jesus – Just the Tarot

Atheist Tarot Readers, Defective Jesus, and Finding a New God-Person

The pragmatism of polytheism.

I have a friend who is an atheist Tarot card reader and it tickles me no end. I like to rag on her a bit and ask her, “Who do you think is answering your questions when you do a reading? Maybe atheist angels or agnostic spirit guides?”

Which generally earns me a dirty look or a shrug. She reads Tarot cards. She’s an atheist. It’s not up for discussion.

Now, she’s kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. The rock is that she was reading Tarot cards for many years before she became an atheist, so she knows that they actually work. When you sit down with a deck of cards and do a reading, you get answers and the answers are generally (not always) right on.

The hard place is that she went through a series of very painful life experiences that led her to conclude that there’s no God and that religion is nothing more than superstitious nonsense. That conclusion wasn’t arrived at in a frivolous manner because she was genuinely suffering in her life, she prayed for help, and nothing much happened.

It’s a pretty simple equation, right? We’re told that there’s some sort of a God-person out there, that he loves us, and that if we’re in trouble he’ll come zooming in and rescue us. So, if we do our part by (a) getting in trouble and (b) praying for help and the God-person doesn’t do his part by (c) zooming in and rescuing us, then it’s logical to conclude that the God-person either doesn’t exist or else he’s pretty useless.

I’m actually very sympathetic with my friend, the atheist Tarot reader, because I had a similar experience when I was in my mid-forties. My father had just killed himself, I lost my job and had to declare bankruptcy, my house was repossessed, and my mother developed Alzheimer’s Disease.

All of this happened within a one year span of time. My life went from being perfectly normal to being a total shit-burger in the wink of an eye. I was so chewed up by life that I had to look up to see the bottom and if it weren’t for bad luck, “I wouldn’t have had no luck at all.” Life had chewed me up, spit me out, and then stomped on me with hob-nail boots to be sure I’d stay on the ground.

I was living in Texas at the time and there’s a fundamentalist christian under every rock and behind every cactus in Texas. It was probably inevitable, then, that one of them said, “Dan, you just need to get down on your knees and pray to Jesus for help.” And I did. I was raised up in the catholic church, so the concept of praying to Jesus wasn’t exactly foreign to me and I thought, “Well, shit . . . what do I have to lose?” Nothing.

So I commenced praying and I prayed and prayed and prayed and asked Jesus to help me in my misery and travails and – SHAZAM! – nothing happened. No heavenly hosts of angels appeared, Jesus didn’t invite me for a walk in the garden and no one anointed my fevered brow with soothing oils. I continued to be royally fucked.

But, unlike my friend, the atheist Tarot reader, I didn’t throw my hands in the air and declare that God is dead and it’s just a cold, hard universe. Instead, I analyzed my situation and thought, “Well, I’m in trouble, I prayed to the God-person to come zooming in and help me, and nothing happened. Obviously, I have a defective God-person. He’s not working, so I’ll just send him back. I need to find a God-person who can get the job done.”

I did a lot of research on Gods and Goddesses and finally settled on Hecate’, the Goddess of the Cross Roads. She seemed like a good fit because I was definitely at a cross roads in my life and I needed to know which way to turn. I prayed and prayed and prayed and asked Hecate’ to help me in my misery and travails and – SHAZAM! – something happened.

In fact, quite a bit happened, just like magic. I met a woman on line, fell in love with her, moved to California and we lived together for 19 years. My life went from being an absolute shit-burger to being wonder-full in the wink of an eye.

Now, I’m not writing all of this as some sort of an anti-Jesus screed or to praise the wonders of Hecate’. I know a few christians who swear up and down that Jesus answers their prayers and they seem like nice, honest people. Maybe they got a Jesus model that wasn’t defective and he sort of works if they don’t take too close a look at him. Maybe Jesus was just a bad fit for me – could be that he doesn’t like my haircut or tie dyed shirts. I don’t know. I just know he didn’t work.

Which leads me back to my friend, the atheist Tarot reader. Like me, she tried praying to her God-person and nothing happened, nothing got better. She quite logically realized he was a defective model and sent him back. Fortunately, she was still able to hang on to her Tarot cards and say, “These DO work, so I’m not sending them back.”

The point being that we have a sort of a pragmatic, mostly unspoken, contract with our God-persons. It’s something along the lines of, “Okay, God-person, we’ll pray to you and we’ll build all of these very grandiose temple-houses for you to live in and we’ll pay the salaries of your priest-persons. You, on the other hand, will help us, console us, give us guidance, and zoom in to help us when we’re in trouble.”

Unfortunately, humans have a long history of making excuses for their God-persons. In many instances, it’s as if the God-person is on vacation when we’re in trouble, or perhaps he has Attention Deficit Disorder and it just slips his mind that we’re hanging off the edge of a cliff holding on to a single branch. In the worst instances, the God-person seems to behave like some sort of a deranged sadist who LIKES wrecking people’s lives and we just pray that maybe he won’t notice us while he’s in a bad mood.

In those instances, it’s perfectly acceptable to just say, “Okay, God-person – I held up my end of the bargain and you didn’t hold up yours. It’s been sweet, but I think we both know this isn’t working out.”

And it’s also perfectly acceptable to find another God-person. Just because this relationship is ending, it doesn’t mean that we can’t have another relationship. There’s no reason to accept the christian line that there’s only ONE God-person and that we mustn’t ever be unfaithful to him, even when he’s being unfaithful to us. What a narcissist!

It’s actually a great big universe out there and there are plenty of God-persons to choose from. If we’re stone-cold poor, for instance, we might want to talk to Lakshmi, the Goddess of Abundance. If we’re facing insurmountable obstacles, Ganesh specializes in removing them. If we’re in need of healing, talk to Tara. If we have no love in your lives, pray to Quan Yin.

I think that you’ll find that most God-persons are actually quite nice entities. For the most part, they seem to have healthy boundaries. They don’t follow you around and spy on what you’re doing. They don’t have temper fits and throw you out of the garden just because you ate an apple. They seem to have a lot of unconditional love and won’t ask you to sacrifice your first born son. And they actually work.

My e-book, “Just the Tarot,” a practical guide to reading Tarot cards, is still available on Amazon for less than you’d pay for a small order of jalapeño poppers and will last a lot longer.

The Rules of Synchronicity Number Two: Lighten the Fuck Up and Walk on Some Water

Playfulness as a key to synchronicity.

In my previous post, The Rules of Synchronicity, Having Sex with Pizzas, and Becoming More Flow-ish, I began to lay out some basic rules for increasing synchronicity in our lives. We then use that synchronicity to get into The Flow State and life becomes a lot easier.

Rule number one, of course, is to ask for synchronicity. It’s like knocking on a door – if you don’t knock, no one will answer.

Rule number two is . . . play.

Just play. As in, don’t take ourselves so seriously. Lighten the fuck up. Mellow out. Have some fun.

Now, to many people, that’s going to sound counter-intuitive. After all, we’re asking the Universe for guidance in our lives! And that’s serious stuff, by golly, and we should act very solemn about it. Maybe dress all in black and look pained and tragic. Or maybe even fall down on our knees and sob about it.

Not.

There is a, “Whatever-It-Is,” out there in the Universe that answers our questions and gives us guidance when we ask. Call it god, call it the faery folk, call it angels, call it whatever you like. It’s there and it engages with us when we engage with it.

Now, the Whatever-It-Is has some basic characteristics, just like a person. In fact, it might be easier to think of Whatever-It-Is as a person or even a friend. One of it’s characteristics is that it’s playful. It likes to engage with people who have a sense of humor and a light heart. It’s not that Whatever-It-Is WON’T engage with us if we’re all serious and dejected and depressed. It would just rather engage with someone who’s a little more fun.

Using the analogy of a friend again, we all have friends who are in a dark, depressed place. Everyone goes in and out of the light and some people stay in the darkness a little longer than others. If we have a friend like that, we don’t turn our backs on him. If she needs to have a cup of coffee and just unload about how miserable her life is, we’ll do that. We’re willing to pat his shoulder and say, “There, there . . . it will all work out.”

On the other hand, if we see that particular friend coming toward us a block away, we might cross the street and peer into a shop window until he passes by. We’re compassionate, but we’re not masochistic. We’re there to help, but we don’t seek out the darkness they’re living in.

Put another way, we’re all attracted to people who are positive, humorous, and light hearted. Their positive energy gives us a good energetic charge and, hopefully, we give them one as well.

In very much the same way, Whatever-It-Is is much more likely to engage with us when we’re living in a fun, humorous, positive space. It has a light, playful energy and so it’s much more compatible with OUR energy when we’re light and playful.

This is, of course, completely contrary to what we’ve been raised to believe. Traditionally, people have sought out a connection with Whatever-It-Is in churches. And what do we know about going to church? It’s very, very, very serious. And solemn. And pretty damned uncomfortable. No giggling allowed, thank you very much.

Catholics even have a tradition of smacking themselves in their chests with their fists and saying, “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea MAXIMA culpa.” That translates as, “I am guilty, I am guilty, I am SO FUCKING guilty.”

Would you like to have a conversation like that with a friend? Of course not. So why do we assume that Whatever-It-Is wants to have that conversation with us? The ironic thing is that we’ve been taught that, in order to talk with Whatever-It-Is, we have to get into a really dark, serious emotional space and this is totally non-productive. It just makes it that much harder for the positive energy and guidance to flow to us, because our vibration is incompatible.

Another problem that many of us – especially those of us who were raised as christians – encounter is that we’ve been taught from the get-go that GOD IS NOT OUR FRIEND! The word, “god,” is just the term that most Westerners use to describe Whatever-It-Is. It’s the something out there that we talk to when we need guidance and help, which we call, “praying,” and when it answers us we call that, “miracles.”

Unfortunately, we’ve also been taught that this god person pretty much doesn’t like anything that makes us happy. That includes masturbation, sex, lying around being lazy, eating too much, and getting high. He’s making a list and he’s checking it twice and he’s going to find out if we’re naughty or nice. And if we’re naughty, we’re going straight to hell. Forever. Period.

In other words, god doesn’t have much of a sense of humor. In fact, you can flip through the entire bible and hardly find one single instance where god appeared to be having any fun or told a joke or did a dance. The one exception I can think of was when Jesus decided to walk on the water just to freak out the local fishermen, but that’s a different story.

So, once again, this is a mind-set that we need to TOTALLY get out of. Whatever-It-Is (call it god if you want to) LIKES for us to have fun. Whatever-It-Is LIKES people who have sex and lie around in a hammock on a sunny day and tell jokes and dance. Who wouldn’t?

Just to recap where we’re at in this discussion at this point:

– We’re much happier, more fulfilled, and content when we’re living in the state of consciousness that we call, “The Flow.”
– That state of consciousness always occurs coincident with synchronicity, so if we can increase our synchronicity, we increase the time we spend in The Flow.
– Synchronicity means having contact with, asking questions of, and getting guidance from the spiritual source that some people call god/goddess or the faery folk or angels or spirit guides or even Whatever-It-Is.
– The first step in achieving synchronicity is to actually, consciously ask for guidance and then watch for answers.
– The answers will come a lot easier if we stay in a happy, light, positive vibration and remember that Whatever-It-Is is a benevolent friend who likes to have fun.

I’ll be posting some more about synchronicity in the near future, but for now just remember that the way to enlightenment is to lighten the fuck up. We can do that!

Remember that my e-book, Just the Tarot, is available on Amazon for much less than what you’d pay for a box of chocolates and you’ll know EXACTLY what you’re getting.

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.

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.

Eating Pancakes with Jesus, Having Lunch with Lucifer and Looking Inward with the Three of Pentacles

A contrast in Christian and Buddhist views of human nature and spirituality.

Are we on the outside looking in or on the inside looking out?

Do we think that heaven or redemption or satori or enlightenment or whatever we want to call it, is, “out there somewhere,” or do we think it’s inside of us, waiting to be uncovered?

Which direction are we gazing? Inside or out? It’s a fundamental, crucial question in terms of how we approach life and our personal spirituality.

In Western Christianity, there’s no question that the focus is very much outward. Heaven, redemption, blessings are seen as things that exist but they’re not an innate part of us. Christian theology goes something like this:

“God made you in his self-image but something kind of went wrong. God is perfect, but you aren’t. In fact, you’re really, really flawed. In fact, let’s be honest here, you’re a real piece of shit. You like to fornicate and steal and lie to people and, um, eat bacon and shrimp. You’re pretty much hopeless, unless you change your ways. If you change your ways, you can eat pancakes with Jesus in heaven, and they use REAL maple syrup, not that Mrs. Butterworth’s crap. On the other hand, if you DON’T change your ways, well, God is going to have to toss you into a flaming pit where you’ll burn in agony forever. Because he loves you.”

Now, the salient point in all of that is that THERE IS NO GOOD INSIDE OF US. Whatever blessings or grace may exist, they exist, “out there,” in God, and it’s only by overcoming our basic, sinful nature that we can have any hope of finding happiness and salvation.

It’s only by becoming, “not us,” that we can get God’s approval and get into that pancake breakfast with Jesus. That sets us up for a lot of spiritual and psychological tension because, basically, everything we really like to do as human beings is a sin and sends us toward having snacks with Satan, instead of breakfast with Jesus. Everything from sex, enjoying our possessions, loving a good meal, having a nice lazy day, eating shell fish or pork, even masturbating are ALL deadly sins.

What causes us to commit all of our sins? Why, our bodies, of course! It isn’t really ME that wants to get into bed with Mary Jo and fuck like bunnies, it’s my body. It isn’t really me that wants a BLT, it’s my body. More specifically, it’s my DAMNED body. If it weren’t for my body, I could be, like, I dunno . . . Mother Teresa . . . or maybe Mahatma Gandhi, except he wasn’t a Christian so he went straight to hell, of course.

The end result of that is that we end up hating even our own bodies because the body is the source of all of those terrible impulses that cause us to sin. That’s why Medieval christians developed wonderful traditions like whipping themselves and self-crucifixion. The terrible, sinful body had to be literally beaten into submission so that it wouldn’t make them sin, or they’d end up having lunch with Lucifer or brunch with Beelzebub (also known as, “Beelzebubba,” if you live in Texas.)

It’s interesting and even a little startling to our Western minds, to compare that Christian model of spirituality with the Buddhist model. Tibetan Buddhists speak of basic human nature in terms of a precious jewel or crystal that is covered with plain rock. Our job, our spiritual quest, is to uncover that beautiful jewel by chipping away at the rock, one little piece at a time. By meditating, practicing mindfulness, and building loving/kindness into our lives, we gradually reveal more and more of the jewel, our true nature. As Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche’ put it:

“Enlightenment is not anything new or something we create or bring into existence. It is simply discovering within us what is already there. It is the full realization of our intrinsic nature.

In sharp contrast to Christian theology, we aren’t terribly flawed,”sinful,” beings. Instead, we are beings that are incredibly beautiful, holy, and wonder-filled. We just haven’t uncovered that part of our nature, that precious jewel, yet.

Our redemption isn’t, “out there,” it’s not something we’re going to find in heaven or a book. It’s very much, “in here.” It’s something that we find by looking inward, toward our true nature, by meditating, consciousness, and increasing the love in our hearts.

This isn’t to say that Buddhists don’t have their Greatest Hits list of, “sins.” They condemn anger, judging others, envy, greed, etc. But, they don’t condemn them in terms of their being a part of our basic nature. Rather, they’re considered sort of side trips that lead us away from our basic goal of enlightenment. They’re distractions, rather than definitions of who we really are.

There’s actually a major Buddhist doctrine called, “Precious Human Birth,” which not only says that we’re NOT terrible, sinful creatures, it says that if we were born human, we hit the fucking jackpot. Only human beings are able to consciously contemplate life, make ethical decisions, and improve our spiritual state of being. When we consider all of the trillions of other beings on our planet who were incarnated as insects and animals, being humans puts us in a very, very, VERY small minority. We lucked out.

It’s a major shift in thinking for most of us who were raised in the West. Our bodies aren’t sources of primal, evil urges; they are precious vessels that contain an ineffable beauty just waiting to be brought to the light. They are a gift beyond comprehension. Heaven and salvation aren’t up in the sky or hiding in a holy book – they’re in our hearts.

And if heaven is in our hearts, we are sacred. Umm . . . really? Hmmm . . . Are you sure?

The Three of Pentacles is a pretty good illustration of the two choices we can make. The stone mason stands on a stool, mallet in hand, ready to carve. Beside him there is a monk and a fool holding a plan. The monk represents a religious creed, a looking outward to others for answers to our spiritual quest. The fool represents our basic human nature, that surge of playful, happy spiritual energy that occurs when we gaze within and joyfully embrace what already exists in our hearts and souls.

We just have to understand that everything that we want to be, we already are.

Happiness, Capitalists, Yellow Rocks, and Radical Meditators

Most people who are on a Spiritual Path eventually come to hold beliefs which conservatives consider, “politically radical.” It’s ironic, because most people who are on a Spiritual Path have very little interest in politics, except to casually observe it as another form of human insanity.

When I use the term, “radical,” I mean it in its original use from the latin word, “radix,” or root, as in, “the root of a plant.” To get radical is to get at the very root of something, to get to the place that it all grows out of, so to speak.

Let’s take the example of the Six of Pentacles. It shows a richly dressed man, scattering coins to beggars, and holding a scale so that he can measure exactly what he’s giving away.

You couldn’t ask for a better representation of the, “scarcity,” view of life that’s at the root of our society. There simply isn’t enough wealth to go around and some people have it and some people don’t. Those who DO have it, should share it with those who don’t have it, but they need to be very, very careful about not giving too much away, because there’s never really enough.

In real time, we see that happening with the gazillionaires who live in penthouses, fly around in private jets, take vacations on yachts, and are DESPERATELY WORRIED that poor people might be getting too many food stamps. Having enough to eat without working for it at minimum wage jobs is bad for their character, doncha know? Makes them lazy and dependent. Pass the champagne, darling . . .

As we move into a deeper level of spirituality, though, we begin to understand that there’s another model for looking at life, which is the, “abundance,” view. The Universe and Mother Earth seem to be richly, almost insanely, abundant. There are enough seeds in one tomato to plant an entire farm. There are enough sperm cells in one tablespoon of semen to repopulate the world. Women’s bodies produce far more eggs than they could ever bear as babies. And, yes, we could produce enough food to feed every hungry person in the world.

And we begin to realize that the problem isn’t that there isn’t enough, the problem is that some people are spiritually sick and want far more than their share of the abundance. Even worse, they want to be sure that other people have less than THEIR share, because they believe in their hearts that wealth is scarce and if they have more wealth, they’re better than other people.

Eckhart Tolle talks about this quite a bit in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (Oprah’s Book Club, Selection 61) In a nutshell, the Ego always wants more STUFF, because the Ego believes that the more STUFF it has, the more important it is. And, as a part of that contrast, if you’ve got less stuff than I have, then I’m just that much more important! If I drive a BMW and you drive a Honda, I’m better than you. If you have a two hundred dollar computer and mine cost five thousand, then I’m better than you. If I live in a McMansion and you live in a trailer, then I’m better than you.

And so we get hypnotized into this weird dance of thinking that our STUFF makes us, “better people.” But, as Tolle points out, it’s just a sugar rush, not real nutrition. Yes, the new computer (or car or house or jewelry) makes us happy for a while, but then it doesn’t anymore. So we have to buy more and more and more stuff to keep getting that rush, but somehow happiness keeps slipping away from us every time.

If we keep walking down the Spiritual Path we realize that the STUFF doesn’t really make us happy, not for long. As we continue to evolve, we start to get a glimpse of happiness WITHOUT the stuff. Maybe that revelation comes to us in our meditations or our dreams or journals, but we begin to get just a glimmer that the material stuff really has very little to do with happiness. We can actually BE HAPPY anytime that we want to and we don’t need a new computer to get there.

And that, my friends, is a RADICAL idea! That goes right to the root of our whole economic system and way of life. It short circuits the entire capitalist system which is based on consumers being convinced that they need to keep consuming STUFF in order to be happy. If we quit buying all of that crap that doesn’t really make us happy, then the gazillionaires who are selling us all of that crap that doesn’t really make us happy are going to lose a lot of money.

Dangerous, dangerous thinking! LOL – it really is. It’s why they killed Jesus. “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.” WHAT???? Kill that guy! Quickly!

The point is that as we explore and grow spiritually, our values change and we become less and less in synch with society as whole. We realize that, ultimately, what all of us want is love and happiness. And we realize that love and happiness flow out of our hearts, not our possessions. Possessions and materialism itself start to feel like a form of insanity, which it can easily become.

Consider the example of the genocide committed against Native Tribes in the United States. We killed hundreds of thousands of Tribal Peoples in the Dakotas and Northern California because they were sitting on land that contained gold.

From their point of view, we were totally out of our minds because NO ONE HAD TOLD THEM THAT GOLD ISN’T JUST A ROCK. Why kill someone over a rock? Which, by the way, it IS just a rock. You can’t eat it. You can’t fertilize your fields with it. You can’t make clothing out of it. Other than being pretty, gold is totally useless.

Except that somewhere, thousands of years ago, some asshole said, “I have this pretty yellow rock and you don’t, so I’m better than you.” Since that original asshole, wars have been fought, untold numbers of people have been tortured and killed, and whole civilizations have been decimated, all because some people wanted to have ALL of the pretty, yellow rocks.

It really is monumentally nuts, when you think about it.

It’s my fervent hope that, as we move out of the ego-based scarcity model and into the new spiritual paradigm, we’ll see materialism begin to wither on the vine. Contrary to their paranoia, that doesn’t mean we need to have a revolution and take all of the rich people’s stuff away from them. There’s plenty to go around and if their yellow rocks make them feel better, so be it.

That’s abundance.

That’s radical.

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Spring Equinox, the Four of Wands, and the Spiritual Joy of Chocolate Covered Bunnies

Exploring the lost – and found – joy of spirituality.

I haven’t celebrated easter in a very long time. I’m not a christian, so I don’t feel any particular connection there. I was also reared as a catholic, so there may actually still be a little subconscious hostility left over as a result of recovering from that heritage.

This year, though, I decided that I was really going to celebrate the Spring Equinox. I won’t belabor the fact that the christian churches never met a pagan holiday that they didn’t steal or co-opt, and that easter is obviously a take-over of the celebration of Spring. We all know that. What I hadn’t really consciously flashed on, though, was that I was letting the christian holiday interfere with MY holiday in more ways than one.

It’s been a bitch of a year and a bitch of a winter, not just for me but for the entire world. There’s been a lot of death, a lot of depression, a lot of darkness and craziness and it’s gone on for a very long time. So when the first golden daffodil started popping open this year, I could feel in my very bones that I wanted to celebrate. I wanted to embrace that light with everything I had.

I decided to build a Spring Equinox altar. That, along with incense and candles, is one of the few positive things about growing up catholic. I’ll build an altar anywhere, anytime, at the drop of a freaking hat. And then I’ll stick candles on it and get some incense burning, by Goddess.

I spent hours cruising through our local stores, purchasing the, “ingredients,” for my little shrine to Spring. As usual, Dollar General was a treasure trove for low priced holiday decorations. I bought glittery eggs and plaster bunny rabbits for fertility symbols. Candles and chrysanthemums and sea shells. Virgin of Guadalupe’ votives to represent the Goddess. And more bunnies. I went home and dug out my crystals and my pentagrams and my chalice and athame’, and began assembling the altar.

About half way through the process I realized that I was having a hell of a good time. I actually found myself laughing out loud as I arranged the items on an old coffee table and rearranged them and rearranged them again. I put my statues of Tara and Quan Yin in the center of the table, strung white christmas lights around the shrine, lit incense, and laughed some more.

It was fun!

And it really hit me like a hammer: organized religions didn’t just steal our holidays, they stole our fun. They took every single pagan holiday, turned it something dark and solemn and serious, and systematically tried to wring every bit of joy and laughter out of it.

Easter is a prime example of that. The pagan celebrations of Spring had a HUGE amount of fun attached to them. Much like the Four of Wands, there was dancing, drinking, revelry and the people who were doing the celebrating didn’t just eat chocolate bunnies, they fucked like bunnies. A LOT.

And then along came organized religion. Suddenly the celebration of Spring was all about death. All about a very kind – and perhaps fictional – man being tortured, crucified and killed. And, yes, I know that christians like to say that easter is all about re-birth, all about christ rising from the tomb, but it’s really not. It’s about death.

It’s like they took my beautiful, golden daffodil and threw a bucket of blood on it.

There’s been that same strange dance between pagan joy and organized religion for centuries and I’d have to say that – all in all – we pagans are winning. Organized religion took over the mid-winter festival and declared that it was the birthday of Jesus, a very solemn occasion, doncha know? We countered with christmas trees and presents and twinkling lights. Organized religion took over our festival celebrating the end of the season of light and declared that it was, “All Souls Day.” We came right back and said, “Nope, it’s Halloween – break out the masks and candy!”

They said, “Easter,” and we replied, “Chocolate Bunnies!”

The point is that you can’t repress the joy of true spirituality. William James pointed that out in The Varieties of Religious Experience a long time ago. The hallmarks of someone who has had a true spiritual experience are joy, compassion and love.

To put it another way, if we’re not having some FUN with our religions, we’re not connecting with any sort of spirituality AT ALL. If we’re afraid to laugh in church, we’re in the wrong church.

So this year I’m starting again. Like my little Spring Equinox altar, I’m assembling the, “ingredients,” of my spirituality. They will include feathers and crystals and bells and, yes, some chocolate bunnies. And I may rearrange them and then rearrange them again, but I’ll be laughing while I do it.

Wishing you a joy-FULL Spring Equinox and BIG smiles.

The Hermit Card and Ho Ho Ho-ing Your Way Through the Holidays

I had one of those shocking moments recently where I suddenly realized that it’s almost Thanksgiving and I’m living alone. And I had the requisite reaction to that for a few hours.

Oh, my god!

It’s almost Thanksgiving!

And I’m living alone!

Which means . . . I’m going to be alone on Thanksgiving!

Oh, NO . . .

The thought sat there in my gut for a few hours like some super-sized greasy hamburger and fries, making me mildly nauseated and regretful for having it. And then I started tip toeing around the feelings and thinking, “Hmmm . . . that’s interesting. Why is being alone on Thanksgiving such a terrible, terrible thing?”

In my original definition of The Hermit, I wrote:

This is a card of solitude and the individual is very much withdrawn from others around him. This isn’t a bad sort of solitude, however, this is a solitude that involves spiritual growth and contemplation.

The point being that there are times in our lives when it’s totally appropriate and healthy to be alone. In my case, my partner of 19 years died last year and this is a period of self-imposed solitude, meditation, and thought for me. The silence really is golden and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’d say that there are a bunch of us in the same boat, but we’re not in the same boat. We’re in our separate little boats drifting along on our own currents, but hopefully you take my meaning. Perhaps, like me, they’ve had a partner die or maybe they’ve gone through a divorce or they have a job that requires them to work on the holidays.

For many of them, they are alone the majority of the time and THAT’S ALL RIGHT the majority of the time.

So what is it about the holidays that makes us feel like it’s somehow NOT alright to be alone?

I think one of the keys lies in the word itself: alone. We assign a lot of negative connotations to that word. Alone is sad, pitiful, lost, desolate and, of course, lonely. We have to learn how to draw the venom out of the word and out of the concept.

Scott Cunningham wrote a lovely little light-weight book called, “Wicca For the Solitary Practitioner,” and I really dig that concept. I am not alone; I am a solitary practitioner. I make my own magic now.

Solitude does not equal loneliness. Solitude many times equals healing and immense spiritual and emotional growth. It’s something to be treasured, not dreaded. People who are, “alone,” are many times very, very happy, evolved beings.

Another key, of course, is societal expectations. Thanksgiving is a time to sit down with members of your family – no matter how much you may loathe some of them – and eat very large quantities of dead birds. We all know that and we’re programmed with that from the time we’re kids. You never saw a Norman Rockwell painting of Thanksgiving that featured one guy sitting by himself eating lasagna, right?

Just LOOK at those happy campers! It’s Thanksgiving and they’re not alone. And, boy, that dead bird looks just perfect! No lasagna on THAT table.

And that’s the point: it’s not being alone on the holidays that makes us feel bad, it’s the expectation that somehow we’re not supposed to be alone on the holidays and that if we are alone something is dreadfully wrong. In other words, if you’re okay with living alone 363 days of the year but it makes you feel terrible on Thanksgiving and Christmas, it ain’t being alone that’s bumming you out – it’s Christmas and Thanksgiving.

So what do we do about that? One solution that I see with some of my friends is to get very, very hostile toward Christmas and Thanksgiving. “They’re artificial holidays. They’re so commercialized and materialistic. They’ve lost the original meanings. Etc., etc. etc.”

You know – sort of the modern day, “Bah, humbug,” solution. If you don’t have at least one friend who’s a Bah Humbugger you must not spend much time on FaceBook.

But . . . somehow . . . that doesn’t feel quite right, either. With all of their glitz, tinsel, and artificiality, I’ve had some really wonderful holidays with family and friends in the past. I’m happy for my friends who are still in that groove and I don’t want to rain on anyone’s Macy’s Parade.

It’s just not me anymore.

It seems to me that there are really only a couple of rational responses to the holidays when you’re a Solitary Practitioner.

You can pretend that they just aren’t happening and that it’s just like any other day of the year. That requires some Deeply Disciplined Denial, but you can pull it off if you live by yourself and insert ear plugs before you walk into a store.
You can invent new rituals and traditions and OWN those days instead of letting them own you.

I’m not sure, yet, but I think I’m leaning toward the second solution.

Christian fundamentalists get in a royal snit when you say, “Happy Holidays,” instead of, “Merry Christmas.” They forget – or ignore – that the original pronunciation of the term was, “Happy Holy Days.”

The celebrations of the harvest and abundance – what we call Thanksgiving – and lighting bright lights and candles on the darkest day of the year – what we call Christmas – have been Holy Days from time immemorial. They’re built into our Souls and have nothing to do with Jesus, Pilgrims, America, or eating large,dead birds.

I can celebrate that as The Hermit as easily as I can in a crowd. I just need some good lasagna recipes.