NEW VISION MAJOR ARCANA XII   REVERSE
THE DREAM 6 OF WATER	NO-THINGNESS MAJOR ARCANA V	PARTICIPATION 4 OF FIRE
		REVERSE
MIND CONTROL KING OF CLOUDS: MASTERY OF MIND CONTROL

NEW VISION

The figure on this card is being born anew, emerging from his earthbound roots and growing wings to fly into the unbounded. The geometric shapes around the body of the figure show the many dimensions of life simultaneously available to him. The square represents the physical, the manifest, the known. The circle represents the unmanifest, the the spirit, pure space. And the triangle symbolizes the threefold nature of the universe: manifest, unmanifest, and the human being who contains both.
Now you are presented with an opportunity to see life in all its dimensions, from the depths to the heights. They exist 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. By allowing all of life's colors to penetrate us, we become more integrated.


When you open up to the ultimate, immediately it pours into you. You are no longer an ordinary human being - you have transcended. Your insight has become the insight of the whole existence. Now you are no longer separate - you have found you roots. Otherwise, ordinarily, everybody is moving without roots, not knowing from where their heart goes on receiving energy, not knowing who goes on breathing in them, not knowing the life juice that is running inside them.
It is not the body, it is not the mind - it is something transcendental to all duality, that is called bhagavat - the bhagavat in the ten directions ...
Your inner being, when it opens, first experiences two directions: the height, the depth. and then slowly, slowly, as this becomes your established situation, you start looking around, spreading into all other eight directions.
And once you have attained to the point where your height and your depth meet, then you can look around to the very circumference of the universe. Then your consciousness starts unfolding in all ten directions, but the road has been one

THE DREAM

Some enchanted evening you're going to meet your soul mate, the perfect person who will meet all your needs and fulfill all your dreams. Right? Wrong! This fantasy that songwriters and poets are so fond of perpetuating has its roots in memories of the womb, where we were so secure and 'at one' with our mothers; it's no wonder we have hankered to return to that place all our lives. But, to put it quite brutally, it is a childish dream. And it's amazing we hang on to it so stubbornly in the face of reality. Nobody, whether it's your current mate or some dreamed-of partner in the future, has any obligation to deliver your happiness on a platter - nor could they even if they wanted to. Real love comes not from trying to solve our neediness by depending on another but by developing our own inner richness and maturity. Then we have so much love to give that we naturally draw lovers towards us.


This has been said again and again, down through the ages. All the religious people have been saying this: "We come alone into this world, we go alone." All togetherness is illusory. The very idea of togetherness arises because we are alone, and the aloneness hurts. We want to drown our aloneness in relationship ...
That's why we become so much involved in love. Try to see the point. Ordinarily you think you have fallen in love with a woman or a man because she is beautiful, he is beautiful. That is not the truth. The truth is just the opposite: You have fallen in love because you cannot be alone. You were going to fall. You were going to avoid yourself somehow or other. And there people who don't fall in love with women or men - then they fall in love with money. They start moving into money or into a power trip, they become politicians. That too is avoiding you aloneness. If you watch man, if you watch yourself deeply, you will be surprised - all your activities can be reduced to one single source. The source is that you are afraid of your aloneness. Everything else is just an excuse. The real cause is that you find yourself very alone.

NO-THINGNESS

Being 'in the gap' can be disorienting and even scary. Nothing to hold on to, no sense of direction, not even a hint of what choices and possibilities might lie ahead. But it was just this state of pure potential that existed before the universe was created. All you can do now is to relax into this nothingness ... fall into this silence between the words ... watch this gap between the outgoing and incoming breath. And treasure each empty moment of the experience. Something sacred is about to be born.


Buddha has chosen one of the really very potential words - shunyata. The English word, the English equivalent, 'nothingness', is not such a beautiful word.
That's why I would like to make it 'no-thingness' - because the nothing is not just nothing, it is all. It is vibrant with all possibilities. It is potential, absolute potential. It is unmanifest yet, but it contains all. In the beginning is nature, in the end it 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?
Nothingness to nothingness is the whole journey.

PARTICIPATION

Each figure in this mandala holds the right hand up, in an attitude of receiving, and the lft hand down, in an attitude of giving. The whole circle creates a tremendous energy field that takes on the shape of the double dorje, the Tibetan symbol for the thunderbolt. The mandala has a quality like that of the energy field that forms around a buddha, where all the individuals taking part in the circle make a unique contribution to create a unified and vital whole. It is like a flower, whoes wholeness is even more beautiful than the sum of its parts, at the same time enhancing the beauty of each individual petal.
You have an opportinity to participate with others now to make your contribution to creating something greater and more beautiful thatn each of you could manage alone. your participation will not only nourish you, but will also contribute something precious to the whole.


Have you ever seen night going? Very few people even become aware of things which are happening every day. Have you ever seen the evening coming? The midnight and its song? The sunrise and its beauty? We are behaving almost like blind people. In such a beautiful world we are living in small ponds of our own misery. It is familiar, so even if somebody wants to pull you out, you struggle. You don't want to be pulled out of your misery, of your suffering. Otherwise there is so much joy all around, you have just to be aware of it and to become a participant, not a spectator.
Philosophy is speculation, Zen is participation. Participate in the night leaving, participate in the evening coming, participate in the stars and participate in the clouds; make participation your lifestyle and the whole existence becomes such a joy, such an ecstasy. You could not have dreamed of a better universe.

MIND CONTROL

KING of CLOUDS: MASTERY of MIND CONTROL