Tarot Meditation Card for the Day - Osho Zen Tarot - 7 of Rainbows, Patience

I appreciate the Osho Zen tarot because the imagery so often perfectly communicates the concept described by the keyword on the card. This card, the 7 of Rainbows (Patience), has one of the best pictorial representations of all the cards in the set.

When you draw this card you face the task of accepting that some things in life have a rhythm that you cannot speed up or slow down!  Hence the card shows us the phases of the moon and the woman who is pregnant.  These natural processes follow predictable cycles, especially the phases of the moon.  The human body is not quite as predictable, reliable, or hard to manipulate as the Moon orbiting Earth orbiting the Sun.  We all have situations in our lives where we want things to either speed up or slow down and we have trouble seeing the optimal process.

This circumstance is especially true when two or more people are involved.  We want someone to "get it" so we can move forward, trying to ignore the process of the other person in favor of what we want.  Or perhaps we are the person trying desperately to "get it" and we cannot make the process accelerate.  Maybe we "get it', but don't "want it" and we do everything we can to slow or stop the process.  Patience is not just a state of right activity, but also a state of right understanding.

On a personal level, as I have been on the journey of a spiritual awakening, I have had many a day of impatience, wishing I could "get on with it" and "be done" with the drama and struggle of being thrown completely out of my comfort zone.  I know what a comfort zone feels like and many days wish I could get back in one, not the one I had before, but the next one I'm moving towards.  Unfortunately, the transition often has its own agenda and sometimes what is best takes time.  Drawing this card is often very calming for me, a message from myself to myself to "settle down" and let things unfold as they will ... because they will.  Trying to force the issue before the right time or out of the right rhythm almost always results in negative outcomes.

As you read this post, think about any area of your life, any situation you feel impatient about and take a step back mentally.  What is the lesson in the "not happening"?  What is the cycle and how are you out of step with it and how do you get in step?  Where in your life do you need patience and how can you support that patience in your actions and thinking?

Tarot Meditation Card for the Day - Osho Zen Tarot - 6 of Air, The Burden

In the Osho Zen Deck a number of the Air cards are not what you would describe as "happy" cards (2/Schizophrenia, 3/Ice-Olation, 4/Postponement, 7/Politics, 8/Guilt, and 9/Sorrow); not surprising in a deck based on Zen Buddhism, which considers the mind the ultimate source of suffering in life.  So, when you draw the 6 of Air, the Burden, look at your life and see where you are taking on the burdens of others.

Life can be an uphill climb much of the time and doing it without extra weight on our backs is certainly the way to go.  Here the figure on the bottom represents the querent who is trying to climb the mountain of life with someone riding him, and as if to really drive the point home, there is a rooster on top of the Fop unwilling to make his own climb.  The card, though, has a double meaning.  It is very possible that the Fop being a burden is the querent as well.  Are you burdened or a burden to others?

In either case the card expects us to refuse to continue to accept the burdens of others or to stop being a burden to others.  This challenge can be very personal, especially if family members are tied to the reading or the first thought that crosses the mind of the querent is of a family member.  This card is not about helpful support but the clear abuse of another person's goodwill and strength.  If we immediately think of a person in our life when this card appears, then that person needs to be challenged as does the expectation to carry that person's burden.  In essence, we all get one life to make as our own in this lifetime and we should not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of ... and this card is about ALLOWING.  Nor should we take unfair advantage of others when we can "walk on our own."

Tarot Meditation Card for the Day - Osho Zen Tarot - New Vision XII

New Vision is the 12th Card of the Major Arcana:

When you draw this card, you are "now presented with the opportunity to see life in all its dimensions, from the depths to the heights.  They exits together, and when we come to know from experience that the dark and the difficult are needed as much as the light and easy, then we begin to have a very different perspective on the world." (Osho Handbook, 26)  Recently I have been engaged in a blog discussion about an Astrological reading done by Jamie Partridge of Darkstar Astrology about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Jaime's interpretation of Ahmadinejad's chart is very thought provoking and I recommend reading it to understand why this card resonates so powerfully with me, especially if you read all the blog comments.

As a professional astrologer myself, I am certainly feeling a heavy dose of the heavy-handedness of the universe right now.  I just finished a blog entry myself about Saturn and Pluto and it doesn't get much "darker" than talking about those two energy points in some kind of relationship.  The most recent aspect was a square (Saturn in Libra to Pluto in Capricorn).  Steven Forrest does not mince words about this aspect in the Inner Sky, where he states flatly that the square is about combative, enemies energy.  On its best day the square probably would describe two hard fighting gladiators, who, at the end of the contest, if both are still alive, respect each other for going all out against one another.  On the lower vibration, you get gridlock in Washington and little real forward movement on some very big problems.

This card reminds me that we need Recessions and Depressions when we go too far and we have clearly gone too far.  Just yesterday, I heard that temperatures in LA, Ca peaked at 113.  This morning, while doing my Tai Chi, I had the thought that global warming is the Earth's equivalent of a fever to get rid of an infection.  And you know who/what the infection is!  Fevers serve a purpose; Ahmadinejad is serving a purpose; the Great Recession is serving a purpose.  That purpose is to help all of us attain a New Vision.  For me the New Vision involves some old concepts mingled with new technologies: Intentional Communities re-localizing food production/consumption while having access to knowledge and people from around the world via the Internet and Mobile Phones.  We need to slow down our material consumption to speed up our spiritual growth.  We need more time with family and friends we choose/intend and less time looking to be "entertained" or "meeting obligations" that clearly do not help or support our own personal development.

In traditional decks, this card is represented as The Hanged Man, which I always describe to clients as "Knowing Sacrifice;" something conscientious parents understand all too well.  I knowingly and happily sacrificed my academic career for my family; I have a long vision for the future that sees great gifts in wise sacrifices in these current moments.  We need New Vision and it may take some darkness for us to see the the light we cannot currently see because of all the "glitzy" lights trying to distract us that have been part of our behavior since 2001 and Pluto's journey through Sagittarius.  What does your New Vision look like?

Book Recommendation - Tarot and Psychology by Arthur Rosengarten, PhD

Welcome to my first book recommendation for this blog.  I want to begin by saying that I am not a slutty bibliophile; I love books, but only the best of the best.  I am not after a "complete" collection of tarot and astrology books; I am after a useful collection of tarot and astrology books.  My time to read is limited and I prefer to keep my bookshelves stocked with books I will actually reread or pull off and reference periodically or regularly.  I constantly weed my shelves, and the books on them are heavily marked up with notes and codes that help me find important references.  This book, Tarot and Psychology: Spectrums of Possibility by Arthur Rosengarten, PhD, provides the reader with one of the best descriptions of Tarot in use in the mainstream practice of psychological counseling, including a section that talks about Tarot work with schizophrenic patients.

Rosengarten writes with academic precision while remaining very accessible to non-academic readers, my favorite kind of writer.  Lately I've been on an Einstein quote kick and Rosengarten is one of those writers who understands a complex subject well enough to explain it simply (Einstein: "If you can't explain it simply, then you don't understand it well enough." http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins383803.html).  Malcolm Gladwell has this talent as does Stephen J. Gould, Carol Tarvis, Mary Pipher, and rare others.  At the very beginning of the book, in the Introduction, Rosengarten provides a nice summation of the deep power of the Tarot:

"How to explain Tarot to those who would use it properly for the greatest good - individuals who desired greater spirituality in their lives, including the benefits of psychological insight and depth, without the baggage of affiliation that invariably accompanies any single set of beliefs.  Tarot, they will soon find, operates on many levels of profound meaning from a purely non-affiliated platform in the truest sense.  Tarot makes accessible to awareness a full spectrum of psychological and spiritual possibility with little preference for it's users qualifications or beliefs.  Rather, magically one might say, Tarot captures the heartbeat of experience.  This fact alone should make the deck of human possibility, as I call it, immediately relevant to helping professionals who deal with the heartbeat of experience daily." (Rosengarten, 5, 2000)

The entire book is filled with useful knowledge, case studies, and practical techniques and ranks among my top three tarot books (including The Tarot by Cynthia Giles and 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card by Mary Greer).