Sojourning

The occurrence of this card may indicate a need to be in a place of power and vision. British biologist James Lovelock (formerly with NASA) has provided much evidence to support his Gaia Hypothesis that the earth functions as a super organism. Complex organisms have very differentiated structures, and we can see this with our own bodies. It is very different, for example, to have an ant crawl across you knee than the cornea of your eye. The spherical body of Gaia has a very differentiated structure as well, and some parts of its surface seem to be power spots, places that are like the acupuncture points or chakra locations on our bodies that are associated with vortices of energy. Monument Valley is a place that should convince anyone with an ounce of sensitivity that power spots are real. In the last few days of his life Timothy Leary was asked what he would advise people looking back on his own lifetime of experience and lessons. He said, “Be careful where you film the movie of your life.” Choose the part of the body of Gaia you live on as carefully as possible. Sometimes it is valuable to make a [...]

Open avenues of possibility. The ego has a number of thankless jobs. Principle among them is mediating between the inner and outer world. Since it is responsible for logistics, it is forever troubleshooting, and for this and other reasons it will tend to focus on disaster scenarios and the perceived obstacles to what it considers progress. There are obstacles, but you are also surrounded by open avenues of possibility, and this card indicates that this is a propitious occasion to focus on those. Racecar drivers are trained that if they find they are heading toward the wall they avoid looking at the wall, and instead look toward where they want to go. This card could also indicate a propitious time to travel.

Journeying is an archetypal human experience. I often feel the call to adventure as Winter turns to Spring, the urge to get out of the house and experience home on the road. Staying in one place for too long so easily and inevitably becomes a stagnant routine. Emerson said: “The problem with traveling is you take yourself with you.” It’s true that you can’t rely on a change of setting to take the place of inner dynamism, but I would rephrase Emerson’s aphorism to read, “The problem and possibility of traveling…” Traveling can be a change of scenery to distract from inner stagnation, but it can also be a secular pilgrimage, a voyage of discovery and transformative rite of initiation. Travel can bring you into contact with other cultures that can give you perspective on your culture and conditioned assumptions. There are so many forms of travel, inner, outer, international, interdimensional… but pick your traveling companions, if any, with great care! If you haven’t observed a person under acute stress you may not know who they are and may be pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised. Wilderness sojourns are a particularly powerful form of travel. It is all too easy to spend [...]

Journeying is an archetypal human experience. I often feel the call to adventure as Winter turns to Spring, the urge to get out of the house and experience home on the road. Staying in one place for too long so easily and inevitably becomes a stagnant routine. Emerson said: “The problem with traveling is you take yourself with you.” It’s true that you can’t rely on a change of setting to take the place of inner dynamism, but I would rephrase Emerson’s aphorism to read, “The problem and possibility of traveling…” Traveling can be a change of scenery to distract from inner stagnation, but it can also be a secular pilgrimage, a voyage of discovery and transformative rite of initiation. Travel can bring you into contact with other cultures that can give you perspective on your culture and conditioned assumptions. There are so many forms of travel, inner, outer, international, interdimensional… but pick your traveling companions, if any, with great care! If you haven’t observed a person under acute stress you may not know who they are and may be pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised. Wilderness sojourns are a particularly powerful form of travel. It is all too easy to spend [...]

Get out there and see what is happening in the world. Sometimes the conscious mutant will tend to withdraw from the blooming, buzzing madness of collective energy. It is also easy to fall into an attitude of sarcastic disdain towards the often grotesque and toxic goings on. But we need to know what is happening in our world. What is the state of the present zeitgeist? What is happening locally and globally? Some people feel justified in not knowing about current events. They assert, with some legitimacy, that the news is so often negative and ruled by the “if it bleeds it leads” principle of infotainment. While this is true of many news sources, it does not excuse the obligation of every capable citizen to be as informed as possible about what is happening. While the internet is currently bankrupting newspapers and defunding rigorous journalism, it also makes available many new, non-mainstream sources of information. Even better than seeking out news sources is for you to be your own journalist and visiting anthropologist. The view from the street is irreplaceable if you really want to know what is going on. Some hardcore right-wingers are sure that the U.S. is better [...]

The hero’s journey always begins with answering the call to adventure. The journey will always involve a descent into darkness, but it must be undertaken if we are to fulfill our destiny. As Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar, “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries.” Many of the worst regrets are not for what was done, but for what remains undone. And remember that the call to adventure comes in very unexpected forms and makes demands that may be offensive to rationality, practicality and “good sense.” If you’ve read Tolkien’s The Hobbit, you may remember how one part of Bilbo answered the call to adventure, while another part, the sensible, respectable middle-aged property owner part, resisted at almost every step. Joseph Campbell wrote, “This first stage of the mythological journey – which we have designated the “call to adventure” – signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown. This fateful region of both treasure and danger may be [...]

Journeying is an archetypal human experience. I often feel the call to adventure as Winter turns to Spring, the urge to get out of the house and experience home on the road. Staying in one place for too long so easily and inevitably becomes a stagnant routine. Emerson said: “The problem with traveling is you take yourself with you.” It’s true that you can’t rely on a change of setting to take the place of inner dynamism, but I would rephrase Emerson’s aphorism to read, “The problem and possibility of traveling…” Traveling can be a change of scenery to distract from inner stagnation, but it can also be a secular pilgrimage, a voyage of discovery and transformative rite of initiation. Travel can bring you into contact with other cultures that can give you perspective on your culture and conditioned assumptions. There are so many forms of travel, inner, outer, international, interdimensional… but pick your traveling companions, if any, with great care! If you haven’t observed a person under acute stress you may not know who they are and may be pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised. Wilderness sojourns are a particularly powerful form of travel. It is all too easy to spend [...]

Journeying is an archetypal human experience. I often feel the call to adventure as Winter turns to Spring, the urge to get out of the house and experience home on the road. Staying in one place for too long so easily and inevitably becomes a stagnant routine. Emerson said: “The problem with traveling is you take yourself with you.” It’s true that you can’t rely on a change of setting to take the place of inner dynamism, but I would rephrase Emerson’s aphorism to read, “The problem and possibility of traveling…” Traveling can be a change of scenery to distract from inner stagnation, but it can also be a secular pilgrimage, a voyage of discovery and transformative rite of initiation. Travel can bring you into contact with other cultures that can give you perspective on your culture and conditioned assumptions. There are so many forms of travel, inner, outer, international, interdimensional… but pick your traveling companions, if any, with great care! If you haven’t observed a person under acute stress you may not know who they are and may be pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised. Wilderness sojourns are a particularly powerful form of travel. It is all too easy to spend [...]

It is not unusual for a conscious, individualized person to feel like a stranger in a strange land. There is much in the Babylon Matrix that is strange and disaffecting. Recognize the feelings, have compassion for them, but face them like a Warrior. If we can avoid self-pity there is much to learn from being a stranger in a strange land. The path of individuation can feel isolating, but some relative seclusion can be extremely developmental, giving you the space to discover and unfold your individuality. It is true that the more you work on yourself the fewer will be the people you can relate to as full equals. Don’t fall into self-pity or victimhood about this. No person is an island; we are all floating in the same ocean of consciousness. The path of individuation may sometimes be lonely, but being lost in a crowd of acquaintances is also lonely and worse in all sorts of ways. Follow your individual path, accept the partial isolation and you may discover that it leads you to spiritual allies following their own individual paths to a place where many paths and errands meet. Though you may not feel good about it, it [...]

The occurrence of this card may indicate a need to be in a place of power and vision. British biologist James Lovelock (formerly with NASA) has provided much evidence to support his Gaia Hypothesis that the earth functions as a super organism. Complex organisms have very differentiated structures, and we can see this with our own bodies. It is very different, for example, to have an ant crawl across you knee than the cornea of your eye. The spherical body of Gaia has a very differentiated structure as well, and some parts of its surface seem to be power spots, places that are like the acupuncture points or chakra locations on our bodies that are associated with vortices of energy. Monument Valley is a place that should convince anyone with an ounce of sensitivity that power spots are real. In the last few days of his life Timothy Leary was asked what he would advise people looking back on a life time of experience and lessons. He said, “Be careful where you film the movie of your life.” Choose the part of the body of Gaia you live on as carefully as possible. Sometimes it is valuable to make a [...]