CLINGING TO THE PAST 5 OF WATER
MOMENT TO MOMENT 2 OF RAINBOWS	ABUNDANCE KING OF RAINBOWS: MASTERY OF THE PHYSICAL	RIPENESS 9 OF RAINBOWS
REVERSE	REVERSE
MORALITY QUEEN OF CLOUDS: MASTERY OF MIND   REVERSE

CLINGING TO THE PAST

The figure pictured in this card is so preoccupied with clutching her box of memories that she has turned her back on the sparkling champagne glass of blessing available here and now. Her nostalgia for the past really makes her a 'blockhead', and a beggar besides, as we can see from her patched and ragged clothes. She needn't be a beggar, of course - but she is not available to taste the pleasures that offer themselves in the present.
It's time to face up the fact that the past is gone, and any effort to repeat it is a sure way to stay stuck in old blueprints that you would have already outgrown if you hadn't been so busy clinging to what you have already been through. Take a deep breath, put the box down, tie it up in a pretty ribbon if you must, and bid it a fond and reverent farewell. Life is passing you by, and you're in danger of becoming an old fossil before your time!


These tenses - past, present and future - are not the tenses of time; they are tenses of the mind. That which is no longer before the mind becomes the past. That which is before the mind becomes the present. And that which is going to be before the mind is the future.
Past is that which is no longer before you.
Future is that which is not yet before you.
And present is that which is before you and is slipping out of your sight. Soon it will be past ... If you don't cling to the past ... because clinging to the past is absolute stupidity. It is no longer there, so you are crying for spilled milk. What is gone is gone! And don't cling to the present because that is also going and soon it will be past. Don't cling to the future - hope, imaginations, plans for tomorrow - because tomorrow will become today, will become yesterday. Everything is going to become yesterday.
Everything is going to go out of your hands.
Clinging will simply create misery.
You will have to let go.

MOMENT TO MOMENT

As this figure moves across the stones, he steps lightly and non-seriously, and at the same time absolutely balanced and alert. Behind the swirling, ever-changing waters we can see the shapes of buildings; there appears to be a city in the background. The man is in the marketplace but at the same time outside of it, maintaining his balance and able to watch it from above.
This card challenges us to move away from our preoccupations with other spaces and other times, and stay alert to what is happening in the here and now. Life is a great ocean in which you can play if you drop all your judgemtns, your preferences, and the attachemtn to the details of your long-term plans. Be available to what comes your way, as it comes. And don't worry if you stumble or fall; just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, have a good laugh, and carry on.


The past is no more and the future is not yet: both are unnecessarily moving in directions which don't exist. One used to exist, but no longer exists, and one has not even started to exist. The only right person is one who lives moment to moment, whose arrow is directed to the moment, who is always here and now; wherever he is, his whole consciousness, his whole being is involved in the reality of here and in the reality of now. That's the only right direction. Only such a man can enter into the golden gate.
The present is the golden gate.
Here-now is the golden gate.
... And you can be in the present only if you are not ambitious - no accomplishment, no desire to achieve power, money, prestige, even enlightenment, because all ambition leads you into the future. Only a non-ambitious man can remain in the present.
A man who wants to be in the present has not to think, has just to see and enter the gate. Experience will come, but experience has not to be premeditated.

ABUNDANCE

This Dionysian character is the very picture of a whole man, 'Zorba the Buddha' who can drink wine, dance on the beach and sing in the rain, and at the same time enjoy the depths of understanding and wisdom that belong to the sage. In one hand he holds a lotus, showing that he respects and contains within himself the grace of the feminine. His exposed chest (an open heart) and relaxed belly show that he is at home with his masculinity as well, utterly self-contained. The four elements of earth, fire, water and sky all conjunct at the Kin of rainbows who sits atop the book of wisdom of life.
If you are a woman, the King of Rainbows brings the support of your own male energies into your life, a union with the soulmate within. For a man, this card represents a time of breaking through the conventional male stereotypes and allowing the fullness of the whole human being to shine forth.


In the East people have condemned the body, condemned matter, called matter 'illusory', Maya - it does not really exist, it only appears to exist; it is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. They denied the world, and that is the reason for the East remaining poor, sick, in starvation. Half of humanity has been accepting the inner world but denying the outer world. The other half of humanity has been accepting the material world and denying the inner world. Both are half, and no man who is half can be contented.
You have to be whole: rich in the body, rich in science; rich in meditation, rich in consciousness. Only a whole person is a holy person, according to me. I want Zorba and Buddha to meet together. Zorba alone is hollow. His dance has not an eternal significance, it is momentary pleasure. Soon he will be tired of it. Unless you have inexhaustible sources, available to you from the cosmos itself ... unless you become existential, you cannot become whole.
This is my contribution to humanity; the whole person.

RIPENESS

When the fruit is ripe, it drops from the tree by itself. One moment it hangs by a thread from the branches of the tree, bursting with juice. The next moment it falls - not because it has been forced to fall, or has made the effort to jump, but because the tree has recognized its ripeness and simply let it go.
When this card appears in a reading it indicates that you are ready to share your inner riches, your 'juice'. All you need to do is relax right where you are, and be willing for it to happen. This sharing of yourself, this expression of your creativity, can come in many ways - in your work, you relationships, your everyday life experiences. No special preparation or effort on your part is required. It is simply the right time.


Only if your meditation has brought you a light that shines in every night will even death not be a death to you but a door to the divine. With the light in your heart, death itself is transformed into a door, and you enter into the universal spirit; you become one with the ocean.
And unless you know the oceanic experience, you have lived in vain. Now is always the time, and the fruit is always ripe. You just need to gather courage to enter into you inner forest. The fruit is always ripe and the time is always the right time. There

MORALITY

Morality has restricted all the juice and energy of life to the narrow confines of her mind. It can't flow there, so she really has become 'a dried up old prune'. Her whole manner is very proper and stiff and severe, and she is always ready to see every situation as black and white, like the jewel she wears around her neck.
The Queen of clouds lurks in the minds of all of us who have been brought up with rigid ideas of good and bad, sinful and virtuous, acceptable and unacceptable, moral and immoral. It's important to remember that all these judgments of the mind are just products of our conditioning. And whether our judgments are applied to ourselves or to others, they keep us from experiencing the beauty and godliness that lies within. Only when we break through the cage of our conditioning and reach the truth of our own hearts can we begin to see life as it really is.
(related card - CONDITIONING)


Dodhidharma ... far transcends moralist, puritans, so-called good people, do-gooders. He has touched the very rock bottom of the problem.
Unless awareness arises in you, all your morality is bogus, all you culture is simply a thin layer which can be destroyed by anybody. But once your morality has come out of your awareness, not out of a certain discipline, then it is a totally different matter. Then you will respond in every situation out of your awareness. And whatever you do will be good. Awareness cannot do anything that is bad. That is the ultimate beauty of awareness, that anything that comes out of it is simply beautiful, is simply right, and without any effort and without any practice.
So rather that cutting the leaves and the branches, cut the root. And to cut the root there is no other method than a single method: the method of being alert, of being aware, of being conscious.