THE SOURCE ACE OF FIRE THE SOURCE   REVERSE
SHARING QUEEN OF FIRE: MASTERY OF ACTION	THE OUTSIDER 5 OF RAINBOWS	ORDINARINESS 8 OF RAINBOWS
REVERSE	REVERSE	REVERSE
ICE-OLATION 3 OF CLOUDS

THE SOURCE

ACE of FIRE The SOURCE

SHARING

The Queen of Fire is so rich, so much a queen, that she can afford to give. It doesn't even occur to her to take inventories or to put something aside for later. She dispenses her treasures without limits, welcoming all and sundry to partake of the abundance, fertility and light that surrounds her. Wen you draw this card, it suggests that you too are in a situation where you have an opportunity to share your love, your joy and your laughter. And in sharing, you find that you feel even more full. There is no need to go anywhere or to make any special effort. You find that you can enjoy sensuality without possessiveness or attachment, can give birth to a child or to a new project with an equal sense of creativity fulfilled. Everything around you seems to be 'coming together' now. Enjoy it, ground yourself in it, and let the abundance in you and around you overflow.


As you move above to the fourth center - that is the heart - your whole life becomes a sharing of love. The third center has created the abundance of love. By reaching to the third center in meditation, you have become so overflowing with love, with compassion, and you want to share. It happens at the fourth center - the heart. That's why even in the ordinary world people think love comes out of the heart. For them it is just hearsay, they have heard it; they don't know it because they have never reached to their heart. But the meditator finally reaches to the heart. As he has reached to the center of his being - the third center - suddenly an explosion of love and compassion and joy and blissfulness and benediction has arisen in him with such a force that it hits his heart and opens the heart. The heart is just in the middle of all your seven centers - three centers

THE OUTSIDER

The small child in this card is standing on one side of a gate, looking through it. He is so small, and so convinced that he cannot get through, he cannot see that the chain holding the gate is not locked: all he has to do is open it.
Whenever we feel 'left out', or excluded, it brings up this feeling of being a small, helpless child. It is not surprising, as a the feeling is deeply rooted in our earliest childhood experiences. The problem is that, because it is so deeply rooted, it plays over and over again, like a tape, in our lives. You have an opportunity now to stop the tape, to quit tormenting yourself with ideas that you are somehow not 'enough' to be accepted and included. Recognize the roots of these feelings in the past, and let go of the old pain. It will bring you the clarity to see how you can open the gate and enter that which you most long to become.


So you are feeling yourself an outsider. This is good. This is the transitory period. Now you have to be alert not to fill yourself with pain and misery. Now that God is no longer there, who is going to console you? You don't need any consolation. Humanity has come of age. Be a man, be a woman, and stand on your own feet ....
The only way to be connected with existence is to go inwards, because there at the center you are still connected. You have been disconnected physically from your mother. That disconnection was absolutely necessary to make you an individual in your own right. But you are not disconnected from the universe. Your connection with the universe is of consciousness. You cannot see it, so you have to go deep down with great awareness, watchfulness, witnessing, and you will find the connection. The buddha is the connection!

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.

ICE-OLATION

In our society, men in particular have been taught not to cry, to put a brave face on things when they get hurt and not show that they are in pain. But women can fall into this trap too, and all of us at one time or another might feel that the only way to survive is to close off our feelings and emotions so we can't be hurt again. If our pain is particularly deep, we might even try to hide it from ourselves. This can make us frozen, rigid, because deep down we know that one small break in the ice will free the hurt to start circulating through us again.
The rainbow-colored tears on this person's face hold the key to breaking out if this 'ice-olation'. The tears, and only the tears, have the power to melt the ice. It's okay to cry, and there is no reason to feel ashamed of your tears. Crying helps us to let go of pain, allows us to be gentle with ourselves, and finally helps us to heal.


We are miserable because we are too much in the self. What does it mean when I say we are too much in the self? And what exactly happens when we are too much in the self? Either you can be in existence or you can be in the self - both are not possible together. To be in the self means to be apart, to be separate. To be in the self means to become an island. To be in the self means to draw a boundary line around you. To be in the self means to make a distinction between 'this I am' and 'that I am not'. The definition, the boundary, between 'I' and 'not I' is what the self is - the self isolates. And it makes you frozen - you are no longer flowing. If you are flowing the self cannot exist. Hence people have become almost like ice-cubes. They don't have any warmth, they don't have any love - love is warmth and they are afraid of love. If warmth comes to them they will start melting and the boundaries will disappear. In love the boundaries disappear; in joy also the boundaries disappear, because joy is not cold.