LAZINESS 9 OF WATER   REVERSE
ORDINARINESS 8 OF RAINBOWS	MORALITY QUEEN OF CLOUDS: MASTERY OF MIND	THE REBEL MAJOR ARCANA IV
REVERSE
COMPARISON 5 OF CLOUDS

LAZINESS

9 of WATER

ORDINARINESS

This figure walking in nature shows us that beauty can be found in the simple, ordinary things of life. We as easily take this beautiful world we live in for granted. Cleaning the house, tending the garden, cooking a meal - the most mundane tasks take on a sacred quality when they are performed with you total involvement, with love, and for their own sake, without thought of recognition or reward.
You are facing a time now when this easy, natural and utterly ordinary approach to the situations you encounter will bring far better results than any attempt on your part to be brilliant, clever, or otherwise extra-ordinary. Forget all about making headlines by inventing the latest widget, or dazzling your friends and colleagues with your unique star quality. The special gift you have to offer now is presented best by just taking things easily and simply, one step at a time.


Sometimes it happens that you become one, in some rate moment. Watch the ocean, the tremendous wildness of it - and suddenly you forget you split, your schizophrenia; you relax. Or moving in the Himalayas, seeing the virgin snow on the Himalayan peaks, suddenly a coolness surrounds you and you need not be false because there is no other human being to be false to. You fall together. Or, listening to beautiful music, you fall together. Whenever, in whatsoever situation, you become one, a peace, a happiness, a bliss, surrounds you, arises in you. You feel fulfilled.
There is no need to wait for these moments - these moments can become you natural life. These extra-ordinary moments can become ordinary moments - that is the whole effort of Zen. You can live an extraordinary life in a very ordinary life: cutting wood, chopping wood, carrying water, carrying water from the well, you can be tremendously at ease with yourself. Cleaning the floor, cooking food, washing the clothes, you can be perfectly at ease - because the whole question is of you doing you action totally, enjoying, delighting in it.

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.

THE REBEL

The powerful and authoritative figure in this card is clearly the master of his own destiny. On his shoulder is an emblem of the sun, and the torch he holds in his right hand symbolizes the light of his own hard-won truth. Whether he is wealthy or poor, the Rebel is really an emperor because he has broken the chains of society's repressive conditioning and opinions. He has formed himself by embracing all the colors of the rainbow, emerging from the dark and formless roots of his unconscious past and growing wings to fly into the sky. His very way of being is rebellious - not because he is fighting against anybody or anything, but because he has discovered his own true nature and is determined to live in accordance with it. The eagle is his spirit animal, a messenger between earth and sky.
The Rebel challenges us to be courageous enough to take responsibility for who we are and to live our truth.

People are afraid, very much afraid of those who know themselves. They have a certain power, a certain aura and a certain magnetism, a charisma that can take out alive, you people from the traditional imprisonment ...
The enlightened man cannot be enslaved - that is the difficulty - and he cannot be imprisoned ... Every genius who has known something of the inner is bound to be a little difficult to be absorbed; he is going to be an upsetting force. The masses don't want to be disturbed, even thought they may be in misery; they are in misery, but they are accustomed to the misery. And anybody who is not miserable looks like a stranger.
The enlightened man is the greatest stranger in the world; he does not seem to belong to anybody. No organization confines him, no community no society, no nation.

COMPARISON

5 of CLOUDS