Tarot Meditation Card for the Day - Osho Zen Tarot - The Master

The Master is a card unique to the Osho Zen Tarot Deck because it is not a card of the Major or Minor Arcana, giving this deck 79 cards instead of only 78.

When you draw this card, you are reminded that your life is about your own mastership.  People can teach you, people can guide you, people can even tell you what to do (and you can give them all your power); but, ultimately, you are supposed to determine your own destiny and understand your own story.  In Zen Buddhism one tries to follow the Eightfold Path, which involves: the Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.  In all situations in life there is the Right choice or solution, not too much and not too little.  Not perfect, but optimal ... the best at any given time.  Finding your Zen is about finding your Right Path in life and through life.

Drawing this card raises the question of "where am I?" in my life drama.  What does your mastership look like.  In my own story, at one time, I thought it involved teaching knowledge at the collegiate level.  Currently I am trying out a destiny as a full-time parent, which is a good fit, but only part of the story still unfolding.  I certainly feel in Mastership when working with the Tarot and helping others transform, which was really the basis for my pursuit of my degree and my desire to teach.  What is your Right Path and when you face decisions, do you make them with Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration?  Who is the person in the world you most admire, look up to, would trust to guide you ... well, then you should become that person  or use and leave behind that person because you are meant to be a Master in your own right.

This card is also a reminder, by being outside the standard number of cards, that the Tarot is a tool we use and not a tool that uses us.

Pulling Cards with my Partner, Betsy, This Morning

In Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis (New Consciousness Readers) by Stanislav Grof and Christina Grof (Paperback - Sep 1, 1989), there is a chapter on Shamans.  In the chapter "When Insanity is a Blessing: The Message of Shamanism", Holger Kalweit writes about the years of suffering many spiritual leaders must go through to complete the Shamanic journey, literally years and years of illness, mental and/or physical, before they become wisdom teachers for their tribe/community.  I bought this book after I suffered a severe panic attack almost a year ago to the day.  The attack was completely debilitating requiring the EMS to come to me off the highway and nearly two weeks of bed rest.  Even when I emerged to a low level of functioning, I admitted myself into the hospital experiencing chest pains within another two weeks.  At the hospital I had an episode where I blacked out from stress. They were required to release me the next day because they could find nothing wrong with my heart.  They did, however, set up a stress test for me.  Concurrently, my doctor's office had found an elevated bilirubin count in my blood test, indicating a possible problem with my liver.  Oh, and I was in the first stage of my Uranus Opposition.  I asked my doctor if I could be inducing my problems due to my anxiety and stress.  He said it was possible, but they could not test for it.  Everything else, they could and would test, and they did.


I took my stress test and passed with flying colors ... excellent health for a man my age (41).  Due to my health concerns I made a radical change in my diet to organic foods and water, fresh squeezed juice.  In fact, my body out right rejected processed food and artificial drinks; I even quit drinking sweet tea ... completely.  Even so, I was still feeling very sick and my doctor ordered a liver/spleen ultrasound.  In the time before the ultrasound I was reading up on some dietary issues and noted that the lemon juice I was drinking would act as a cleanser for my liver, flushing toxins out.  I even found a connection with bilirubins right before my test.  I decided to stop drinking the lemon juice a day or two before my test.  Once again, the test were negative; I was fine.  I told the doctor about my discovery with regard to the lemon juice and he suggested I stay off it for two weeks and have them retest my blood.  And, as you can presume, I was fine, my bilirubin count was back to normal.  In the end I had no physical aliments; my mind was causing the heart attack simulation and my cleansing diet was forcing toxins into my body so I could purge them.  In the end ... and still to this day ... its all in my mind.


I do want to say and compliment my doctors; they did their job wonderfully for what they do.  But in the end, after we went down the list of physical problems we reached the bottom of the list ... the problem is psychological.  At the peak of the crisis I got an emergency ration of anti-anxiety medication, which I grudgingly took.  In my home aspirin expires before it is all used up.  This fact is even more the case now that I'm on a very healthy diet.  I have not actually been sick (cold, flu, or other virus) in almost a year.  When I have felt a little ill coming on, some rest and minimal preventative medicine do the trick.  So how to deal with the anxiety ... my mind in crisis.  The drugs were ok for a short term, immediate fix to a severe attack, but not the long term direction I wanted to go.  At my doctor's suggestion and those of good friends who have had psychological counseling, I decided to see a psychologist.  I also asked my good friend and fellow professional astrologer Darrell Steen to look at my chart.  Both proved immensely helpful.  In the end, in my case, it has been the astrology that has been the most valuable.  To put it bluntly, I'm in a personal astrological sh*t storm that I will have to endure and persevere through for about 8 more years (yes, you read that right, 8 years).  This information brings me back to the chapter referred to at the beginning of this post.  


I know we want quick fixes in our world of high speed; I want them sometimes too.  But my mind and spirit are going through a major shift.  And it has been books on spirituality and astrology that have been the most helpful ... and at the top of the list is the Liquid Light of Sex: Kundalini, Astrology, and the Key Life Transitions by Barbara Hand Clow (Paperback - Sep 1, 2001).  This book talks explicitly about the Uranus Opposition, which will begin to end for me after October of this year.  For those of you with astrological knowledge here's the shorthand of my long term storm - Transiting Neptune is square my Natal Neptune and Transiting Pluto is square my Natal Venus (then my Mercury, Eris, Saturn, North Node, and finally my Sun ... all in Aries).  Oh, and I got to have Transiting Saturn roll over my Natal Uranus and Pluto about a year ago (at, guess what time!).  All this explanation brings me to the reading that is the catalyst for this post.

Since my original severe attack, I have faced bouts with general anxiety and some days of extreme anxiety.    Throughout this process I have pulled cards and so has Betsy.  The source of the anxiety appears to be responsibility ... feeling overwhelmed by responsibility.  We drew cards this morning and here's what came up.  The first question asked was what is Philip feeling, I drew the 7 of Fire (Stress) and Betsy drew the 10 of Fire (Suppression):

Painfully fitting cards, clearly reflecting my feelings and her interpretation of my feelings.  So the next question we posed was, "What does Philip need to do?"  I drew the 2 of Fire (Possibilities) and she drew the 3 of Fire (Experiencing).

Now the cards identifying my current feelings were dead on; painfully so.  The cards drawn to answer the question, "what to do?" are also fire cards, suggesting, even demanding action.  My card leads me to interpret my situation as one where I have choices even if the stress makes me feel as if I do not.  I need distance (the eagle peering down from a high vantage point) to see choices.  Betsy's card is one of my favorites in this deck because it shows the mingling of energy fields between the woman and the tree.  As part of my therapy, as suggested in the book Shamanic Spirit: A Practical Guide to Personal Fulfillment by Kenneth Meadows (Paperback - Apr 9, 2004), I walked through a local park and touched the trees, asking for healing energy.  I have lapsed on that action and chose to walk barefoot in the grass of my backyard to reconnect with the grounding energy of the earth.  I also know I need to "experience" this anxiety, which I believe to be connected to struggles in this life time and a past one (especially one in India 1500 years ago when I committed suicide by drowning; my daughter's soul now is my daughter's soul from that life time ... but that's another blog entry entirely).  So, in the vein of the 2 of Fire, I pursued some time to meditate, to pull back, which helped me to be grateful for all that I currently have and see that I am not trapped.  To apply the 3 of Fire, I have found ways to experience the four elements to help with my feelings, sitting under a fan in my office (air), swimming with my daughter at the pool (water), staring at flame while meditating (fire), and walking barefoot in my back yard to feel the grass and earth on my bare skin (earth).  These actions (fire) have helped immensely.


In the end, if you have made it to the end of this entry, I wanted most to share one of the practical applications I have for the tarot in my life, especially in times of deep crisis.  More than anything I have learned and continue to learn from my difficult journey; I can feel my old self, my "serious" self dying, and a new self being born.  As you can guess the death of one and birth of the other is not a quick or simple process; the one being released wants to hold on and the one being born is not so sure about this current world and its behaviors.  I can only say how grateful I am to have astrology and tarot as tools to help me, as well as, and more importantly the loving support of Betsy, my daughter, my parents, my friends and the wise professionalism of my psychologist and doctor.

Two Card Tarot Reading - Osho Zen Tarot

This post contains a video demonstrating my two card tarot reading technique that I use at the Body, Mind, Spirit Expo each year in Raleigh. 

The first video is an introduction explaining the process.  The second video is the reading. I will draw two cards randomly and read them as the Present Moment and the Challenge to the Present Moment.  Once I have completed the initial reading, I will reverse the cards and re-read them.

Tarot Meditation Card for Today - Osho Zen Major Arcana V - No-Thingness

I want to introduce readers to the Tarot by pulling a card to meditate on from time to time.  I do not use this process as a daily practice, but you can, especially if you are learning the Tarot.  The card above comes from the Osho Zen Tarot, an Eastern Zen Buddhist influenced deck.  It is good that this card is the first one I pulled because it shows the very different direction this Tarot deck takes from the traditional Western deck.  In a traditional Western Tarot, this card would be the Hierophant (or Learned Scholar).  In the West the pinnacle of the development of the mind is to "fill it up" (PhD's, JD's, and lots of other letters after your name).  This cards shows that the pinnacle of development in the East is to EMPTY the mind.  This card was a good draw for me and an excellent card to use to demonstrate the helpfulness of Tarot in your personal life.

Before I write about the specifics of my day and how this card proved helpful, let me point out that I prefer to use the cards as a psychological (and not psychic) tool.  Others may use them in a psychic capacity, but I use them as, essentially, Art Therapy (or sophisticated pictograms).  The cards present me with an image and a meaning (from the study of the deck) and I let my intuition take flight and see where I go inside myself, with the card or cards as my guide(s).  I am a "practical" Tarot reader, and not a mystic.  When I read for others I help them follow a similar process to get them to pay attention to the card and not me, the reader.  So, here's my story with regard to this card today.

As usual, my day begins fairly early.  I was up by 6AM and started blogging and visiting Facebook.  In my home there are 3 children, my daughter, who is 5 and my friend's daughters who are 5 and 10.  Her 5 year old pops up like popcorn at 8AM sharp, and was up almost 2 hours before her sister came down stairs.  Not long after her sister came down, my friend came to tell me she thought she heard my daughter crying upstairs, but wasn't sure.  I rushed upstairs to check on her and she was indeed crying.  When I asked her what was wrong, she told me her leg was hurting and it was painful to stand.  She was very upset and a little scared, so I asked her some questions to try to determine how it felt and were it hurt.  She told me the front of her leg was bothering her and I could see a bruise from what looked like, most likely, a charlie horse rough housing with the 10 year old.  As it turned out, they had been playing hard yesterday and she had actually cut the bottom of her foot.  The cut did not look like anything deep, but it did have the appearance of a puncture and the leg that was hurting was the one with the injured foot.  So, I'm concerned immediately about tetanus.

I ask my daughter if she would like to go to the doctor and have him/her look at her leg and her foot.  She says she would, so off we go.  Needless to say, my stress level is up a few notches wondering if she's going to be in need of a tetanus shot and if I missed something regarding her foot injury.  My mind can go to some pretty dark scenarios pretty fast.  We went to the doctor and they did confirm it was a puncture, but he did not see any debris in the wound or increased redness around the cut.  He also agreed that the leg was most likely sore from a deep bruise or strain.  He could not say 100% she did not need a tetanus shot though and left it to my discretion.  Thanks, right?!  I've chosen to observe her and see if the wound has any problems by tomorrow and if she starts to show signs of a fever.  I suspect its just a basic cut and bruised leg.  Even so, my mind was off and running.

So, when I drew the No-Thingness card, I knew I needed to empty my mind.  From the book of the deck, "In the beginning is nature, in the end is nature, so why in the middle do you make so much fuss?  Why, in the middle, becoming so worried, so anxious, so ambitious - why create such despair?"  Why indeed did I create such despair even as I worked to find answers and the answer so far is just a little life ... a little cut, and run of the mill bruise on the thigh.  Why couldn't I hold a lower level of concern until I had reason to hold a higher level of concern?  I do not mean to imply that I wish I had not taken her to the doctor, but to question how I LET MYSELF FEEL through my thoughts as if she had tetanus already.  It's not easy in a world filled with fear-mongering; we get conditioned to go to dark places before we even now if we need to go to dark places.  It's a shame really.  After I drew the card, I took some deep breaths, breathing out the negative assumptions and the worry. 

My daughter has spent the rest of the day resting at home and playing gently, which is very hard for her.  She likes to go, go, go, and go hard.  She also informed me that "ice cream would make it feel better," which I am sure, it did :-).