STRESS 7 OF FIRE
CONDITIONING MAJOR ARCANA XV	CREATIVITY MAJOR ARCANA III	MOMENT TO MOMENT 2 OF RAINBOWS
REVERSE	REVERSE	REVERSE
INTEGRATION MAJOR ARCANA XIV   REVERSE

STRESS

How many people do you know who, just when they were completely overloaded, with too many projects, too many 'balls in the air', have suddenly come down with the flu, or taken a fall and ended up on crutches? That's just the sort of 'bad timing' the little monkey with the pin in his hand is about to impose on the 'one-man-band' pictured here!
The quality of stress represented by this card visits all of us at times, but perfectionists are particularly vulnerable to it. We create it ourselves, with the idea that without us nothing will happen - especially in the way we want it to! Well, what makes you think you're so special? Do you think the sun won't rise in the morning unless you personally set the alarm? Go for a walk, buy some flowers, and fix yourself a spaghetti dinner - anything 'unimportant' will do. Just put yourself out of that monkey's reach!


All private goals are neurotic. The essential man comes to know, to feel, "I am not separate from the whole, and there is no need to seek and search for any destiny on my own. Things are happening, the world is moving - call it God ... he is doing things. They are happening of their own accord. There is no need for me to make any struggle, any effort; there is no need for me to fight for anything. I can relax and be." The essential man is not a doer. The accidental man is a doer. The accidental man is, of course, then in anxiety, tension, stress, anguish, continuously sitting on a volcano. It can erupt any moment, because he lives in a world of uncertainty and believes as if it is certain. This creates tension in his being: he knows deep down that nothing is

CONDITIONING

This card recalls an old Zen story, about a lion who was brought up by sheep and who thought he was a sheep until an old lion captured him and took him to a pond, where he showed him his own reflection. Many of us are like this lion - the image we have of ourselves comes not from our own direct experience but from the opinions of others. A 'personality' imposed from the outside replaces the individuality that could have grown from within. We become just another sheep in the herd, unable to move freely, and unconscious of our own true identity.
It's time to take a look at your own reflection in the pond, and make a move to break out of whatever you have been conditioned by others to believe about yourself. Dance, run, jog, do gibberish - whatever is needed to wake up the sleeping lion within.


Unless you drop your personality you will not be able to find your individuality. Individuality is given by existence; personality is imposed by the society. Personality is social convenience.
Society cannot tolerate individuality, because individuality will not follow like a sheep. Individuality has the quality of the lion; the lion moves alone.
The sheep are always in the crowd, hoping that being in the crowd will feel cozy. Being in the crowd one feels more protected, secure. If somebody attacks, there is every possibility in a crowd to save yourself. But alone? - only the lions move alone.
And every one of you is born a lion, but the society goes on conditioning you, programming your mind as a sheep. It gives you a personality, a cozy personality, nice, very convenient, very obedient.
Society wants slaves, not people who are absolutely dedicated to freedom. Society wants slaves because all the vested interests want obedience.

CREATIVITY

From the alchemy of fire and water below to the divine light entering from above, the figure in this card is literally 'possessed by' the creative force. Really, the experience of creativity is an entry into the mysterious. Technique, expertise and knowledge are just tools; the key is to abondon oneself to the energy that fuels the birth of all things. This energy has no form or structure, yet all the forms and structures come out of it.
It makes no differnece what particular from your creativity takes - it can be painting or singing, planting a garden or making a meal. The important thing is to be open to what wants to be expressed through you. Remember that we don't posses our creations; they do not belong to us. True creativity arises from a union with the divine, with the mystical and the unknowable. Then it is both a joy for the creator and a blessing to others.


Creativity is the quality that you bring to the activity that you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach - how you look at things ... Not everybody can be a painter - and there is no need also. If everybody is a painter the world will be very ugly; it will be difficult to live. And not everybody can be a dancer, and there is no need. But everybody can be creative.
Whatsoever you do, it if you do it joyfully, if you do it lovingly, if your act of doing is not purely economical, then it is creative. If you have something growing out of it within you, if it gives you growth, it is spiritual, it is creative, it is divine.
You become more divine as you become more creative. All the religions of the world have said God is the creator. I don't know whether he is the creator or not, but one thing I know: the more creative you become, the more godly you become. When your creativity comes to a climax, when your whole life becomes creative, you live in God. So he must be the creator because people who have been creative have been closest to him.
Love what you do. Be meditative while you are doing it - whatsoever it is!

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.

INTEGRATION

The image of integration is the unio mystica, the fusion of opposites. This is a time of communication between the previously experienced dualities of life. Rather than night opposing day, dark suppressing light, they work together to create a unified whole, turning endlessly one into the other, each containing in its deepest core the seed of the opposite.
The eagle and the swan are both beings of flight and majesty. The eagle is the embodiment of power and aloneness. The swan is the embodiment of space and purity, gently floating and diving upon and within the element of the emotions, entirely content and complete within her perfection and beauty.
We are the union of eagle and swan: male and female, fire and water, life and death. The card of integration is the symbol of self-creation, new life, and mystical union; otherwise known as alchemy.


The conflict is in Man. Unless it is resolved there, it cannot be resolved anywhere else. The politics is within you; it is between the two parts of the mind.
A very small bridge exists. If that bridge is broken through some accident, through some physiological defect or something else, the person becomes split, the person becomes two persons - and the phenomenon of schizophrenia or split personality happens. If the bridge is broken - and the bridge is very fragile - then you become two, you behave like two persons. In the morning you are very loving, very beautiful; in the evening you are very angry, absolutely different. You don't remember your morning ... how can you remember? Another mind was functioning - and the person becomes two persons. If this bridge is strengthened so much that the two minds disappear as tow and become one, then integration, then crystallization, arises. What George Gurdjieff used to call the crystallization of being is nothing but these two minds becoming one, the meeting of the male and the female within, the meeting of yin and yang, the meeting of the left and right, the meeting of logic and illogic, the meeting of Plato and Aristotle.