SUPPRESSION 10 OF FIRE   REVERSE
RECEPTIVITY QUEEN OF WATER: MASTERY OF EMOTIONS	INNER VOICE MAJOR ARCANA II	THE BURDEN 6 OF CLOUDS
REVERSE	REVERSE	REVERSE
TURNING IN 4 OF WATER

SUPPRESSION

The figure on this card is quite literally 'all tied up in knots'. His light still shines within, but he has repressed his own vitality trying to meet so many demands and expectations. He has given up all his own power and vision in return for being accepted by the very same forces that have imprisoned him. The danger of suppressing one's natural energy in this way is apparent in the cracks of volcanic eruption about to take place around the edges of the image.
The real message of the card is to find a healing outlet for this potential explosion. It is essential to find a way to release whatever tensions and stresses might be building up inside you right now. Beat on a pillow, jump up and down, go out into the wilderness and scream at the empty sky - anything to shake up your energy and allow it to circulate freely. Don't wait for a catastrophe to happen.


In Sanskrit the name is alaya vigyan, the house where you go on throwing into the basement things that you want to do but you cannot, because of social conditions, culture, civilization. But they go on collecting there, and they affect your actions, your life, very indirectly. Directly, they can not face you - you have forced them into darkness, but from the dark side they go on influencing your behavior. They are dangerous, it is dangerous to keep all those inhibitions inside you.
It is possible that these are the things that come to a climax when a person goes insane. Insanity is nothing but all these suppressions coming to a point where you cannot control them anymore. But madness is acceptable, while meditation is not - and meditation is the only way to make you absolutely sane.

RECEPTIVITY

Receptivity represents the feminine, receptive quality of water and of the emotions. Her arms are extended upwards to receive, and she is completely immersed in the water. She has no head, no busy and aggressive mind to hinder her pure receptivity. and as she is filled she is continuously emptying herself, overflowing, and receiving more. the lotus pattern or matrix that emerges from her represents the perfect harmony of the universe that becomes apparent when we are in tune with it.
The Queen of water brings a time of unboundedness and gratitude for whatever life brings, without any expectations or demands. Neither duty or thought of merit or reward are important. Sensitivity, intuition and compassion are the qualities that shine forth now, dissolving all obstacles that keep us separate from each other and from the whole.


Listening is one of the basic secrets of entering into the temple of God. Listening means passivity. Listening means forgetting yourself completely - only then can you listen. When you listen attentively to somebody, you forget yourself. If you cannot forget yourself, you never listen. If you are too self-conscious about yourself, you simply pretend that you are listening - you don't listen. You many not your head; you may sometimes say yes and no - but you are not listening. When you listen you become just a passage, a passivity, a receptivity, a womb: you become feminine. And to arrive one has to become feminine. You can not reach God as aggressive invaders, conquerors. You can reach God only ... or it will be better to say; God can reach you only when you are receptive, a feminine receptivity. When you become yin, a receptivity, the door is open. and you wait.
Listening is the art for becoming passive.

INNER VOICE

The Inner Voice speaks not in words but in the wordless language of the heart. It is like an oracle who only speaks the truth. If it had a face, it would be like the face at the center of this card - alert, watchful, and able to accept both the dark and the light, symbolized by the two hands holding the crystal. The crystal itself represents the clarity that comes from transcending all dualities. The Inner Voice can also be playful, as it dives deep into the emotions and emerges again to soar towards the sky, like two dolphins dancing in the waters of life. It is connected with the cosmos, through the crescent-moon crown, and the earth, as represented by the green leaves on the figure's kimono.
There are times in our lives when too many voices seem to be pulling us this way and that. Our very confusion in such situations is a reminder to seek silence and centering within. Only then are we able to hear our truth.


If you have found your truth within yourself there is nothing more in this whole existence to find. Truth is functioning through you. When you open your eyes, it is truth opening his eyes. When you close your eyes, it is truth who is closing its eyes.
This is a tremendous meditation. If you can simply understand the device, you don't have to do anything; whatever you are doing is being done by truth. You are walking, it is truth; you are sleeping, it is truth resting; you are speaking, it is truth speaking; you are silent, it is truth that is silent.
This is one of the most simple mediation techniques. Slowly, slowly everything settles by this simple formula, and then there is no need for the technique.
When you are cured, you throw away the meditation, you throw away the medicine. Then you live as truth - alive, radiant, contented, blissful, a song unto yourself. Your whole life becomes a prayer without any words, or better to say a prayerfulness a grace, a beauty which does not belong to our mundane world, a ray of light coming from the beyond into the darkness of our world.

THE BURDEN

When we carry a load of shoulds and shouldn'ts imposed on us by others we become like this ragged, struggling figure trying to make his way uphill. "Go faster, try harder, reach the top!" shouts the foolish tyrant he carries on his shoulder, while the tyrant himself is crowned with an imperious rooster.
If life these days feels like just a struggle from the cradle to the grave, it could be time to shrug your shoulders and see what it feels like to walk without these characters on your back. You have your own mountains to conquer, your own dreams to fulfill, but you will never have the energy to pursue them until you release yourself from all the expectations you've gathered from others but now think are your own. Chances are they exist only in your own mind, but that doesn't mean they can't weigh you down. It's time to lighten up, and send them on their way.


A man's true life is the way in which he puts off the lie imposed by others on him. Stripped, naked, natural, he is what he is. This is a matter of being, and not of becoming. The lie cannot become the truth, the personality cannot become your soul. There is no way to make the nonessential the essential. The nonessential remains nonessential and the essential remains the essential, they are not convertible. And striving towards truth is nothing but creating more confusion. the truth has not to be achieved. It cannot be achieved, it is already the case. Only the lie has to be dropped.
All aims and ends and ideals and goals and ideologies, religions and systems of improvement and betterment, are lies. Beware of them. Recognize the fact that, as you are you are a lie. Manipulated, cultivated by others. Striving after truth is a distraction and a postponement. It is the lie's way to hide. See the lie, look deep into the lie of your personality. Because to see the lie is to cease to lie. No longer to lie is to seek no more for any truth - there is no need. The moment the lie disappears, truth is there in all its beauty and radiance. In the seeing of the lie it disappears, and what is left is the truth.

TURNING IN

The woman in this image has a faint smile on her face. In fact she is just watching the antics of the mind - not judging, not trying to stop them, not identified, just watching as if they were traffic on the road, or ripples on the surface of a pond. And the antics of the mind are slightly amusing, as it jumps up and down and twists this way and that, trying to get your attention and seduce you into the game.
To develop the knack of taking a distance from the mind is one of the greatest blessings. It is what meditation is all about really - not chanting a mantra, or repeating an affirmation, but just watching, as if the mind belongs to somebody else. You are ready to take this distance now, and to watch the show without getting caught up in the drama. Indulge yourself in the simple freedom of Turning In whenever you can, and the knack of meditation will grow and deepen in you.


Turning Inwards is not a turning at all. Going inwards in not a going at all. Turning inwards simply means that you have been running after this desire and that, and you have been running and running and you have been coming again and again to frustration. That each desire brings misery, that there is no fulfillment through desire. That you never reach anywhere, that contentment is impossible. Seeing this truth, that running after desires takes you nowhere, you stop. Not that you make any effort to stop. If you make any effort to stop it is again running, in a subtle way. You are still desiring - maybe now it is desirelessness that you desire.
If you are making an effort to go in, you are still going out. Any effort can only take you out, outwards.
All journeys are outward journeys, there is no inward journey. How can you journey inwards? You are already there, there is no point in going. When going stops, journeying disappears; when desiring is no more clouding your mind, you are in. This is called turning in. But it is not a turning