THE DREAM 6 OF WATER   REVERSE
COMPROMISE 6 OF RAINBOWS	ABUNDANCE KING OF RAINBOWS: MASTERY OF THE PHYSICAL	POLITICS 7 OF CLOUDS
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THE REBEL MAJOR ARCANA IV   REVERSE

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.

COMPROMISE

In the courts of ancient Japan, the male attendants where often selected from the ranks of petty criminals who were castrated. Because of their intimate familiarity with the activities of the court, they were often at the center of the political and social intrigues and exercised a great deal of power behind the scenes.
The two figures on this card remind us of the sleazy and conspiratorial situations we can get into when we compromise our own truth. It is one thing to meet another halfway, to understand a point of view different from our own and work towards a harmony of the opposing forces. It is quite another to 'cave in' and betray our own truth. If we look deeply into it, we usually find that we are trying to gain something - whether it is power or the approval of others. If you are tempted, beware: the rewards of this kind of compromise always leave a bitter taste in the mouth.


Don't be clever, otherwise you will remain the same, you will not change. Half-techniques on the path of love and half-techniques on the path of mediation will create much confusion in you. They will not help ... But to ask for help is against the ego, so you try to compromise. This compromise will be more dangerous, it will confuse you more because, made out of confusion, it will create more confusion. So try to understand why you hanker for compromise. Sooner or later you will be able to understand that compromise is not going to help. And compromise may be a way of not going in either direction, or it may be just a repression of your confusion. It will assert itself. Never repress anything, be clear-cut about your situation. And if you are confused, remember that you are confused. This will be the first clear-cut thing about you: that you are confused.
You have started on the journey.

ABUNDANCE

This Dionysian character is the very picture of a whole man, 'Zorba the Buddha' who can drink wine, dance on the beach and sing in the rain, and at the same time enjoy the depths of understanding and wisdom that belong to the sage. In one hand he holds a lotus, showing that he respects and contains within himself the grace of the feminine. His exposed chest (an open heart) and relaxed belly show that he is at home with his masculinity as well, utterly self-contained. The four elements of earth, fire, water and sky all conjunct at the Kin of rainbows who sits atop the book of wisdom of life.
If you are a woman, the King of Rainbows brings the support of your own male energies into your life, a union with the soulmate within. For a man, this card represents a time of breaking through the conventional male stereotypes and allowing the fullness of the whole human being to shine forth.


In the East people have condemned the body, condemned matter, called matter 'illusory', Maya - it does not really exist, it only appears to exist; it is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. They denied the world, and that is the reason for the East remaining poor, sick, in starvation. Half of humanity has been accepting the inner world but denying the outer world. The other half of humanity has been accepting the material world and denying the inner world. Both are half, and no man who is half can be contented.
You have to be whole: rich in the body, rich in science; rich in meditation, rich in consciousness. Only a whole person is a holy person, according to me. I want Zorba and Buddha to meet together. Zorba alone is hollow. His dance has not an eternal significance, it is momentary pleasure. Soon he will be tired of it. Unless you have inexhaustible sources, available to you from the cosmos itself ... unless you become existential, you cannot become whole.
This is my contribution to humanity; the whole person.

POLITICS

Do you recognize this man? All but the most innocent and sincere of us have a politician lurking somewhere in our minds. In fact, the mind is political. Its very nature is to plan and scheme and try to manipulate situations and people so that it can get what it wants. Here, the mind is represented by the snake, covered with clouds and 'speaking with a forked tongue'. But the important thing to realize about this card is that both faces are false. The sweet, innocent, 'trust me' face is a mask, and the evil, toxic, 'I'll have my way with you' face is a mask, too. Politicians don't have real faces. The whole game is a lie.
Take a good look at yourself to see if you have been playing this game. What you see might be painful, but not as painful as continuing to play. It doesn't serve anybody's interest in the end, least of all yours. Whatever you might achieve in this way will just turn to dust in you hands.


Anybody who can be a good pretender, a hypocrite, will become your leader politically, will become your priest religiously. All that he needs is cunningness, all that he needs is a facade to hide behind. Your politicians live double lives, your priests live double lives - one from the front door, the from the back door. And the back-door life is their real life. Those front-door smiles are just false, those faces looking so innocent are just cultivated.
If you want to see the reality of the politician you will have to see him from his back door. There he is in his nudity, as he is, and so it the priest. These two kinds of cunning people have dominated humanity. And they found out very early on that if you want to dominate humanity, make it weak, make it feel guilty, make it feel unworthy. Destroy its dignity, take all glory away from it, humiliate it. And they have found such subtle ways of humiliation that they don't come in the picture at all; they leave it to you to humiliate yourself, to destroy yourself. They have taught you a kind of slow suicide.

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.