Category: minor arcana

Thought-Forms, Astral Pornography, and The Ace of Wands

Are our thoughts actually energy forms?

A few years ago I was reading a fascinating book called, “You Are Not Your Brain,” and the authors made a statement that was positively shocking to me:  “To this day, scientists and psychologists cannot agree on exactly what a thought is.”

At first blush, that sounds completely ridiculous because we all know what thoughts are.  They’re . . . um . . . they’re like . . . these little things that jump up in our heads and live in our brains, right?  

There . . . I solved that one.  You’re welcome.

Seriously, though, there really isn’t a good working definition of what a thought actually is.  There’s a sort of reductionist explanation of how our nervous systems and brains produce thoughts.  We can hook someone up to a brain monitor and see which parts of their brains light up with activity when they’re thinking about a particular subject.  Perhaps their fear center – the amygdala – lights up because they’re thinking of something really scary.  Or their prefrontal cortex – the thinking brain – lights up because they’re doing some heavy problem solving.  

That doesn’t really do anything but describe the process of making the idea, though.  It doesn’t tell us what the finished product is.  That theory – that the brain makes ideas – exists cheek by jowl with the stimulus/response model where something in our environment makes us think certain things.  Perhaps we see a picture of Donald Trump and we think, “Ohhh, scary clown,” which makes us think of circuses which makes us think of Stephen King horror novels about murderous clowns which makes us think about our overdue library book.

That concept seems to be counter-intuitive when we think about . . . well . . . intuition.  When we have  intuitions or  flashes of insight, it feels as if they’ve popped right up in our brains without anything else making them happen.  When someone asked Einstein how he invented the theory of relativity he said, “Oh, it just dropped in while I was playing the piano.”

For centuries, human beings viewed some types of ideas in just that way:  as something that came into our minds from an outside source.  That’s why the word, “inspire,” means to have something breathed into you.  The notion was that something out there – perhaps the Universe or the Gods or the fairies – inserted the idea into your mind.

That’s what’s portrayed in the Tarot card, The Ace of Wands.  Wands represent ideas and this is an idea or thought coming into the world in its purest form of mental energy.  It’s, “divinely inspired.”

That STILL doesn’t tell us exactly what an idea IS, though.  It’s just talking about it’s source, rather than it’s contents.

Now, the Theosophists and Victorian occultists had very specific ideas of exactly what an idea is.  They viewed ideas as thought-forms, which is to say, individual little packets of energy produced by our brains and emotions and auric fields.  And – important point – they felt that they were independent of the human being once they were produced.

We’ve all seen those cartoons where there’s a person having a thought that appears as a bubble with text in it, hovering over the character’s head.  That’s a convenient way to visualize what the Theosophists were talking about.  Every time that we have a thought, it’s like our bio-field – our brains, emotional energies, energy bodies – are extruding a little, tiny thought-form bubbles that exists outside of us.

Most of the bubbles don’t last very long because they don’t contain much energy.  Let’s face it, many of us are NOT thinking about the theory of relativity while we play the piano.  Instead, we’re having really profound thoughts like, “Where’d I put my car keys?  Need a cup of coffee.  Gotta walk the dog.  Did I do the laundry?”   So these are little bubbles that appear for a moment, pop, and disappear.

When the thought forms are really heavily charged with energy, though, they stick around.  How do they get charged?  Well, through emotions and through repetition.

Suppose you just went to bed with someone and you had a super-duper, unbelievable, I-think-my-ears-just-fell-off orgasm at the exact moment that you thought, “I love you.”  That, “I love you,” thought is super-charged with energy and it will last.  Ditto, if you’ve been badly shocked or frightened by something.  The more intense the emotion, the more of an energetic charge the thought-form has and the longer it will exist.

We can also charge the thought-forms with energy by thinking of them over and over and over.  On a positive note, we can see that happen when someone thinks of their lover constantly, as we tend to do in the early stages of falling in love.  The obsessive thinking keeps adding energy to that same, “I love you,” thought-form and makes it’s last.  On a negative note, we can see the same pattern with chronic anxiety and depression.  Constantly thinking of things that frighten us or make us sad just increases the charge in the thought-forms and so the depression will linger long after the original cause.

Two of the early Theosophists, Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, published a book called, “Thought Forms.” It had illustrations of the forms as they emerged from people’s auras, as seen by psychic mediums.  Here’s one of a peaceful thought:

And here’s one of an angry thought.

I would have liked to have seen one of a horny thought – sort of astral pornography, I guess – but the Victorians didn’t roll that way.

So is all of this true?  Maybe.  It certainly forms the basis for much of what we call visualization and manifestation, as well as the concepts of either cursing or blessing someone.  I’ll be writing more about that in the immediate future but for the time being it’s a fun concept to play with.  What if our thoughts are actual things that exist in our personal energy space and exert an influence on us and those around us?  How can we change the negative thought-forms and increase the positive-forms?  Can we pick up someone else’s thought-forms, much like a virus?

Before you dismiss the idea out of hand, remember what we started off with here: the most preeminent psychologists and scientists in the world have absolutely no idea what a thought is.  The theory of thought-forms is just as good – and maybe better – than most of their theories.

Remember that my e-book, “Just the Tarot,” is still available – dirt cheap! – on Amazon. In fact, I’m sending thought-forms at you right now. You should buy this book . . . you should buy this book . . . you should buy this book . . .

The Five of Wands, Louise Hay, and Becoming the Grown Up Who Lives in Our Heads.

A look at childhood programming and using affirmations.

If I were to say, “Your thoughts are total bullshit,” you’d probably feel highly insulted.  On the other hand, if I were to say, “My thoughts are total bullshit,”  you might agree with me or you might tell me that’s not true and wonder where I got such a terrible self-image.

But if I were to say, “A lot of OUR thoughts, as human beings, are total bullshit,” that’s a more fertile ground for discussion simply because it depersonalizes it and takes us out of a fight-or-flight reaction.  We don’t have to defend anything or run away from being criticized.

In, “You Can Heal Your Life,” Louise Hay made the point that, at their base, our thoughts really mean nothing at all.  They’re just words that we string together and they don’t take on any meaning by themselves.  We have to ASSIGN meaning to them.  We have to say, “I believe these thoughts are true.”

And, oddly, our beliefs are nothing more than thoughts that we’ve repeated over and over and over until we believe that they’re true.  When we take a little closer look at those thoughts we can understand exactly why so many of them really are bullshit.

First of all, a lot of our thoughts were, “installed,” in our little brains when we were far, far too young to make any rational judgements about their validity.  By the time that we reach late adolescence most of us have been thoroughly programmed with unexamined thoughts that we believe to be true.  The richest source of the programming is our families, of course, but we get a hefty dose of it from our teachers and peers, as well.  Some of those thoughts might be things like:

I’m no good at math.

I can’t dance.

I’m a terrible athlete.

I’m not very good looking.

I’m too fat or too skinny or too tall or too short.

I don’t fit in.

Nobody likes me.

Or the thoughts might be something like:

Democrats are communists.

Republicans are fascists.

Rich people are heartless.

People who don’t practice my religion are evil.

Black people are scary or white people are arrogant honkies.

Immigrants are too lazy to work AND they’re going to steal my job.

These are all just words, strung together to make thoughts, which were repeated over and over when we were young until we came to believe that they must be true.

The truth of these beliefs were totally unexamined when we were kids because we didn’t have the mental capacity to evaluate them.  If our parents or teachers told us they were true, well then – hey –  they must be true because that’s what the grownups said. For the most part, though, they remain unexamined when we’re adults, which is the second reason that many or our thoughts are total bullshit.

Most of our thoughts are subliminal, which literally means, “below the light.”  In this case, we mean, “below the light of consciousness.”  We just think them, without even being aware of the fact that we’re thinking them.  That’s the infamous, “stream of consciousness,” or, “monkey mind,” that engages about 20 seconds after we wake up in the morning.  It’s just a ceaseless chatter that runs along by itself and contains – buried in its content – all of that programming that we got as kids.  It sounds like this:

Gotta get the coffee going, godamn it’s cold, I wonder if I have enough gas in the car, should have balanced the checkbook but I’m no good at math, gotta get the kids up and make breakfast, can’t believe the price of eggs, it’s the rich Republicans driving the prices up, nobody cares about working people, if only I had a better job but I’m not smart enough to get a better job, where are my socks . . .”

The unexamined thoughts that were programmed into us when we were kids are running over and over again, all the time, and remain unexamined.  And, yes, thoughts that are repeated over and over become beliefs and, like the people in the Five of Wands, we’ll fight to the death to defend our beliefs.

Which is the third reason that most of our thoughts are bullshit.  We’re totally ego involved with them.  Most of us, most of the time, completely identify with that subliminal thought stream.  We experience it as, “These are MY thoughts in MY mind, therefore, they’re a part of me.”  It never occurs to us that they’re not really our thoughts.  They’re our parent’s thoughts and our teacher’s thoughts and maybe even the thoughts of that bully who tortured us at recess in the third grade.

Affirmations, as Louise Hay points out, are a simple way to step out of that thought stream and start changing our beliefs by changing our thoughts.  Let’s face it:  most of don’t have the time to just sit there all day and watch our thoughts.  “Ah HA!  There’s another negative thought from my childhood programming!  Take THAT, negative thought!”

What we can do, though, is to become a little more conscious of our thought streams.  Even when we’re working or driving to the store or taking a shower, we can watch the mind chattering away and consciously think, “Okay, that’s a pretty negative thought,  And it’s probably not MY thought; it’s just something my mind was taught when I was a kid.”

When we begin to dis-identify with that constant stream of thoughts, we immediately lose the need to defend them.  After all, they’re not really my thoughts, so why should I care about them?  And then we can begin to replace all of that subliminal programming with programming that we consciously choose.

Just pick a positive thought – any positive thought – and repeat it 3 or 400 times a day.  Does that seem like a lot?  Well, how many times a day do we say something negative to ourselves with that childhood programming?  Hundreds of times, right?

If that sounds like a sort of a forced, Pollyanna Positivity it’s because it is. We are quite literally pushing our thoughts in a new direction and it can feel completely unnatural to begin with.  But that’s the whole point:  there’s nothing, “natural,” about our unhappy beliefs, either.  They were just thoughts that were repeated again and again, often by the miserably unhappy adults who raised us.  That’s all that happy beliefs are, too – thoughts that are repeated again and again until they become beliefs.  And we get to be the adults who are repeating them, which is pretty cool.

Small Town America, the Chat ‘N’ Chew Cafe’, and the Five of Wands.

A look at why small town Americans overwhelmingly support Donald Trump.

When we look at the electoral map of the United States, we can’t help but notice that there is a veritable sea of Red States that stretches from one coast to the other.  When we look a little closer at that sea, we notice that it’s actually composed of millions of tiny, little towns in thousands of tiny, little counties.  This is rock solid Trump country and – since Trump is a Master Salesman – it might behoove us to look at exactly what it is that he’s selling to these folks.

In a word, it’s, “nostalgia.”  Nostalgia for a simpler, cleaner, more understandable way of life.  You know . . . like we all had in the 1950s.

Now, I passed through a fair number of those little towns as I was growing up and, in many ways, they were all remarkably similar.

1 – They all had a local cafe’/hamburger joint with a cute name like, “The Chat ’N’ Chew,” where folks gathered for Sunday brunch or morning coffee.

2 -They all had one barber shop and one beauty salon.

3 -They all had a local high school and the Friday night football game at that high school was the most important event of the week.

4 -The high school football team was always called, “The Fightin’ ___________, “ (fill in the blank according to the local animal mascot, although I never encountered, “The Fighting’ Oysters.”)

5 -They all had some version of a local swimming hole where the younger kids frolicked and the older kids might go skinny dipping on a dare.

6 -They all had a, “lovers lane,” which was usually a small road on a hill or bluff where the high school kids went to explore their sexualities and lose their virginities.

7 – Except in the South, they all had one or two, “Negro,” families whose children might be allowed to attend the local schools, but were de facto segregated in every other way.

8 – They all had one token, “queer,” who was usually a single, older male who owned the local antique shop, cared for his aging mother, and was known to be, “a little light in the loafers, if ya know what I mean.”

9 – They were all convinced that their little town was somehow unique, different, and better than all of the other little towns and they usually had a billboard right outside of the town to tell you just exactly that.

I mention all of this, not to make fun of or denigrate those towns, but to point out that THEY WERE REALLY REAL.  Millions of Americans were born in and grew up those places and lived extremely happy lives in them.  

And then they left.

A big factor in their leaving is that Small Town America doesn’t have many ways to make a living.  Unless your Daddy owned a farm or your Mama owned The Chat ’N’ Chew, you were pretty well screwed in finding a job.  Another reason, of course, is that young people naturally want to get out and explore the world, to see what lies beyond that billboard on the edge of town.

There are many other millions of us who never had those small town experiences.  We can legitimately point out that while they were living their Ozzie and Harriet/white picket fences/1950s lives, Black people were still being lynched in the South.  Latinos were walled into barrios.  Gay folks were routinely beaten and sometimes killed.  Middle class women were quietly losing their minds and becoming addicted to Valium in record numbers.

That’s not to say that those small towns were hot beds of racism and homophobia.  For most of the people who lived there, those simply weren’t issues that they dealt with.  Except for that local antique dealer, there weren’t any queers and the few Black folks who lived there weren’t a problem because they kept their heads down and kept to themselves.

The end result is that we have millions of Americans who look back on their lives in Small Town, USA, as a golden, magical time.  These are the folks who spend thousands of dollars to travel back to high school reunions and reminisce over, “that year when the football team was the district champion.”

You also see these folks on the local community pages on FaceBook.   They chime in with comments like, “Hey, I lived in Thimble Town in the 1960s.  Does anybody else remember the milk shakes at Stegner’s 5 and dime?”  Or, “Whatever happened to Mrs. Peachtree?  She was my favorite teacher.”

That’s exactly what Trump is selling to that sea of Red Counties and Towns: nostalgia for a time that they viewed as simpler and easier, where everything, “made sense.”  It isn’t just the people who are still living there, it’s also the millions of people who USED to live there.

And so we’ve ended up with an America that’s essentially divided into two different cultures:  the rural folks, who remember a time when their lives were so much better; and the urban and coastal dwellers who view that life as largely incomprehensible, if not a down right lie.  Much like the Five of Wands, we’ve got a whole bunch of people swinging sticks at each other but never quite connecting.

The ironic thing, of course, is that the man who’s selling that nostalgic vision to the rural folks has never gone camping or hiking, never gone fishing or hunting, never owned a dog, lived most of his life in a penthouse in New York City, and wouldn’t be caught dead in a pair of blue jeans.

All of which doesn’t matter to his supporters in the least. A good salesman doesn’t just sell a product.  He sells an illusion.  And there is no better illusionist in the world than Donald J. Trump.

Being a Misfit, Being Heard, and the Five of Pentacles

The pain of never being understood and how to use it for growth.

About a year and a half ago, I took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality test and discovered that I belong to a group called the, “INFJ.”  INFJs are essentially introverted intuitives and are as rare as hair on a frog.  Only 1% of the population are INFJs and less than 1/2 of 1% of the population are INFJ males.

Americans love to think of themselves as being special and unique, of course, so a small cottage industry has arisen around being an INFJ.  Claiming to be an INFJ has become sort of a short hand to tell other people how incredibly evolved and spiritual and sensitive you are. 

There are a kazillion videos and books pointing out how FABULOUSLY wonderful INFJs are and you can even buy INFJ tee shirts and bumper stickers just in case some mere mortals missed the bulletin.

I, on the other hand, looked at the description of the personality type and thought, “Oh, I am SO fucked.”

One of the strongest human drives is the need to be heard and acknowledged.  To have the feeling that other human beings – or even ONE human being – truly hears what we’re saying and understands what we’re feeling and thinking.

American couples spend millions of dollars every year going to therapists to learn how to communicate and to listen to each other.  In other words, how to be heard by our partners.

Many of us derive a great deal of pleasure from social media sites like FaceBook because we feel that someone out there is actually hearing us and acknowledging our existence.

Thic Nhat Hahn and other Buddhist masters have stressed the importance of deep and compassionate listening.  Hearing what the other person is really saying rather than composing a clever response while they’re speaking.

Actually being heard for who we are seems to heal the human heart.

While Americans may worship the concept of being, “unique,” they don’t really see the flip side of it, which is that the more different you are, the less likely it is that other people will actually understand you.  Some people might look at the INFJ personality configuration and think, “Oh, boy, I’m SO special.”  What they’re not seeing is that 99% of the people in the world don’t see the world the same way that the INFJ sees it and probably never will.

And that can break your heart. That can drive you to end it.

There are, of course, many other ways besides being an INFJ that will cause a person to not, “fit in.”  I was born into an Army family and military brats are renowned for feeling like perpetual outsiders in the civilian community.  It might be caused by belonging to a racial or ethnic minority, or having a disability, or being gay or trans, or not fitting the cultural standards of being physically attractive.  Janis Ian expressed that so poignantly in her song, “At Seventeen”,:

I learned the truth at seventeen 

That love was meant for beauty queens 

And high school girls with clear-skinned smiles 

Who married young and then retired . . .

High School, perhaps above all else, teaches us the cruel realities of not fitting in.  

Oddly, not fitting in – being a misfit –  can eventually quit breaking our hearts and act as a springboard to spiritual growth.  That only happens, though, when we finally surrender and just give up.  

What happens to a person who truly doesn’t fit in when they try to fit in?  Essentially, they deny their own reality and desperately attempt to, “blend in.”  They try to become what they think other people will like.  They hollow themselves out more and more in the quest to have someone, even one person, understand them and love them for who they really are.

The paradox, of course, is that they’re trying to trick someone into loving them for who they are by being who they aren’t, so even if they snag a friend or a lover or a partner, they’re still not really being seen or loved.

Eventually, if we keep that up, we come to feel like the beggars in the Five of Pentacles, always on the outside in the cold while the, “normal,” people are inside the church receiving all of the blessings that seem to be their birthrights.

There’s something incredibly liberating, though, when we finally admit to ourselves that we don’t fit in and never will.  When we finally admit that we’re never going to be one of the beautiful, golden people who seem to wear their lives like a tailored glove.

No, it doesn’t mean that we’ll finally be heard or acknowledged by other people.  In fact, the more we become our authentic selves, the more likely it is that other people will not hear us.

But . . . we can finally hear our Selves.

The Five of Pentacles, Karma, and God’s Little Baskets of Muffins

Transforming ourselves through karmic selfishness.

I have a younger friend who HATES karma.

More specifically, he hates when he’s in the middle of an, “Oh poor me,” bitching session and someone shrugs her shoulders and says, “Well, that’s karma.”  

First of all, it interrupts the rhythm of his complaining and he has to go back and remember what he was so upset about.  

“What was I saying?  I know it was important . . . oh, I remember . . . life is meaningless and no one understands me . . .”

Secondly, it infuriates him because it suggests that the mess he finds himself in is somehow HIS fault and the whole point of his rap is that it’s everything and everyone else’s fault.  Which is just further proof that no one understands him.

This guy was raised by a Buddhist and that may have something to do with his constant irritation.  It’s developmentally important that teenagers be able to rebel against their parents.  The first way that we really begin to define who we are in the world is by making it clear that we aren’t our parents.  I imagine that it must be pretty damned difficult for a teenager to get any rebellion traction against a Buddhist parent.

“You know, Dad, sometimes I really hate you.”

“Well, son, all strong emotions will pass if we simply do a little deep breathing.  Remember, you’re the sky and your emotions are just clouds drifting by.”

Or

“I’ve been think about getting a tattoo.  What do you think about that?”

“Ah . . . perhaps you should get a tattoo of a double dorje or some other sacred symbol.  In a sense, it would be a constant reminder of the spiritual nature that dwells in physical matter.”

Or

“Maybe I’ll paint my face blue and dye my hair orange.”

“Hmmm . . . I wonder if you were a Druid in a past life.  Do you feel a particular attraction to oak trees?”

Aargh!  So it’s possible that this guy was deeply emotionally scarred by all of that loving kindness and unconditional acceptance from his parents.  If only they’d yelled at him or told him he was an idiot occasionally!  

Still, he does have a bit of a point about the notion of karma.

It’s perfectly understandable that people get a little riled up over the idea of crappy things happening to them because of what they may have done in a past life.  After all, most of us have absolutely no memory of our past lives and so it feels like we’re being punished for something that someone else did.  

Suppose I was Attila the Hun in a past life and in a fit of Barbarian Rage I whipped out my scimitar and beheaded a turtle.  Then 200 lifetimes later –   as Dan Adair –  I’m in a traffic accident and I get whiplash BECAUSE I decapitated that turtle.  That seems a little . . . unjust.  I mean, I’m NOT Attila in any sort of a meaningful sense, so why should I get sent to the principal’s office because Attila was a dick?

And then, to make it even worse, when I’m sitting there in my cervical collar reflecting on exactly HOW unjust it all is, an acquaintance says, “Oh, well, that’s karma.”  As my younger friend would put it:  “Fuck you.”

Now, there’s a particularly odious Christian doctrine called, “predestination.”  It holds that some people are born with the unchangeable destiny that they’re going to heaven when they die. Other people are born with the unchangeable destiny that they’re going straight to hell when they die.  It doesn’t matter what we do or how we behave, our ultimate destiny has already been decided at the moment of birth.

It’s like God is up there in the Kosmic Kitchen baking up human Souls and, as he pulls each one out of the Soul Muffin Pan, he tosses them into separate baskets marked, “Heaven,” and, “Hell.”

“Okay, heaven, heaven, heaven – whoops, you’re fucked – hell, heaven, fucked again, heaven . . .”  Like the beggars in the Five of Pentacles, we’re out in the cold and we’re going to stay there.

Theologians came up with a perfectly logical reason for this totally insane doctrine.  The idea is that God is all powerful and all knowing.  So if God knows everything, then that must mean that he knows everything that happened in the past, the present, AND the future!  And if God already knows what’s going to happen in the future, then he must already know who’s going to heaven and who’s going to hell.  Shazam!  There you are – it’s already determined.

That’s the kind of weird, Left-Brain, cuckoo for coco puffs vibe that a lot of people get off of the notion of karma.  It seems to be some sort of an inexorable process that was put into motion a long time before we came along and there’s not a damned thing we can do about it.  We’re either in the Heaven Basket or we’re in the Oh, You’re So Fucked Basket.  Like it’s something that happens TO us for no particular reason.

Of course, the important point that most of us miss is that karma isn’t happening to us, we’re happening to karma.  It’s a totally dynamic process and it’s something that we can change every single day simply by the ways that we behave right now.

The most simplistic way to think of it is as a sort of a bank account.  Rather than being born into a You’re-Going-to-Hell Basket or a You’re-Going-to-Heaven Basket, we’re born with a certain amount of Karmic Kash that we earned (or didn’t earn) in past lives.  The Dalai Lama will probably be reborn with several savings accounts, a really huge checking account, many certificates of deposit and a great coin collection.  Attila the Turtle Beheader, on the other hand, will be reborn with 50 cents in the bank and a lot of overdue bills.

The thing is, though, that the way that we’re born isn’t our destiny.  The way that we behave is our destiny.  Attila, for instance, might start a refuge for homeless turtles.  Every single time that he saves a turtle and gives it a meaningful life – KA -CHING – that’s another deposit in his Karma Account.  The Dalai Lama, on the other hand, might decide to support Eric Trump for President and – ZAP – that’s a major withdrawal from his Karmic Account.

As David Michie said in, “Buddhism for Busy People,” 

In what is one of the most outstandingly ingenious aspects of Buddhist teachings, we come to realize that our own selfish interests lie in being altruistic . . .months, years or decades of being generous for selfish reasons begin to have a predictable effect . . .what starts out as a contrived and self-conscious change of attitude and behavior results in a genuine metamorphosis.

In other words, we don’t have to start out as Mother Theresa or an Awakened Master.  We can start out as perfectly normal, selfish, self-centered human beings who are being kind to other beings because we DON’T want to end up wearing a cervical collar.  When we pick up a turtle that’s in the middle of the road and leave it safely on the other side, we can be doing it for the completely selfish reason of wanting to fill up our Karmic Account.

As we continue those little acts of kindness they gradually transform us.  They become acts of loving/kindness, where we’re actually noticing and caring about the welfare of the people and beings around us.  The translation of the word, “karma,” is, “action,” and that’s the key.  Our actions change us, even if they originate in selfishness.

And that’s how Attila the Hun becomes the Dalai Lama.  Pretty simple.

The Rules of Synchronicity, Having Sex with Pizzas, and Becoming More Flow-ish

Basic rules for increasing synchronicity in your life and getting in the Flow.

We’re all familiar with that state of being that we call, “being in the Zone,” or, “being in the Flow.” Both artists and athletes talk about the special state of consciousness where their work becomes completely focussed, everything they want to accomplish unfolds effortlessly and the perception of time seems to be suspended. When we’re in the Flow, life becomes a magical mystery tour and feels like a perfect fit instead of a struggle.

There are dozens of books out there on the subject of the Flow, but my favorite is Charlene Belitz groundbreaking book The Power of Flow. She noted that when we’re in the Flow state, we have a marked increase in synchronistic events and she thought, “Hmmmm . . . if synchronicity goes along with the Flow state like cheese dip goes with Doritos . . . then that means that when one occurs, the other occurs, too. So . . . if we can increase synchronicity, maybe we can increase being in the Flow.”

And it works. I tried it. When I trigger extra synchronicity in my life, then my life begins to hum along much more smoothly and I feel happier, more content, and easier in my spirit. I may not be in the Flow constantly, but I’m sure as hell a lot more Flow-ish and that feels pretty good.

When we boil down synchronicity and then hang it on the line to dry, it basically just means that the universe is having a conversation with us. Carl Jung defined it as, “a meaningful convergence of interior and exterior events,” which is really just a formal way of saying that the universe is noticing what we’re thinking and interacting with our thoughts.

The classic example is when we’re sitting there thinking about our Great Aunt Petunia Lilac Huckleberry, whom we haven’t spoken to in 25 years, the phone rings and – Shazam! – it’s Aunt Petunia and she has something really important to tell us. Now, we can dissect that and analyze it and pick it apart a million ways to Sunday, but there are really only three things we need to focus on here: (1) We thought of Aunt Petunia; (2) Aunt Petunia called us; and (3) it was meaningful.

That sort of thing happens to all of us on what seems to be a completely random basis. Since it’s random – in other words, we’re not consciously causing it to happen – we just call it a coincidence. We shrug our shoulders and say, “Well, that was damned weird,” and just forget about it.

On the other hand, when we recognize that it’s really a thing – that we can make things like that happen – then it becomes a force in our lives. We start experiencing synchronicity a lot more because we’re asking for it to happen. And as we experience more synchronicity, then we find ourselves more and more in the Flow and life becomes a LOT easier.

There are some simple rules involved with causing more synchronicity to appear in our lives. I’ve stumbled across some of them as I’ve explored the subject and want to share them in a few ongoing posts, so I’ll start with this one.

SYNCHRONICITY RULE NUMBER ONE: START THE CONVERSATION

The first rule is to realize that there is something out there talking with us, having meaningful conversations, and giving us answers when we need them. BUT . . . whatever it is, it doesn’t usually start the conversation. We need to reach out to whatever it is first, and then it replies to us.

Human beings have realized that there was something out there talking with us for most of our existence and we’ve tried to fill in the blanks about who or what it is. Some people perceive the something out there as angels and spirit guides. Some people perceive it as Fairies. Some people see it as Jesus answering their prayers. Some people think of it in impersonal terms, like the Tao.

It doesn’t matter! We don’t have to figure out exactly what it is that’s talking back to us in order to have the conversation. If you feel more comfortable calling it Jesus, that’s fine. If you prefer Spirit Guides, that’s fine, too. If you just want to call it, “Hey, you,” then go for it. The main thing is to just realize that it’s there, it has answers for you, and it’s waiting for you to ask for them.

So, suppose you have a new boyfriend and he seems to be just perfect. He’s charming, good looking, he’s well read, fun to be with, has lots of money to throw around, and you think he may be The One. BUT . . . as the relationship develops you discover that the only way that he can have sex is to slather himself in tomato paste and cover his body with slices of pepperoni. Unless he’s dressed up as a pizza, he’s completely impotent in bed and you’re highly conflicted about this because you don’t much care for pizza and you certainly don’t want to eat it every night. It’s a conundrum and you need some guidance about your choices in the matter.

So what do you do? You just stop and say, “Hey, you, (or Jesus or Fairies or Tao) what should I do about this? I think I love the guy, but shtupping Italian food just really doesn’t turn me on.” And then you take a walk or go to work or throw all of your tomato covered bed sheets in the washer and wait for an answer.

And the answer will come. It may be something as dramatic as the local Round Table Pizza burning to the ground or it may be as subtle as finding a can of tomato paste that’s been run over by a truck, but the answer will come. Once we ask the question, the universe will always find a way to let us know what we need to do.

Which leads us to Rule Number One (a):

DON’T BE AN ASKHOLE

Have you ever had a friend who was constantly asking for your advice but never took it? They come to you with one problem after another, ask what they should do, and then manufacture endless reasons for why they can’t possibly do what you suggested.

They’re basically being askholes. They’re not really interested in solutions, they’re just interested in the drama of their problems. We may occasionally lose our tempers and blow up at those people but more often we just fade away. We start avoiding them as much as we can and, if they corner us, we just nod and say, “Uh, huh. Golly. How ‘bout that? Gee whiz.”

We’ve learned that they’re never going to follow our advice and so we stop giving it. The Universe (or Jesus or Fairies or the Tao or Hey You) is very much like that. If we ask for help with something, it will always respond with an answer. But . . . if we continually ignore the advice, then Hey You will start avoiding us and ignoring our questions because it knows we don’t really want an answer.

So, in the example above, the Universe might suggest that you leave the guy, or it might suggest that you sprinkle him with Parmesan cheese before you have sex, or it might suggest that you ask him to dress up like a grilled cheese sandwich instead of a pizza and see how THAT goes. Whatever form the advice comes in, we need to act on it. If we don’t, the advice will just stop coming. If we do, then the advice will increase, synchronicity will increase, and we’ll find ourselves more and more in the Flow.

I’ll be offering some more insights on how to increase synchronicity in the next few posts. In the meantime, ask and ye shall receive. Askhole and ye shall not.

Remember that my ebook, Just the Tarot, is still available on Amazon for less than the price of a single slice of pizza and MUCH less than a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup. You should buy a copy.

Cheatin’ Horndogs, Vibrators in the Refrigerator, and Tarot Cards that Indicate Infidelity

Tarot cards that indicate infidelity in a relationship.

“She just started liking cheating songs,
And what’s bothering me,
I don’t know if it’s the cheating she likes,
Or just the melody.” – John Anderson

If you read Tarot cards for other people, you’ll find that one of the major topics that those people want to know about is love and romance.

Is she the right one for me?
Does he feel the same about me that I feel about him?
Should I ask her out?
Should we move in together?
Are we meant to get married?
Will this relationship last?

And, of course, with love and romance there are frequently questions about fidelity and cheating. Most marriages and relationships are, “monogamous,” which is derived from the Greek, meaning, “keep your dick in your pants,” (except when you’re with me.) A very large part of the marital and partnership contract is that when we fall in love we’ll be sexually and emotionally exclusive to that one other person.

Just the Tarot by Dan Adair – a kindle ebook available on Amazon

Having sex with or becoming emotionally attached to a third party is seen as a major violation of that contract and is grounds for terminating it. And there are major penalties that go along with that violation, such as being locked out of your house in your bathrobe, or having your partner pour maple syrup all over your best clothes just before she throws them out into the front yard. And many times, it’s not even REAL maple syrup, it’s that cheap, artificially flavored crap like Mrs. Butterworths.

Quite naturally, then, people who are cheating on their partners will go to great lengths to conceal it. And, quite naturally, the partner who’s being cheated on will somehow know, on a very deep, almost psychic level, that their mates are being unfaithful. There may be extremely subtle, subliminal clues, such as your husband having a giant hickey on his neck, or finding a pair of jockey shorts under the pillow when you wear boxer shorts. Or perhaps coming home early from work and seeing a naked man running out your back door, or finding a strange vibrator in the refrigerator next to the carton of eggs.

Those are the kinds of subdued, low key signals that will often make a person stop and ponder if there’s something more going on in their marriage than meets the eye. Still, their partners will tend to deny it. The vibrator in the refrigerator must have accidentally fallen into the grocery bag at the supermarket and really belongs to someone else. The naked man running out the backdoor was the plumber, who was sleepwalking, and was completely shocked when he awakened without clothes while he was working on the dripping faucet in the bathroom. The hickey on your husband’s neck was the result of a near tragic vacuum cleaner accident at work. The jockey shorts under the pillow were meant to be a present and now you’ve gone and ruined the surprise.

Even though these are all perfectly rational, reasonable explanations, there may still be lingering suspicions and so your client will want to consult the Tarot cards to determine the truth. Here are a few cards that may indicate that the questioner’s partner is what is clinically referred to as a, “cheatin’ horndog.”

THE LOVERS REVERSED

The Lovers is obviously THE romantic relationship card in the Tarot deck. It shows that period of time when you’re first together with your romantic partner and the whole world seems magical and glowing. It’s just the two of you, in your shining little garden. Just you and the angels and . . . um . . . that pesky snake climbing up the tree. When it’s reversed, the party’s over, baby. You’ve been thrown out of the garden and it’s time to deal with reality.

THE DEVIL (UPRIGHT OR REVERSED)

The Devil card shows the same two figures from The Lovers card, only things don’t seem to be as peachy anymore. For one thing, instead of an angel hovering over them, there’s a great big horny kind of a goat/bat demon thingie. They’re chained to a black stone or altar and they have tails which are on fire. (Having your tail burst into flames is another one of those subtle signs that there may be something wrong.) The Devil card can mean a lot of rotten things, such as addictions, super negativity, etc, etc,, but in this context – cheatin’ horndogs – it probably indicates a sexual affair that’s going on and it probably indicates that it’s a pretty heavy duty affair that may have strong elements of BDSM. I mean, horny goats, chains and flaming tails? Really?

THE TOWER (UPRIGHT OR REVERSED)

The Tower, as you might guess, is NOT a positive card. It usually indicates a freaking disaster that’s happening right in the middle of our happy little lives. The flash of the lightning bolts indicates that it’s sudden and shocking. It tends to destroy our lives right down to the foundation and then we’ve got to start rebuilding them, piece by piece. Having this show up in a reading about fidelity would indicate the sudden knowledge that your partner has been unfaithful and the relationship has been completely destroyed by that lack of fidelity.

FIVE OF WANDS

The Five of Wands may show up in a relationship where there’s a LOT of emotional turmoil. In the South, they talk about, “fight and fuck,” relationships. These are relationships where the two people involved have huge fights with much screaming and throwing of plates, and then they reconcile and have make-up sex that’s incredibly good. There are spoken phrases in there like, “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” and, “I promise this will never happen again, ‘cause you’re the dumplings in my chicken soup, honey buns.” Yes, I know honey buns and chicken soup are a disgusting combination, but you get the idea. There’s cheating going on, but they’ll probably reconcile and spend the next week in bed.


QUEEN OF WANDS REVERSED

The Queen of Wands has a lot of good characteristics and, among them, is fidelity. If she shows up reversed, there’s a very good chance that someone isn’t practicing that virtue.

ACE OF CUPS REVERSED

The Ace of Cups shows pure, unadulterated love pouring into the world. It tends to appear when someone is just starting off on a new romantic relationship and their hearts are full of love. When it’s reversed, there’s a good chance that their love got adulterated by a cheatin’, adulterating horndog.

THREE OF CUPS REVERSED

Obviously, this is very much of a party hardy card. When it’s upright, it’s healthy, joyous and free partying. When it’s reversed and shows up in this kind of a reading it can indicate that the joy is leaving or that your partner is partying with someone else.

TEN OF CUPS REVERSED

Among other things, the Ten of Cups is the Happy Family card. When it’s reversed it can be a sign that the happy family is breaking up, particularly if it’s a family with children involved.

KNIGHT OF CUPS REVERSED

The Knight of Cups is riding out on a sincere quest for love. Reversed, it indicates that the love wasn’t found.

THREE OF SWORDS

LOL – well . . . yeah . . . that one’s pretty obvious. Stabbed right in the heart.

SEVEN OF SWORDS

The Seven of Swords is all about sneaking around and stealing someone else’s power. This is the kind of person who has an affair right in front of everyone’s eyes and somehow gets away with it. This card also shows up frequently when you’re involved with a malignant narcissist who’s just using you for their own ego gratification.

TWO OF PENTACLES

The Two of Pentacles may show up in a reading like this to indicate someone who’s trying to juggle two different love affairs and keep both of them going.

SIX OF PENTACLES

This may indicate a lover who’s not really giving with a whole, loving heart. Love is being measured out very carefully.

Those are just a few of the red flags that may show up if your questioner wants to know if his or her partner is running around.

Remember to be very careful with these types of readings. Many people are in a great deal of denial when relationships are falling apart and really, really DON’T want you to tell them what you see in the reading. What they want is for you to tell them that they were wrong and that the vibrator in the refrigerator is really just a whipped cream dispenser. If you’re doing a reading for your best friend and you tell her that her husband is playing hide-the-sausage with his secretary, she may not be pleased with you. At all.

And, of course, it’s always possible that the questioner’s partner might NOT be a cheatin’ horn dog. He could just be a rat faced dingleberry, which is an entirely different kettle of fish. In either case, approach this topic with caution. Practice using phrases such as:

It seems that all may not be as it appears.
There’s a certain murkiness here.
There appears to be a fork in the road of life.

Avoid using phrases such as:

I think he’s dipping his wick with your best friend.
She’s a real bottom feeder and believe me, I MEAN bottom.
You should have listened to your mother. By the way, does your mother still have that spare room?

The Pragmatism of Happiness, Colliding with Bubbles and The Five of Wands

The pragmatism of choosing to be happy.

Maybe we’re just meant to be happy.

That may sound a bit simplistic and silly on the face of it.  “Duh . . . who doesn’t want to be happy?”  Still, when we consider all of the hoops we jump through in order to NOT be happy, it’s kind of amazing.  Happiness, for many of us, always seems to be a future event rather than something we enjoy in the present moment.

  • I’ll be happy when I finally get out of high school.
  • I’ll be happy when I finally get laid.
  • I’ll be happy when I get a good job.
  • I’ll be happy when I get that new computer.
  • I’ll be happy when I get a new car.
  • I’ll be happy when I fall in love.
  • I’ll be happy when I get married.
  • I’ll be happy when I get divorced.
  • I’ll be happy when the kids are grown up and I have some time for myself.

And on and on and on.  That approach is valid, to a certain extent.  We do get some measure of happiness from all of these things and events, but it never seems to last.  It never seems like real happiness.  It’s like we’re microdosing instead of getting the whole pill.

One of the problems is that we always look at happiness as something that happens to us, rather than something we generate on our own.  We see this reflected in the way that we talk about the process.  “You make me happy.”  Or, “this made me sad.”  Or, “I couldn’t believe how happy that made me feel.”  

The way we verbalize it sounds like there are these bubbles floating around the universe that we occasionally have collisions with and it changes the way that we feel.  “Uh, oh, I just ran into a sad bubble, so I’m sad now.”  Or, “Oh, man, that happy bubble felt good.  Yay!”

Since we don’t control those sources of happiness, since they’re things that happen to us rather than by us, we never feel as if we control our own happiness.  Yes, we can try to maximize our lives so that we run into more happy bubbles than sad bubbles.  We can get rid of the negative people in our lives.  We can find jobs that don’t totally suck.  We can intentionally pick out books or videos that are uplifting, rather than depressing.  But that’s still giving that power of happiness away to exterior sources.  We’re still just trying to control the exterior sources rather than realize our own ability to be happy just because we want to be.

So a good first step in being happy is to just claim our own emotional states.  That means realizing that our happiness, sadness, joy, depression, anger, love, etc. are all things that we are generating ourselves.  They don’t come from outside of us – we’re making them up as we go along.  

Put another way, it’s not a simple stimulus/response interaction.  We don’t have to automatically respond to our life’s events in certain pre-programmed ways.  We can – and do – interpret them.  We just usually interpret them in a very unconscious way.  We’ve been taught that some events are supposed to make us sad and some events are supposed to make us happy and we never stop to question why.

For instance, marriage = happiness and divorce = sadness.  We accept that equation instantly, despite the fact that about half the marriages in our country are miserable experiences and divorce often feels like being let out of a prison.  As the bumper sticker says, “It is better to have loved and lost than to go on living with a psychopath.” 

Now, once we’ve gotten there, when we’re willing to accept that WE are making our own emotions happen rather than colliding with random happy or sad bubbles, then the next step is to actually ask ourselves why we’re choosing those emotions.  A good yardstick to use in that process is evaluating whether they’re actually doing anything for us.  Are they making our lives better?  Are they moving things forward?  Are they improving the quality of our lives?

By way of an example, I used to love, love, LOVE my self-righteous anger.  If I really, genuinely felt that I was right and someone else was wrong, I was willing to argue all night and fight to the death to defend my position and change the other person’s opinion.  I was angry because I had every right to be angry.  

In my defense, I don’t think I’m exactly alone in that process.  Social media groups often feel like the Five of Wands, where everyone is madly swinging their opinions at everyone else, all of us sure that we’ve got the real skinny on what’s true and what’s not.  Our current politics are even worse.

A peculiar thing happened to me, though, where I reached a point of realization that anger just didn’t work very well.  It was this sudden revelation that every single time I got angry, it made things worse instead of better.  Every single time.  Without fail, if I lost my temper I ended up with shit on my shoes and feeling like hell.  Far from changing anyone’s mind about the issue we were arguing over, it just convinced them that I was an angry asshole and there was no reason to listen to me.

And so I just gave it up.  Sure, I get irritated or impatient, just like any other human being, but I haven’t been angry in several years.  Not because I’m some kind of Mahatma Gandhi, but simply because it doesn’t work.  It’s like trying to use the wrong key to start your car.  If you know it’s not going to work, why would you do it?

In the same sense, sadness and depression are emotions that just don’t work very well for human beings.  They make life a lot harder, instead of a lot easier.  They freeze us in place and keep us from attaining our goals and feeling connections with life and joy.  

They are basically an unnatural act, in the true sense of that term.  When we look at young critters, what’s their primary activity?  Play.  Puppies, kittens, young humans, young apes, any young being gets up in the morning and plays until they’re so exhausted that they fall over.  And then they get up and do it again.  We’re born happy and we have to learn how to be unhappy.

Now, it’s true that into every life a little shit must fall.  We aren’t going to feel happy and positive when someone we love has just died or we’ve just gotten run over by a truck.  About 90% of the time, though, NOTHING IS WRONG.  That means that in about 90% of our lives, we can make that simple choice of how we’re going to feel:  happy or sad?  Can you imagine having a life that was 90% happy?  Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

It doesn’t have to be some bold, existential statement, either.  It doesn’t have to be some phony Pollyanna stance that everything in life is sweetness and light.  It can be a simple act of pragmatism.  Happiness makes us feel connected with life and our fellow beings.  We move forward toward our goals and opportunities for growth seem to appear out of nowhere.  Depression makes us miserable and we feel that we have no choices and no growth in life.

In a nutshell, depression doesn’t work very well.  Sadness doesn’t work very well.  We can give them up, just like a bad habit, because ultimately that’s all they are.  

The Five of Cups and the Dark and Magical Path to Happiness.

Happiness as a choice, rather than just a state of being.

The Five of Cups shows a person who is in deep grief.  He’s lost something vital in his life and he’s mourning it on the deepest, most profound  level.  In the system of the Tarot, Cups represent emotions and he sees three of his cups lying on the ground, tipped over, and spilling out their emotions.  He’s literally hypnotized and immobilized by his sadness.

A sub-theme of this card is that he is also NOT focusing on the two remaining cups, which are upright and full.  He is so concentrated on what he’s lost that he’s not perceiving that he still has something left to be grateful for.

Happiness is one of those things in life that we seldom contemplate until we lose it.  Most humans are born happy.  Sure, there are the inevitable times when babies get, “fussy,” or decide to stay awake screaming their little heads off all night, but most young critters are happy, playful and content.  It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about human babies, puppies, kittens, or deer, the young are pretty much happy, pretty much most of the time.

So in many ways, happiness is a birthright of most living beings.  It’s also frequently a matter of inertia – objects in motion tend to stay in motion and happy people tend to stay happy.  We don’t even think about it until it disappears – we’re just pretty much happy, pretty much most of the time.  In the words of the old blues song, “You don’t miss your water ‘til your well runs dry.”

We’re told that into each life a little shit must fall, and, sure enough, we all suffer a certain amount of loss and grief.  We all have loved ones who die or become very ill, we get fired from jobs, we go through separations and divorces, and we occasionally get into car wrecks or fall down and break something that we’d rather not have broken. 

Thankfully, for most of us, those losses come in fairly measured doses and we have enough support built into our lives to recover and return to our natural state of happiness.  But there are also those of us who get absolutely hammered by loss and grief.  Who don’t just experience the death of loved ones, but the tragic death of loved ones.  Who don’t just go through a divorce but go through a devastating divorce, lose their homes, lose their jobs, and find themselves out on the street with nothing but the lint in the pockets of their overcoats.  Who not only lose their happiness, but lose it for a LONG time.  

Oddly, those are the people who probably appreciate happiness the most, because they’re the people who were forced to live without it.  They’re the people who had to fight to regain it, often alone, frightened, and hopeless.  To my mind, they’re some of the real heroes in life, the spiritual warriors who made it back from the dark side, from the brink of madness and suicide.

If you’ve ever gone through that kind of a loss, you’ll know what I mean.  If you’ve suffered a major nervous breakdown, or battled with alcoholism and addiction, or lived with crippling depression, you know what it’s like to be so down that you can’t even see up anymore.  Life becomes a meaningless, seemingly endless, series of days and nights filled with darkness, sadness, and extreme anxiety.  You don’t really know why you go on living, but you do, putting one foot in front of the other and slogging along toward nothing.

Now, some of us don’t make it back from that journey into darkness.  Some of us get swept over the precipice into oblivion.  Suicide is the 12th leading cause of death in the United States.  In 2020 there were 1.2 million suicide attempts in the country and nearly 46,000 successful suicides.  Those are, of course, only the suicides we know about because many of them are concealed.

For those of us who do make it back, happiness becomes a desperate quest and a practice.  We realize at some point that if we’re going to stay alive we somehow have to find a way to recapture happiness and build it back into our lives.  For some of us, that means finding a really good therapist to help us unravel all of the emotional knots and heal the psychic wounds.  For others, the gateway to happiness is the doorway to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting hall.  Perhaps happiness arrives in the form of a prescription for Prozac or a spiritual reawakening or even a psilocybin mushroom. 

Happiness doesn’t arrive all at once, neatly bound in wrapping paper and ribbons.  It’s something that we carefully build back into our lives, one trembling step at a time.  We may need to learn how to control our thoughts that obsessively lead us back to melancholy view points.  We may need to learn how to control our emotions and just do some deep belly breathing and meditation when we feel overwhelmed with sadness.  We may need to sit down with a therapist and do some serious exploration of why our paths crumbled under our feet.

Happiness at that point is transformed from a natural occurrence into a set of skills that we practice in our daily lives.

For me, one of the major breakthroughs was my therapist teaching me that we can be happy whenever we want to be.  We can sit down, meditate on something that makes us happy, and we will feel happy, even if just for a few moments.  If we string together enough of those meditations, we have a happy day.  If we string together enough of those days, we have a happy life.  It’s a skill.  It’s a practice.

The other day I was listening to this delightful video from author Mary Pipher about her book, “Women Rowing North.”  

The book is primarily about women and about aging, but it also has a lot of good information on happiness.  One of the things she said that really jumped out at me is that happiness is an existential choice.

There’s a deeply profound lesson in there because happiness can’t be a choice until we’ve lost it and then we’ve finally learned how to regain it.

When happiness is just our natural state of being, we’re on spiritual cruise control.  When we’re pretty much happy, pretty much most of the time, like puppies and kittens and babies,  we’re not choosing happiness – we just ARE happy.  And happiness is frequently perceived as something that’s outside of us, that happens to us, rather than something we create.  We meet the right partner, we stumble into a good job, we have a nice summer, we get laid, we see a funny movie.  It’s all a sort of a pleasant parade of sweet events that we have absolutely no control over.

When we lose our happiness – really and truly lose it for an extended period of time – and we learn how to recreate it in our lives, then it becomes something that we can control.  It becomes a product of practicing certain skill sets like meditating, staying in positive thinking, avoiding negative situations and people, and performing all of the little mental and emotional hygiene tasks that are required to stay in a state of happiness.  We’re trying to stay in a state of happiness because we KNOW that we’ll die if we don’t.

There’s a step beyond that, though, which is what Mary Pipher is talking about.  When we practice happiness long enough, there comes a wonderful day when we realize that we CHOOSE to be happy.  At that point, happiness isn’t just a survival mechanism, it isn’t just a way to avoid the darkness.  It’s an active, conscious embrace of the Light.  Happiness isn’t just a way to get along, it becomes our primary value and our choice and we know that we’ll never live without it again.

It’s a huge gift in life.  We only find it at the end of some very dark paths, but when we reach that point we realize that the journey has been a magical quest that led us to our own inner light.

The Four of Pentacles, Elon Musk, and the Buddha in High Top Sneakers

An exploration of materialism as a source of joy.

I recently bought a pair of Keds High Top Sneakers and I got a major spiritual insight out of them.  That may sound a little weird but Robert Pirsig in, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” said that the Buddha could reside as easily on a computer chip as on a lotus.  So I see no reason that the Buddha couldn’t wear Keds High Tops.

I actually have a long history with Keds High Top Sneakers.  More accurately, I have a long NON history with them.  When I was a kid I desperately wanted a pair of them.  I thought that, without a doubt, they were the coolest sneakers in the entire world, and I was especially enamored of the circular white rubber sticker on the ankle that said, “KEDS.”  I knew that if I could get my feet into those sneakers all of my problems would be solved and I would live happily ever after, forevermore.

So, of course, my parents wouldn’t buy them for me, because that’s what parents do when you’re a little kid.  They stomp all over your sneaker dreams and leave you as a damaged human being who will grow up to be maladjusted and unable to cope with the modern world or ever form a meaningful relationship.  And all because they wouldn’t buy you a lousy pair of Keds High Tops.  Tragic, really.

I don’t know why I had to get this old before it finally occurred to me that I could buy my OWN Keds HIgh Top Sneakers.  Talk about self-love!  Talk about nurturing my Inner Child!  What a brilliant idea:  I could buy my own Keds!

And so I did.

The moment of Spiritual Keds Insight came when I opened the package at home and found myself feeling pure, unadulterated . . . fun.  It was just a LOT of fun pulling the little paper wads out of the toes, lacing them up, pulling them on and walking around the house admiring my feet.  My new KEDS HIGHTOP feet!

And that’s when I solved a basic conundrum I’ve been dealing with about  affirmations, visualization, and all of the various courses and videos out there that teach us, “how to have the life and abundance that we’ve always dreamed of having.”

I realized that I’d been feeling guilty about having material possessions that make me happy.  I’m in good company in experiencing that guilt because a lot of us – particularly those of us who were raised in Christian families – have been taught that material possessions are really, really bad.  Jesus rapped on that subject several times and said that it was easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.  He didn’t choose to expand the thought and tell us whether it’s easier for a camel to get into heaven than for a rich man to get through the eye of a needle, but I would certainly think so, all things being equal.  Nonetheless, it was clear that he had a mighty poor opinion of rich people and all of their toys.

One result of that early programming about material possessions (they are bad and you won’t get into heaven) is that I have trouble really embracing the New Thought teachings about abundance.  I definitely believe in visualization and in affirmations because I’ve seen them work in my own life.  Still, when the speakers get to the inevitable part where they talk about abundance, I veer off course.  Their talks usually go something like:

“Just a few short years ago I was so poor that I couldn’t even afford to have a penis.  I was so far down I had to look up to see a snake’s belly.  I was so poverty stricken that all I could afford to eat was dirt.  Why, I remember going into coffee shops and asking for a cup of hot water because it was free and then, when they weren’t looking, I’d mix some dirt into the water and pour ketchup on it so I could have some dirt soup.  But then one day when I was sitting in the local park –  because that’s the only place I had to sleep – I was chewing on some dirt and licking dew off of the leaves of a tree to wash it down and I suddenly understood . . . EVERYTHING!  And that’s when I developed my Amazing New Method of visualizing.  Now I have a private jet, 12 sports cars, 6 mansions, 8 girlfriends and, yes, friends, I’ve even grown a penis.  A big one.  And if you buy my new book you can have all of that, too!”

I’m good with that, right up until the point where they mention the jet, sports cars and mansions and then I think, “Bad . . . you won’t get into heaven.”  Because, you know, materialism is shallow and not really spiritual or evolved and people become obsessed with making money and turn into Donald Trump and Elon Musk, even though we kind of have to halfway forgive Elon because what chance did he have with a name like that? 

There’s even a Tarot card for it:  The Four of Pentacles.

It shows a man sitting on his little stool, clutching a coin to his chest, with another coin sitting on his head.  It’s not so much that he owns his money as that it owns him.  It’s sitting on him as much as he’s sitting on it. You can take one look at him and tell he’s not getting through the eye of a needle, much less into heaven.

Now, one of the most misquoted passages from the Bible is, “Money is the root of all evil.”  The actual passage says that THE LOVE OF MONEY is the root of all evil.  And that’s what my new sneakers taught me:  it’s not about the material possessions, it’s about the ATTACHMENT to them.

Buddhists talk a lot about attachment.  When we attach to material possessions (or even lovers)  we automatically start to think of them as, “ours.”  As extensions of ourselves, as part of our egos.  We feel more important because we have, “stuff,” and the more stuff we get, the more important we feel.  Then we start looking around at other people and comparing our stuff to their stuff.  If we’ve got more stuff than them, or more expensive stuff, then we must be better than them.  If they’ve got more or better stuff, then we become jealous of them and maybe even grow to hate them or dream about them losing all of their stuff so that we’ll be more important.

That’s the point where we’ve stopped seeing ourselves or others as humans and substituted material possessions for a measurement of worth.  Yes, that’s bad and, no,  we won’t get through the eye of a camel anymore, not even a rich camel.

But there’s a sort of a, “pre-attachment,” point with material possessions where they’re just a lot of fun, and fun is good in the same way that happy is good.  That’s what my Keds sneakers taught me.

If we give a new toy to a normal, very young child, the kid is going to be just as happy as a little clam in diapers.  She’ll play with it and stick it in her mouth and drool on it and carry it around for days.  And laugh a lot.  It’s a wonderful, fun thing to watch and there’s no downside.

Within a very short period of development, though, we begin to see a change in the way that some children receive new toys.  Especially in homes where there are too many children and not enough love, we see kids start to attach to their toys.  This is MY toy, it’s not yours.  They don’t want to share it with the other children and may begin to hide and even hoard their toys.  They may go into absolute screaming fits if one of the other kids tries to play with their . . . stuff.  Basically, even at that very young age, they’ve learned to substitute material possession for self worth and love.

The trick, then, is to re-learn the joy of a new toy without attaching to it.  There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with enjoying material possessions.  Hell, it’s probably hard wired into our nervous systems.  

I can thoroughly enjoy my Keds High Tops without at all thinking that my High Tops are better than your loafers.  I don’t have to run out and buy 20 more pairs of High Tops so that I’ll have a lot more of them than you.  I don’t need to put my High Tops in a safety deposit box.  I don’t have to get all tragically existential because, yes, someday my High Tops will wear out, so what’s the point of life anyway???

I can just enjoy them and I can do that with any other material possession that I want.  There’s nothing innately evil, wrong, or unspiritual about Keds High Tops.  They’re fun and fun is good, in the same way that happy is good, and happy is very good indeed.

At the end of the day, we’re here in the Earth School and the Earth School is chock full of fun toys, so we can just take pleasure in them, share them, and even love them for exactly what they are: toys.  Life is good and no one named us Elon Musk, so there is much to be grateful for.