The Herald

THE HERALD of B.O.T.A. EUROPE vol. VII no. 3 Spring 2001 Contents: § Editorial § Some thoughts on the Tree § The Way To Freedom § Contacts and group work

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EDITORIAL Welcome to the latest edition of The Herald, Spring 2001. Some of our readers may remember the late Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001, made in 1968, or perhaps may have read the book by Arthur C. Clarke. As with all prophetic visions, some of what was anticipated has indeed come to pass, while other landmarks are still some way off. We have yet to get a manned space flight to Mars, (never mind as far as Jupiter!) but we have a much better idea of how we might do this now than we did when Clarke was writing in the 60s. Indeed the European Space Agency and NASA anticipate that we will have a manned mission to Mars by 2010. It is reassuring to see the steady progress of our species on this planet toward ever greater achievements. All the more so as we pass through the dawning of the new millenium, amongst all of the prophecies of doom and Armageddon. And yet for all that, one cannot help but feel a sort of sympathy for our scientists. For they struggle in the dark with concepts that would baffle you and I, and yet the explanation for so many apparently inexplicable phenomena that they witness, the answers to so many apparently unanswerable questions that they ask can indeed be found, and would certainly be by now, had the occult tradition not been so well hidden by our forebears. In his book “A brief History of Time”, the British physicist Professor Stephen Hawking concludes that in order to collapse the wave function of the electrons that constitute our universe, something “external” to the universe must be concentrating on it. Compare that with the words of the Kyballion: “...the universe is the mental creation of God”..... In the works left to us by some of the past masters we read that man is a work unfinished, and that he is as yet not ready for the knowledge of his true worth or substance. He must be allowed to grow into the knowledge at his own pace. Indeed even today those of us who dedicate ourselves to the occult path may at some stage be asked to take oaths of secrecy and silence. And yet one cannot help but worry as we look at the current state of our planet that humanity is making these realisations rather slower than our forbears might have hoped. The world’s population is 6 billion and still growing at an exponential rate, and our environment and the other species that we share it with are being depleted faster than we can repair the damage. Surely if ever the time was ripe for the secret wisdom to begin to unfold, it is now. It is up to those of us that feel the stirrings of it in our hearts to hold the lantern for the rest of our fellows, for those of us who do not see that we are all ONE, that indeed the universe is all one piece. Fraternally, in L.V.X.

The editors. P.S. whoops, nearly forgot to talk about this edition of The Herald. We are grateful to Frater Abacus for his insightful piece on the tree of life, and its use as a tool for understanding other aspects of the work that we study. Following this is the next in our series of pieces from Anne Davies’s Sunday Sermons. The subject of this one is The Way To Freedom through Tarot. Incidentally it’s well worth reading the passage from the bible that she refers to, Matthew 12, before or after reading her piece. Finally we have the group work and contacts page. You will notice that we have no letters page this edition. Why? Because no-one wrote to us! SO come on, please put pen to paper or finger to keyboard and tell us and the readers what’s on your mind. Also, we would really like to get some humorous material in The Herald too, provided it has some relevance to our work. Maybe you know of just the joke.....

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A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT THE TREE OF LIFE It is always rewarding to meditate upon the diagram of the Tree of Life, and how it can be used practically. Beyond the well-known astrological and Tarot keys attributions, we can use it as a blueprint for many applications: the 10 Commandments, the physical, psychological and occult constitution of Man, the orders of Archangels and Angels, etc...For example, let us place on the Tree of Life the Invocation we use to open many of our meetings: 1 2 3 4

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Holy art Thou, Lord of the Universe, Holy art Thou, whom Nature hath not formed, Holy art Thou, the vast and the mighty One, Lord of the Light and of the darkness.

Obviously, the first verse refers to the first Sephirah, Kether, the primordial Point, The One Light, the Unity from Whom all proceed. But in order to remain as such, He "delegates" His power of creation to the second Sephirah, Chokmah, through the path of Aleph. Qabalists of old say that the central part of the letter Aleph has the shape of a Yod, representing the highest level of Will and Power. The uppermost point of the Yod corresponds to Kether, the body the of Yod and its lowest point represent the second Sephirah, Chokmah (from Paul Case: The Tarot, Key 9, page111, English Edition; page 99, French edition). The second verse refers to the Divine Father, the second Sephirah, everlasting expression, "similar" but not "identical" to Kether. Chokmah has not been "formed" by Nature as He proceeds directly from Kether, and precedes Binah in the numerical sequence of the Sephiroth. In plane geometry, Chokmah can be represented by the diameters of an infinite virtual circle, extending in opposite directions from the Primal Point. In solid geometry, that would be an infinity of straight lines as diameters of an infinite virtual sphere, expressing the "Idea" of space (A sea urchin is a good vizualisation..) Simultaneously, the Creator establishes a structure to receive this everflowing Fountain of Life. He then "expresses" His feminine aspect through the path of Beth to the third Sephirah, Binah, everlasting receptacle of Light, in order to bring to fruition all that can be created, past, present and future. The third line of the Invocation corresponds to Binah : she is Mother Nature, at Her highest expression, the Divine Mother. The number three represents the first "closed" geometrical symbol: the triangle in plane geometry, the cone in solid geometry, both being also understood as infinite in space. These symbols correspond to the womb of the great Mother, creation, gestation and birth. They are also related to the necessary cycles of birth and death of all creation, which are finite by definition. Therefore the "Idea" of Time appears with Binah (The picture of a galaxy, "curving in" the diameters of the virtual sphere of Chokmah, is a useful representation) The last verse expresses the Unity of the Creator with His creation through the whole Tree of life. He is the Lord of All: of Light, from Kether, to the darkness in the lowest quadrant of Malkuth. Another way to use the Tree of Life is to place upon it the letters of the Divine Name IHVH. This is a different visualization even if some points are identical to the above. 1 - I/Yod corresponds to the Archetypal world, Atziluth, related to Sephiroth1 and 2, Kether and Chokmah, the Divine Father (see above) 2 - The first H/He corresponds to the Creative world, Briah, related to Sephirah 3, Binah, the Divine Mother (see above) 3 - V/Vav corresponds to the Formative world, Yetzirah, related to Sephiroth 4 to 9, included. The central Sephirah, Tiphareth, the Son or Christos, is the center of a circle comprising these Sephiroth, and the center of the middle pillar of Mildness. Tiphereth is directly connected to all of them, as well as to the three Supernal Sephiroth (Kether, Chokmah and Binah)

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Of interest to note: The path connecting Kether to Tiphareth is Key 2, corresponding to AMA, the "sterile mother", the High Priestess, that is : a virgin, before she is impregnated by the Yod from Kether/Chokmah. The path connecting Chokmah to Binah is Key 3, corresponding to AIMA, the pregnant mother (AMA+YOD), the Empress who appears in the Tarot sequence BEFORE the Emperor...These two paths cross each other where "the Divine Father and the Divine Mother are eternally united". These clues should get our attention about what the real meaning of the Virgin Mary is... As for the birth of the Christos between an ox and a donkey, look at a blank astrological chart: the ox corresponding to the sign Taurus and the donkey to the sign Capricorn, you will find that the sign in the middle is Pisces... In plane geometry, the number 6 (sixth Sephirah and value of Vav) is associated with Tiphareth. It is formed by two interlaced equilateral triangles, Fire and Water, which also express Air and Earth, and the hexagram. In solid geometry, it is expressed by to interlaced cones. 4 - The second H corresponds to the Material world, Assiah, and is related to Sephirah 10, Malkuth, the Daughter (of Briah) who is also traditionally called the Bride of the Son. As it is written in Song of Songs (1:5): "I am black but comely, o ye daughters of Jerusalem"(look at the colours of Malkuth)... In plane geometry, the number 10 is associated with Malkuth and formed by two interlaced pentagrams, expressing "good and evil" in material creation, and the decagram. Trace for yourselves this figures, plane and solid, to understand that it is where we live our daily life. You will be surprised to find out how many positive clues you can get out of these drawings: just look at them for 10 to 15 minutes at least once a week, the same way you should look at your Keys! In conclusion, some additional thoughts: Let us add the sephirotic values of Kether (1), Chokmah (2), Binah (3), Tiphareth (6) and Malkuth (10). We get 22, which means the 22 sacred letters of Creation are present in the Divine Name Tetragrammaton, as well as the spelling of His Name gives 26, the value of the Sephiroth on the Middle Pillar. There is always more Knowledge that can be Received: that is what QBL means, if we learn how to receive this Inner Light! In L.V.X. Abacus

Would you like to have a piece of your own work published in The Herald? The Herald is translated into four languages: English, French, German and Spanish, and sent to over 2,000 addresses throughout Europe. If you have something you would like to share with out readers please e-mail it to the following address: [email protected] or post it to Jeremy Tarling, 103 Scotts Road, Leyton, London, E10 6LN, United Kingdom. We welcome prose (including short stories or your own experiences on the path), poetry, jokes, quizzes, crosswords, in fact anything that you would like to see published. May the Light be extended upon you! in L.V.X. the Editors

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TAROT: THE WAY TO FREEDOM

Reverend Ann Davies -- Sunday Service October 18, 1959 The title of my sermon today is "Tarot: The Way to Freedom," and we took the text from Matthew 12 in order to show you how, when one knows what has truly been said, that is, when one becomes truly familiar with the Qabalah, the apparent meaning is not the true meaning in the Holy Scriptures, nor indeed in any of the religious writings and teachings down through the ages. First of all, let's analyse and ask ourselves, "What is freedom?" Remember, Jesus, as well as all the great saviours of the world, of which there have been many - Jesus did say that one must follow Him in order to be liberated, and so have also said the various great adepts down through the ages. Now, in Qabalah it is very well understood that when one speaks of the Tree one is speaking of the Way of Return and the Way of Return is utterly and completely dependent on our liberating ourselves from the man-made, the man-formed, the man-prisons in which we have become enslaved, so to speak. What are these prisons? Like we read from the text, in one form of dogma if we do certain things or do not do certain things, we are considered evil, and often the different dogmas reverse themselves. I always love to tell this little story, which is so charming, of the gentleman who died and went to Hell. As he was travelling through Hell on his little sight-seeing tour he came across a Roman Catholic priest. He said, "Why Father! What are you doing in Hell?" The father said, "Oh alas, I ate meat on Friday and now I am eternally doomed." He walked along some more and came across a Protestant minister and he said, "Why, Reverend! What are you doing in Hell?" The minister said, "Oh alas, I played cards." He clicked his tongue sadly, walked down some more, and came across a Jewish rabbi. He said, "Why, Rabbi! What are you doing in Hell?" The rabbi said, "Alas, alas! I ate pork and now I am eternally condemned." He walked along some more and came across a Christian Science practitioner, and said "Why, sir! What are you doing in Hell?" The Christian Science practitioner drew himself up haughtily and said, "But I am not!" Here, we have a beautiful indication of the problems that we face, each and every one of us. Either we are denying an actuality because we haven't got the courage to face it and therefore solve certain problems in our own heart; or we have become so utterly convinced that we are evil, that we are forever and forever attracting to ourselves the people and the conditions which are going to keep us miserable; and then we don't know what is the matter. The whole Qabalah - which, incidentally, you always remember was the training Jesus received, all the great prophets of the Bible were taught the esoteric mysteries, the various lessons which we can understand and utilise from the Holy Scriptures - can be done only if we learn to understand what it was they were really saying; and this unhappy tendency to be so literal with deep truths which can never be communicated in words. They must always be interpreted in terms of symbol. Even modern psychology has, as we know, finally discovered that the language of the subconsciousness, the language of the soul, the language of the emotions, the language of the spirit, this language is a language of symbol; and words are symbols for symbols of something that has occurred. Words, again, can only deal with descriptions and interpretations of objective things. To directly understand, then, what goes on inside ourselves, and how to cope with what we discover going on inside ourselves, we need to learn how to speak the language of our true Selves. This is the language of Tarot and Qabalah, well-known to all the great sages and adepts. The Qabalists down through the ages always utilised the mystery school training for spiritual development, for freeing humanity from these prisons within which we live and move and have our being. Again, let's analyse these prisons a little more carefully and see how we can, perhaps, learn to walk with greater dignity, contentment, serenity, love and joy. These, remember, are dependent on our learning how to free ourselves from what we call our old habit patterns. In the little story of Matthew, the Pharisees describe as evil one who would dare to do good on the Sabbath; for example, healing the sick or gathering food. Don't we all do the same things in various ways? If we follow one faith, we consider everyone else evil who does not adhere to certain ideas of what it is to be spiritual.

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I remember so well how a man was looked down upon by his wife and children because he insisted upon reading a book on the Sabbath. He felt the Sabbath was a very good day in which to improve his mind. The wife, incidentally, was what we might call an injustice collector. What is it to be an injustice collector? We all have injustices we've collected; and we walk around with them in our hearts. These injustices keep us very unhappy; and they bring us great sorrow. A little example here, in story form, will show it a little more clearly; and then, perhaps, it will help us find some of these areas within our own heart and learn how to transmute them. I remember, many years ago, a young woman was talking to Dr. Case. She was apparently under the impression that she was showing him what a very unhappy childhood she had, even though she did not deserve such a condition. She said to him, "I lived with this family who had a daughter. I boarded there. The woman in the family used to tell everyone that she loved me just as much as she loved her own daughter. I watched to see, 'Is this really true? Does she really love me as much as she loves her own daughter?' I kept a careful eye on her and I discovered she took the cream off the top of the milk for her own daughter, and I got the skimmed milk." Well, this sounds like a sad story, it is true. Yet you will be surprised when you hear what Dr. Case's reaction was. He said, "My God! How warped!" Well, here we come to the heart of the matter. This little girl, even though she was only five or six years old, was hunting for injustices. Her attention was focused on being mistreated. She was looking for evidence. When we look for evidence, we find it. This is the point. She was feeding her soul even at this tender age. She was feeding her soul with pictures and experiences of rejection; and, incidentally, she gathered them right and left and high and low. This child's life was a series of rejections; and yet this was a very lovely child. She was a very sweet and lovely person. Nevertheless, she was utilising a universal principle in reverse. She was building with her emotions, with her expectations. She was building unhappy experiences. She was collecting proof, continuously, that she was not loveable. If we look into our own hearts and examine some of the things we have thought and felt and done, maybe not once but over and over again, we may start to discover what it is we truly need to free ourselves from. What we need to free ourselves from, basically, are the habit patterns which have been fed into us not only as children, not only by the mass mind within which we all live and move and have our being, but also from our past incarnations. We carry our prisons with us; and we can liberate ourselves from our prisons only as we discover what it is we have been doing with our creative powers. Incidentally, this is not as easy as it sounds. That is why in the elementary metaphysical teachings, which are very wonderful and beautiful, and certainly teach deep truths; nevertheless, those who follow these basic elementary teachings do discover that no matter how hard they try to hold what are considered the more positive states of mind, they do discover that somehow they keep failing. I knew someone who had a tremendous illumination one night. She had really had a hellish incarnation; and she lived in continuous fear of practically everything. She was a very intense hypochondriac and one night it suddenly dawned on her. It came with a brilliant flashing blast of lightning. The recognition that she had been continuously and deliberately feeding these fears and expectations through a lifetime and had, therefore, continuously experienced that which she had been holding. She saw this principle so well. She understood it so fully, that she knew, she thought, that she would never again be guilty of such misuse of these divine powers. For a day-and-a-half she did beautifully, and then all of a sudden she realised, "Ah! How the mighty have fallen." Even though she understood the principle, even though she saw the cause and effect as straight and true as one could see anything, what she did not realise was this: That habit patterns cannot be broken overnight. This, of course, is one of the problems with aspirants. They feel or think that once they've had an insight or a realisation or an illumination that that is it - but it isn't. One needs to put a new habit pattern in place of the old. One needs to retrain the responses. One needs to have enough spiritual humility to recognise that one is going to fall over and over again as one develops the spiritual muscles with which to finally hold the positive state of mind and finally be liberated entirely from the necessity to keep bringing a certain kind of experience to oneself over and over again. Just wanting to hold an opposite or positive state of mind doesn't usually work for very

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long, although it helps a little. That is why the enlightened adepts have worked out these series of aids, these symbols, these Tarot cards, the Tree of Life which is older, perhaps, even than Man; in order to be able to have something to hang onto that gives a continuous positive suggestion, that keeps pounding in the language of the soul upon the prisons to dissipate their strength, to release the energy into the opposite or positive factor of what is wanted or desired. In relation to the injustice collectors, I heard a little girl (not a little girl, this girl is in her middletwenties now) tell her mother one day, as the mother was reminiscing about her child's various experiences, the mother was saying to the child, "Do you recall so-and-so and so-and-so," and they were all rather pleasant memories. The daughter said, "You know mother, it's very funny. My most acute and intense memories are the injustices I received from you; and I have very little memory of all these other things. When you remind me it comes back to me vaguely." The mother said, "Is that right, dear?" She was a very startled mother, because in this particular instance the child had been treated unusually well. This was a very loving and patient mother. This was a very indulgent mother. This was a mother who saw to it that on birthdays and on Christmas and so on there were all kinds of goodies; and yet this child was holding the injustices, or what she interpreted as injustices. As an example she said to her mother, "You know, when I was five years old you told me to take a nap, and I didn't want to take a nap. You said, 'Well, just lie down and close your eyes and look at pretty pictures in your mind, make them up, and that way you will at least be resting.'" And so the daughter said, "I woke up and I realised my mother had tricked me. She had tricked me." And she said, "You know mother, I felt hatred for you. You had tricked me, you had lied to me, and I realised that was your intention all along, that I actually should fall asleep." Well, can we go back in our minds? Can we examine the things we have collected in the way of injustices, then examine the various experiences we have had through life? And, can we then see how so much of our sorrow, so much of our pain has come because we have in some strange way felt that we are more important, perhaps, if we are a tragedy king, or the tragedy queen? Lots of us have done that. It isn't truly that we do not go through terrible heartbreak and heartache and desolation. We do. But, beloved brothers and sisters, we don't have to anymore. This is the point. When we recognise just what it is that we have done, and what it is that our tendencies are travelling toward, we can, with the proper training as given in the symbolic usages; we can with the proper training break these habit patterns. Indeed, if we aspire to the Highest, not only can we, but we must come to a place where we must. We cannot know reality or experience reality as long as we are looking out at life through the colours of our injustice-collecting areas of our life. We just simply cannot do it, because we are unable to see through anything except the glass that we have coloured, and continuously do colour. Now, just recognising, as we said, some of the patterns we have made for ourselves - this doesn't do the job. It sometimes seems that we have to become desperate enough; and we have to have brought enough sorrow and heartache and desolation to ourselves in order to become determined enough to change the pattern. Here again, in freeing ourselves we have another element to consider. This has to do, again, with what the Pharisees felt in the little story that we told. You see, one of the reasons that we need to collect injustices, one of the reasons, though there are several, has to be that we walk around with guilt complexes because we may have as Protestants played cards, or as Roman Catholics eaten meat on Friday, or as Jewish followers eaten pork. These are just symbolic expressions. In other words, we have gotten specific ideas or notions in our heads as to what is good and what is evil. Inasmuch as these notions come to us from the man-made laws, from the misinterpretations of life, we have some very strange notions about the ideas of what is good or spiritual behaviour and what is bad or evil behaviour. We all carry around in our hearts various emotions which, for lack of a better term, we might call remorse. And we say to ourselves -- and if we do not say it intellectually, we are saying it subconsciously and emotionally, because that is the level from which we project our life experiences. Don't you see? And so, we say to ourselves subconsciously, "I don't really deserve to have loyal friends, because I did thus and thus;" or "I do not really deserve to be loved, because I have been a bad girl or boy;" or "I don't really deserve to have success, because I have not really earned it; I have failed in this, and failed in that, and failed in the other." These are the things we say to ourselves

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emotionally, and we are not consciously aware of it. Don't you see? And so the result is that we act in such ways so that other human beings will give us the experiences that will be another injustice, or another betrayal, or another pain added to the picture. Now then, how to overcome this tendency? Well, again, we need help. And it is working with these symbolic techniques which help to bring about the change of these reactions and emotions and responses in our nature to free ourselves from guilt; that is, from remorse, that is, from the need to punish ourselves from having been whatever it is we consider evil. In order to do this, we need to be willing at least for awhile to give up our immediate ideas of what is good and what is evil, as Jesus mentioned in this little story. To do good on the Sabbath is not evil, but to the people of that day and to some people of this day, it is still an evil. There are many things that we do which we consider bad because we have been trained to respond that way without even being aware of it. We look out at other people and we see them doing all sorts of things which make us click our tongues, love to talk about it against them. And, those of us who are very self-deceived will even shake our heads sadly and say "Poor things, I'd hate to have their karma." You see, what it is we are doing is projecting a punishment from our own awareness to somebody else; and we are projecting a condemnation of their act. Now this does not mean that we must not be able to evaluate other human beings. But there is a great difference in evaluation with understanding and acceptance, and evaluation with condemnation, even when we kid ourselves that we are being objective and/or compassionate. You see, as long as we need to build unhappy experiences for ourselves, because we are still in the prisons; and we wouldn't consciously remember most of them, because we are still in the prisons of the things we think and feel have been bad; that is bad action on our part, as long as we're in that, we're going to be condemning ourselves. And therefore, we will always project it out. And we will feel that way about others. And we will accept it back to ourselves. Again, there is a friend I have who always said to herself and to everyone else, "I love humanity. I love humanity and I live only to serve humanity." So she went out to serve and discovered that not only were the people unwilling to be served, but that they responded in ways which made her use certain terms which are not repeatable. She had a terrible shock. She was disillusioned with humanity. Disillusioned entirely, from having been the sort of person, or she thought she was this sort of person, who loved humanity and wanted to serve humanity. And, she used to say, "I trust everybody." From this, she became a misogynist, and went the complete reverse saying, "The one thing that I'm ashamed of is that I belong to the human race. The human race is vicious. The human race is evil. The human race is self-centred, selfish, brutal and cruel." I will not tell you just what this poor soul has been doing with her own immediate personal life, because whatever we think and feel and project, and especially with such emotions, our own lives take it on. We compel on the subconscious level. We compel other people to treat us in terms of our attitude toward them from the subconscious level. This woman we just told you about had a friend who saw things a little differently. This other friend always used to say, "You know, I really don't trust people at all. But somehow, somewhere down in them, every person has a spark of goodness. And so I wouldn't be so foolish as to expose myself to the weaknesses that I know everyone has, because as Kahlil Gibran said, 'Every human being is like a bridge, where if you put enough weight on it, it's going to crack.'" Therefore, every human being has a place where he or she is just going to break down under the impact of temptation; and this is the measure of the strength of that soul. At some point every soul will crack under the proper stimulus. This is the point. Therefore, like Kahlil Gibran has said, the murdered is not guiltless of his own murder. The one who is robbed is not guiltless of the fact that he has been stolen from, because inasmuch as it has happened to us, there's something in our natures which has invited it. And furthermore, inasmuch as someone else had the compulsion to act in a certain way toward us, it's because that was the point or the breaking area of the bridge of that individual toward ourselves. The friend of the misogynist said, "Inasmuch as humanity is really an immature child, just an evolving child, wouldn't it be foolish for me to expect a two-year-old to walk without falling, or a three-year-old to eat without splashing food all over everything, or a ten-year-old to be able to clean the house in perfect manner?" Because she understood this, this person who said she did not trust people actually trusted them more, and incidentally, received a great deal more love from them. Why? Because she was willing to see reality.

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We here come to the Christian Science practitioner of my story, you see, who said, "But I'm not!" I mean, he just wasn't there. In the same way, the willingness to see people as they are does not mean that we condemn them. It means that we've actually learned how to see ourselves a little bit better than we did. And, we know that we're all children walking together. As we have enough spiritual humility to recognise that we are immature children, but children of God, walking the way toward freedom; we accept our little weaknesses and by accepting them, because we acknowledge that we are not yet perfected, we make it possible for ourselves to change our environment much more readily. The moment we truly accept ourselves, but with the intention of helping ourselves grow, we then also are projecting the same thing to our husbands and our wives, our friends, our business associates, our relatives. We are projecting it there. And we are subconsciously compelling them to love and accept us. And the reason we can do it when we find the way is because more and more we stop requiring the mistreatment. We stop needing to be an injustice collector, because we figure we do not need to punish ourselves anymore. Life is quite capable of growing us. And, we can grow with far less pain. We can grow with beauty. We can dance through life experiences on the whole when we learn how to utilise the messages that have been given to us in their true interpretations by the Scriptures, by all the holy writings of the ages, by utilising the specific training that is necessary in order to reach into our hearts and forgive ourselves and others; for incidentally, things, that really don't require forgiveness at all, because most of the things we think have been evil are in ourselves, except for very few exceptions that haven't been that at all. A child is not evil if it throws a tantrum. It's just a child. Knowing oneself as a child of God, which the Tarot techniques definitely help us to experience and know directly, knowing ourselves as a child of God makes all the difference in the world. It stops us from the necessity to keep building frustration, unhappiness, condemnation, misery, bitterness and the like, and develop enough of a truly loving nature instead of the make-believe love that so many of us are prone to. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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