency is so strong that many will resist change even if they are in a bad situation that is attempting to get better. You may remember the Morgan Freeman character in Shawshank Redemption who is unable to adjust to life as a free man and wants to get locked in at night. I'm also reminded of a newspaper photo I once saw of a young girl who had been horribly abused by her mother who had broken many of her bones. The photo was of a court hearing and shows the little girl being led away by some kindly looking matron while she is screaming to be reconnected with her mother. Better the devil we know, than a devil, or even an angel, that we don't. The average person tends to tread water, seeks to maintain status quo, homeostasis, and will change inwardly only in response to drastic outside shock. When shocks occur the average person take no responsibility for them (especially if they are negative shocks), believing instead that he is the victim   of "bad luck" or forces beyond control. This may be especially  true, of course, when the shock is a macro-geophysical or nation-state effect like a flood, earthquake or war. Shocks, it should be pointed out, can be "good" or "bad." Winning the lottery or suddenly falling in love is a shock just as much as a car accident or economic crash. Shock just means the equilibrium has experienced a perturbation or disturbance — a sudden disequilibrium. Don Juan said (I'm paraphrasing), that for the average man everything is either a blessing or a curse, but for the warrior everything is a challenge and a learning experience. The psychic inertia that resists change is so strong that Jung described the path of individuation, or unique individual development, as "contra naturum" — contrary to or against nature. Gurdjieff, who so eloquently described man's mechanical nature, called the change to unmechanicalness "against God." Their point was that to generate your own internal change meant pushing against such vast inner and outer inertial force that it was as if you had a whole universe resisting you. Often it is us, our own neurotic homeostasis and passivity, our false ego, that provides the resistance. And as Jung said, "Man's greatest passion isn't sex, love, money or power — it's laziness." So shock can be like a divine gift, a catalyst for evolutionary change. After all, if it wasn't for shock in the form of a giant asteroid hitting the earth sixty-five million years ago and flattening everything larger than a chicken there might be a velociraptor strolling through tropical foliage instead of you sitting there reading this over the internet. Our incarnation began with birth shock and  ends with a shock too. Shock is our often unwelcome and constant, if unpredictable, companion. If shock seems relevant to your change process, go to A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler and read the complete section "Dealing with Shock." Consider this a propitious time to flow with the cycle of life and accept change with agility and good grace.

"All things must change to something new, to something strange." -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Human incarnation is usually a fluctuation between metamorphosis and stagnation. As the Dylan lyric puts it: "he not busy being born is busy dying." Norie Huddle, in her book Butterfly, describes in poetic language the metamorphosis of caterpillar into butterfly: "The caterpillar's new cells [after it has built its cocoon] are called 'imaginal cells.' They resonate at a different frequency. They are so totally different from the caterpillar cells that his immune system [that is the immune system of the worm] thinks they [the new imaginal cells] are enemies... and gobbles them up... But these new imaginal cells continue to appear, more and more of them! Pretty soon, the caterpillar's immune system cannot destroy them fast enough. More and more of the imaginal cells survive. "And then an amazing thing happens! The little tiny lonely imaginal cells start to clump together, into friendly little groups. They all resonate together at the same frequency, passing information from one to another. Then, after a while, another amazing thing happens! The clumps of imaginal cells start to cluster together!... a long string of clumping and clustering imaginal cells, all resonating at the same frequency, all passing information from one to another there inside the chrysalis. "...Then at some point, the entire long string of imaginal cells suddenly realizes all together that it is Something. Different from the caterpillar. Something New! Something Wonderful! ...and in that realization is the shout of the birth of the butterfly! "Each new butterfly cell can take on a different job. There is something for everyone to do, and everyone is important. And each cell begins to do just that very thing it is most drawn to do. And every other cell encourages it to do just that. A great way to organize a butterfly!" For there to be a metamorphosis, certain existing structures need to be broken down to make room for new ones. In the chrysalis, most of the caterpillar's old body is digested and used as a nutrient source to construct the new body. The human ego, however, fears change and tends to desperately cling to an existing identity. Metamorphosis can, therefore, be interpreted as catastrophic, and the old ego-identity, recognizing a threat to its very existence, will seek ways to defend itself. Like the caterpillar, the old self may have an immunological reaction to the budding of the new self. Also like caterpillars, we have imaginal cells within us, parts of us that contain the catalytic vision-seeds of the future. Let's ground this with a personal example. Sometime in the Nineties an eighty-year-old woman, who was a Jungian analyst, gave a talk I attended in Boulder. At the end of her talk there were questions from the audience and the first one came from a young woman. "Now that you are an elder," asked the young woman, "what you can tell me as a young woman about love?" The elder woman replied, "When I was your age I was desperately trying to be loved. But now I know that it is better to simply be love." The old woman describes a profound metamorphosis that took decades. The metamorphosis from self-centered to selfless is one of the most classic and valuable. Goethe described it this way: "Human life runs its course in the metamorphosis between receiving and giving." I have been working on exactly this metamorphosis in my own life. As a recovering narcissistic personality type, I find that it is very easy for me to fall into preoccupation with being loved. Many of us fall into the common delusion that if only we can be loved by some particular person we aspire to romantically, then everything will be great. But if I allowed myself to focus obsessively on being loved, I would only be prolonging adolescence into middle age. Also, trying to be loved doesn't work all too well. If what we want from others predominates, then most will correctly sense us as needy and self-centered, which will likely make us less attractive to them. The more we try to contrive and force progress with love, the more neurotic and desperate we become, which only helps to keep love away. A person who has successfully moved toward being love, however, is like a source of love and warmth that other people want to be near. "The story of Americans is the story of arrested metamorphoses. Those who achieve success come to a halt and accept themselves as they are. Those who fail become resigned and accept themselves as they are." -- Harold Rosenberg As I work on the long path of metamorphosing toward being love, I can sometimes hear frantic inferior voices within me saying things like, But if I don't try to get love back from others I won't get anything. or, If I just focus on being love, others will just take that for granted and won't bother to love me back. Even though the old identity, which consisted of an uneasy coalition of subpersonalities and various neurotic stratagems didn't work very well in the past, they still want to be in charge. They're like a dysfunctional conspiracy of old, corrupt politicians who know that they have presided over famine, depression and a series of inner and interpersonal wars, but are nonetheless determined to be reelected and feel entitled to lifetime terms. To the old coalition of subpersonalities, metamorphosis appears as a looming black-robed reaper wielding a scythe. To a deeper self, metamorphosis appears as sunlight entering a smoked-filled room. As the sunlight intensifies, furtive figures scurry away into vanishing shadows and the light exposes crumpled masses of scribbled papers, the tawdry remnants of backroom dealings and smear campaigns that soon become cinders trailing away as wisps of smoke. The metamorphosis from trying to be loved to trying to be love is very likely going to be something I'll still be working on when I am eighty, if I make it to that age. To keep such a gradual metamorphosis going takes continual vigilance and an ability to relinquish, to sacrifice the obsolescent focus on getting love and the various neurotic ways of trying to go about that. The example I gave of the eighty-year-old woman and myself was an illustration of one type of metamorphosis, but there are many others. The crucial thing is for you to know what sorts of metamorphoses are going on in you so that you can consciously assist these transformations. If a caterpillar/butterfly had a human life span, then its time in the chrysalis would also last for decades. Unlike the caterpillar/butterfly, most human beings cannot afford to retreat into a cocoon while undergoing the metamorphosis. Usually we need to work on metamorphosis while still functioning in the world. To succeed with the transformation we need great perseverance, patience and just the right balance of firmness and gentleness with ourselves. Whether you are undergoing sudden or gradual transformation, consider the occurrence of this card as a sign that this is a propitious time for metamorphosis.

This card warns about the human tendency to give power away to a guru, political leader, celebrity, or a person who is the object of romantic idealization. Power may also be given away to an idea, an ideology, a fundamentalism (religious or secular), a movement, an addiction, an exciting, dangerous activity and so forth. There are myriad things that people give their power away to. This chalk graffiti was found on a sidewalk in Boulder. Amma is a guru whose is promoted as a kind of god by her followers and in her own literature. She treats those close to her with sadistic despotism, supposedly to help break their egos. The graffiti writer obviously has a guru complex always watching, but they externalized their neurotic disempowerment into a need to tell the world that their guru is omniscient and has taken the place of a supervisory Old Testament God. As Jung pointed out, proselytizing usually indicates an unbalanced psyche who has a compulsive need to spread the psychic contagion. You automatically disempower yourself when you inflate another person into a God and this can happen with romantic infatuation, guru worship, fundamentalist mythologizing and other relationships that have an unhealthy asymmetry of power. In a very interesting issue of What is Enlightenment magazine (which is itself largely the product of abusive guru Andrew Cohen) entitled "What is Ego?" every psychologist and spiritual teacher included had some fascinating insight into the nature of ego, except Amma. Repeatedly she insisted on the need to submit to a guru (especially herself) to break the ego, and asserted that her often sadistic treatment of disciples was in service of this. But when the interviewer asked why she never had a guru, Amma (who refers to herself in the third person as rock diva Madonna is fond of doing) replies, "Amma considers the whole of creation to be her guru." In other words, her supposedly nonexistent ego is actually so inflated that only the whole of creation is big enough to be her guru. If Amma invited others to have the whole of creation as their guru she would be a Taoist, and I would have no problem with her, but when a guru (or other power tripper) places themselves in a hierarchical position that is permanently higher than what any follower can obtain, you know that you are in the presence of cult pathology. What is the motive that causes so many people to give their power away to a force that wants to dominate them? I speculate about that in my essay on the financial meltdown Foxes and Reptiles -- Psychopathy and the Financial Meltdown of 2008-9, "I have a theory of the often astonishing appeal of psychopaths, cult leaders, super salesmen and demagogues of various sorts that uses magnetism as analog. Most people are highly fragmented and oppressed by what psychologists call "psychic entropy" -- the anxious tape loops and other distracted thoughts and fantasies that crowd their attentional space. When a person of single-minded focus and confidence appears it is analogous to placing a powerful magnet below a sheet of paper on which there is a scattering of iron filings. The magnet immediately organizes the scattered filings into a coherent pattern that reflects its magnetic field. The scattered personality feels an immense relief to be structured in this way from the outside and craves further contact and submission to the magnetic personality that can produce this effect which relieves them of their default state of psychic entropy." People may be similarly motivated when they give their power away to a fundamentalist religion, a new diet or financial scheme, a motivational speaker and many other forces and persons. They want something that will structure them from the outside in. To whom or to what do you give away your power? Consider this is a propitious time to reclaim it. You need to always be watching you.

We all waste potential at times. This is a propitious time to see where there is wasted potential you can reclaim. It is much more important to reclaim your own wasted potential than to help other people reclaim theirs. You can only help others reclaim wasted potential when they meet you halfway, when it is their will and intention to reclaim their own potential and you are an assistant, not a substitute, for their intentionality. Also, you can only help others fulfill their potential to the extent that you have fulfilled yours. How do we waste potential? Everyone needs to probe into this for himself, but many of the ways are classic. Using myself as example, I see that I waste potential when I compromise my physical health because I feel under stress, or I feel celebratory, and use those as reasons to mistreat my body through over indulgence in food or whatever else. Every day feels either stressful or celebratory or both, and therefore I can find reasons to indulge at any time. Almost any time I treat my body in a way that would not make sense lifelong, I waste potential. I said "almost" because there are some occasions where it is appropriate to use up some of the body's potential to save some other potential that is more valuable. For example, it would be appropriate to stay up past a healthy bedtime to talk to a suicidal friend. When I look to see where I waste potential, I am essentially doing an energy audit; I am looking at the energetic transactions in my life, such as financial transactions, bodily transactions, social transactions and emotional transactions. At the same time, I must do a time audit. Just as space/time is a bonded pair, so too is energy/time. Where my energy goes, so goes my time, where my time goes, so goes my energy. Let's say I make an impulsive purchase of something I don't really need. It seems like I didn't spend much time making the purchase, but for most of us time and money are in an equation together. It takes a lot of my time to make the money I need to get by, and the more I spend, the more I need to spend time working to replace the lost money. Social transactions can be the most fulfilling and valuable uses of resources possible at certain times, but at other times they can be massive depotentiators. A huge depotentiator that I have found in myself and others is trying to work out inner conflicts interpersonally. An addictive, dependent relationship can be a place where we waste massive resources. Where we waste potential is where we put energy and time into departing from the experience of meaning. We waste potential when we vent, act out, and let ourselves go. As Goethe says, "A master first reveals himself in his ability to hold back." There is a divining rod available to tell us if we are wasting potential. Ask yourself, "Will I remember this well on my death bed?" If you can't answer in the affirmative, then you are probably wasting potential. Consider this a propitious time to see the ways you waste potential, and reclaim it for life-affirming purposes.

You have chosen the blank card and need to consult your inner truth about this rather than the oracle. Perhaps this area is still unformed, or perhaps you already know the answer but are consulting the oracle as if you didn't. It is the unformed aspects of life that create room for free will. Paracelsus, the great alchemist, said that we are here to "finish nature." We are subcreators, here to bring form out of the formless. In writing this card, I am bringing form out of the formless mass of zeros and ones from which the card arises. This card indicates an area of formlessness that you are called upon to give form to. Often we tend to think that the answer to what troubles us lies fully formed somewhere, and we need only seek out that fully formed answer through an oracle or some other means. But perhaps we are, as George W. Bush would say, "The Decider." It is not for something outside of us to supply the answer; it is for us to choose the answer. Some people fall for what I call the "museum curator fallacy." Perceiving that there is something sacred about the universe, they feel that they don't dare touch anything or change anything or interfere with anything. They become like a member of a Star Trek away team with an over fussy sense of the prime directive. What people caught by the museum curator fallacy forget is that they are not outside of the glass case, they are in it, and they were designed by nature to be interventionist alchemists. Another classic mistake people make is what I call the "single correct diagnosis fallacy." According to this fallacy, there is a single correct diagnosis of what is going on in a given situation. But we know from quantum physics that the universe is not as cut and dried as that. An electron is not in any particular place; it is more like a cloud of probabilities. Interpretation of what is going on is often a choice, a choice that generates a timeline. For example, a friend of mine had his wallet stolen. Unconsciously defaulting to the single correct diagnosis fallacy, he assumed that he was the victim of a random, meaningless misfortune. From the rationalistic point of view, this diagnosis was the most reasonable interpretation. From the point of view of Occam's Razor, the random misfortune diagnosis was the simplest explanation, and therefore, logically, the one most likely to be true. But there are other ways to judge truth than logical efficiency. Although one could make the strongest logical case for the random misfortune diagnosis, it was a truth that was both aesthetically displeasing and disempowering. By choosing the logically efficient random misfortune diagnosis my friend gained absolutely nothing but a demoralized sense of being a random victim. I suggested an alternative diagnosis, that the loss of the wallet was a synchronicity. In dreams, I pointed out, the loss of a wallet often means a need to shed an old identity as our wallets are full of ID that supposedly tell who we are. I proposed that the loss of the wallet was a painful but synchronistic shock meant to awaken him to the need to shed an old identity that no longer served him. Since this related to things my friend was going through, this new interpretive choice was felt by him to be very empowering and it allowed the painful shock to become a catalyst for his metamorphosis. Consider that the truth is sometimes unformed and waiting for you to choose an interpretation that will govern the ensuing timeline. Consider this a propitious moment of unformed space, a propitious moment for you to give form to the formless.

The heart has two phases, contraction and expansion, systole and diastole. Mammal incarnation has two phases it cycles through on a daily basis -- waking and dreaming. We are interdimensional travelers, arriving from another dimension at birth, departing to other dimensions at death. The cycle of the day recapitulates the cycle of a life. At night/old age we run out of energy, grow sleepy, and eventually surrender to the temporary oblivion of sleep/death. Sleep/death is not an eternity of velvet darkness; the velvet darkness is polka-dotted with shimmering portals -- incarnations/dreams. The dreamtime is our other daily dimension, and it is ruled by a different physics than the physics of our waking dimension. The relentless and ubiquitous tyrant gravity does not bind us, and if we realize that we are able to fly and translocate at will. Linear time does not bind us, and past, present and future fold together in wavy patterns like Damascus steel. In the dreamtime, synchronicity is the rule rather than the seeming exception. The Tao of the dream usually unfolds in parallel to inner psychic content. An unproven assumption is that we generate our own dreams. But the dreams of people who are dull and unimaginative in the waking life, often have the surreal double and triple entendre complexity of the dreams of the most imaginative, as if they were all directed by David Lynch. And who is the dream generator in the many documented cases of mutual dreaming? Our culture of fundamentalist materialism has the naïve prejudice that waking is "more real" than dreaming. Waking and dreaming are just two cases of our having a perception that something seems to be going on. Physics tells us that the seemingly solid objects of our waking life are actually patterned energy, that matter (as Einstein pointed out) is actually just a special case of energy. Also, we never sense anything but internal perceptions. For example, when you look at an object with your waking eyes you see ambient light reflected off the topography of its surface. That light passes through the simple convex lens of your cornea and appears upside down on the back of your retina. The image is then turned right side up and otherwise interpreted by neurological processing. There is obviously a time gap between the object and this artifact of its existence (reflected light) reaching your eye and then being interpreted into perception. So what I see with my waking eyes is a neurological reconstruction of a past event. Spiritual teachings, philosophy, neurology and psychology are unanimous in telling us that we are never sure of what we're looking at, that human perception means to look through a glass darkly at a thin slice of an edge of a multidimensional multiverse. So it is merely cultural prejudice to assume that the patterned energy we perceive in our waking life is "more real" than the patterned energy we perceive in the dreamtime. Consider the case of a sleeping boy having a dream on a subway train. In the waking life this boy has the stereotypical bad stepfather -- a sadistic, controlling personality who sees this boy's whole existence as an irritation. Superficially, especially when others are present, he pretends to have the boy's best interests at heart. The boy's mother tells her son that he should love his stepfather and the boy is confused; he's not sure what to think of him. In the boy's dream his stepfather appears as a monster who turns into a human only when other adults are in the room. Meanwhile, back in the waking life, random strangers step on or off the subway, stations are announced, etc. Which is more "real," what's going on in the subway or what's going on in the dream? If your point of view is meaningfulness or relevance to the boy, then the dream seems more "real." There's a Jewish tradition that says, "An uninterpreted dream is like an unopened letter." That overstates the case for dream interpretation. Dreams are not puzzles awaiting solution, but life experiences. Dream interpretation is at least as subjective and limiting as "life interpretation." It would probably be meaningless, for example, to attempt an interpretation of what you did last Tuesday. But on some Tuesday there could be a dramatic episode of the sort that would later become a frequently repeated story or anecdote. These dramatic episodes could be subject to interpretations such as, "That certainly taught me never to believe that people are who they say they are." Similarly, most of the dreams that people bring for dream interpretation are dramatic episodes where insistent meanings are breaking through from dreamtime to waking time. Interpretation is still subjective, but the dream may be tasking us to interpret it into the waking life. Another naïve assumption about dreams is that we are alone in a world of our own imagining. Sleeping and dreaming are boundary-dissolving states, and our dreaming psyche may be impinged on by other dreaming psyches or by autonomous entities able to travel into the dreamtime dimension. The occurrence of this card is a reminder of the importance of the dreamtime as the other daily phase of your present incarnation. Don't fall asleep to the Babylon Matrix spell of forgetfulness of the dreamtime dimension. The Babylon Matrix wants you to believe that it is all there is, and that your every will and desire must be fulfilled through the dense, gravity- bound parameters of its limited realm. Reclaim your birthright as an interdimensional traveler and restore your awareness of the dreamtime. Restore your awareness of the Babylon Matrix as a massively dense collective dream. At the end of the day, and at the end of your life, this is a dream from which you will awaken.

Becoming aware that you are dreaming in the dream time, and also becoming aware in the waking time that this is another type of dream, a collective dream. A classic lucid dreaming technique is to ask yourself throughout the day Am I dreaming? In some ways the answer is always: Yes. The heart has two phases, contraction and expansion, systole and diastole. Mammal incarnation has two phases it cycles through on a daily basis -- waking and dreaming. We are interdimensional travelers, arriving from another dimension at birth, departing to other dimensions at death. The cycle of the day recapitulates the cycle of a life. At night/old age we run out of energy, grow sleepy, and eventually surrender to the temporary oblivion of sleep/death. Sleep/death is not an eternity of velvet darkness; the velvet darkness is polka-dotted with shimmering portals -- incarnations/dreams. The dreamtime is our other daily dimension, and it is ruled by a different physics than the physics of our waking dimension. The relentless and ubiquitous tyrant gravity does not bind us, and if we realize that we are able to fly and translocate at will. Linear time does not bind us, and past, present and future fold together in wavy patterns like Damascus steel. In the dreamtime, synchronicity is the rule rather than the seeming exception. The Tao of the dream usually unfolds in parallel to inner psychic content. An unproven assumption is that we generate our own dreams. But the dreams of people who are dull and unimaginative in the waking life, often have the surreal double and triple entendre complexity of the dreams of the most imaginative, as if they were all directed by David Lynch. And who is the dream generator in the many documented cases of mutual dreaming? Our culture of fundamentalist materialism has the naïve prejudice that waking is "more real" than dreaming. Waking and dreaming are just two cases of our having a perception that something seems to be going on. Physics tells us that the seemingly solid objects of our waking life are actually patterned energy, that matter (as Einstein pointed out) is actually just a special case of energy. Also, we never sense anything but internal perceptions. For example, when you look at an object with your waking eyes you see ambient light reflected off the topography of its surface. That light passes through the simple convex lens of your cornea and appears upside down on the back of your retina. The image is then turned right side up and otherwise interpreted by neurological processing. There is obviously a time gap between the object and this artifact of its existence (reflected light) reaching your eye and then being interpreted into perception. So what I see with my waking eyes is a neurological reconstruction of a past event. Spiritual teachings, philosophy, neurology and psychology are unanimous in telling us that we are never sure of what we're looking at, that human perception means to look through a glass darkly at a thin slice of an edge of a multidimensional multiverse. So it is merely cultural prejudice to assume that the patterned energy we perceive in our waking life is "more real" than the patterned energy we perceive in the dreamtime. Consider the case of a sleeping boy having a dream on a subway train. In the waking life this boy has the stereotypical bad stepfather -- a sadistic, controlling personality who sees this boy's whole existence as an irritation. Superficially, especially when others are present, he pretends to have the boy's best interests at heart. The boy's mother tells her son that he should love his stepfather and the boy is confused; he's not sure what to think of him. In the boy's dream his stepfather appears as a monster who turns into a human only when other adults are in the room. Meanwhile, back in the waking life, random strangers step on or off the subway, stations are announced, etc. Which is more "real," what's going on in the subway or what's going on in the dream? If your point of view is meaningfulness or relevance to the boy, then the dream seems more "real." There's a Jewish tradition that says, "An uninterpreted dream is like an unopened letter." That overstates the case for dream interpretation. Dreams are not puzzles awaiting solution, but life experiences. Dream interpretation is at least as subjective and limiting as "life interpretation." It would probably be meaningless, for example, to attempt an interpretation of what you did last Tuesday. But on some Tuesday there could be a dramatic episode of the sort that would later become a frequently repeated story or anecdote. These dramatic episodes could be subject to interpretations such as, "That certainly taught me never to believe that people are who they say they are." Similarly, most of the dreams that people bring for dream interpretation are dramatic episodes where insistent meanings are breaking through from dreamtime to waking time. Interpretation is still subjective, but the dream may be tasking us to interpret it into the waking life. Another naïve assumption about dreams is that we are alone in a world of our own imagining. Sleeping and dreaming are boundary-dissolving states, and our dreaming psyche may be impinged on by other dreaming psyches or by autonomous entities able to travel into the dreamtime dimension. The occurrence of this card is a reminder of the importance of the dreamtime as the other daily phase of your present incarnation. Don't fall asleep to the Babylon Matrix spell of forgetfulness of the dreamtime dimension. The Babylon Matrix wants you to believe that it is all there is, and that your every will and desire must be fulfilled through the dense, gravity- bound parameters of its limited realm. Reclaim your birthright as an interdimensional traveler and restore your awareness of the dreamtime. Restore your awareness of the Babylon Matrix as a massively dense collective dream. At the end of the day, and at the end of your life, this is a dream from which you will awaken.

Access your emotionally neutral, higher thinking, cosmic vision. Ironically, what farseeing vision often reveals are the obvious truths that are right in front of our faces, but which are nevertheless hard to recognize. The personal view can trap us in the forever chaos of he said/she said. An impersonal or cosmic view requires fiercely looking into things without emotional entanglement. Avoid significant decisions and actions while in a state of emotional agitation. Get past the point of view of internal considering where everything is viewed by the ego as a blessing or a curse. Cut through to the core of what is going on. One way to do this with your life is to ask yourself the question: What will I remember well on my deathbed?

Essence -- Radiating with the energy of who you really are. Your core essence — that which created your DNA and incarnation circumstances. According to the Taoist I Ching, evolution occurs on the path of "reverse alchemy," the path of "returning to the Tao." Evolution does not necessarily occur by perpetual attunement to the Tao. Daisies, spiders and viruses live perfectly attuned to the Tao, never deviate from it, but don't have the potential for individual evolution that human beings possess. We are born in touch with our essence, but relentless programs of conditioning work to separate us from our original essence. However, if we are able to travel the difficult path of reverse alchemy, undo the many layers of conditioning and restore our original essence, then we will be evolved.

Diving into the unconscious and dealing with whatever hair-raising events, visions, entities, life-changing realizations you find there. Nothing could be more crucial than Socrates' great commandment: "Know thyself." Those who don't know themselves act out their unknown contents in the world, and often with disastrous results. Explore the unconscious with the courage to see the horror and beauty of the endless diversity of elements. But don't explore as a tourist, as a psychedelic thrill-seeker or dilettante. If you enter the unconscious without a moral purpose, as Jung pointed out, you are asking to get wrecked. You would not go deep-sea diving without some training, tools, discipline, and a support network. Shamans don't travel into the unconscious to have fun or hang out, they enter with respect, usually for the moral purpose of healing, and they get in and get out as quickly as possible, well aware of the dangers. Another moral purpose to enter the unconscious is to expand consciousness and to share that expanded consciousness with others. Sometimes we are in a state where we are consumed or obsessed with some outer controversy, but actually what we are experiencing is much more fundamentally an agitation happening in the unconscious. We live in a mostly extroverted culture where problems and rewards are located in the outer world. But virtually all human problems -- war, conflict, environmental destruction, etc. ultimately derive from a single source -- human psychology. Try the following meditation: sit still, focus on your breathing, but instead of trying to still your mind, let it run amuck, going wherever it wants to. Have a pen and notebook (or other recording system) in front of you, and record what comes up. It is also of great value to pay attention to your dreams and record them for further study. It is crucial to be aware of the forces and subpersonalities in your personal unconscious. To be ignorant of them is to be ruled by them, allowing yourself to be dominated by a network of autonomous complexes. "I'm not really the type to wander off and sit down and go through deep wrestling with my soul." -- George W. Bush, as quoted in Vanity Fair, October 2000 "I'm also not very analytical. You know I don't spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things." -- George W. Bush, aboard Air Force One, June 4, 2003 How do you know yourself? One way is continuous, mindful attention to the movies with voice over narration playing in your head all day and all night. There are waking movies, dreaming movies and day-dreaming movies. The Dubyah sort of method of self-inquiry would be to ignore these movies as just bits of nonsense. But notice that every bit of ephemeral whatever -- a flickering image, a twisted thought form of words strung together -- each of these has an absolutely factual existence. It is a fact that you thought of that particular image, those particular words. The unfolding of the universe is altered because you thought of one thing and not another. And regardless of what a dismissive ego might think, each of these "bits of nonsense" happens for a reason, is a product of inner forces operating within you. Acknowledging this takes courage, because we would rather cling to a neater, tidier version of ourselves -- an air-brushed year book photo, when actually we look more like labyrinths filled with moving images and words. And these labyrinths have twists and turns and secret corridors we may not know ourselves. If we don't know them, then this unexplored content -- sexuality, emotions, unintegrated desires, etc. -- will come spilling out of us as slips of the tongue, and sometimes as horrendous irreversible actions (the stuff that personal and collective histories are made of). For example: "The truth of that matter is, if you listen carefully, Saddam would still be in power if he were the president of the United States, and the world would be a lot better off." -- George W. Bush, second presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004 "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." -- George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004 "Who could have possibly envisioned an erection -- an election in Iraq at this point in history?" -- George W. Bush, at the White House, Washington, D.C., Jan. 10, 2005 "The most important job is not to be governor, or first lady in my case." -- George W. Bush, Pella, Iowa, as quoted by the San Antonio Express-News, Jan. 30, 2000 "I want to thank my friend, Senator Bill Frist, for joining us today. You're doing a heck of a job. You cut your teeth here, right? That's where you started practicing? That's good. He married a Texas girl, I want you to know. Karyn is with us. A West Texas girl, just like me." -- George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., May 27, 2004 It is all too easy to point to the unconsciousness of the other, but the only thing standing between you and Dubyah-consciousness is eternal vigilance about your inner content. You must be willing to explore the sometimes dark and twisted contents of yourself. Really listen to the voices speaking in your head all day long. Notice that there are different tones of voice, different agenda, different subpersonalities speaking with those different voices. Witness the voices or else become them as a sequence of acting out personalities. Witness all the images that appear in your mind. It's said that fear is like a dark room where negatives are developed. Carefully study all those negatives, prints, slides and looping videos. Evaluate each of them on various scales such as negative/neutral/positive, fear/anxiety to calm/spiritual acceptance, power/love. Besides careful observation of inner content, you must also recognize that you are not merely a passive observer of these inner artifacts. In fact, you are the producer, the director, the special effects team and all the actors in these inner movies. You can decide to start editing out certain repetitious scenes and looping voices. You can consciously choose and create thought forms, images and scenes to add to your inner content. Exploration of inner content is not like a tour of a museum where you mustn't touch any of the glass cases or their curious contents. Inner exploration is an active, interactive, and sometimes interventionist process. To observe a thing is to change a thing, and the maximal case of this is when the object of your observation is your own inner content. Crowley's definition of magik is: "The science and art of creating change in conformity to will." You are at your most magically empowered when you choose to use your will to create change in your inner content. So throw open all those glass cases, probe all the curious inner contents, and, when you are ready, grasp hold of some of these strange artifacts and metamorphose them with your true will. Exploration of inner content is a pathway of truth which takes great courage, moment by moment. Not everyone who glimpses this pathway to truth has the courage to follow it into the labyrinth of the unconscious. Consider the poem "The Wayfarer" by Stephen Crane (1871-1900): The Wayfarer, Perceiving the pathway to truth, Was struck with astonishment. It was thickly grown with weeds. "Ha," he said, "I see that no one has passed here in a long time." Later he saw that each weed Was a singular knife. "Well," he mumbled at last, "Doubtless there are other roads." For an introduction to learning more about the levels and content of the unconscious see Thoughts on Jung Here are a couple of excerpts: "Nobody doubts the importance of conscious experience; why then should we doubt the significance of unconscious happenings? They also are part of our life, and sometimes more truly a part of it for weal or woe than any happenings of the day." -- C.G. Jung "People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn the literature of the whole world—all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls. Thus the soul had gradually been turned into a Navareth from which nothing good can come. Therefore let us fetch it from the four corners of the earth—the more far-fetched and bizarre it is the better!" -- C.G. Jung

What is blocking your connection to the light? Usually there is some sort of negative inner script that frames life and/or yourself negatively. Negative frames are often just below the surface of consciousness and act as filters through which perceptions pass and are distorted. For example, "Life sucks and then you die. I never get my fair share. I can't do anything right." etc. These negative frames constrict life energy and operate as self-fulfilling prophecies. We can easily perpetuate the eclipse by regret, and feeling bad about feeling bad. Consider for a moment how many other human beings must be in similar straits right now. Pray for compassion and healing for yourself and others who are similarly afflicted. Remember that real change usually comes out of the dark night of the soul. Alchemically, one needs the descent into chaos to create new forms. As the Dylan lyric puts it, "He not busy being born is busy dying." The eclipse comes when your soul feels like it is busy dying. Receiving this card means it is a propitious time to get busy being born. Resources for dealing with inner eclipse follow, but it is also possible that the eclipse is more outer. This card could indicate a time where you are in an environment that is not receptive to what you have to offer. If so, consider this text related to I Ching Hexagram #36," Eclipse". From Brian Browne Walker's The I Ching or Book of Changes: A Guide to Life's Turning Points Darkness reigns in the external world now, Disengage from negative feelings and maintain your inner light. This is a time when darkness and inferior energies surround you. ..The only light left is that inside your own heart, and you are counseled to return to it, maintain it, and quietly nourish yourself with it. It is in dark moments that a correct attitude is most important. If we fight against the darkness, we are swallowed by it and suffer great misfortune. If we react to the lack of visible progress with despair and negativity, we extinguish our own inner light and block the aid of the Creative. If we try to persuade others that they must return to the light, we exhaust ourselves in vain now. In a time such as this, it is wise to adopt a stance of outer disengagement and inner perseverance. Don not focus on or interact with the negative influences around you; this only strengthens their grip on you. Step aside, yield, let go, allow people and events to pass without attachment. Direct your attention inside, to your inner light, your devotion to what is right, your conversation with the Higher Power. Progress may be slow, but there will indeed be progress. Remember that much of the work of the Higher Power is hidden from us, and that we enable and assist it by remaining detached, accepting, and reserved in the face of negative influences. Again, the above was from Brian Brown Walker's superb, concise I Ching. Additional Resources If you are in a situation where your value is not being recognized consider the following: Keep secret work secret. We live in a cult of confession society where people go on national television to spill out their personal lives. But consciousness work, esoteric work, is depotentiated, loses power, when you share it with those who haven't earned access. As Aleister Crowley said, "If I tell a man something he isn't ready to hear, it is the same as if I told him a lie." Don't spill your pearls before swine, save them for your spiritual allies, those that share a deep commitment to consciousness. Often it is safer and in a variety of ways advantageous to be cloaked and to evade unnecessary attention. Deng Ming-Dao, a modern Taoist sage points out, "Useful trees are cut down. Useless ones survive. The same is true of people. The strong are conscripted. The beautiful are exploited. Those who are too plain to be noticed are the ones who survive. They are left alone and safe. But what if we ourselves are among such plain persons? Though others may neglect us, we should not think of ourselves as being without value. We must not accept the judgment of others as the measure of our own self-worth... Thus, to be considered useless is not a reason for despair, but an opportunity. It is the chance to live without interference and to express one's own individuality." If your eclipse is inner (in addition to or instead of situational) the following card texts contain a whole toolbox full of field-tested techniques for emerging from inner eclipse. The first tells you how to deal with psychic entropy and the second is on how to awaken from depression. Dealing with Psychic Entropy Psychic or psychological entropy is a state of mind first written about by Carl Jung and later developed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in his concept of Flow. A state of psychic entropy is characterized by anxiety, sadness and boredom and typically includes looping negative thought tapes. Psychic entropy is a state that leaves us hampered in our ability to deal with complex external tasks or useful inner contemplation. We all know what this feels like -- that all too familiar state of being frazzled, fragmented and unraveled, paralyzed by inertia and self-conflict, worried thoughts gnawing our mind like a chew toy. So what can we do about that? One answer is to use such times to do easy mechanical tasks like laundry and dishes that can be done even if your attention is a bit fragmented. Entertaining, not too dense audio books and podcasts on headphones can be a way to fill the chaotic inner space with better quality content. Psychic entropy is more likely to occur in solitude so if there is a positive social interaction available you can try that. Focus on external considering -- on others' needs rather than your own -- as psychic entropy is based on internal considering. Alternatively, you could go all the way in the other direction and sit down in solitude, perhaps with a journal open, and carefully observe, or even record, all the fragmenting thoughts as they loop through your mind and see what subpersonalities they come from and what their issues are. If the state of psychic entropy comes from a general deficit of meaning in your life then see what you can do to increase meaningfulness. Consider Csikszentmihalyi's "5 C's" of a Complex Personality as summarized by Maryam: "The Complex Personality knows how to integrate a variety of experiences into its overall experience, making the dullest moments interesting. Being in Flow leads to Complexity for when you experience Flow, you want to experience more of it and construct your world to pull you irresistibly towards experiences within the Flow. Focus on these to craft your world: 1) Clarity - Know what you want to do in your life every day. Have clarity of goals, listen to feedback and adjust yourself to the feedback you receive from the world. 2) Center – You are in Balance. Your goal is to focus, to know how to avoid distractions, to become at one with what you're doing, with all of your attention under your control. 3) Choice - Knowing there are a variety of possibilities around you, that you're not determined by outside events but have choice and can move within it. Whatever you do, you do "at Choice". 4) Commitment- Care for what you're doing at all times. Remain conscious of what you care about. Commit to it. 5) Challenge - Keep upping your challenges as you master a certain level. Always make life more challenging." See the section on "Dealing with Afflictive Thoughts and Feelings" in A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler for a more thorough discussion. Awakening from Depression Subclinical depression is almost the norm in our society. Many people go through their days burdened, their gaze lowered, suffering under a generalized feeling of oppression. Although it is easy to attribute much of this to fractured, alienated lives, environmental toxins and poor diet, research indicates that the primary causes are negative thought forms, often occurring just beneath conscious awareness, which frame perception negatively so that one lives in a darkened reality tunnel. For example, "Life sucks, and then you die...I never get my fair share...I can't do anything right..." etc. The negative thought forms trigger negative emotions which in turn trigger physiological changes, and the process feeds on itself as a vicious circle. This card indicates that this is a propitious time for you or someone close to you to awaken from depression. There are many ways to go about the awakening, but the will has to be there for recovery to occur. Depression is a yin condition, associated with lowered energy and a murky wateriness. Take deep breaths, stand up straight with good posture and get going, get active, raise fire, the yang principle, by doing stuff! Don't feel like it? Excellent, that is the sure sign of how well getting active will work. Pick tasks that give definite results by putting in the effort -- like cleaning up your home. Shift to a high vitality diet with more live and raw food. Do a fearless moral inventory and ask yourself what you will remember well on your deathbed and prioritize doing that. Depression is often suffering that is neglected and not confronted. For this reason I prefer anguish and the dark night of the soul because these are more dynamic states capable of transformation. Confront what haunts you.

The potential for magical manifestation is inherent in the universe. In the New Age this has inflated into the mantra, "You create your own reality." But if this were the case, wouldn't some sufficiently positive-thinking New Ager have created a world without pollution? To a great extent you do create your own inner reality, and sometimes your inner reality and outer reality will correspond. When no causal factor can be found to explain such a correspondence we call it a "synchronicity." Our will, our intentions, our physical actions and our use of magic can all result in manifestation. But keep in mind, "More tears are shed for answered prayers, than for unanswered prayers." So be careful what you wish for. According to Aleister Crowley's definition,"Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will." One of my principles of magic is that the most powerful ritual is not one inherited from tradition, but one created spontaneously in the moment with full conscious engagement. The ritual you create today can be more individual and unique and consciously intended, more relevant and applicable to the current conditions. Few of us access the array of powers that exist, at least as potential, within us. Probably the single factor that most limits our access to power is the central spell or enchantment of the Babylon Matrix, which causes us to pursue outside objects, persons or entities to find our wholeness and fulfillment. Once you set out on that quest you become as enchantment-bound as a Ring Wraith. The hot pursuit of the external object is the anti-magic, a heatsink like a black hole for any radiance of self or personal power. If a person is inanely infatuated, for example, it is easy to see how much power they have abandoned. But if you instead focus on your own center, the self, the source that flows through you, if you shift your gaze from the Precious to the fires of chaos, the boiling cauldrons of ones and zeros, the stuff that matrices are made of, then you become a subcreator and have access to the wizard within. For those of you willing to read more, here are some of Crowley's essential principles of magick: I Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will. II. Postulate ANY required Change may be effected by the application of the proper kind and degree of Force in the proper manner through the proper medium to the proper object. III Theorems 1. Every intentional act is a Magickal Act. 2. Every successful act has conformed to the postulate. 3. Every failure proves that one or more requirements of the postulate have not been fulfilled. 4. The first requisite of causing any change is thorough qualitative and quantitative understanding of the conditions. (Illustration: The most common cause of failure in life is ignorance of one's own True Will, or of the means by which to fulfill that Will...He may really be a painter, and yet fail to understand and to measure the difficulties peculiar to that career.) 5. The second requisite of causing any change is the practical ability to set in right motion the necessary forces. 8. A man whose conscious will is at odds with his True Will is wasting his strength. He cannot hope to influence his environment efficiently. 9. A man who is doing his True Will has the inertia of the Universe to assist him. 15. Every force in the Universe is capable of being transformed into any other kind of force by using suitable means. There is thus an inexhaustible supply of any particular kind of force that we may need. 16. The application of any given force affects all the orders of being which exist in the object to which it is applied, whichever of those orders is directly affected. 17. A man may learn to use any force so as to serve any purpose, by taking advantage of the above theorems. 18. He may attract to himself any force of the Universe by making himself a fit receptacle for it, establishing a connection with it, and arranging conditions so that it's nature compels it to flow toward him. 19. Man's sense of himself as separate from, and opposed to, the Universe is a bar to his conducting its currents. It insulates him. (Illustration: A popular leader is most successful when he forgets himself, and remembers only "The Cause." Self-seeking engenders jealousies and schism.) 20. A man can only attract and employ the forces for which he is really fitted. 21. There is no limit to the extent of the relations of any man with the Universe in essence; for as soon as man makes himself one with any idea, the means of measurement cease to exist. But his power to utilize that force is limited by his mental power and capacity, and by the circumstances of his human environment. 23. Magick is the Science of understanding oneself and one's conditions. It is the Art of applying that understanding in action. 25. Every man must do Magick each time that he acts or even thinks, since a thought is an internal act whose influence ultimately affects action, though it may not do so at the time. 39 Every act of your life is a magickal act; whenever from ignorance, carelessness, clumsiness, or what not, you come short of perfect artistic success, you inevitably register failure, discomfort, frustration. Why should you study and practice Magick? Because you can't help doing it, and you had better do it well than badly. Accordingly, the most important preliminary to any Magickal operation is to make sure that its object is not only harmonious with, but necessary to, your Great Work. "Thou has no right but to do thy will." Every act, therefore, with the thoughts and words which determine its performance, is a sacrament. To refuse to fulfill any of one's possibilities is the direct negation of the Great Work.

For there to be novelty in our lives, for there to be metamorphosis, there needs to be open space. It is hard to grow something new in a space that is already overcrowded. What we often don't realize about a loss, about the dark night of the soul, about a dry period in some area, is the space that it opens up for us where new life can grow. Both the ego and life abhor a vacuum. The ego fears unplanned emptiness and would like to fill up all the unformed spaces with stuff, activity, people and places. But the more the ego fills up all the unformed space in our lives, the less chance there is for life to find its serendipitous ways to fill that space with something new. One of the most obvious cases of the ego's compulsive space filling is on the interpersonal plane. Some people are terrified to have a space in their life where there is no romantic partner. When space opens up, their ego anxiously asserts itself: Well I have to be going out with someone, maybe I should try this person or that one. Maybe I should register with an online dating service. Maybe I should... One of the last things the ego would be likely to consider is that maybe it should do nothing. When the interpersonal space in your life is already filled up, then there is much less room for some new and unexpected person. There is also less room for something that is not interpersonal, but which may need that space to grow. The ego tends to be anxious about any empty spaces in any area of your life and interprets those as deficiencies and deprivations that urgently need to be filled up. In conversations it may tend to view silences as anxious "dead air time" that should be filled up with chatter. But a few silent moments between persons can be a thoughtful, soulful time, a chance to reflect before reentering the word stream. Similarly, with the creative process, no one should expect access to the creative muse all the time. Much mediocre art is created by people who have built an ego identity around being a writer, composer, artist, etc. They feel they must always be doing their art or else they experience a catastrophic loss of identity. For example, some writers will talk about "writer's block" and will talk about being "blocked" as though they were undergoing a major illness. But "writer" was not stamped on their birth certificate. No one gave them a guarantee that they would be filled up with stuff to write about all the time. There are fallow periods in the creative process, and if you try to fill up those spaces you end up churning out mediocrity rather than channeling inspiration. In the past, I used to try to force access to Parallel Journeys, the epic story I have worked on off an on for a very long time. I felt that I "should" be working away at it, and ended up "shoulding" on myself when I wasn't. In writing my essay on the creative process, The Path of the Numinous, however, it became much clearer to me that following the creative muse meant also following it into empty spaces. When I let go of Parallel Journeys as the thing I should be working on, I found that the muse filled that space with all sorts of other stuff. Also, I aim at being a generalist and refuse to identify myself as specifically a non-fiction writer, a fiction writer, a photographer, a philosopher and so forth. I want my creativity to be motivated by content, not identity. When one form of creativity dries up for a time, I usually find that another springs to life in the unformed space that opens up. In other cases, what comes in to fill up the unformed space is relationship, travel, or taking in the creative work of others. Consider this a propitious time to invite and welcome open spaces in your life.

Keep reaching for your dreams and ignore the inner or outer advice of "sensible, reasonable, realistic" subpersonalities and interpersonal advisers. As George Bernard Shaw said, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." On the practical level, if you have a big dream, you will usually find that it takes at least two hours of focused work most days to fulfill it. If you are blessed with a dream that is in accord with your True Will, consider this a propitious time to keep reaching for it.