I left my Bodhi Tree post and the income it provided, partly to pursue becoming a Waldorf teacher, yet mainly because of becoming tired of supplying answers to the same questions time and time again. Most clients would come to me hopeful that their desires in relationships or careers were forthcoming, and if the layout showed a strong possibility of fulfillment they would leave feeling good about the future. Only to come back next month, with new desires or new problems. For me, it was like being a proprietor selling organic fruits and candy bars, and watching everyone go for the latter and the quick sugar high.
Mouni Sadhu, a great modern occultist and teacher of the tarot, came to the teaching and experience of Ramana Maharshi, a venerated Indian sage who lived until 1950. Ramana came to embody the knowledge of Self-awareness and offered a method of Self-inquiry for becoming aware of our divine nature. Mouni came to the realization how limited the tarot, or any system for that matter, is to the direct experience of the Infinite. The tarot is only a tool to observe the patterns of expression in one's individual self and in the universe.
How I use the tarot is to honor all the parts of oneself, which each card represents, to play with a full deck so to speak. To do so, however, one needs to experience the still, perfect, unconditional abode of happiness that only meditation can lead to. When one does that, and practice maintaining that awareness, then one can unconditionally love, not necessarily like, all the aspects of oneself and the actions of others. For example, the greedy, fearful part in myself. I do not like it, nor do I encourage it to direct my actions. Yet, I can laugh at it and love it, because I know it is not who I AM. It is a joke in relationship to the Truth of my being. If one can love each card, even those horrible looking ones with those dripping swords, one will be a master of one's happiness.
Dealing with every problem is like pruning a tree. Doing so is fine if one is making a living helping people solve their problems; that is how psychic lines thrive. Yet it gives nothing permanent to the clients to utilize and hold onto. It does not go to the root. Everybody wants to feel good. Most clients who come to intuitive artists want to assuage their heated minds and have someone listen to their anxieties. Until they discover that only by moving beyond the mind and its incessant chatter, will they not keep coming back.
The tarot and other systems of divination, psychic readings, etc. are only shadows of the truth. They only deal with various states and actions in consciousness, from different perspectives, not with consciousness itself, the foundation and the residing force of all creation. They do not deal with knowing God, but only with God's manifestations. If one relies on these ephemeral forms, instead of awakening to God consciousness, only more suffering will result. That is why in ancient China, for example, the questioner would sit in silence a long while, in the wisdom beyond the conniving of the mind, before asking the I-Ching a question.
When one becomes still and knows I AM, untouched by an action, any condition, then life becomes a blissful game. A card game, in fact.
Janaka Stagnaro copyright 2003
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