Tag: co-creation

The Five of Wands and a Committee of Egos

The Five of Wands is almost painful to look at.  All of that conflict! All of that fighting! All of those guys whacking each other with their staves!

Except, they’re not.

If you look a little more closely at the Five of Wands you see that NO ONE is getting hit.  Not one single staff has landed on one single head. Look a little closer and you see that they’re all holding their staves with one hand, which is a little awkward for close quarter combat, right?

So what the hell’s going on here?

When you stand back and get a little perspective on the painting you can see that the staves are actually starting to form a pattern as they’re being waved around in the air.  One side of a pentacle is forming and we can assume the other side is coming eventually.

Wands, of course, represent ideas or ambitions and pentacles are possessions or earth based manifestations.  The short hand on this card is that a variety of ideas are coming together and will manifest into a single, material form.

We might call this, “co-creation by committee.” Or more accurately, co-creation by ego.

Ego gets a bad rap a certain extent of the time.  Aside from being that distracting voice that won’t shut the hell up when we’re trying to meditate, there are some things that ego is very good at doing.  Ego is great for making out grocery lists, or remembering to change the oil in the car, or paying the bills on time. Ego is not only good at planning for the future, ego can plan six or seven possible futures simultaneously AND be obsessed with the past while it’s doing that.

One thing that ego is NOT good at, though, is co-creation.  It’s almost as if acknowledging that someone else might have a better idea is a threat to ego’s very existence.

As Eckhart Tolle said in “A New Earth:  Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose,”

“There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right. . . For you to be right, of course, you need someone else to be wrong, and so the ego loves to make wrong in order to be right. . . Being right places you in a position of imagined moral superiority in relation to the person or situation that is being judged and found wanting.  It is that sense of superiority the ego craves and through which it enhances itself.”

And when you put a group of people in a room together, all of whom are convinced that they’re right and everyone else is wrong, you end up with the Five of Wands.  They’re not just waving their wands around, they’re waving their egos around. They’re not TOUCHING each other, not synthesizing each others creativity into a real group effort and so it’s very difficult to bring a coherent, complete vision out of the gathering.

Real co-creation requires that we step out of our egos for awhile and actually listen to other people’s ideas and inspirations.  That we operate as equals and acknowledge that each person brings valuable gifts to the table.  

There was a very popular book written by Thomas Anthony Harris in the 1960s called, “I’m Okay, You’re Okay.”  The premise of the book was that we’re all on equal footing spiritually, no one is a superior or an inferior. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross flipped it a little and said, “I’m not okay, you’re not okay, and that’s okay.”

Either way you look at it, THAT’S the point where we start to have real co-creation with other people.  When we leave the ego by the door to guard the umbrellas and actually listen to each other.

The Fool, The Magician, and Jesus Driving a Plymouth

Jesus is Watching – Original Painting by Dan Adair

There is a terrible country and western song called, “Jesus, Take the Wheel.”  I admit freely that every time I hear it I think, “Jesus, take a hike.” Too much church when I was a kid, no doubt.

At any rate, the heroine of the song is driving her car down an icy road when she suddenly hits a patch of black ice, the car starts to spin out of control, she takes her hands OFF of the steering wheel and cries out, “Jesus, take the wheel!”

Jesus, take the wheel

Take it from my hands

‘Cause I can’t do this on my own

I’m letting go

So give me one more chance

And save me from this road I’m on

Jesus, take the wheel

And apparently he does and the next thing she knows she’s sitting on the shoulder of the road in her car, which for some reason I’m thinking is an old Plymouth, and everything’s hunky dory.

Now, aside from making me intensely frightened of fundamentalist christians driving in snowstorms, it also brings up the distinction between spiritual surrender and spiritual co-creation.  I wrote in a recent post that I was practicing turning my most difficult problems over to my higher powers and this song is a perfect example of what I didn’t mean.

When we look at The Fool tarot card we see someone whom we might call, “god(dess) intoxicated.”  He is channeling that power from the Higher Realms, it’s flowing through every molecule of his being and he is HIGH with its’ energy.  He’s going to dance right off the edge of that cliff and just float away instead of plummeting to his death. In a very real sense he has surrendered his being and his body to that Higher Power.

But then we transition to the next card, The Magician, and we see something very different.  He’s in touch with that same energy, that same power, but he’s not just channeling it, he’s controlling it and directing it.

And that’s a major distinction, both philosophically and spiritually.  It’s the difference between spiritual surrender and spiritual co-creation.

In classic christian theology human beings are seen as essentially flawed, sinful creatures whose only hope for real salvation is to surrender their lives and their wills to Jesus.  Essentially, they want their independent, “selves,” to disappear as much as possible so they can be replaced by Jesus. It’s sort of like a cross between being possessed by a cuddly demon and The Stepford Wives.  You’re out, Jesus is in, everybody’s happy. Jesus take the wheel.

In Wiccan and Pagan theology, we aren’t flawed sinners, we are embodiments of the divine.  Yes, we may not remember that, we may be confused, disoriented, feel spiritually and emotionally lost, but in essence we ARE the divine on a journey to the earth plane.

When we,“turn our problems over,” to our angels, spirit guides, gods and goddesses, we aren’t asking them to take the wheel.  We’re asking them for wisdom and guidance to help us on our journeys. We’re asking them enter into our lives and act as co-creators with us.  

As an artist I can totally relate to that concept.  Instead of hogging the canvas and the paints and the brushes, I can paint for a little bit and then let my spirit guides paint for a little bit.  Or I can ask them for some advice about what colors to use and how I should blend the shadows and the light. But, ultimately, it’s my signature that goes on that canvas.  Ultimately my life is my creation, it’s not a surrender or a mistake. And I don’t think our Higher Powers would want it any other way.


Karmic Re-Set with the Nine of Swords

I remember the last time I pulled the Nine of Swords in one of my personal readings.  I had a very spiritual reaction, which was, “Well . . . shit.” Swiftly followed by another, which was, “Why me?”

It probably wasn’t one of my better days.

The Nine of Swords absolutely screams, “karma.”  The individual is lying in bed with his head in his hands, a perfect image of someone who has just awakened from a screaming nightmare.  The quilt on the bed is covered with astrological symbols showing past incarnations in different signs of the zodiac. The swords behind him seem locked together like the bars in a prison cell.

There can be no doubt that this is someone who has just realized that he’s accumulated some terrible, terrible karma and is going to have to pay a serious price for it.

There’s another way of looking at it, though.

If you’ve spent any substantial time in spiritual exploration then you’ve had that, “Ah HA!” moment when you realize that you are a co-creator of your life.  It goes something like this:

I control my thoughts.  My thoughts cause my emotions.  My emotions cause my energy vibrations.  My energy vibrations, through the Law of Attraction, determine what’s going to manifest in my life.  Therefore, I control (or create) what’s manifesting in my life.

To put it more succinctly, if I’m broadcasting a lot of negative vibrations I’m going to attract a lot of negative crap into my life.  If my vibrations are positive, positive things will flow into my life.

There’s a real rush that goes along with that revelation.  We feel very liberated from random circumstances and from people victimizing us.  We realize that all of this isn’t being done TO us, we’re making it happen to ourselves, which means that we can change it.

But there are a couple of, “Well . . . shit,” moments that go along with that.

The first one is, “Well . . . shit . . . I made this.  This is MY karma. I’m totally responsible for this mess.”

It wasn’t our abusive fathers, or our crazy ex-wife or husband, or the country or culture we grew up in, or the opportunities we did or didn’t have, or anything OUT THERE.  We manifested all of it into our lives or we chose to NOT manifest something better. We made it.

Well . . . shit . . .

The second appallingly scary moment happens when we realize that it means that we’re also creating what happens next.

Alcoholics Anonymous and the other 12 Step Programs have a saying:  “You can start your day over whenever you want to.” In other words, if you’re having a terrible day you can always take a deep breath, reconnect with your serenity, and change how your day is going.

Tibetan Buddhism embraces the concept that we can start our karma over whenever we want to.  No, we can’t escape the unfolding of consequences from our previous actions but we can make those consequences a lot better by starting to live our lives with love and compassion and the creation of good karma.

And when we realize – truly realize – that we are creating our lives right now, right here, with the choices that we’re making, that we’re starting over,  that’s a pretty heavy responsibility.

For one thing we have to get really clear on just what we DO want.  What are my values? What do I want in my life? Peace? Serenity? Happiness?  Family? Sex? Money? What do I want to create in my life? If all of this isn’t just stuff that’s happening to me, if it isn’t just things that people are doing to me, if I’m MAKING my life . . . what do I want it to look like?

And if we’re going to choose to consciously create our own lives – and we don’t have to, we can stay unconscious – then we have to consciously choose, every day, every hour, to control our emotions, our vibrations, and our manifestations.  

And that’s not easy.

Well . . . shit . . .