(By Mark Ford, Editor of The Palm Beach Letter: http://www.palmbeachletter.com/)
I had my first serious run-in with debt when I was 30 years old.
My wife K and I were renting a condominium in Washington, D.C. Our landlady came to us with an exciting opportunity: We could buy the condo for $60,000 with no money down. For just $100 a month more than what we were already paying for rent, we would be paying a mortgage. It sounded like a great deal, so we took it.
What we bought was a negatively amortizing mortgage with a three-year term and an 11% interest rate. That meant, every three years we were paying $19,800 in debt service and another $3,000 in closing costs.
We didn't realize what was going on because our monthly payments were only $550. I was too foolish then to ever ask myself, "What is the cost of this debt?"
I tried to find another bank to take me out of this scam but none would. The mortgage we had signed was not backed by the government (Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae), which meant that no other bank would touch it.
I learned that when banks make it easy to borrow money, it's not because you are a nice, deserving person. I learned that if you can get a loan despite poor credit (as ours was at the time), there is usually a scam involved. It also taught me to always ask the two critical questions about debt, "How much will it cost?" and, "Can I afford it?" It was an expensive lesson.
Many of us view debt as a necessity. We buy homes with it. And cars. And boats, and toys, and vacations. Some use it to buy the basics: clothes, food, and furniture.
Debt is not necessary. It is a luxury. Sometimes debt is useful. Sometimes it is wasteful. But debt is always dangerous.
It is unnecessary because there are always less expensive ways of getting what you want. And it is dangerous because it can sometimes be very expensive.
Let me give you two examples.
Let's say that, like most Americans, you are in the habit of buying things with credit cards. After a while, you notice that you have accumulated $30,000 in total debt. You decide to cut up your cards and repay your debt. You can devote $400 a month to paying it back. How long will it take, and how much will it cost you?
The answer may surprise you. Assuming an interest rate of 10%, it will take you 10 years to pay off the credit card debt. And your total payments will be $47,275. Of that, $17,275 will have been in interest payments.
Or let's take a $150,000 home on which you take a $120,000 loan with a 6.5% interest rate over 20 years. The mortgage payments are $894 a month, which you can afford. But how much will that house really cost you? Including interest payments? You will end up paying $244,725 for that house. Almost 40% of that – $94,725 – will have been to interest payments.
The commercial community (bankers and manufacturers) doesn't want you to be afraid of debt. And neither does the government. These institutions want you to like debt. They want you to use it. They want you to go into debt because it is good for them.
When you take out a mortgage to buy a home, or sign a lease on a car, or use credit cards to pay for your lifestyle expenses, the commercial community profits. The manufacturers make money on products you may or may not need. And the banks make money on your debt.
The mainstream financial media rarely talks about the dangers of debt. That's because they make their profits from the financial institutions and manufacturers whose advertisements support their publications.
And the government actually encourages its citizens to take on debt. This was the recommended strategy for getting us out of the Great Recession that the (second) Bush administration (and the Federal Reserve) advocated and it's the same scheme that Obama's people are advocating today.
Here's what you should know about debt:
As a general rule, you should live without it. You should find less expensive ways to acquire the things you need.
Unless you are wealthy, don't lease your car. Buy it. Buy the car you can afford, not the car you believe will make you happy. Any non-appreciating asset (such as a car) will never make you happy if you have to pay its debt service. I didn't buy my first luxury car until I was a multimillionaire.
Don't buy anything with a credit card. Keep only one credit card for renting cars. Use a debit card to buy clothes and groceries. If you don't have enough money in your bank account to use your debit card on a purchase, don't buy it. If you don't have enough money in the bank to buy something, it means you can't afford it.
If you can't afford the debt on your house, sell it (if you can) and buy something cheaper. In any case, start paying off the principle balance of your house (the amount you owe, not the interest you will owe) as fast as you can. Make it a goal to own your house free and clear as soon as possible.
If you have debt, pay it off as fast as you can, but not before you have filled up your bucket for emergency savings. By emergency savings, I mean money you will need to pay your bills if you lose your job. Six months' income is what some financial advisors recommend. I'd recommend a year. It may take you that long to replace your lost income.
Pay off your debt even if the interest rate is low. In theory, you should put your extra money elsewhere if you can earn more on it than you are paying in interest. If, for example, you can get 4% in municipal bonds and you have a student loan at 2%, it makes more sense to buy municipals bonds and pay your student loan off slowly. But in reality, the extra 2% you are earning on the spread is not worth the risk in carrying the debt.
When I started earning money, the first thing I did was get rid of that terrible loan on the condominium I told you about earlier.
The next thing I did was pay off the mortgage I took on a home. I paid it off in two or three years, even though it was a 30-year mortgage. I loved the idea of owning my home free and clear. So I put every extra dollar I had toward paying down that mortgage. The bank didn't like it, but the day I tore up that mortgage... I felt like I had been emancipated from financial slavery.
Finally, if you are troubled by debt, know this: you can get out of it just as I did.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Medical Journals: High Alkaline Foods - 12 Perfect Foods for Optimal Health
(Reproduced from Alkaline Foods & Alkaline Diet - The Complete Resource: http://www.acidalkalinediet.com/high-alkaline-foods-12-perfect-foods-for-optimal-health)
It only stands to reason that the pH level of our body would have an effect on how our body functions. An imbalance can cause many different health issues, leaving the body vulnerable to disease and premature aging. Maintaining an alkaline pH in the body is one of the best ways to prevent these problems.
It’s important to understand that a food’s ability to create an acidic or alkaline condition in the body doesn’t actually have any connection with the pH of the food itself. It’s the effect that it has on the body after it’s eaten that matters.
A high alkaline foods diet refer to those which leave an alkaline residue within the body. Of course, it’s not necessary to give up all acidic foods, but the more alkaline foods you consume, the better your pH balance will be. Here is a list of 12 of the best foods for maintaining a healthy alkaline level within your body.
1 – Herb Teas, Green Tea, and Lemon Water
When choosing beverages, stick to green tea, herb teas and lemon-infused water. Of course, these beverages will be even more beneficial if you make them with alkaline water. Avoid soft drinks, beer, tea and coffee, as these beverages will have an acidifying effect.
2 – Soy Milk and Soy Cheese
Soy milk and cheese are much better choices than dairy products made from cow’s milk. Goat milk and goat cheese are also good choices.
3 – Olive, Flax Seed and Canola Oil
When choosing oils, olive oil is considered the best for an alkaline diet. However, flax seed oil and canola oil are also good choices, as compared to corn and other vegetable oils.
4 – Wild Rice, Quinoa and Millet
Instead of choosing white flour and commercially produced pastries, stick to grains such as wild rice, quinoa and millet.
5 – Almonds and Chestnuts
Almonds and chestnuts are both good choices for an alkaline diet. However, avoid peanuts, walnuts, cashews and pecans, as they are among the most acidic of the nuts
6 – Raw Spinach and Lettuce
Salads made with leafy greens are always a good diet choice. Eating spinach raw is the best choice, because although it is one of the most alkaline foods in its raw state, it is actually mildly acidic when cooked.
7 – Soybeans, Peas and Green Beans
When choosing beans and legumes, soybeans and green beans are the best choices. Other varieties such as lima, navy, pinto and kidney beans are more acidic.
8 – Sweet Potatoes and Potato Skins
Although white potatoes without the skins are an acidic food, the potato skins themselves are alkaline. Sweet potatoes are also very good choice. Squash and zucchini are also good substitutes for white potatoes, since they are also alkaline.
9 – Asparagus, Broccoli and Onions
Most vegetables are good choices for an alkaline diet, but asparagus, broccoli and onions are especially good choices. Beets and okra are also good high alkaline vegetables.
10 – Lemons, Limes, Orange and Grapefruit
Citrus fruits are a good example of foods that are acidic in their natural state, but which have an alkaline-producing effect within the body.
11 – Watermelon, Mangos and Papaya
Many fruits have an alkaline effect, but watermelon, mangos and papaya are among the best. Grapes, blueberries and apples are also excellent choices. However, cranberries, blackberries and prunes are among the most acidic fruits.
12 – Stevia, Maple Sugar and Raw Sugar
Stevia, maple sugar and raw sugar are among the best choices for sweeteners. Avoid artificial sweeteners such as NutraSweet, Equal, and Sweet ‘N Low, as they are among the most acidic.
A high alkaline diet involves using a list of high alkaline foods. We have an extensive one available for free on this site (N.B. Please go to the before mentioned website at: http://www.acidalkalinediet.com/).
It only stands to reason that the pH level of our body would have an effect on how our body functions. An imbalance can cause many different health issues, leaving the body vulnerable to disease and premature aging. Maintaining an alkaline pH in the body is one of the best ways to prevent these problems.
It’s important to understand that a food’s ability to create an acidic or alkaline condition in the body doesn’t actually have any connection with the pH of the food itself. It’s the effect that it has on the body after it’s eaten that matters.
A high alkaline foods diet refer to those which leave an alkaline residue within the body. Of course, it’s not necessary to give up all acidic foods, but the more alkaline foods you consume, the better your pH balance will be. Here is a list of 12 of the best foods for maintaining a healthy alkaline level within your body.
1 – Herb Teas, Green Tea, and Lemon Water
When choosing beverages, stick to green tea, herb teas and lemon-infused water. Of course, these beverages will be even more beneficial if you make them with alkaline water. Avoid soft drinks, beer, tea and coffee, as these beverages will have an acidifying effect.
2 – Soy Milk and Soy Cheese
Soy milk and cheese are much better choices than dairy products made from cow’s milk. Goat milk and goat cheese are also good choices.
3 – Olive, Flax Seed and Canola Oil
When choosing oils, olive oil is considered the best for an alkaline diet. However, flax seed oil and canola oil are also good choices, as compared to corn and other vegetable oils.
4 – Wild Rice, Quinoa and Millet
Instead of choosing white flour and commercially produced pastries, stick to grains such as wild rice, quinoa and millet.
5 – Almonds and Chestnuts
Almonds and chestnuts are both good choices for an alkaline diet. However, avoid peanuts, walnuts, cashews and pecans, as they are among the most acidic of the nuts
6 – Raw Spinach and Lettuce
Salads made with leafy greens are always a good diet choice. Eating spinach raw is the best choice, because although it is one of the most alkaline foods in its raw state, it is actually mildly acidic when cooked.
7 – Soybeans, Peas and Green Beans
When choosing beans and legumes, soybeans and green beans are the best choices. Other varieties such as lima, navy, pinto and kidney beans are more acidic.
8 – Sweet Potatoes and Potato Skins
Although white potatoes without the skins are an acidic food, the potato skins themselves are alkaline. Sweet potatoes are also very good choice. Squash and zucchini are also good substitutes for white potatoes, since they are also alkaline.
9 – Asparagus, Broccoli and Onions
Most vegetables are good choices for an alkaline diet, but asparagus, broccoli and onions are especially good choices. Beets and okra are also good high alkaline vegetables.
10 – Lemons, Limes, Orange and Grapefruit
Citrus fruits are a good example of foods that are acidic in their natural state, but which have an alkaline-producing effect within the body.
11 – Watermelon, Mangos and Papaya
Many fruits have an alkaline effect, but watermelon, mangos and papaya are among the best. Grapes, blueberries and apples are also excellent choices. However, cranberries, blackberries and prunes are among the most acidic fruits.
12 – Stevia, Maple Sugar and Raw Sugar
Stevia, maple sugar and raw sugar are among the best choices for sweeteners. Avoid artificial sweeteners such as NutraSweet, Equal, and Sweet ‘N Low, as they are among the most acidic.
A high alkaline diet involves using a list of high alkaline foods. We have an extensive one available for free on this site (N.B. Please go to the before mentioned website at: http://www.acidalkalinediet.com/).
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Deep Truth
(By Gregg Braden: Excerpt from the Introduction to his new book entitled "Deep Truth")
Introduction
There is a single question that lurks at the very core of our existence.
It’s the unspoken question lying beneath every choice we’ll ever make. It lives within every challenge that will ever test us, and it’s the foundation for every decision we’ll ever face. If God had a cosmic question “counter” to track the things we humans wonder about most, then I have no doubt that this device would have maxed out and returned to zero so often in registering this one question alone that even God would have lost count of how many times it’s been asked!
The question at the root of all questions—one that has been asked countless times by countless individuals during the estimated 200,000 years or so that we’ve been on Earth—is simply this:
Who are we?
While the question itself appears simple and brief, the way in which we answer it has implications that we simply cannot escape. It tears directly into the heart of each moment of our lives, and forms the lens that defines the way we see ourselves in the world and the choices we make. The meaning we give to these three words permeates the fabric of our society. It shows up in everything we do, from the way we choose the food that nourishes our bodies . . . to how we care for ourselves, our young children, and our aging parents.
Our answer to who we are underlies the core principles of civilization itself: it influences how we share resources such as food, water, medicine, and other necessities of life; when and why we go to war; and what our economy is based upon. What we believe about our past, our origins, our destiny, and our fate even justifies our thinking regarding when we choose to save a human life, and when we choose to end it.
In what may be the greatest irony of our existence, at the dawn of the 21st century, following more than 5,000 years of recorded history, we have still not clearly answered this most basic question about ourselves. And while at any time discovering the truth of our existence would be worth the time, energy, and resources needed to do so, as we currently face the greatest crises affecting life and survival in the memory of our species, it’s especially critical for our time, here, now.
The Clear and Present Danger
One good reason for us to know who we are stands above all others. Maybe it’s no coincidence that today, after three centuries of using the scientific method to answer the most basic question about ourselves, we also find ourselves in deep trouble here on planet Earth. It’s not just any old run-of-the-mill trouble we’re in. It’s the kind of trouble of which dramatic novels and science fiction blockbusters are made.
Just to be absolutely clear: It’s not Earth that’s in trouble. It’s us, the people who live here on Earth. I can say with a high degree of confidence that our planet will still be here 50 years from now, and 500 years from now. No matter what choices we make during that time period—no matter how many wars we wage, and how many political revolutions we begin or how badly we pollute our air and oceans—the world that our ancestors called the “garden” will still be here making the same 365.256-day journey around the sun each year, just as it has for the past 4.55 billion years or so.
The question is not about Earth; it’s about whether or not we will be on Earth to enjoy it. Will we still be here to enjoy the sunsets and sensual mysteries of nature? Will we witness the beauty of the seasons with our families and other loved ones? As I’ll explore in a subsequent chapter, unless something changes soon, the experts are betting against us.
The reason? Because, when it comes to having what it takes for our children and us to live on Earth, we’re dangerously close to making the choices that lead us beyond the “point of no return.” This is the conclusion of an independent study on climate change co-chaired by Britain’s former Secretary of State for Transport Stephen Byers and U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), which was released in 2005. It stated that when it comes to the environment alone, we could reach that tipping point in as little as ten years and lose the fragile web of life that sustains us. But the environment is only one of a host of crises facing us today, each leading us toward the same potentially deadly outcome for the human race.
The best minds of our time acknowledge that we’re on multiple collision courses with disastrous outcomes—from the renewed threat of global war, the overuse of our resources, and the growing shortages of food and drinkable water; to the unprecedented stress we’re placing on the world’s oceans, forests, rivers, and lakes.
The problem is that the experts can’t seem to agree on what to do about these problems.
Act . . . but How?
Sometimes it’s a good idea to study a problem thoroughly before we act. The more we know about a difficult situation, the more certain we can be that we’ve found the best solutions to the dilemma. But sometimes prolonged study is not so good. There are times when the best thing to do is act quickly to survive the immediate crisis, and only then to study the problem in detail from the safety of the time bought by taking decisive action.
Maybe the best way to illustrate what I mean here is with a make-believe scenario:
Let’s say that on a beautiful, clear, and sunny day you’re crossing a stretch of highway with a friend in order to get from your house on one side of the road to your friend’s home on the other. Suddenly you both look up after being engrossed in deep conversation and see a huge 18-wheel tractor-trailer rig coming directly toward you. Instantly your body’s “fight or flight” response kicks in so that you can act. The question is: How? You have to decide quickly what to do. You and your friend both must choose, and choose fast.
So there you are, in the middle of the highway, with three lanes in front of you and three lanes behind you. Your dilemma is this: Do you have time to move forward to your destination— the other side—or is it best to move backward to the place you began? To answer the question with absolute certainty, you would need information that you simply don’t have at your fingertips in this moment. You do not know, for instance, whether the truck is empty or loaded. You may not be able to tell precisely how fast it is moving or whether the driver can even see you on the road. You might not be able to recognize if it’s a diesel- or gasoline-fueled truck that’s coming your way, or what make the vehicle is.
And this is precisely the point. You don’t need to know all of those details before you act. In the moment that you’re crossing the highway, you already have all of the information necessary to tell you you’re in a bad place. You already know that your life is in danger. You don’t need such details to recognize the obvious: there’s a big truck heading your way . . . and if you don’t move quickly, in a matter of seconds nothing else is going to matter!
While this scenario may sound like a silly example, it’s also precisely where we find ourselves on the world stage today. Our paths as individuals, families, and nations are like that of you and your friend walking across the highway. The “big truck” that’s bearing down upon us is the perfect storm of multiple crises: situations such as climate change, terrorism, war, disease, the disappearance of food and water, and a host of unsustainable ways of dealing with everyday living here on Earth. Each crisis has the potential to end civilization and human life as we know it.
We may not be in agreement as to precisely why each of these events is occurring, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are actually happening now. And, like two friends deciding to move forward across the highway or go back to the safety of where they’ve come from, we could study each crisis for another 100 years . . . yet the fact is that there are people, communities, and ways of life that will not survive the time it takes for all of the data to be compiled, the reports to be published, and the results to be debated.
The reason is that while we’re evaluating the problem, people’s homes will be destroyed by earthquakes, “superstorms,” floods, and war; the land that sustained them will stop producing food; their wells will dry up; oceans will rise; coastlines will disappear— and those individuals will lose everything, including their lives.
While these scenarios may sound extreme, the events I’m describing are already occurring in places such as Haiti, Japan, the Gulf Coast of the United States, and drought-ridden Africa . . . and it’s getting worse.
Just as it makes tremendous sense to move out of the path of the big truck coming your way on the highway before you study the problem further, it makes tremendous sense to move out of the way of the multiple disasters looming on the horizon before they take an even greater toll. And just as the direction you choose to move on the highway determines whether or not you get to your friend’s house on the other side, the way we decide to take action in the face of the greatest threats to our existence will determine whether we succeed or fail, live or die. Our choices for survival all point back to the way we think about ourselves in the world, and how our thinking leads us to act.
The message of this book is that we must act wisely and quickly to head off the collision that awaits us on the highway of life we’ve chosen to cross. Maybe Albert Einstein said it best: “A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.” Developing a new level of thinking is precisely what we need to do today. We know the problems exist. We’ve already applied the best minds of our time, and the best science based upon the best theories available, to study those problems. If we were on the right track with our thinking, doesn’t it make sense that we would have more answers and better solutions by now? The fact that we don’t tells us we need to think differently.
The Dilemma
In recent years, an explosion of new discoveries throughout the sciences has left little doubt that many long-standing views about life, our world, and our bodies have to change. The reason is simple: The ideas are wrong. New evidence has given us new ways to think about the perennial questions of life, including where we’ve come from, how long we’ve been here, how we can best survive the crises that face our world, and what we can do now to make
things better. While the new discoveries give us hope, despite the breakthroughs we still have a problem: the time required for us to integrate these discoveries into the accepted way of thinking may be longer than the time that’s available to us to solve the crises.
The state of biology is a perfect example of how this works. The recently developed science of epigenetics is based upon scientific fact. It proves that the genetic code that we call the “blueprint of life,” our DNA, changes with our environment. The piece that traditional scientists are reluctant to talk about is that the environment changing our DNA includes more than the toxins in our air and water, and more than the electromagnetic “noise” inundating those who live among the power lines, transformer stations, and cell-phone towers of the biggest cities in the world. The environment includes our very personal, subjective experiences of beliefs, emotions, and thoughts as well.
So while the scientific evidence tells us that we can change the DNA at the root of the life-threatening diseases that ravage our friends and loved ones, the textbooks that Western medical doctors rely upon still teach us that we can’t, saying that we’re victims of heredity and other factors beyond our control. Fortunately, this is beginning to change.
Through the work of visionary scientists such as stem-cell biologist Bruce Lipton, author of The Biology of Belief (Hay House, 2008), the surprising results of the latest studies are slowly percolating into the textbooks we rely upon for medical understanding. However, the conduit that carries these new discoveries about our cells—as well as those updating what we know of the origin of our species, our civilization, and the details of our past—is a system that is notoriously slow. The general rule for the lag time between a scientific discovery and its review, publication, and acceptance— before it shows up in the textbooks—is eight to ten years, and sometimes longer. And this is where the problem becomes obvious.
The best minds of today tell us in no uncertain terms that we’re facing multiple crises posing threats of unprecedented magnitude, and that each of these crises must be dealt with immediately. We simply don’t have eight to ten years to figure out how to adapt to the situation and head off the emerging threats of terrorism, war, and a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. These are issues that must be addressed now.
Our old ways of thinking—which include believing in survival of the fittest, the need for competition, and our separation from nature—have brought us to the brink of disaster. We’re living at a time in history when we must confront the potential loss of all that we cherish as a civilization. It’s precisely because we need new ways of thinking that the ancient question of who we are takes on a significance that is greater than ever. At the same time, a new mode of seeing the world, based upon a growing body of scientific evidence, is filling in the missing pieces of our knowledge and changing the way we think about ourselves.
In light of the new evidence regarding near–ice age civilizations, the false assumptions of human evolution, the origin and role of war in our past, and the undue emphasis on competition in our lives today, we must rethink the most basic beliefs that lie at the core of the decisions we make and the way we live. This is where Deep Truth comes in.
Why This Book?
While there is certainly no shortage of books that identify the extraordinary conditions threatening us today, they fall short of addressing the single element lying at the heart of how we deal with them. How can we possibly know what to choose—what policies to enact, what laws to pass—or how to build sustainable economies, share lifesaving technologies, and bridge the issues that are tearing at the fabric of our relationships and society . . .
until we’ve answered the single question that lies at the very core of our existence: Who are we? As individuals, as families, as nations, and as a combined human civilization, we must first know who we are before we can make the right choices. It’s especially important to do so now, at a time when every choice counts.
How can we know what choices to make until we answer the single question that lies at the heart of each and every choice:
Precisely who are we?
Without answering this fundamental question, making life altering decisions is like trying to enter a house without knowing where the door is. While it’s possible to break in through a window or knock down a wall, we’d damage the home in the process. And maybe this is a perfect metaphor for the quandary we find ourselves in. For our human family, which has more than quadrupled in size in a little over a century—from 1.6 billion in 1900 to about 7 billion in 2011—we can either use the key of understanding who we are to move through the door of successful solutions. . . or we can damage our home (Earth and ourselves) by responding to crises through the knee-jerk reactions of false assumptions based in incomplete science.
When we embrace the truths of our history on Earth, our planet’s cycles of change, and the role these play in our lives, then we’ll understand what we’re really up against, what our options are, and what choices are available.
This book identifies six areas of discovery (and the facts they reveal) that will radically change the way we’ve been led to think about our world and ourselves in the past. As we address the great crises of our time, these are the most important truths we must consider:
— Deep Truth 1: Our ability to defuse the crises threatening our lives and our world hinges upon our willingness to accept what science is revealing about our origins and history. As we face the never-before-seen threats that must be resolved within the next eight to ten years, how can we possibly know what choices to make, what laws to pass, and what policies to enact until we know who we are? The false assumptions of longstanding beliefs regarding evolution and human origins make little sense in the face of recent discoveries throughout the sciences.
— Deep Truth 2: The reluctance of mainstream educational systems to reflect new discoveries and explore new theories keeps us stuck in obsolete beliefs that fail to address the greatest crises of human history. We base our choices of life, government, and civilization on the way we think about ourselves, our relationship to each other, and our relationship to planet Earth. For the last 300 years, these beliefs have come from the false assumptions of an outdated science. The sound principles of the scientific method have a built in feature for self-correction of false assumptions that is effective when we allow the method to work as it was intended.
— Deep Truth 3: The key to addressing the crises threatening our survival lies in building partnerships based upon mutual aid and cooperation to adapt to the changes, rather than in pointing fingers and assigning blame, which makes such vital alliances difficult. Our multiple crises (some induced by humans and some that have arisen naturally) have arrived at the tipping point of threatening the ultimate survival of our species. The industrial age has definitely contributed to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; and we certainly need to find clean, green, and alternative ways to provide electricity and fuel for the seven billion people who are presently living on our planet . . . however:
— Deep Truth 5: A growing body of scientific data from multiple disciplines, gathered using new technology, provides evidence beyond any reasonable doubt that humankind reflects a design put into place at once, rather than a life-form emerging randomly through an evolutionary process over a long period of time. While science may never identify precisely what, or who, is responsible for the design underlying our existence, the discoveries strongly challenge the conventional wisdom of evolutionary theory, and demonstrate that the chance that we resulted from random processes of biology is virtually nonexistent.
— Deep Truth 6: More than 400 peer-reviewed studies have concluded that violent competition and war directly contradict our deepest instincts of cooperation and nurturing. In other words, at the core of our truest nature we simply are not “wired” for war! Why, then, has war played such a dominant role in shaping our history, our lives, and our world? Clues to the answer are found in the records of our early experiences on Earth, and the ancient accounts that hold instructions for ending the “war of the ages” and living at the heights of our destiny, rather than succumbing to the depths of our fate. The sheer magnitude and number of crises converging in the first years of the 21st century pose a critical threat—a clear and present danger to our survival—and follow the cyclical trends that led to the loss and collapse of civilizations past. Knowing who we are, where we are in the cycles of civilization and nature, and the mistakes of past civilizations that we can learn from is the key to surviving the crises facing us today. The best science of our time, when it is married to the wisdom of our past, confirms that we still have the ways and means to shift our time of crisis into a time of emergence. We can create a new world based upon actionable and sustainable principles rooted in the core understanding of our deepest truths.
In This Book
Through the seven chapters in this book, I invite you into an empowering, and possibly novel, way of thinking about your relationship to the world. For some people, this way of thinking may be nothing new. Maybe you were fortunate enough to be raised in a family that allowed current discoveries about civilization and life to fill in the missing pieces of your spiritual, religious, and historical views on the world.
For those who did not have such an upbringing, however, the chapters that follow open the door to a powerful, and practical, new path of self-discovery. Regardless of your beliefs, the evidence forcing humanity to rethink the traditional story of who we are, how long we’ve been here, and why the world seems to be “falling apart at the seams” is fascinating reading.
In the pages that follow, you will discover:
By its nature, the exploration of what and how we think of ourselves is different for everyone—it’s a journey that is unique, intimate, and personal. So much of that difference stems from the experiences we share with our families, peer groups, and cultures. We’ve all been taught stories that explain our past and the origins of the earth and humanity, and that help us make sense of our world—stories based on what our community accepts as “truth” at a given point in time.
I invite you to consider the discoveries recounted in these pages and explore what they mean to you. Talk them over with the important people in your life; and discover if, and how, they may change the story that is shared in your family. Deep Truth is written with one purpose in mind: to empower us (as we solve the crises of our lives and our world) to understand our relationship with the past. The key to empowerment is simply this: the better we know ourselves, the clearer the choices in our lives become.
No one knows for certain what the future holds. Quantum understanding tells us that we are always selecting our future through the choices we make in this very moment. But no matter which challenges await us or which choices we’ll be faced with, one thing is absolutely certain: knowing who we are and understanding our relationship to one another, as well as to the world beyond, gives us the evolutionary edge that our ancient ancestors may not have had when they faced similar challenges in the past.
With that edge, we tip the scales of life and balance in our favor. And it all begins with our awareness of the deepest truths of our existence, and how we rely on those truths each day for every choice in our lives.
N.B. If you are interested in Greg Braden's latest literature, please go to the following for further details: http://promos.hayhouse.com/deeptruth/index.php)
Introduction
There is a single question that lurks at the very core of our existence.
It’s the unspoken question lying beneath every choice we’ll ever make. It lives within every challenge that will ever test us, and it’s the foundation for every decision we’ll ever face. If God had a cosmic question “counter” to track the things we humans wonder about most, then I have no doubt that this device would have maxed out and returned to zero so often in registering this one question alone that even God would have lost count of how many times it’s been asked!
The question at the root of all questions—one that has been asked countless times by countless individuals during the estimated 200,000 years or so that we’ve been on Earth—is simply this:
Who are we?
While the question itself appears simple and brief, the way in which we answer it has implications that we simply cannot escape. It tears directly into the heart of each moment of our lives, and forms the lens that defines the way we see ourselves in the world and the choices we make. The meaning we give to these three words permeates the fabric of our society. It shows up in everything we do, from the way we choose the food that nourishes our bodies . . . to how we care for ourselves, our young children, and our aging parents.
Our answer to who we are underlies the core principles of civilization itself: it influences how we share resources such as food, water, medicine, and other necessities of life; when and why we go to war; and what our economy is based upon. What we believe about our past, our origins, our destiny, and our fate even justifies our thinking regarding when we choose to save a human life, and when we choose to end it.
In what may be the greatest irony of our existence, at the dawn of the 21st century, following more than 5,000 years of recorded history, we have still not clearly answered this most basic question about ourselves. And while at any time discovering the truth of our existence would be worth the time, energy, and resources needed to do so, as we currently face the greatest crises affecting life and survival in the memory of our species, it’s especially critical for our time, here, now.
The Clear and Present Danger
One good reason for us to know who we are stands above all others. Maybe it’s no coincidence that today, after three centuries of using the scientific method to answer the most basic question about ourselves, we also find ourselves in deep trouble here on planet Earth. It’s not just any old run-of-the-mill trouble we’re in. It’s the kind of trouble of which dramatic novels and science fiction blockbusters are made.
Just to be absolutely clear: It’s not Earth that’s in trouble. It’s us, the people who live here on Earth. I can say with a high degree of confidence that our planet will still be here 50 years from now, and 500 years from now. No matter what choices we make during that time period—no matter how many wars we wage, and how many political revolutions we begin or how badly we pollute our air and oceans—the world that our ancestors called the “garden” will still be here making the same 365.256-day journey around the sun each year, just as it has for the past 4.55 billion years or so.
The question is not about Earth; it’s about whether or not we will be on Earth to enjoy it. Will we still be here to enjoy the sunsets and sensual mysteries of nature? Will we witness the beauty of the seasons with our families and other loved ones? As I’ll explore in a subsequent chapter, unless something changes soon, the experts are betting against us.
The reason? Because, when it comes to having what it takes for our children and us to live on Earth, we’re dangerously close to making the choices that lead us beyond the “point of no return.” This is the conclusion of an independent study on climate change co-chaired by Britain’s former Secretary of State for Transport Stephen Byers and U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), which was released in 2005. It stated that when it comes to the environment alone, we could reach that tipping point in as little as ten years and lose the fragile web of life that sustains us. But the environment is only one of a host of crises facing us today, each leading us toward the same potentially deadly outcome for the human race.
The best minds of our time acknowledge that we’re on multiple collision courses with disastrous outcomes—from the renewed threat of global war, the overuse of our resources, and the growing shortages of food and drinkable water; to the unprecedented stress we’re placing on the world’s oceans, forests, rivers, and lakes.
The problem is that the experts can’t seem to agree on what to do about these problems.
Act . . . but How?
Sometimes it’s a good idea to study a problem thoroughly before we act. The more we know about a difficult situation, the more certain we can be that we’ve found the best solutions to the dilemma. But sometimes prolonged study is not so good. There are times when the best thing to do is act quickly to survive the immediate crisis, and only then to study the problem in detail from the safety of the time bought by taking decisive action.
Maybe the best way to illustrate what I mean here is with a make-believe scenario:
Let’s say that on a beautiful, clear, and sunny day you’re crossing a stretch of highway with a friend in order to get from your house on one side of the road to your friend’s home on the other. Suddenly you both look up after being engrossed in deep conversation and see a huge 18-wheel tractor-trailer rig coming directly toward you. Instantly your body’s “fight or flight” response kicks in so that you can act. The question is: How? You have to decide quickly what to do. You and your friend both must choose, and choose fast.
So there you are, in the middle of the highway, with three lanes in front of you and three lanes behind you. Your dilemma is this: Do you have time to move forward to your destination— the other side—or is it best to move backward to the place you began? To answer the question with absolute certainty, you would need information that you simply don’t have at your fingertips in this moment. You do not know, for instance, whether the truck is empty or loaded. You may not be able to tell precisely how fast it is moving or whether the driver can even see you on the road. You might not be able to recognize if it’s a diesel- or gasoline-fueled truck that’s coming your way, or what make the vehicle is.
And this is precisely the point. You don’t need to know all of those details before you act. In the moment that you’re crossing the highway, you already have all of the information necessary to tell you you’re in a bad place. You already know that your life is in danger. You don’t need such details to recognize the obvious: there’s a big truck heading your way . . . and if you don’t move quickly, in a matter of seconds nothing else is going to matter!
While this scenario may sound like a silly example, it’s also precisely where we find ourselves on the world stage today. Our paths as individuals, families, and nations are like that of you and your friend walking across the highway. The “big truck” that’s bearing down upon us is the perfect storm of multiple crises: situations such as climate change, terrorism, war, disease, the disappearance of food and water, and a host of unsustainable ways of dealing with everyday living here on Earth. Each crisis has the potential to end civilization and human life as we know it.
We may not be in agreement as to precisely why each of these events is occurring, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are actually happening now. And, like two friends deciding to move forward across the highway or go back to the safety of where they’ve come from, we could study each crisis for another 100 years . . . yet the fact is that there are people, communities, and ways of life that will not survive the time it takes for all of the data to be compiled, the reports to be published, and the results to be debated.
The reason is that while we’re evaluating the problem, people’s homes will be destroyed by earthquakes, “superstorms,” floods, and war; the land that sustained them will stop producing food; their wells will dry up; oceans will rise; coastlines will disappear— and those individuals will lose everything, including their lives.
While these scenarios may sound extreme, the events I’m describing are already occurring in places such as Haiti, Japan, the Gulf Coast of the United States, and drought-ridden Africa . . . and it’s getting worse.
Just as it makes tremendous sense to move out of the path of the big truck coming your way on the highway before you study the problem further, it makes tremendous sense to move out of the way of the multiple disasters looming on the horizon before they take an even greater toll. And just as the direction you choose to move on the highway determines whether or not you get to your friend’s house on the other side, the way we decide to take action in the face of the greatest threats to our existence will determine whether we succeed or fail, live or die. Our choices for survival all point back to the way we think about ourselves in the world, and how our thinking leads us to act.
The message of this book is that we must act wisely and quickly to head off the collision that awaits us on the highway of life we’ve chosen to cross. Maybe Albert Einstein said it best: “A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.” Developing a new level of thinking is precisely what we need to do today. We know the problems exist. We’ve already applied the best minds of our time, and the best science based upon the best theories available, to study those problems. If we were on the right track with our thinking, doesn’t it make sense that we would have more answers and better solutions by now? The fact that we don’t tells us we need to think differently.
The Dilemma
In recent years, an explosion of new discoveries throughout the sciences has left little doubt that many long-standing views about life, our world, and our bodies have to change. The reason is simple: The ideas are wrong. New evidence has given us new ways to think about the perennial questions of life, including where we’ve come from, how long we’ve been here, how we can best survive the crises that face our world, and what we can do now to make
things better. While the new discoveries give us hope, despite the breakthroughs we still have a problem: the time required for us to integrate these discoveries into the accepted way of thinking may be longer than the time that’s available to us to solve the crises.
The state of biology is a perfect example of how this works. The recently developed science of epigenetics is based upon scientific fact. It proves that the genetic code that we call the “blueprint of life,” our DNA, changes with our environment. The piece that traditional scientists are reluctant to talk about is that the environment changing our DNA includes more than the toxins in our air and water, and more than the electromagnetic “noise” inundating those who live among the power lines, transformer stations, and cell-phone towers of the biggest cities in the world. The environment includes our very personal, subjective experiences of beliefs, emotions, and thoughts as well.
So while the scientific evidence tells us that we can change the DNA at the root of the life-threatening diseases that ravage our friends and loved ones, the textbooks that Western medical doctors rely upon still teach us that we can’t, saying that we’re victims of heredity and other factors beyond our control. Fortunately, this is beginning to change.
Through the work of visionary scientists such as stem-cell biologist Bruce Lipton, author of The Biology of Belief (Hay House, 2008), the surprising results of the latest studies are slowly percolating into the textbooks we rely upon for medical understanding. However, the conduit that carries these new discoveries about our cells—as well as those updating what we know of the origin of our species, our civilization, and the details of our past—is a system that is notoriously slow. The general rule for the lag time between a scientific discovery and its review, publication, and acceptance— before it shows up in the textbooks—is eight to ten years, and sometimes longer. And this is where the problem becomes obvious.
The best minds of today tell us in no uncertain terms that we’re facing multiple crises posing threats of unprecedented magnitude, and that each of these crises must be dealt with immediately. We simply don’t have eight to ten years to figure out how to adapt to the situation and head off the emerging threats of terrorism, war, and a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. These are issues that must be addressed now.
Our old ways of thinking—which include believing in survival of the fittest, the need for competition, and our separation from nature—have brought us to the brink of disaster. We’re living at a time in history when we must confront the potential loss of all that we cherish as a civilization. It’s precisely because we need new ways of thinking that the ancient question of who we are takes on a significance that is greater than ever. At the same time, a new mode of seeing the world, based upon a growing body of scientific evidence, is filling in the missing pieces of our knowledge and changing the way we think about ourselves.
In light of the new evidence regarding near–ice age civilizations, the false assumptions of human evolution, the origin and role of war in our past, and the undue emphasis on competition in our lives today, we must rethink the most basic beliefs that lie at the core of the decisions we make and the way we live. This is where Deep Truth comes in.
Why This Book?
While there is certainly no shortage of books that identify the extraordinary conditions threatening us today, they fall short of addressing the single element lying at the heart of how we deal with them. How can we possibly know what to choose—what policies to enact, what laws to pass—or how to build sustainable economies, share lifesaving technologies, and bridge the issues that are tearing at the fabric of our relationships and society . . .
until we’ve answered the single question that lies at the very core of our existence: Who are we? As individuals, as families, as nations, and as a combined human civilization, we must first know who we are before we can make the right choices. It’s especially important to do so now, at a time when every choice counts.
How can we know what choices to make until we answer the single question that lies at the heart of each and every choice:
Precisely who are we?
Without answering this fundamental question, making life altering decisions is like trying to enter a house without knowing where the door is. While it’s possible to break in through a window or knock down a wall, we’d damage the home in the process. And maybe this is a perfect metaphor for the quandary we find ourselves in. For our human family, which has more than quadrupled in size in a little over a century—from 1.6 billion in 1900 to about 7 billion in 2011—we can either use the key of understanding who we are to move through the door of successful solutions. . . or we can damage our home (Earth and ourselves) by responding to crises through the knee-jerk reactions of false assumptions based in incomplete science.
When we embrace the truths of our history on Earth, our planet’s cycles of change, and the role these play in our lives, then we’ll understand what we’re really up against, what our options are, and what choices are available.
This book identifies six areas of discovery (and the facts they reveal) that will radically change the way we’ve been led to think about our world and ourselves in the past. As we address the great crises of our time, these are the most important truths we must consider:
— Deep Truth 1: Our ability to defuse the crises threatening our lives and our world hinges upon our willingness to accept what science is revealing about our origins and history. As we face the never-before-seen threats that must be resolved within the next eight to ten years, how can we possibly know what choices to make, what laws to pass, and what policies to enact until we know who we are? The false assumptions of longstanding beliefs regarding evolution and human origins make little sense in the face of recent discoveries throughout the sciences.
— Deep Truth 2: The reluctance of mainstream educational systems to reflect new discoveries and explore new theories keeps us stuck in obsolete beliefs that fail to address the greatest crises of human history. We base our choices of life, government, and civilization on the way we think about ourselves, our relationship to each other, and our relationship to planet Earth. For the last 300 years, these beliefs have come from the false assumptions of an outdated science. The sound principles of the scientific method have a built in feature for self-correction of false assumptions that is effective when we allow the method to work as it was intended.
— Deep Truth 3: The key to addressing the crises threatening our survival lies in building partnerships based upon mutual aid and cooperation to adapt to the changes, rather than in pointing fingers and assigning blame, which makes such vital alliances difficult. Our multiple crises (some induced by humans and some that have arisen naturally) have arrived at the tipping point of threatening the ultimate survival of our species. The industrial age has definitely contributed to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; and we certainly need to find clean, green, and alternative ways to provide electricity and fuel for the seven billion people who are presently living on our planet . . . however:
- Fact: Climate change is not human induced. The scientific evidence of 420,000 years of Earth’s climate history shows a pattern of warming and cooling cycles at approximately 100,000-year intervals when no human industry was present.
- Fact: During the warming and cooling cycles of the past, the rise in greenhouse gases generally lags behind the temperature increase by an average of 400 to 800 years.
- Fact: It will take never-before-seen levels of synergy and teamwork to create sustainable lifestyles that help us adapt to natural cycles of change, as well as to address human-induced crises.
— Deep Truth 5: A growing body of scientific data from multiple disciplines, gathered using new technology, provides evidence beyond any reasonable doubt that humankind reflects a design put into place at once, rather than a life-form emerging randomly through an evolutionary process over a long period of time. While science may never identify precisely what, or who, is responsible for the design underlying our existence, the discoveries strongly challenge the conventional wisdom of evolutionary theory, and demonstrate that the chance that we resulted from random processes of biology is virtually nonexistent.
— Deep Truth 6: More than 400 peer-reviewed studies have concluded that violent competition and war directly contradict our deepest instincts of cooperation and nurturing. In other words, at the core of our truest nature we simply are not “wired” for war! Why, then, has war played such a dominant role in shaping our history, our lives, and our world? Clues to the answer are found in the records of our early experiences on Earth, and the ancient accounts that hold instructions for ending the “war of the ages” and living at the heights of our destiny, rather than succumbing to the depths of our fate. The sheer magnitude and number of crises converging in the first years of the 21st century pose a critical threat—a clear and present danger to our survival—and follow the cyclical trends that led to the loss and collapse of civilizations past. Knowing who we are, where we are in the cycles of civilization and nature, and the mistakes of past civilizations that we can learn from is the key to surviving the crises facing us today. The best science of our time, when it is married to the wisdom of our past, confirms that we still have the ways and means to shift our time of crisis into a time of emergence. We can create a new world based upon actionable and sustainable principles rooted in the core understanding of our deepest truths.
In This Book
Through the seven chapters in this book, I invite you into an empowering, and possibly novel, way of thinking about your relationship to the world. For some people, this way of thinking may be nothing new. Maybe you were fortunate enough to be raised in a family that allowed current discoveries about civilization and life to fill in the missing pieces of your spiritual, religious, and historical views on the world.
For those who did not have such an upbringing, however, the chapters that follow open the door to a powerful, and practical, new path of self-discovery. Regardless of your beliefs, the evidence forcing humanity to rethink the traditional story of who we are, how long we’ve been here, and why the world seems to be “falling apart at the seams” is fascinating reading.
In the pages that follow, you will discover:
- Archaeological evidence leaving little doubt that advanced civilizations, with advanced technology, grew and flourished on Earth long before the traditionally accepted date of 5,000 to 5,500 years ago
- Why the wars we fight today stem from a way of thinking that began long ago, and why they’re the modern continuation of an ancient battle that’s not even ours
- Science-based evidence that human life is the result of an intelligent design
- A timeline illustrating when the human code of life is activated in the womb, when the first heartbeat of human life begins, and when consciousness awakens in human development
- A revised timeline of past civilizations (and how they fit into the world-age cycles) giving new meaning to the crises of today, as well as helping us define the choices that lie before us. It’s important that you know up front what you can expect from your journey through these discoveries. For that reason, the following statements clearly explain what this book is, and what it is not:
- Deep Truth is not a science book. Although I will share the leading-edge science that invites us to rethink our relationship to the past, the cycles of time, our origins, and our habit of war, this work has not been written to conform to the format or standards of a classroom science textbook or a technical journal.
- This is not a peer-reviewed research paper. Each chapter and every report of research has not gone through the lengthy review process of a certified board or a selected panel of experts with a history of seeing our world through the eyes of a single field of study, such as physics, math, or psychology.
- This book is well researched and well documented. It has been written in a reader-friendly style that describes the experiments, case studies, historical records, and personal experiences supporting an empowering way of seeing ourselves in the world.
- This book is an example of what can be accomplished when we cross the traditional boundaries between science and spirituality. By marrying the 20th-century discoveries of genetics, archaeology, microbiology, and fractal time, we gain a powerful framework within which to place the dramatic changes of our age, and a context that helps us deal with those changes.
By its nature, the exploration of what and how we think of ourselves is different for everyone—it’s a journey that is unique, intimate, and personal. So much of that difference stems from the experiences we share with our families, peer groups, and cultures. We’ve all been taught stories that explain our past and the origins of the earth and humanity, and that help us make sense of our world—stories based on what our community accepts as “truth” at a given point in time.
I invite you to consider the discoveries recounted in these pages and explore what they mean to you. Talk them over with the important people in your life; and discover if, and how, they may change the story that is shared in your family. Deep Truth is written with one purpose in mind: to empower us (as we solve the crises of our lives and our world) to understand our relationship with the past. The key to empowerment is simply this: the better we know ourselves, the clearer the choices in our lives become.
No one knows for certain what the future holds. Quantum understanding tells us that we are always selecting our future through the choices we make in this very moment. But no matter which challenges await us or which choices we’ll be faced with, one thing is absolutely certain: knowing who we are and understanding our relationship to one another, as well as to the world beyond, gives us the evolutionary edge that our ancient ancestors may not have had when they faced similar challenges in the past.
With that edge, we tip the scales of life and balance in our favor. And it all begins with our awareness of the deepest truths of our existence, and how we rely on those truths each day for every choice in our lives.
N.B. If you are interested in Greg Braden's latest literature, please go to the following for further details: http://promos.hayhouse.com/deeptruth/index.php)
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Financial Journals: The Broken Window Fallacy
(Reproduced from an article taken from "The Daily Crux Sunday Interview" entitled "An economic lie that is ruining America" - An interview between The Palm Beach Letter and one of its authors, Mark Ford)
The Palm Beach Letter: Let's talk about books. What is the best book on economics or investing you've ever read?
Mark Ford: I haven't read all that many. But I'd have to say that the book that had the greatest impact on my thinking was Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson.
PBL: A classic. How did that affect you?
Ford: It was one of those "eureka!" moments. It was like coming up from a murky basement into a bright room. The book gave me a clear, common-sense explanation of why things were the way they were. I could finally see the fallacies that supported so much stupidity that passed for economic science.
PBL: Such as?
Ford: Such as why public works are so often wasteful, why government credit diverts production, why technological advances are good, not bad, for employment, why spread-the-work schemes inevitably fail, why government price-fixing and tariffs make us poorer, etc.
PBL: So what is the most important thing you got from reading Economics in One Lesson?
Ford: That you can't understand any economic policy unless you look at the whole picture. It's not enough to see the immediate, localized consequences of any public action. You must see its long-term effect on the entire economic community. Hazlitt says that nine-tenths of the economic fallacies politicians use do so much harm because they ignore this lesson. After reading the book, I can't help but agree.
PBL: That's a little abstract. Can you explain?
Ford: Hazlitt explains it beautifully in the second chapter, entitled "The Broken Window."
It goes like this:
A hoodlum throws a rock through a baker's plate glass window. A crowd gathers and talks about what a shame it is. But someone suggests that it is actually a blessing. He points out that the $250 the baker must pay for a new window will make the glazier $250 richer. And the glazier will use that $250 to spend with other merchants. The smashed window, according to this theory, will go on providing money and employment in ever-widening circles.
The logic is that the hoodlum who threw the brick was not a menace at all, but a public benefactor. The crowd agrees.
PBL: It does seem like a compelling argument.
Ford: It does. Yet, it's a logical fallacy.
PBL: So what's the fallacy?
Ford: The crowd is right that the broken window will benefit the glazier. But the crowd is looking only at one part of the picture: the effect on the glazier. That's the fallacy. To view the event properly, one must take into account its effect on not just one person or group, but also on the entire economy.
If you do that, you will quickly see that the baker is poorer by $250. And that means he won't be able to spend $250 on the suit he was planning to buy. The tailor that was to get his order for the suit won't have the $250 that would have come to him. And so he won't be able to spend that money with other merchants.... and so on, down the line.
The crowd was thinking only of two parties – the baker and the glazier – because they can see the window. But they don't consider the tailor because the suit is invisible – it is never made.
PBL: That's good. So how does this apply to governmental policies?
Ford: One example Hazlitt gives is government credit to farmers. (This was a big issue during the 1940s, when the book was written.)
At that time, many politicians supported government credit to farmers because farmers represented a big constituency for them. The argument in favor of farm credits was based on particular farmers who could not get the credit they needed from private lenders (banks, mortgage lenders, and so on).
In proposing the legislation, politicians always told stories about the poor farmer who won't be able to make it unless the government steps in to help him. If we buy a farm (or tractor) for him, he will be productive again and resume his role as an upstanding citizen. His farm will add to the total national product, and he will eventually pay it off with the produce he sells. So the loan actually costs the taxpayers nothing, since it will be self-liquidating.
PBL: Again, it sounds like a compelling argument.
Ford: Yes it does, so long as you look at only part of the picture: the short-term effect on the particular farmer who can't get the loan. But if you have learned Hazlitt's lesson, you will see the fallacy in it.
There is a reason this particular farmer cannot get the loan he wants. It is because the private lending community doesn't think he or his farm is worthy of it. (In other words, he is not credit-worthy.)
As Hazlitt points out, credit – good or bad – is what the farmer already has before he applies for the loan. If he has credit, he will get the loan privately. It is only when he doesn't have credit that the government must step in. In other words, the only purpose of government credit is to provide loans to people or businesses that are not credit-worthy.
To understand the whole picture, you must look at the effect of that loan. To provide the loan, the government must take the money – in the form of taxation – from the private sector. And that money will not be used for whatever purposes it would have been used.
For every $1,000 that is given by the government to a farmer with bad credit, $1,000 will not be spent by some private person or business on a person or business with good credit. The long-term implication is obvious: more risk, greater net losses, and less efficiency. The economy loses out in the long run.
PBL: Yes, I can see that. But that particular farmer, if he doesn't get the loan, will be worse off.
Ford: Yes. In the short term, he will be worse off. Hazlitt doesn't deny this. And that is one of the things I like about his thinking. He does not make the mistake that some free-market theorists make in denying these short-term, limited problems.
Economic progress in a free market always produces limited and temporary hardships, but those hardships are more than offset by an overall long-term increase in wealth. Hazlitt doesn't pretend that free markets will solve all problems. He argues that in the long run they provide the best net result.
PBL: Can you give me examples of how this is relevant today?
Ford: Open up any newspaper and you will see evidence of it in the editorials. Watch any talk show on economics and you'll see it all the time. The broken window fallacy is the go-to gimmick of almost every successful politician, Republican or Democrat.
PBL: For example?
Ford: On the treadmill this morning, I saw a "news" story about what the "reporter" called "the growing problem of hunger in America."
The reporter showed a clip of a young woman who said she was having trouble feeding her children with the $300 a month she gets in food stamps. She said the pain of hunger was "unimaginable." The reporter concluded that something must be done to increase food stamp allocations.
If it weren't for the fact that this young woman weighed about 280 pounds, I would have been moved. But had I believed her, I would have reminded myself that this was the broken window theory in operation.
No mention was made of the fact that the $300 in food stamps she was getting from the government was actually costing taxpayers much more than $300. With all the government bureaucracy involved in qualifying her, tracking the expenses, and reporting them, the cost of those food stamps was probably closer to $500 or $600. And that $500 or $600 was taken from taxpayers that would have spent it elsewhere, providing food and clothing for others.
So the net effect is actually negative. That wasn't part of the report.
PBL: So how does this idea affect you personally? I mean, how can a person use this knowledge to better his life?
Ford: Well, for one thing, I'm very careful about my charitable expenditures. I don't give to major charities, because I'm afraid they may be as inefficient as the government.
I do spend a good amount of money every year on charitable projects, but they are all my projects – ones that I feel responsible for and that I control. I want to know that if I spend $60,000 to build a library in Nicaragua, it will do more good than spending $60,000 on a new BMW. This makes me work much harder to make sure the investment pays off.
This idea has also been important in my business thinking. When I discuss capital expenditures with my client companies, I always stop to think, "Is this the best use of this money? Or would we get a higher return for the whole company if we spent it elsewhere?"
But the most important benefit for me is that it allows me to spend very little time worrying about government policies that attempt to regulate the economy. I know that most of them – regardless of what party favors them – will be wasteful. That gives me extra time to focus on my investing.
PBL: Thank goodness for that.
N.B. The Broken Window Fallacy was first introduced via the Parable Of The Broken Window by Frédéric Bastiat in his 1850 essay "Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas" (That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen) to illustrate why destruction, and the money spent to recover from destruction, is actually not a net-benefit to society. The parable, other than the Broken Window Fallacy is also known as Glazier's Fallacy, and demonstrates how opportunity costs, as well as the law of unintended consequences, affect economic activity in ways that are "unseen" or ignored.
The Palm Beach Letter: Let's talk about books. What is the best book on economics or investing you've ever read?
Mark Ford: I haven't read all that many. But I'd have to say that the book that had the greatest impact on my thinking was Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson.
PBL: A classic. How did that affect you?
Ford: It was one of those "eureka!" moments. It was like coming up from a murky basement into a bright room. The book gave me a clear, common-sense explanation of why things were the way they were. I could finally see the fallacies that supported so much stupidity that passed for economic science.
PBL: Such as?
Ford: Such as why public works are so often wasteful, why government credit diverts production, why technological advances are good, not bad, for employment, why spread-the-work schemes inevitably fail, why government price-fixing and tariffs make us poorer, etc.
PBL: So what is the most important thing you got from reading Economics in One Lesson?
Ford: That you can't understand any economic policy unless you look at the whole picture. It's not enough to see the immediate, localized consequences of any public action. You must see its long-term effect on the entire economic community. Hazlitt says that nine-tenths of the economic fallacies politicians use do so much harm because they ignore this lesson. After reading the book, I can't help but agree.
PBL: That's a little abstract. Can you explain?
Ford: Hazlitt explains it beautifully in the second chapter, entitled "The Broken Window."
It goes like this:
A hoodlum throws a rock through a baker's plate glass window. A crowd gathers and talks about what a shame it is. But someone suggests that it is actually a blessing. He points out that the $250 the baker must pay for a new window will make the glazier $250 richer. And the glazier will use that $250 to spend with other merchants. The smashed window, according to this theory, will go on providing money and employment in ever-widening circles.
The logic is that the hoodlum who threw the brick was not a menace at all, but a public benefactor. The crowd agrees.
PBL: It does seem like a compelling argument.
Ford: It does. Yet, it's a logical fallacy.
PBL: So what's the fallacy?
Ford: The crowd is right that the broken window will benefit the glazier. But the crowd is looking only at one part of the picture: the effect on the glazier. That's the fallacy. To view the event properly, one must take into account its effect on not just one person or group, but also on the entire economy.
If you do that, you will quickly see that the baker is poorer by $250. And that means he won't be able to spend $250 on the suit he was planning to buy. The tailor that was to get his order for the suit won't have the $250 that would have come to him. And so he won't be able to spend that money with other merchants.... and so on, down the line.
The crowd was thinking only of two parties – the baker and the glazier – because they can see the window. But they don't consider the tailor because the suit is invisible – it is never made.
PBL: That's good. So how does this apply to governmental policies?
Ford: One example Hazlitt gives is government credit to farmers. (This was a big issue during the 1940s, when the book was written.)
At that time, many politicians supported government credit to farmers because farmers represented a big constituency for them. The argument in favor of farm credits was based on particular farmers who could not get the credit they needed from private lenders (banks, mortgage lenders, and so on).
In proposing the legislation, politicians always told stories about the poor farmer who won't be able to make it unless the government steps in to help him. If we buy a farm (or tractor) for him, he will be productive again and resume his role as an upstanding citizen. His farm will add to the total national product, and he will eventually pay it off with the produce he sells. So the loan actually costs the taxpayers nothing, since it will be self-liquidating.
PBL: Again, it sounds like a compelling argument.
Ford: Yes it does, so long as you look at only part of the picture: the short-term effect on the particular farmer who can't get the loan. But if you have learned Hazlitt's lesson, you will see the fallacy in it.
There is a reason this particular farmer cannot get the loan he wants. It is because the private lending community doesn't think he or his farm is worthy of it. (In other words, he is not credit-worthy.)
As Hazlitt points out, credit – good or bad – is what the farmer already has before he applies for the loan. If he has credit, he will get the loan privately. It is only when he doesn't have credit that the government must step in. In other words, the only purpose of government credit is to provide loans to people or businesses that are not credit-worthy.
To understand the whole picture, you must look at the effect of that loan. To provide the loan, the government must take the money – in the form of taxation – from the private sector. And that money will not be used for whatever purposes it would have been used.
For every $1,000 that is given by the government to a farmer with bad credit, $1,000 will not be spent by some private person or business on a person or business with good credit. The long-term implication is obvious: more risk, greater net losses, and less efficiency. The economy loses out in the long run.
PBL: Yes, I can see that. But that particular farmer, if he doesn't get the loan, will be worse off.
Ford: Yes. In the short term, he will be worse off. Hazlitt doesn't deny this. And that is one of the things I like about his thinking. He does not make the mistake that some free-market theorists make in denying these short-term, limited problems.
Economic progress in a free market always produces limited and temporary hardships, but those hardships are more than offset by an overall long-term increase in wealth. Hazlitt doesn't pretend that free markets will solve all problems. He argues that in the long run they provide the best net result.
PBL: Can you give me examples of how this is relevant today?
Ford: Open up any newspaper and you will see evidence of it in the editorials. Watch any talk show on economics and you'll see it all the time. The broken window fallacy is the go-to gimmick of almost every successful politician, Republican or Democrat.
PBL: For example?
Ford: On the treadmill this morning, I saw a "news" story about what the "reporter" called "the growing problem of hunger in America."
The reporter showed a clip of a young woman who said she was having trouble feeding her children with the $300 a month she gets in food stamps. She said the pain of hunger was "unimaginable." The reporter concluded that something must be done to increase food stamp allocations.
If it weren't for the fact that this young woman weighed about 280 pounds, I would have been moved. But had I believed her, I would have reminded myself that this was the broken window theory in operation.
No mention was made of the fact that the $300 in food stamps she was getting from the government was actually costing taxpayers much more than $300. With all the government bureaucracy involved in qualifying her, tracking the expenses, and reporting them, the cost of those food stamps was probably closer to $500 or $600. And that $500 or $600 was taken from taxpayers that would have spent it elsewhere, providing food and clothing for others.
So the net effect is actually negative. That wasn't part of the report.
PBL: So how does this idea affect you personally? I mean, how can a person use this knowledge to better his life?
Ford: Well, for one thing, I'm very careful about my charitable expenditures. I don't give to major charities, because I'm afraid they may be as inefficient as the government.
I do spend a good amount of money every year on charitable projects, but they are all my projects – ones that I feel responsible for and that I control. I want to know that if I spend $60,000 to build a library in Nicaragua, it will do more good than spending $60,000 on a new BMW. This makes me work much harder to make sure the investment pays off.
This idea has also been important in my business thinking. When I discuss capital expenditures with my client companies, I always stop to think, "Is this the best use of this money? Or would we get a higher return for the whole company if we spent it elsewhere?"
But the most important benefit for me is that it allows me to spend very little time worrying about government policies that attempt to regulate the economy. I know that most of them – regardless of what party favors them – will be wasteful. That gives me extra time to focus on my investing.
PBL: Thank goodness for that.
N.B. The Broken Window Fallacy was first introduced via the Parable Of The Broken Window by Frédéric Bastiat in his 1850 essay "Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas" (That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen) to illustrate why destruction, and the money spent to recover from destruction, is actually not a net-benefit to society. The parable, other than the Broken Window Fallacy is also known as Glazier's Fallacy, and demonstrates how opportunity costs, as well as the law of unintended consequences, affect economic activity in ways that are "unseen" or ignored.
Sunday, October 02, 2011
Medical Journals: Understanding How an Alkaline Diet Works
(A brief summary taken from Alkaline Foods & Alkaline Diet - The Complete Resource: http://www.acidalkalinediet.com/)
Alkaline diets are a popular choice for people who want to achieve optimum good health. However, many people don't actually understand this diet or how it works.
The concept is actually fairly simple - the diet just focuses on regaining the balance that was lost when man started to eat a more domesticated diet. Instead of focusing on foods that are high in sugar, fat, and cholesterol, an alkaline diet primarily consists of fresh fruits and vegetables, healthy whole grains, wholesome protein sources such as soy, beans and legumes, and healthy oils such as canola, olive and flax seed.
These foods may be either alkaline or acid in their natural state, but they all produce what is termed as an "alkaline ash" once digested and metabolized by the body. When the body's pH is kept at a slightly alkaline level, all the systems can work more efficiently.
Understanding the Effects of the Body's pH Level
The pH level of the body has the ability to affect every single cell of the body. When the blood has an alkaline pH instead of an acidic pH, it will have a positive effect on how every bodily system functions. The brain, circulatory system, nerves, muscles, respiratory system, digestive system, and reproductive system can all benefit from a proper pH level.
On the other hand, when the pH of the body is too acidic, it is susceptible to many diseases and problems. Weight gain, heart disease, premature aging, fatigue, nerve problems, allergies, muscle disease and cancer are all more prevalent when the body's pH is not optimal. Because these problems are all more likely to occur when the body's pH is too acid, it makes good sense to eat a diet rich in alkalizing foods.
The primary goal is usually to eat approximately 75-80% alkaline foods along with only about 20-25% acidifying foods. If this level is maintained in the diet, the end result is a slightly alkaline pH in the body, which is perfect for optimum good health.
Choosing Foods for an Alkaline Diet
It's actually quite easy to eat a diet rich in alkaline-producing foods.
Most fresh fruits and vegetables are excellent choices.
Red meat is not a good choice, but you can add plenty of protein to your meals by using soy products, delicious beans, legumes, and nuts such as almonds.
You should eliminate unhealthy fats from your diet, but you can use good fats such as olive, canola, and flax seed oil. High fat dairy products should be avoided, but you can drink soy milk and goat's milk.
Cheeses made from soy milk and goat's milk would also be good choices.
Replace the empty calories of soda with delicious iced herb tea, green tea and lemon water. Coffee should be avoided, but you can drink hot herbal or green tea.
Replace pasta with healthy whole grains such as wild rice, millet and quinoa.
When sweetening your foods, focus on natural products such as raw sugar, stevia and maple sugar.
As you can see, you'll have many nutritious choices that are both delicious and high in alkalizing properties.
Use the food chart on the right hand corner of this blog to make your lifestyle more alkaline and reap the benefits of vibrant health and abundant energy.
N.B. To discover how to alkalize your body fast, as well as to access to the "Alkaline Food Chart" & "Recipe Database", please kindly enter your name and email address at the following website to receive these information FREE: http://www.acidalkalinediet.com/.
You would also access the information (i.e. the Alkaline Food Chart) via the widget which has been installed on the right hand corner of this blog.
Alkaline diets are a popular choice for people who want to achieve optimum good health. However, many people don't actually understand this diet or how it works.
The concept is actually fairly simple - the diet just focuses on regaining the balance that was lost when man started to eat a more domesticated diet. Instead of focusing on foods that are high in sugar, fat, and cholesterol, an alkaline diet primarily consists of fresh fruits and vegetables, healthy whole grains, wholesome protein sources such as soy, beans and legumes, and healthy oils such as canola, olive and flax seed.
These foods may be either alkaline or acid in their natural state, but they all produce what is termed as an "alkaline ash" once digested and metabolized by the body. When the body's pH is kept at a slightly alkaline level, all the systems can work more efficiently.
Understanding the Effects of the Body's pH Level
The pH level of the body has the ability to affect every single cell of the body. When the blood has an alkaline pH instead of an acidic pH, it will have a positive effect on how every bodily system functions. The brain, circulatory system, nerves, muscles, respiratory system, digestive system, and reproductive system can all benefit from a proper pH level.
On the other hand, when the pH of the body is too acidic, it is susceptible to many diseases and problems. Weight gain, heart disease, premature aging, fatigue, nerve problems, allergies, muscle disease and cancer are all more prevalent when the body's pH is not optimal. Because these problems are all more likely to occur when the body's pH is too acid, it makes good sense to eat a diet rich in alkalizing foods.
The primary goal is usually to eat approximately 75-80% alkaline foods along with only about 20-25% acidifying foods. If this level is maintained in the diet, the end result is a slightly alkaline pH in the body, which is perfect for optimum good health.
Choosing Foods for an Alkaline Diet
It's actually quite easy to eat a diet rich in alkaline-producing foods.
Most fresh fruits and vegetables are excellent choices.
Red meat is not a good choice, but you can add plenty of protein to your meals by using soy products, delicious beans, legumes, and nuts such as almonds.
You should eliminate unhealthy fats from your diet, but you can use good fats such as olive, canola, and flax seed oil. High fat dairy products should be avoided, but you can drink soy milk and goat's milk.
Cheeses made from soy milk and goat's milk would also be good choices.
Replace the empty calories of soda with delicious iced herb tea, green tea and lemon water. Coffee should be avoided, but you can drink hot herbal or green tea.
Replace pasta with healthy whole grains such as wild rice, millet and quinoa.
When sweetening your foods, focus on natural products such as raw sugar, stevia and maple sugar.
As you can see, you'll have many nutritious choices that are both delicious and high in alkalizing properties.
Use the food chart on the right hand corner of this blog to make your lifestyle more alkaline and reap the benefits of vibrant health and abundant energy.
N.B. To discover how to alkalize your body fast, as well as to access to the "Alkaline Food Chart" & "Recipe Database", please kindly enter your name and email address at the following website to receive these information FREE: http://www.acidalkalinediet.com/.
You would also access the information (i.e. the Alkaline Food Chart) via the widget which has been installed on the right hand corner of this blog.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Random Thoughts - Bearing Of Grudges
The interesting thing about the bearing of grudges against someone is that it would most likely not hurt anyone else (including that someone) other than yourself. This comic strip taken from Pearls Before Swines created by Stephen Pastis (first released on 1 September 2011) would succinctly demonstrate that fact.
Sunday, September 04, 2011
The Emergence Of Multiple Chaotic Nodes: A Hathor Planetary Message Thought Tom Kenyon
(By The Hathors Through Tom Kenyon - As extracted from Evolution Ezine: http://evolutionezine.com/the-emergence-of-multiple-chaotic-nodes-a-hathor-planetary-message-through-tom-kenyon/)
Your planet is entering a critical transition state, characterized by a multiplicity of Chaotic Nodes.
In our previous communications we have discussed the changes taking place on your Earth in the context of a single Chaotic Node. But from our viewpoint, multiple Chaotic Nodes are now emerging. These complex interacting nodes involve such things as radical weather anomalies, increases in earthquake and volcanic activity, critical challenges to the planet’s eco-systems, challenges to agriculture and food sources, as well as political and economic volatility.
In addition to these planetary Chaotic Nodes, the sun of your solar system is entering a greater level of volatility and unpredictability as well. It is entering into multiple Chaotic Nodes itself, driven by its own internal cycles, but also greatly impacted, as we have said in previous messages, by the galactic center.
The physical challenges you will face in the near future are many, but our message at this time does not concern the physical dimension of these difficulties. These changes, and their resulting challenges, will be apparent to anyone who looks beneath the surface of current events.
Our focus in this communication is on the emotional and spiritual crisis you are facing.
When a system enters multiple Chaotic Nodes there is increased stress on those elements or beings that reside in the vibratory level of existence where the Chaotic Nodes are taking place.
Let us speak to this for a moment in terms other than human existence. From our experience, other dimensions of consciousness and existence are also experiencing their own version of multiple Chaotic Nodes. Thus, the energetic challenges you are facing are not limited just to Earth, but extend to all dimensions of consciousness and all beings, including non-corporeal (energy beings without bodies), who are related to Earth and this galaxy.
But let us come down to Earth, to the nexus point of your existence in time and space.
As we said earlier, beings living in a realm of existence undergoing multiple Chaotic Nodes will be inevitably stressed by increases in chaotic events.
As chaotic elements within planetary weather patterns increase, as challenges to agriculture multiply, and as economic problems grow, there will be an increase in global human anxiety.
This type of anxiety tends to center around physical survival, and while anxiety about survival can drive human beings into a type of madness and irrationality, there is something more insidious and hidden in the current transition state you are now entering.
This hidden danger has to do with thought forms perpetuated by some of your major religions and spiritual traditions. These thought forms and belief systems maintain the notion that there is a separation between the physical and the interdimensional (spiritual) aspects of your existence. The physical world is viewed as tainted; nature is seen as something to be subdued and dominated (as opposed to co-creating with the natural world), and in essence, the world is viewed as something to be escaped from.
We do not share this belief. Our experience is that consciousness is one continuum from the highest vibrations of light into the lowest vibrations of matter and that the very atoms and subatomic particles that comprise your world are, by their very nature, sacred—if by sacred you mean related to the whole.
As the stresses generated by multiple Chaotic Nodes increase, there will be a tendency for many humans to enter delusional and dissociative states of consciousness.
Those who adhere to the thought form that there is an eternal schism between the realms of matter and those of spirit will be most prone to this aberration in consciousness. And as stresses increase, due to the complex interaction of multiple Chaotic Nodes, there will be a marked tendency for some of these individuals to be separated further and further from the realities of the physical dimension. This type of communal dissociation will be further driven by religious and spiritual thought forms regarding “the End Times,” “the Day of Judgment,” and the “Purification of Earth.” This delusional state of mind will become a type of collective mental/emotional virus as whole groups of individuals succumb to stress and overwhelm as they struggle to deal with the global effects of multiple Chaotic Nodes.
Lines in the sand
From our perspective, a line is being drawn in the sands of human consciousness. And this line is nothing less than the demarcation between those who uphold the schism between matter and spirit as perpetuated by the world’s major religions and those who don’t.
What side of this line you stand on will determine to a great extent what you are open to, in terms of planetary and personal transformation.
All Initiates must determine for themselves, what is true and not true, especially when it comes to this religiously perpetuated schism between matter and spirit. And by Initiates, we simply mean those who strive to live upward in consciousness, regardless of the method or spiritual traditions they follow.
The Path of the Heart
From our perspective, the threshold for an Initiate from the lower vibrational worlds into the upper worlds is, first and foremost, through the heart. This transit of consciousness is essentially an inner journey from the lower chakras to the higher chakras. It is only when an Initiate both transcends and transforms his or her personal fixation on security, sex and power that the upward spiral opens. And the entrance into this upward spiral of consciousness occurs when the heart chakra becomes energetically open and permeable.
The paradox and the difficulty is that you live in a dualistic universe, and virtually any action you take is met by a counter-force. This paradox and difficulty is like a metaphorical grain of sand in an oyster; it is irritating. But through the process of self-evolution, the irritation (i.e. duality) becomes a pearl, and paradoxically, something of value emerges from that which was problematic. But each Initiate must create this pearl of self-transformation for him or herself. No religion, no master, no teacher or guru can do it for you.
It may sound too simplistic but, in our experience, the greatest evolutionary catalyst, and the greatest vibratory field of safety to bridge transition states (such as the one you are collectively entering), is through the heart, your heart.
Let us be more specific here. As the number of Chaotic Nodes increases, the challenges to mental and emotional stability will multiply. And as a result, increasing numbers of individuals will enter irrational states of consciousness. There will be a tendency for these individuals to act out in self-destructive ways. And because you are connected to all life on this planet, you will be affected to some extent by the emotional turmoil of others.
Thus it would be of great benefit to you as an Initiate, to cultivate a coherent emotional state, something you return to again and again, reinforcing what we call a positive attractor.
Then it will be as if you have an energetic bubble of coherency around you. You will be able to see clearly and respond to the dualistic world you live in, yet your vibratory essence will remain protected from the increasing levels of chaos and irrationality of others. How you do this is your choice. There are many ways to accomplish this. We will simply offer two.
The first is the most basic and fundamental but is the foundation for the more advanced. We are well aware that many persons reading these messages are new to this type of information, while others are very advanced, which is why we are offering two techniques.
The Basic Technique
This first method is for those unfamiliar with the vastness of their own inner consciousness. It is simple but highly effective.
We recommend you regularly cultivate this coherent state in the garden of your mind.
To accomplish this, you simply reside in the feelings of appreciation or gratitude, without any reason to do so. In other words, you are not looking to something in your environment or your life to feel appreciation or gratitude for. You simply enter into this vibratory state for no other reason other than choosing to do so.
This vibratory state creates a coherency in your body and mind, and it is a type of mental/emotional upliftment that acts as a counter-balance to the downward spiral many humans will be experiencing.
We recommend that you enter this emotional state several times a day. Just a minute or two is all that is needed, but by entering into this vibratory state throughout the day, you train your brain/mind/body to enter into a coherent state at will. And this will be a very helpful and important mind-skill as you enter further into this planetary transition state (i.e. the emergence of multiple Chaotic Nodes).
One reason we say that this mind-skill will be helpful to you is due to the inherent effects of multiple Chaotic Nodes.
Many of you will find greater opportunities for frustration in your daily life. This is because actions taken will increasingly not lead to the result anticipated. Even those of you who are intellectually gifted and masters of manifestation may find blocks and unanticipated hindrances, due to no causation on your part, but rather due to the actions or inactions of others, as well as unanticipated problems caused by the increase of chaotic events in the world around you. Thus, when you find yourself at your wit’s end, so to speak, if you have cultivated the positive attractor of appreciation or gratitude you can use it to intervene into your own emotional turmoil, for if you succumb to your own emotional stress the contagion of mass hysteria is more likely to reach you.
Think of this simple technique as a lifesaver. It’s something passive, you just rest in it, and it creates a vibratory field that by its very nature protects your emotional and spiritual essence.
The Advanced Technique
The second technique we wish to share is for those of you who are more experienced with your inner worlds.
We discussed the first part of this method in a previous message called Ecstasy and the Heart.
The technique involves focusing on the physical heart, not the heart chakra, and while focusing your attention on the physical heart you enter into the state of appreciation or gratitude (just as with the simple method we gave earlier).
The effect of holding your awareness in the physical heart while experiencing appreciation or gratitude creates bliss or ecstasy if you hold the two together long enough.
Once you enter bliss or ecstasy you become aware of the space between the atoms of your body and your environment. This is a shift of mental attention and is based on the quantum reality that physical matter is over 99% space.
Obviously, you do not perceive this space between the atoms of your body and your immediate environment through your physical senses due to the limitations of your nervous system. But the non-local aspect of your consciousness that is unfettered by the limitations of your physical reality can experience this space.
The final stage of this technique involves a shifting of attention. As you become aware of this space in your body and the space around you, you perform a paradoxical feat of consciousness. You send the appreciation and gratitude you are experiencing, both to the space within your body and to the space around you, as well to the particles of matter that comprise your body and the world around you.
This “holding” of both space and matter in the vibratory realm of appreciation or gratitude will eventually reveal your nature as both an embodied and un-embodied being—as a being living through a physical body or form and simultaneously as a consciousness unbounded by form. If you persist with this method, it will eventually open a miraculous doorway for you, a doorway that leads to profound insights regarding the nature of ascension.
In regard to choosing which method to use, we suggest you begin where you are.
The first method, though simple, is highly effective at protecting you from the contagion of human irrationality and will lift you upward into the currents of the upward spiral, even as those around you spiral downward.
When you feel you are ready, you can explore the advanced method. This is not a marathon race to see who can get to the advanced method the quickest.
The only thing that is required is that you reside in appreciation or gratitude as often as possible without causation. This simple vibratory realm will be a great ally to you as you pass through the current planetary transition state.
...
Summary
As we said at the beginning of this message, you are entering a critical transition state. For those unfamiliar with our previous message entitled Transition States of Consciousness, we strongly suggest that you take a look at this communication.
Your Earth is entering a perilous period in its upward movement. Many aspects of your reality will be changing right before your eyes, more rapidly than you could ever have imagined.
Due to the acceleration of time, the transformation of your civilization will increase exponentially. Your word “transformation” literally means moving beyond form, thus the structures of your reality (meaning the thought forms and beliefs as well as the external realities of your life) will be undergoing rapid change.
A greater fluidity of consciousness is required. Protection of your vibratory essence is vital. You are entering harrowing times and yet in this complexity there are immense opportunities for your own personal evolution.
We believe that there will be a greater polarization between people as the Chaotic Nodes increase in number and intensity. And yet even in the midst of that polarization, if your heart/mind is open you will have moments of deep communion with others, even strangers, whenever you look into the eyes of another human being who recognizes the sacredness of this moment, the sacredness of life, and the sacredness of this Earth.
Our thoughts and blessings are with you.
P.S. According to Tom Kenyon, he said "The Hathors say that they are a group of interdimensional, intergalactic beings who were connected with ancient Egypt through the Temples of the Goddess Hathor, as well as several other pre-history cultures.In the late 1980′s, I was “contacted” by them during meditation, and they began to instruct me in the vibratory nature of the cosmos, the use of sacred geometry as a means to stimulate brain performance, and in the use of sound to activate psycho-spiritual experiences. While I was intrigued with the information, I was, at the time, uncomfortable with their self-described origins. I was, after all a practicing psychotherapist and involved in brain research at the time. In short, I was a rationalist. And these beings—whoever they were and wherever they came from—did not fit into my views of reality at the time."
Your planet is entering a critical transition state, characterized by a multiplicity of Chaotic Nodes.
In our previous communications we have discussed the changes taking place on your Earth in the context of a single Chaotic Node. But from our viewpoint, multiple Chaotic Nodes are now emerging. These complex interacting nodes involve such things as radical weather anomalies, increases in earthquake and volcanic activity, critical challenges to the planet’s eco-systems, challenges to agriculture and food sources, as well as political and economic volatility.
In addition to these planetary Chaotic Nodes, the sun of your solar system is entering a greater level of volatility and unpredictability as well. It is entering into multiple Chaotic Nodes itself, driven by its own internal cycles, but also greatly impacted, as we have said in previous messages, by the galactic center.
The physical challenges you will face in the near future are many, but our message at this time does not concern the physical dimension of these difficulties. These changes, and their resulting challenges, will be apparent to anyone who looks beneath the surface of current events.
Our focus in this communication is on the emotional and spiritual crisis you are facing.
When a system enters multiple Chaotic Nodes there is increased stress on those elements or beings that reside in the vibratory level of existence where the Chaotic Nodes are taking place.
Let us speak to this for a moment in terms other than human existence. From our experience, other dimensions of consciousness and existence are also experiencing their own version of multiple Chaotic Nodes. Thus, the energetic challenges you are facing are not limited just to Earth, but extend to all dimensions of consciousness and all beings, including non-corporeal (energy beings without bodies), who are related to Earth and this galaxy.
But let us come down to Earth, to the nexus point of your existence in time and space.
As we said earlier, beings living in a realm of existence undergoing multiple Chaotic Nodes will be inevitably stressed by increases in chaotic events.
As chaotic elements within planetary weather patterns increase, as challenges to agriculture multiply, and as economic problems grow, there will be an increase in global human anxiety.
This type of anxiety tends to center around physical survival, and while anxiety about survival can drive human beings into a type of madness and irrationality, there is something more insidious and hidden in the current transition state you are now entering.
This hidden danger has to do with thought forms perpetuated by some of your major religions and spiritual traditions. These thought forms and belief systems maintain the notion that there is a separation between the physical and the interdimensional (spiritual) aspects of your existence. The physical world is viewed as tainted; nature is seen as something to be subdued and dominated (as opposed to co-creating with the natural world), and in essence, the world is viewed as something to be escaped from.
We do not share this belief. Our experience is that consciousness is one continuum from the highest vibrations of light into the lowest vibrations of matter and that the very atoms and subatomic particles that comprise your world are, by their very nature, sacred—if by sacred you mean related to the whole.
As the stresses generated by multiple Chaotic Nodes increase, there will be a tendency for many humans to enter delusional and dissociative states of consciousness.
Those who adhere to the thought form that there is an eternal schism between the realms of matter and those of spirit will be most prone to this aberration in consciousness. And as stresses increase, due to the complex interaction of multiple Chaotic Nodes, there will be a marked tendency for some of these individuals to be separated further and further from the realities of the physical dimension. This type of communal dissociation will be further driven by religious and spiritual thought forms regarding “the End Times,” “the Day of Judgment,” and the “Purification of Earth.” This delusional state of mind will become a type of collective mental/emotional virus as whole groups of individuals succumb to stress and overwhelm as they struggle to deal with the global effects of multiple Chaotic Nodes.
Lines in the sand
From our perspective, a line is being drawn in the sands of human consciousness. And this line is nothing less than the demarcation between those who uphold the schism between matter and spirit as perpetuated by the world’s major religions and those who don’t.
What side of this line you stand on will determine to a great extent what you are open to, in terms of planetary and personal transformation.
All Initiates must determine for themselves, what is true and not true, especially when it comes to this religiously perpetuated schism between matter and spirit. And by Initiates, we simply mean those who strive to live upward in consciousness, regardless of the method or spiritual traditions they follow.
The Path of the Heart
From our perspective, the threshold for an Initiate from the lower vibrational worlds into the upper worlds is, first and foremost, through the heart. This transit of consciousness is essentially an inner journey from the lower chakras to the higher chakras. It is only when an Initiate both transcends and transforms his or her personal fixation on security, sex and power that the upward spiral opens. And the entrance into this upward spiral of consciousness occurs when the heart chakra becomes energetically open and permeable.
The paradox and the difficulty is that you live in a dualistic universe, and virtually any action you take is met by a counter-force. This paradox and difficulty is like a metaphorical grain of sand in an oyster; it is irritating. But through the process of self-evolution, the irritation (i.e. duality) becomes a pearl, and paradoxically, something of value emerges from that which was problematic. But each Initiate must create this pearl of self-transformation for him or herself. No religion, no master, no teacher or guru can do it for you.
It may sound too simplistic but, in our experience, the greatest evolutionary catalyst, and the greatest vibratory field of safety to bridge transition states (such as the one you are collectively entering), is through the heart, your heart.
Let us be more specific here. As the number of Chaotic Nodes increases, the challenges to mental and emotional stability will multiply. And as a result, increasing numbers of individuals will enter irrational states of consciousness. There will be a tendency for these individuals to act out in self-destructive ways. And because you are connected to all life on this planet, you will be affected to some extent by the emotional turmoil of others.
Thus it would be of great benefit to you as an Initiate, to cultivate a coherent emotional state, something you return to again and again, reinforcing what we call a positive attractor.
Then it will be as if you have an energetic bubble of coherency around you. You will be able to see clearly and respond to the dualistic world you live in, yet your vibratory essence will remain protected from the increasing levels of chaos and irrationality of others. How you do this is your choice. There are many ways to accomplish this. We will simply offer two.
The first is the most basic and fundamental but is the foundation for the more advanced. We are well aware that many persons reading these messages are new to this type of information, while others are very advanced, which is why we are offering two techniques.
The Basic Technique
This first method is for those unfamiliar with the vastness of their own inner consciousness. It is simple but highly effective.
We recommend you regularly cultivate this coherent state in the garden of your mind.
To accomplish this, you simply reside in the feelings of appreciation or gratitude, without any reason to do so. In other words, you are not looking to something in your environment or your life to feel appreciation or gratitude for. You simply enter into this vibratory state for no other reason other than choosing to do so.
This vibratory state creates a coherency in your body and mind, and it is a type of mental/emotional upliftment that acts as a counter-balance to the downward spiral many humans will be experiencing.
We recommend that you enter this emotional state several times a day. Just a minute or two is all that is needed, but by entering into this vibratory state throughout the day, you train your brain/mind/body to enter into a coherent state at will. And this will be a very helpful and important mind-skill as you enter further into this planetary transition state (i.e. the emergence of multiple Chaotic Nodes).
One reason we say that this mind-skill will be helpful to you is due to the inherent effects of multiple Chaotic Nodes.
Many of you will find greater opportunities for frustration in your daily life. This is because actions taken will increasingly not lead to the result anticipated. Even those of you who are intellectually gifted and masters of manifestation may find blocks and unanticipated hindrances, due to no causation on your part, but rather due to the actions or inactions of others, as well as unanticipated problems caused by the increase of chaotic events in the world around you. Thus, when you find yourself at your wit’s end, so to speak, if you have cultivated the positive attractor of appreciation or gratitude you can use it to intervene into your own emotional turmoil, for if you succumb to your own emotional stress the contagion of mass hysteria is more likely to reach you.
Think of this simple technique as a lifesaver. It’s something passive, you just rest in it, and it creates a vibratory field that by its very nature protects your emotional and spiritual essence.
The Advanced Technique
The second technique we wish to share is for those of you who are more experienced with your inner worlds.
We discussed the first part of this method in a previous message called Ecstasy and the Heart.
The technique involves focusing on the physical heart, not the heart chakra, and while focusing your attention on the physical heart you enter into the state of appreciation or gratitude (just as with the simple method we gave earlier).
The effect of holding your awareness in the physical heart while experiencing appreciation or gratitude creates bliss or ecstasy if you hold the two together long enough.
Once you enter bliss or ecstasy you become aware of the space between the atoms of your body and your environment. This is a shift of mental attention and is based on the quantum reality that physical matter is over 99% space.
Obviously, you do not perceive this space between the atoms of your body and your immediate environment through your physical senses due to the limitations of your nervous system. But the non-local aspect of your consciousness that is unfettered by the limitations of your physical reality can experience this space.
The final stage of this technique involves a shifting of attention. As you become aware of this space in your body and the space around you, you perform a paradoxical feat of consciousness. You send the appreciation and gratitude you are experiencing, both to the space within your body and to the space around you, as well to the particles of matter that comprise your body and the world around you.
This “holding” of both space and matter in the vibratory realm of appreciation or gratitude will eventually reveal your nature as both an embodied and un-embodied being—as a being living through a physical body or form and simultaneously as a consciousness unbounded by form. If you persist with this method, it will eventually open a miraculous doorway for you, a doorway that leads to profound insights regarding the nature of ascension.
In regard to choosing which method to use, we suggest you begin where you are.
The first method, though simple, is highly effective at protecting you from the contagion of human irrationality and will lift you upward into the currents of the upward spiral, even as those around you spiral downward.
When you feel you are ready, you can explore the advanced method. This is not a marathon race to see who can get to the advanced method the quickest.
The only thing that is required is that you reside in appreciation or gratitude as often as possible without causation. This simple vibratory realm will be a great ally to you as you pass through the current planetary transition state.
...
Summary
As we said at the beginning of this message, you are entering a critical transition state. For those unfamiliar with our previous message entitled Transition States of Consciousness, we strongly suggest that you take a look at this communication.
Your Earth is entering a perilous period in its upward movement. Many aspects of your reality will be changing right before your eyes, more rapidly than you could ever have imagined.
Due to the acceleration of time, the transformation of your civilization will increase exponentially. Your word “transformation” literally means moving beyond form, thus the structures of your reality (meaning the thought forms and beliefs as well as the external realities of your life) will be undergoing rapid change.
A greater fluidity of consciousness is required. Protection of your vibratory essence is vital. You are entering harrowing times and yet in this complexity there are immense opportunities for your own personal evolution.
We believe that there will be a greater polarization between people as the Chaotic Nodes increase in number and intensity. And yet even in the midst of that polarization, if your heart/mind is open you will have moments of deep communion with others, even strangers, whenever you look into the eyes of another human being who recognizes the sacredness of this moment, the sacredness of life, and the sacredness of this Earth.
Our thoughts and blessings are with you.
P.S. According to Tom Kenyon, he said "The Hathors say that they are a group of interdimensional, intergalactic beings who were connected with ancient Egypt through the Temples of the Goddess Hathor, as well as several other pre-history cultures.In the late 1980′s, I was “contacted” by them during meditation, and they began to instruct me in the vibratory nature of the cosmos, the use of sacred geometry as a means to stimulate brain performance, and in the use of sound to activate psycho-spiritual experiences. While I was intrigued with the information, I was, at the time, uncomfortable with their self-described origins. I was, after all a practicing psychotherapist and involved in brain research at the time. In short, I was a rationalist. And these beings—whoever they were and wherever they came from—did not fit into my views of reality at the time."
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Acceptance
(By Dr. Chuck Spezzano)
Acceptance heals hurt. It heals the resistance that causes or exacerbates the pain. When you accept, it allows you to move forward in the flow, because what you accept, you naturally let go of.
Acceptance heals hurt. It heals the resistance that causes or exacerbates the pain. When you accept, it allows you to move forward in the flow, because what you accept, you naturally let go of.
Monday, August 01, 2011
Do You Remember The Time When You Believe You Can Do Anything?
(By Sasha Xarrian, Founder of Outrageous Mastery, and reproduced from the "Master Your Beliefs - Take Control Of Your Life" website at: http://www.masteryourbeliefs.com/)
Do you remember what it was like when you were a kid?
When you believed that you could be anything you wanted to be when you grew up?
When you believed you could do anything?
The possibilities were endless.
You remember don't you?
You could be a police officer, or a doctor, or an astronaut.
You believed you could be anything you wanted and have anything you wanted
Like that Radio Flyer Wagon or Barbie doll or Dump Truck
You believed that you were "worthy of" and "entitled to" that new toy that you wanted to play with.
You didn't think about the money it could cost to have it.
I mean, at some point you believed money grew on trees and you would think, "Why can't I have that wagon, doll or truck? Don't they {your parents} know how happy that would make me?"
You believed that anything was possible.
And it was.
You didn't have any doubts.
You didn't have any judgments.
You didn't see the "why nots," you just saw the "what ifs."
So, let me ask you this...
Do you still believe you can be or have anything you desire?
Do you believe you are worthy and deserving of having it all?
No?
Why not?
What happened?
Why don't you still believe that you can have it all?
Why don't you still believe that you are worthy enough?
Why do you see all the reasons why it won't work?
Why you can't do it?
Why it's not possible?
Why?
I'll tell you why, but first let me say this...
"It's not your fault that you believe this way."
Here's why:
As you went through life, your beliefs changed.
Other people told you that XYZ wasn't possible.
That told you that you had to work hard.
That life was a struggle.
That you didn't deserve it.
That you weren't good enough, or smart enough, or attractive enough.
At first, you didn't believe them.
Right?
You were still a "kid at heart." You thought that you could have it all.
But then you tried and failed.
We all did.
And the more we tried and failed, the more we began adopting these beliefs as "truths" and "facts."
These fraudulent truths and facts became our beliefs.
We started saying and believing:
I'm not good enough.
I'm not smart enough.
Nothing ever works out for me.
Other people are just lucky.
I'll never succeed.
Life is hard.
The list goes on and on, doesn't it?
Well, I'm here to tell you –
"This Is Not The Truth"
That is not who you are!
That is not what life is about!
These are other people's old, worn out, self-sabotaging beliefs.
And if you don't change these beliefs...
Life will continue to be hard.
You will continue to experience your life exactly like it is now.
You will continue to struggle.
You will continue to fight.
continue to "want more" and never get it.
Your Beliefs Literally Control Your Life.
They control YOU.
Now, obviously I'm NOT talking about religious or political beliefs.
I'm talking about the beliefs that are far more hidden.
It is the Hidden Beliefs that are actually Controlling Every Decision You Make and Action You Take.
You aren't even aware of the beliefs that are controlling your life.
Your beliefs are the cause and effect of everything in your life.
Your beliefs create your feelings and your emotional responses.
Your beliefs determine your success (or lack of it).
Your beliefs determine the quality of your relationships and even whom you choose to be in a relationship with.
Your beliefs determine the kind of... car you drive, home you live in, clothes you wear, job you have
"Your" beliefs have literally created the life "you" are now living.
If you are miserable in any area of your life, it is because of the beliefs you have in that area of your life.
If you aren't living the life of your dreams and creating the life you deserve, it is the perfect time to uncover the hidden beliefs that are keeping you stuck.
No amount of positive thinking, affirmations, law of attraction, or anything else will work to its full potential until you consciously select and incorporate new beliefs.
Our beliefs control everything in our lives!
Do you remember what it was like when you were a kid?
When you believed that you could be anything you wanted to be when you grew up?
When you believed you could do anything?
The possibilities were endless.
You remember don't you?
You could be a police officer, or a doctor, or an astronaut.
You believed you could be anything you wanted and have anything you wanted
Like that Radio Flyer Wagon or Barbie doll or Dump Truck
You believed that you were "worthy of" and "entitled to" that new toy that you wanted to play with.
You didn't think about the money it could cost to have it.
I mean, at some point you believed money grew on trees and you would think, "Why can't I have that wagon, doll or truck? Don't they {your parents} know how happy that would make me?"
You believed that anything was possible.
And it was.
You didn't have any doubts.
You didn't have any judgments.
You didn't see the "why nots," you just saw the "what ifs."
So, let me ask you this...
Do you still believe you can be or have anything you desire?
Do you believe you are worthy and deserving of having it all?
No?
Why not?
What happened?
Why don't you still believe that you can have it all?
Why don't you still believe that you are worthy enough?
Why do you see all the reasons why it won't work?
Why you can't do it?
Why it's not possible?
Why?
I'll tell you why, but first let me say this...
"It's not your fault that you believe this way."
Here's why:
As you went through life, your beliefs changed.
Other people told you that XYZ wasn't possible.
That told you that you had to work hard.
That life was a struggle.
That you didn't deserve it.
That you weren't good enough, or smart enough, or attractive enough.
At first, you didn't believe them.
Right?
You were still a "kid at heart." You thought that you could have it all.
But then you tried and failed.
We all did.
And the more we tried and failed, the more we began adopting these beliefs as "truths" and "facts."
These fraudulent truths and facts became our beliefs.
We started saying and believing:
I'm not good enough.
I'm not smart enough.
Nothing ever works out for me.
Other people are just lucky.
I'll never succeed.
Life is hard.
The list goes on and on, doesn't it?
Well, I'm here to tell you –
"This Is Not The Truth"
That is not who you are!
That is not what life is about!
These are other people's old, worn out, self-sabotaging beliefs.
And if you don't change these beliefs...
Life will continue to be hard.
You will continue to experience your life exactly like it is now.
You will continue to struggle.
You will continue to fight.
continue to "want more" and never get it.
Your Beliefs Literally Control Your Life.
They control YOU.
Now, obviously I'm NOT talking about religious or political beliefs.
I'm talking about the beliefs that are far more hidden.
It is the Hidden Beliefs that are actually Controlling Every Decision You Make and Action You Take.
You aren't even aware of the beliefs that are controlling your life.
Your beliefs are the cause and effect of everything in your life.
Your beliefs create your feelings and your emotional responses.
Your beliefs determine your success (or lack of it).
Your beliefs determine the quality of your relationships and even whom you choose to be in a relationship with.
Your beliefs determine the kind of... car you drive, home you live in, clothes you wear, job you have
"Your" beliefs have literally created the life "you" are now living.
If you are miserable in any area of your life, it is because of the beliefs you have in that area of your life.
If you aren't living the life of your dreams and creating the life you deserve, it is the perfect time to uncover the hidden beliefs that are keeping you stuck.
No amount of positive thinking, affirmations, law of attraction, or anything else will work to its full potential until you consciously select and incorporate new beliefs.
Our beliefs control everything in our lives!
Monday, July 04, 2011
The Major Arcana: The Life Of The Fool
(By Thirteen and reproduced from "Tarot Card Meanings" page in the website of Aeclectic Tarot: http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/learn/meanings/)
The Fool
With all his worldly possessions in one small pack, the Fool travels he knows not where. So filled with visions, questions, wonder and excitement is he, that he doesn't see the cliff he is likely to fall over. At his heel a small dog harries him (or tries to warn him of a possible mis-step). Will the Fool learn to pay attention to where he's going before it's too late?
The Magician
Travelling on his way, the Fool first encounters a Magician. Skilful, self-confident, a powerful magus with the infinite as a halo floating above his head, the Magician mesmerizes the Fool. When asked, the Fool gives over his bundled pack and stick to the Magician. Raising his wand to heaven, pointing his finger to Earth, the Magician calls on all powers. Magically, the cloth of the pack unfolds upon the table, revealing its contents.
To the Fool's eyes, it is as if the Magician has created the future with a word. All the possibilities are laid out, all the directions he can take: The cool, airy Sword of intellect and communication, the fiery Wand of passions and ambition, the overflowing Chalice of love and emotions, the solid Pentacle of work, possessions and body.
With these tools, the Fool can create anything, make anything of his life. But here's the question, did the Magician create the tools, or were they already in the pack? Only the Magician knows - and on this mystery, our eloquent mage refuses to say a word.
The High Priestess
Continuing his journey, the Fool comes upon a beautiful and mysterious veiled lady enthroned between two pillars and illuminated by the moon. She is the opposite of the Magician, quiet where he was loquacious, still where he was in motion, sitting while he stood, shrouded in the night where he was out in the bright of day. Sensing that she is a great seer, the Fool lays out his sword, chalice, staff and pentacle before her. "The Magician showed me these, but now I'm in a quandary. There are so many things I could do with them. I can't decide."
The High Priestess doesn't speak. Instead she hands him a pair of ancient scrolls. Seating himself at her feet, the Fool puts his decision-making on hold and reads by the light of her crescent moon.
"I did not know any of this," says the Fool. The scrolls, like a secret manual, have given him insight into his new tools. "This information helps me to narrow things down, but I'm still afraid of making a wrong decision."
The words come to him then, not from without but from within: "What do your instincts tell you?" The Fool reflects on that, and that's when he knows what he should do. Decision made, he rises to leave even though he suspects that the High Priestess has more secrets she could reveal to him--like what lies behind the pomegranate curtain. Right now, however, he is focused and ready to be on his way.
Thanking the High Priestess, he heads off. But as he leaves he hears that inner voice, rising like the waters which spring and flow from beneath her throne: "We'll meet again...when you're ready to travel the most secret path of all."
The Empress
Having decided what he will create with his tools, the Fool strides forward, impatient to make his future a full-grown reality. This is when he comes upon the Empress. Her hair gold as wheat, wearing a crown of stars, and a white gown dotted with pomegranates. She rests back on her throne surrounded by an abundance of grain and a lush garden. It is possible that she is pregnant.
Kneeling, the Fool relates to her his story. And she, in turn, smiles a motherly smile and gently gives him this advice: "Like newly planted grain or a newborn babe, a new life, a new relationship, a new creation is fragile. It requires patience and nurturing. It needs love and attention. Only this will bring it to fruition." Understanding at last that his creations will take time to develop, the Fool thanks the Empress and continues on his way.
The Emperor
The Fool was given options by the Magician, and decided on one with help from the High Priestess. He learned how to develop it thanks to the Empress. Now it has reached as stage where he must find a way to manage it. How to do this? He approaches a great Emperor seated on a stone throne. The Fool is amazed by the way the Emperor is instantly, eagerly obeyed in every particular, at how well his Empire is run and organized. Respectfully, he asks the Emperor how it is he does this. And the Emperor answers: "Strong will and a solid foundation of laws and order. It's all very well," he explains to the Fool, "to be imaginative, creative, instinctual, patient; but to control one must be alert, brave and aggressive."
Ready now to lead and direct rather than be led, the Fool heads out with new purpose.
The Hierophant
Having created a solid foundation on which to build his future, the Fool is struck with a sudden fear. What if everything he's worked for is taken away? Is stolen, or lost, or destroyed or vanishes? Or what if what he's created isn't good enough? In a panic, he heads into a temple where he finds the Hierophant, a wise and holy man. Acolytes kneel before the man ready to hear and pass on his teachings. The Fool tells the Hierophant his fears, and asks how he can be free of them.
"There are two ways," says the Hierophant sagely, "Either give up that which you fear to lose so it no longer holds any power over you, or consider what you will still have if your fear comes to pass. After all," the Hierophant continues, "if you did lose all you'd built, you would still keep the experience and knowledge that you've gained up to this point, wouldn't you?"
"That is true," the Fool says. "But what about the community, society and friends I've discovered thanks to what I've created? More than knowledge or experience, I value them. If I lost all, I'd lose them too, wouldn't I?"
"Not necessarily," the Hierophant answers with a warm glow in his compassionate eyes. "If your community has traditions that you all share, ethics and beliefs, then you will never lose that fellowship even if circumstances force you to part. You can even pass such onto your children giving them the same fellowship with each other and with past generations."
Hearing this, the Fool feels his heart ease, as if knots of fear have been loosened. A sense of peace blankets him, and he takes a moment to thank the good Hierophant most profoundly. Stepping out of the sanctuary he makes his way to a meeting with his friends. Tonight they will talk about how they can create lessons and traditions to preserve not only their experience and knowledge, but their community.
The Lovers
The Fool comes to a cross-road, filled with energy, confidence and purpose, knowing exactly where he wants to go and what he wants to do. But he comes to a dead stop. A flowering tree marks the path he wants to take, the one he's been planning on taking. But standing before a fruit tree marking the other path is a woman. The Fool has met and had relationships with women before, some far more beautiful and alluring. But she is different. Seeing her, he feels as though he's just been shot in the heart with cupid's arrow.
That's how shocking, how painful is his "recognition" of her. As he speaks with her, the feeling intensifies; like finding a missing part of himself. It is clear that she feels the same about him. They finish each other's sentences, think the same thoughts. It is as if an Angel above had introduced their souls to each other.
Though it was his plan to follow the path of the flowering tree, and though it will cause some trouble for him to bring this woman with him, the Fool knows he dare not leave her behind. Like the fruit tree, she will fulfil him. No matter how divergent from his original intent, she is his future. He chooses her, and together they head down a whole new road.
The Chariot
The Fool is close to completing what he set out to create long ago, back when the Magician revealed those tools to him. But enemies are now standing in his way, devious human enemies, bad circumstances, even confusion in his own mind. There's no more forward momentum; he feels he is fighting just to stay where he is. Walking along the shore, watching the waves come in, he puzzles over how to defeat these enemies and get things moving forward once again. It is here that he comes across a charioteer, standing in his gold and silver chariot, his black and white steeds at rest. "You seem a victorious warrior," the Fool remarks. "I feel beset by my enemies, unable to move forward. What should I do?
"First, you must armour yourself," the Charioteer strikes the chariot and then his breastplate with a gauntleted fist, making both ring out. "Next, you must focus on your goal, where do you mean to go, what do you mean to do." The warrior nods to his beasts. "Your steeds keep the wheels turning, but it is your control and direction of them that gets them to their destination. Dark and light, they must be made to draw in harmony, under your guidance." The Fool nods. That makes sense. "What if an someone or something gets in your way?"
The Charioteer coolly meets the Fool's gaze. "You run them down. Your aim is victory, and to be victorious you must have unwavering confidence in your cause. Never question, never doubt what you're trying to achieve. Never lose your focus or your motivation."
The Fool is impressed and inspired. He thinks he now knows how to get past all the distractions and setbacks that have been keeping him trapped in place, like a riptide in the ocean. He thanks the warrior, but before he leaves, the warrior stays the Fool.
"One thing more you should keep in mind," he says, "Victory is not the end, it is the beginning. Remember that before you decide to enter into any contest."
Strength
The Fool, victorious over his enemies, is feeling arrogant, powerful, even vengeful. There are hot passions in him, ones he finds himself unable and unwilling to control. It is in this state that he comes across a maiden struggling with a lion. Running to help, he arrives in time to see her gently but firmly shut the lion's mouth! In fact, the beast, which seemed so wild and fierce, is now completely at her command.
Amazed, the Fool asks her, "How did you do that?" One hand on the lion's mane, she answers, "I asked the lion to do it, and it did it."
"But-but-" the Fool stutters, confounded. "Why did it want to obey?" At that moment, the Maiden meets the Fool's eyes; he sees in her warmth, gentleness, a heart so great that its generosity seems as infinite as its willingness to understand. And that is when the Fool understands exactly why the lion did her bidding.
It wanted to connect to that higher energy.
Yet there is still one thing that confuses the Fool. "But," he says, much softer now, "Why would you, fair maiden, want to keep company with a beast?"
"Because he, too, is filled with a wonderful energy," the Maiden says. "It is wild and fierce, but it can be banked, like a fire in a hearth. I knew if he would take direction from me, we could both be warmed."
"So, too," she adds, "are our passions. Let them run wild and they will do damage. But we can, with gentle fortitude, check and direct those passions. In doing so, we can get so much more out of them. And yet, still sate them."
His rage quieted, the enlightened Fool walks away knowing that it wasn't only the lion that was tamed this day by a Maiden's pure and innocent strength.
The Hermit
After a long and busy lifetime, building, creating, loving, hating, fighting, compromising, failing, succeeding, the Fool feels a profound need to retreat. In a small, rustic home deep in the woods, he hides, reading, cleaning, organizing, resting or just thinking. But every night at dusk he heads out, travelling across the bare, autumnal landscape. He carries only a staff and a lantern.
It is during these restless walks from dusk till dawn, peering at and examining whatever takes his fancy, that he sees things he's missed during his lifetime. His lantern illuminates animals and insects that only come out at night, flowers and plants that only bloom by moon or star light.
As these secret corners of the world are illuminated and explored by him, he feels that he is also illuminating hidden areas of his mind. In a way, he has become the Fool again. As in the beginning, he goes wherever inspiration leads him. Back then, however, his staff rested on his shoulder, carrying unseen his pack. The Fool was like the pack: wrapped up, unknown. The Hermit's staff leans out before him now, not behind. And it carries a lantern, not a pack. The Hermit is like the lantern, illuminated from within by all he is, capable of penetrating the darkness.
The Wheel of Fortune
From out of hiding comes the Fool, into the sunlight, as if being pulled up from some low, dark point on a wheel. It is time for a change. Staff in hand, he heads back out into the world, expecting nothing. But, strangely, things seem to happen to him as the hours go by, good things. Wandering by a water wheel a woman offers him a drink in a golden chalice, and then urges him to keep the cup; as he wanders by a windmill, he stops to watch a young man swinging a sword; when he expresses his admiration of the weapon, the young man presses it into his hand, insisting that he take it.
And finally, when he comes upon a rich merchant sitting in a wagon, right over one of the wheels, the man hands him a bag of money. "I decided to give this to the tenth person who walked past me today," explains the Merchant, "You're the tenth." The Fool hardly thought he could still be surprised, but he is. It is as if everything good that he ever did in his life is being paid back to him, three-fold. All luck this day is his.
Justice
The Fool is looking for a new path, a new aspiration and inspiration for his life. Sitting uncertain at a crossroads he notices a blind wise woman listening to two brothers argue over an inheritance. They have come to her for judgment. One brother has the whole inheritance, the other has nothing.
"I ask that all of it be given to me," the poor brother demands, "Not only because I have a better right to it, but because I will not be wasteful with it, as he is!" But the rich brother protests, "It is rightfully mine and that's all that should matter, not what I do with it!"
The woman listens, then awards half of the rich brother's inheritance to the poor brother. The Fool thinks this only fair, but neither brother is happy. The rich one hates losing half his wealth, and the poor one feels he ought to have gotten all.
"You were fair," the Fool remarks to the woman after the brothers have left. "Yes, I was," she answers plainly. "With only half the inheritance, the rich one will stop being so wasteful. And the poor one will have as much as he needs. Even though they cannot see it, this decision was good for both."
The Fool thinks on this and realizes that he has spent his life achieving worldly ambitions and physical goods while leaving his spiritual self to starve. He ought to have given half his time and energy to his spiritual self, but he didn't. It's no wonder that he feels unbalanced. Thanking the woman, he heads out to restore equilibrium to his inner scales.
The Hanged Man
The Fool settles beneath a tree, intent on finding his spiritual self. There he stays for nine days, without eating, barely moving. People pass by him, animals, clouds, the wind, the rain, the stars, sun and moon. On the ninth day, with no conscious thought of why, he climbs the tree and dangles from a branch upside down like a child. For a moment, he surrenders all that he is, wants, knows or cares about. Coins fall from his pockets and as he gazes down on them - seeing them not as money but only as round bits of metal.
It seems to him that his perspective of the world has completely changed, as if his inverted position has allowed him to dangle between the mundane world and the spiritual world, able to see both. It is a dazzling moment, dreamlike yet crystal clear.
Timeless as this moment of clarity seems, he realizes that it will not last. Very soon, he must right himself, but when he does, things will be different. He will have to act on what he's learned. For now, however, he just hangs, weightless as if underwater, observing, absorbing, seeing.
Death
Having left the tree from where he hung, the Fool moves carefully through a fallow field, head still clearing from visions. The air is cold and wintry, the trees bare. He knows he has started on his spiritual journey in earnest, but feels strangely empty and profoundly sad, as if he has lost something.
Before him he sees, rising with the sun, a skeleton in black armour mounted on a white horse. He recognizes it as Death. As it stops before him, he humbly asks, "Have I died?" And the Skeleton answers, "Yes, in a way. You sacrificed your old world, your old self. Both are gone, dead."
The Fool cannot keep from weeping. "Forgive me," he says, embarrassed by his tears.
"There is nothing to forgive," Death replies. "Mourning is natural and you must deal with your loss before you can accept anything new. Keep in mind, however, that old leaves must wither and fly away from a tree's branches, leaving them bare, before new green leaves can appear."
As Death rides away, the Fool sees the truth in those words. He, too, feels like a skeleton, all that he was stripped away. This, he understands, is how all great transformations start, by removing everything down to bare bone or soil so that something new has room to grow.
Temperance
Recovering from feelings of loss at last, the Fool begins to wonder if he will finally find the new spirituality he's after. It occurs to him that so far, he's been dealing with opposites: the two opposing sides of the scales (Justice), the material and spiritual (which he hung between as the Hanged man), death and birth (the one leading into the other in the Death card). Does one always have to be surrendered to get the other? he wonders.
It is at this point that he comes upon a winged figure standing with one foot in a brook, the other on a rock. The radiant creature pours something from one flask into another. Drawing closer, the Fool sees that what is being poured from one flask is fire, while water flows from the other. The two are being blended together into a completely different substance!
"How can you mix fire and water?" the Fool finally whispers. Never pausing the Angel answers, "You must have the right vessels and use the right proportions."
The Fool watches with wonder. "Can this be done with all opposites?" he asks. "Indeed," the Angel replies, "Any oppositions, fire and water, man and woman, thesis and anti-thesis, can be made into a unified third. It is only a lack of will and a disbelief in the possibility that keeps opposites, opposite." And that is when the Fool begins to understand that he is the one who is keeping his universe in twain, holding life/death, material world and spiritual world separate. In him the two could merge. All it takes, the Fool realizes, is the right proportions, the right vessel and enough faith that the two can be unified.
The Devil
The Fool comes to the foot of an enormous black mountain where reigns a creature half goat, half god. At his hooves naked people, linked to the god's throne by chains, engage in every indulgence imaginable: sex, drugs, food, drink. The closer the Fool gets, the more he feels his own earthly desires rising in him. Carnal desires, hunger for food and power, greed and selfishness. "I have given up all such desires!" he roars at the Goat god, resisting the beast's power with all his might. He is sure that this is a test of his new spirituality, one where he must prove that the temptations of the material world cannot sway him.
The creature responds to his defiance with a curious look. "All I am doing is bringing out what is already in you," it responds mildly. "Such feelings are nothing to fear, nothing to be ashamed of, or even to avoid. They are even useful to helping you in your quest for spirituality, though many try to pretend otherwise."
The Fool gestures angrily at the chained men and women, "You say that even though these are clearly enslaved to the material world?"
The Goat-god mimics the Fool's gesture. "Take another look." The Fool does so, and realizes that the chained collars the men and women wear are wide enough for them to easily slip off over their heads. "They can be free if they wish to be," the Goat-god says, "They remain here because they want to be controlled by their base, bestial desires. There are, however, others…."
At this the Goat-god gestures upward, toward the peak of the mountain. "…Others who have used these same impulses to climb to the highest heights. If they had denied their desires they'd never have gotten there."
On hearing this, the Fool sees that he has mistaken the Goat-god. This is not a creature of evil as he thought, but of great power, the lowest and the highest, both of beast and god. Like all power, it is frightening, and dangerous...but it is also a key to freedom and transcendence.
The Tower
As the Fool leaves the throne of the Goat God, he comes upon a Tower, fantastic, magnificent, and familiar. In fact, The Fool, himself, helped build this Tower back when the most important thing to him was making his mark on the world and proving himself better than other men. Inside the Tower, at the top, arrogant men still live, convinced of their rightness.
Seeing the Tower again, the Fool feels as if lightning has just flashed across his mind; he thought he'd left that old self behind when he started on this spiritual journey. But he realizes now that he hasn't. He's been seeing himself, like the Tower, like the men inside, as alone and singular and superior, when in fact, he is no such thing.
So captured is he by the shock of this insight, that he opens his mouth and releases a SHOUT! And to his astonishment and terror, a bolt of actual lightning slashes down from the heavens striking the Tower and sending its residents leaping out into the waters below.
In a moment, it is over. The Tower is rubble, only rocks remaining. Stunned and shaken to the core, the Fool experiences profound fear and disbelief. But also, a strange clarity of vision, as if his inner eye has finally opened. He tore down his resistance to change and sacrifice (Hanged man), then came to terms with Death (Death); he learned about moderation and synthesis (Temperance) and about power (The Devil). But here and now, he has done what was hardest: he destroyed the lies of his life. What's left are the foundations of truth. On this he can rebuild himself.
The Star
On the bleak landscape where the Tower stood, the Fool sits, empty, despairing. He hoped to find direction on this spiritual journey, a path to his spiritual self, but having just learned that most of his life was a lie, he now feels lost. Sitting on the cold stones, he gazes up at the night sky wishing for some kind of guide. And that is when he notices, nearby, a beautiful girl with two water urns. As he watches, she kneels by a pool of water illuminated with reflected starlight. She empties the urns, one into the pool, one onto the thirsty ground.
"What are you doing," he asks her. She looks up at him, her eyes twinkling like stars. "I am refilling this pool, so that those who are thirsty may drink, and I am also watering the earth so that more fruit trees will grow to feed those who are hungry." She nods back to a single fruit tree that stands nearby, a nightingale singing amid its branches.
"Come," she invites. "Sate your hunger and quench your thirst."
The Fool plucks some fruit from the tree, then kneels by her and drinks from the pool. The water tastes wonderful, like liquid starlight, and the fruit is equally delicious. Both help to heal his wounded heart.
Having quenched his thirst and sated his hunger, the Fool lays back to gaze up at the stars. "They're so beautiful," he said, "but so distant."
"Like possible futures," agrees the girl. "Cool and distant. Yet if you keep one in sight, it can guide you to your destination no matter how far away it is." Even as she says this, she began to fade away, like dew, vanishing. All that remains is a gleam that was at the centre of her forehead. This rises up and up, until it settles in the night sky as a shining star. "Follow your star," the woman's voice seems to sing from that light, "and have hope."
The Fool takes in a breath and rises. It is a dark night, a desolate land. But for the first time, he has a guiding light to show him the way. Distant as it is, it restores his faith.
The Moon
Following the star the Fool travels through the night. The full Moon rises, illuminating for him a watery path. And he begins to feel disoriented, as if walking in his sleep. He passes under the moon, between two pillars ancient and strange. Suddenly, he looks around to find himself in another land entirely. When he was in the presence of the High Priestess, he saw hints of this dark land through the sheer veil draped behind her throne. And later, when he hung from the tree, he felt himself between the physical world and this one. Now, he has at last passed behind the veil.
Here are the mysteries he sought, the darkest mysteries, ones that have to do with the most primal and ancient powers. It is a land poets, artists, musicians and madmen know well, a terrifying, alluring place, with very different rules. Wolves run wild across this land, hunting alongside maidens with bow and arrows. Creatures from childhood nightmares and fantasies peer from shadows, eyes glowing.
The path the Fool was walking is now a river, and he stands hip-deep in the powerful pull of its salty waters. There is, on the nearby shore, a small boat, but it has no rudder, no oar. The Fool realizes he has only two choices. He can lose himself in this desolate, primal land of madness and illusion, howl with the wolves, be hunted down, or he can get into the boat and trust himself to the river. The moon will be in control either way, but in the boat his surrender to the powers of the unconscious will at least take him somewhere.
Inspiration, visions and genius are the rewards of such surrender to the Moon's Magic, as artists, poets and seers know. The Fool gets into the boat, and shoves off. As the waters sweep him away, moonbeams light his "path" and he feels the Mistress of this dark land gazing down at him with the High Priestess's approving eyes.
The Sun
The Fool wakes at dawn from his long, dark night of the soul to find that the river has deposited him in a serene pool. There is a walled garden around this pond dominated by roses, lilies and splendid, nodding sunflowers. Stepping ashore, he watches the sun rise overhead. The day is clear. A child's laughter attracts his attention and he sees a little boy ride a small white pony into the garden.
"Come!" says the little boy, leaping off the horse and running up to him. "Come see!" And the child proceeds to take the Fool's hand and enthusiastically point out all manner of things, the busy insects in the grass, the seeds and petals on the sunflowers, the way the light sparkles on the pond. He asks questions of the Fool, simple but profound ones, like "Why is the sky blue?" He sings songs, and plays games with the Fool.
At one point the Fool stops, blinking up at the Sun so large and golden overhead, and he finds himself smiling, wider and brighter than he has in a very long time. He has been tested and tried, confused and scared, dismayed and amazed. But this is the first time that he has been simply and purely happy. His mind feels illuminated, his soul light and bright as a sunbeam, and it's all thanks to this child with his simple questions, games and songs. This boy has helped the Fool see the world and himself anew.
"Who are you?" the Fool asks the child at last. The child smiles at this and seems to shine. And then he grows brighter and brighter until he turns into pure sunlight.
"I'm You," the boy's voice says throughout the garden, "The new you." And as the words fill the Fool with warmth and energy, he comes to realize that this garden, the sun above, the child, all exist within him. He has just met his own inner light.
Judgement
As the Fool leaves the garden of the Sun, he feels that he is near the end of his journey, ready to take a final step. But something is keeping him from doing this, holding him back. He gazes up, hoping to find guidance from the Sun; instead he sees above him a fiery angel, beautiful and terrible.
"You are right," the Angelic figure confirms, "you have only one last step on your journey, one final step to completion. But you cannot take that step until you lay your past to rest."
The Fool is perturbed. "Lay it to rest? I thought I'd left it behind, all of it!"
"There is no way to leave the past behind," The Angel observes. "Each step wears down the shoe just a bit, and so shapes the next step you take, and the next and the next. Your past is always under your feet. You cannot hide from it, run from it, or rid yourself of it. But you can call it up, and come to terms with it. Are you willing to do that?"
The Angel hands the Fool a small trumpet. The Fool is hesitant, but he knows that the Angel is right. There are certain memories he has a hard time looking back on as they make him feel guilty, ashamed, angry. He knows that he's never come to terms with what happened and he must if he wants to make that final transition.
He blows the trumpet and it cracks open the Earth. From under the Fool's feet, the spirits of his past selves rise up, including those less than admirable past selves that he's tried to forget.
For the first time, he faces them. They are, he sees, nothing to fear. They were him once-upon-a-time, but not now. Even as he realizes this, he finds himself forgiving those past selves for the wrongs they did that left him feeling bad. He senses, in turn, that they forgive him for ignoring the lessons they had to teach him. As he reaches an understanding with them, they start to rise up and float away, vanishing into the sky. Though they remain as experiences and memories, they no longer have any power over him. He is free of ill-feelings, reborn, and living in the present.
The World
The Fool turns to take that final step along his final path, and finds, to his bemusement, that he is right back where he started, at the edge of that very same cliff he almost stepped over when he was young and too foolish to look where he was going. But now he sees his position very differently. He thought he could separate body and mind, learn all about one, then leave it to learn about the other. But in the end, it is all about the self: mind and body, past and future, the individual, and the world. All one, including the Fool and the Mystic who are both doorways to the secrets of the universe.
With a knowing smile, the Fool takes that final step right off the cliff...and soars. Higher and higher, until the whole of the world is his to see. And there he dances, surrounded by a yoni of stars, at one with the universe. Ending, in a sense, where he began, beginning again at the end. The world turns, and the Fool's journey is complete.
N.B. Dedicated to the diversity and beauty of Tarot, Aeclectic Tarot is the website which would provide its visitors with an abundant wealth of knowledge and information on the topic of Tarot. Thirteen, through the Aeclectic Tarot Forum, has weaved this beautiful story based on the design of the Major Arcana of the Rider-Waite Tarot style of the Tarot deck. The Rider-Waite Tarot is a classic Tarot deck, perhaps the most well-known in the Western world. It is often called the first modern Tarot deck, as the cards drawn by Pamela Colman-Smith and commissioned by Waite were the first to use detailed pictures on the minor arcana cards. One may sample some of the deck's designs at this link: http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/rider-waite/.
The Fool
With all his worldly possessions in one small pack, the Fool travels he knows not where. So filled with visions, questions, wonder and excitement is he, that he doesn't see the cliff he is likely to fall over. At his heel a small dog harries him (or tries to warn him of a possible mis-step). Will the Fool learn to pay attention to where he's going before it's too late?
The Magician
Travelling on his way, the Fool first encounters a Magician. Skilful, self-confident, a powerful magus with the infinite as a halo floating above his head, the Magician mesmerizes the Fool. When asked, the Fool gives over his bundled pack and stick to the Magician. Raising his wand to heaven, pointing his finger to Earth, the Magician calls on all powers. Magically, the cloth of the pack unfolds upon the table, revealing its contents.
To the Fool's eyes, it is as if the Magician has created the future with a word. All the possibilities are laid out, all the directions he can take: The cool, airy Sword of intellect and communication, the fiery Wand of passions and ambition, the overflowing Chalice of love and emotions, the solid Pentacle of work, possessions and body.
With these tools, the Fool can create anything, make anything of his life. But here's the question, did the Magician create the tools, or were they already in the pack? Only the Magician knows - and on this mystery, our eloquent mage refuses to say a word.
The High Priestess
Continuing his journey, the Fool comes upon a beautiful and mysterious veiled lady enthroned between two pillars and illuminated by the moon. She is the opposite of the Magician, quiet where he was loquacious, still where he was in motion, sitting while he stood, shrouded in the night where he was out in the bright of day. Sensing that she is a great seer, the Fool lays out his sword, chalice, staff and pentacle before her. "The Magician showed me these, but now I'm in a quandary. There are so many things I could do with them. I can't decide."
The High Priestess doesn't speak. Instead she hands him a pair of ancient scrolls. Seating himself at her feet, the Fool puts his decision-making on hold and reads by the light of her crescent moon.
"I did not know any of this," says the Fool. The scrolls, like a secret manual, have given him insight into his new tools. "This information helps me to narrow things down, but I'm still afraid of making a wrong decision."
The words come to him then, not from without but from within: "What do your instincts tell you?" The Fool reflects on that, and that's when he knows what he should do. Decision made, he rises to leave even though he suspects that the High Priestess has more secrets she could reveal to him--like what lies behind the pomegranate curtain. Right now, however, he is focused and ready to be on his way.
Thanking the High Priestess, he heads off. But as he leaves he hears that inner voice, rising like the waters which spring and flow from beneath her throne: "We'll meet again...when you're ready to travel the most secret path of all."
The Empress
Having decided what he will create with his tools, the Fool strides forward, impatient to make his future a full-grown reality. This is when he comes upon the Empress. Her hair gold as wheat, wearing a crown of stars, and a white gown dotted with pomegranates. She rests back on her throne surrounded by an abundance of grain and a lush garden. It is possible that she is pregnant.
Kneeling, the Fool relates to her his story. And she, in turn, smiles a motherly smile and gently gives him this advice: "Like newly planted grain or a newborn babe, a new life, a new relationship, a new creation is fragile. It requires patience and nurturing. It needs love and attention. Only this will bring it to fruition." Understanding at last that his creations will take time to develop, the Fool thanks the Empress and continues on his way.
The Emperor
The Fool was given options by the Magician, and decided on one with help from the High Priestess. He learned how to develop it thanks to the Empress. Now it has reached as stage where he must find a way to manage it. How to do this? He approaches a great Emperor seated on a stone throne. The Fool is amazed by the way the Emperor is instantly, eagerly obeyed in every particular, at how well his Empire is run and organized. Respectfully, he asks the Emperor how it is he does this. And the Emperor answers: "Strong will and a solid foundation of laws and order. It's all very well," he explains to the Fool, "to be imaginative, creative, instinctual, patient; but to control one must be alert, brave and aggressive."
Ready now to lead and direct rather than be led, the Fool heads out with new purpose.
The Hierophant
Having created a solid foundation on which to build his future, the Fool is struck with a sudden fear. What if everything he's worked for is taken away? Is stolen, or lost, or destroyed or vanishes? Or what if what he's created isn't good enough? In a panic, he heads into a temple where he finds the Hierophant, a wise and holy man. Acolytes kneel before the man ready to hear and pass on his teachings. The Fool tells the Hierophant his fears, and asks how he can be free of them.
"There are two ways," says the Hierophant sagely, "Either give up that which you fear to lose so it no longer holds any power over you, or consider what you will still have if your fear comes to pass. After all," the Hierophant continues, "if you did lose all you'd built, you would still keep the experience and knowledge that you've gained up to this point, wouldn't you?"
"That is true," the Fool says. "But what about the community, society and friends I've discovered thanks to what I've created? More than knowledge or experience, I value them. If I lost all, I'd lose them too, wouldn't I?"
"Not necessarily," the Hierophant answers with a warm glow in his compassionate eyes. "If your community has traditions that you all share, ethics and beliefs, then you will never lose that fellowship even if circumstances force you to part. You can even pass such onto your children giving them the same fellowship with each other and with past generations."
Hearing this, the Fool feels his heart ease, as if knots of fear have been loosened. A sense of peace blankets him, and he takes a moment to thank the good Hierophant most profoundly. Stepping out of the sanctuary he makes his way to a meeting with his friends. Tonight they will talk about how they can create lessons and traditions to preserve not only their experience and knowledge, but their community.
The Lovers
The Fool comes to a cross-road, filled with energy, confidence and purpose, knowing exactly where he wants to go and what he wants to do. But he comes to a dead stop. A flowering tree marks the path he wants to take, the one he's been planning on taking. But standing before a fruit tree marking the other path is a woman. The Fool has met and had relationships with women before, some far more beautiful and alluring. But she is different. Seeing her, he feels as though he's just been shot in the heart with cupid's arrow.
That's how shocking, how painful is his "recognition" of her. As he speaks with her, the feeling intensifies; like finding a missing part of himself. It is clear that she feels the same about him. They finish each other's sentences, think the same thoughts. It is as if an Angel above had introduced their souls to each other.
Though it was his plan to follow the path of the flowering tree, and though it will cause some trouble for him to bring this woman with him, the Fool knows he dare not leave her behind. Like the fruit tree, she will fulfil him. No matter how divergent from his original intent, she is his future. He chooses her, and together they head down a whole new road.
The Chariot
The Fool is close to completing what he set out to create long ago, back when the Magician revealed those tools to him. But enemies are now standing in his way, devious human enemies, bad circumstances, even confusion in his own mind. There's no more forward momentum; he feels he is fighting just to stay where he is. Walking along the shore, watching the waves come in, he puzzles over how to defeat these enemies and get things moving forward once again. It is here that he comes across a charioteer, standing in his gold and silver chariot, his black and white steeds at rest. "You seem a victorious warrior," the Fool remarks. "I feel beset by my enemies, unable to move forward. What should I do?
"First, you must armour yourself," the Charioteer strikes the chariot and then his breastplate with a gauntleted fist, making both ring out. "Next, you must focus on your goal, where do you mean to go, what do you mean to do." The warrior nods to his beasts. "Your steeds keep the wheels turning, but it is your control and direction of them that gets them to their destination. Dark and light, they must be made to draw in harmony, under your guidance." The Fool nods. That makes sense. "What if an someone or something gets in your way?"
The Charioteer coolly meets the Fool's gaze. "You run them down. Your aim is victory, and to be victorious you must have unwavering confidence in your cause. Never question, never doubt what you're trying to achieve. Never lose your focus or your motivation."
The Fool is impressed and inspired. He thinks he now knows how to get past all the distractions and setbacks that have been keeping him trapped in place, like a riptide in the ocean. He thanks the warrior, but before he leaves, the warrior stays the Fool.
"One thing more you should keep in mind," he says, "Victory is not the end, it is the beginning. Remember that before you decide to enter into any contest."
Strength
The Fool, victorious over his enemies, is feeling arrogant, powerful, even vengeful. There are hot passions in him, ones he finds himself unable and unwilling to control. It is in this state that he comes across a maiden struggling with a lion. Running to help, he arrives in time to see her gently but firmly shut the lion's mouth! In fact, the beast, which seemed so wild and fierce, is now completely at her command.
Amazed, the Fool asks her, "How did you do that?" One hand on the lion's mane, she answers, "I asked the lion to do it, and it did it."
"But-but-" the Fool stutters, confounded. "Why did it want to obey?" At that moment, the Maiden meets the Fool's eyes; he sees in her warmth, gentleness, a heart so great that its generosity seems as infinite as its willingness to understand. And that is when the Fool understands exactly why the lion did her bidding.
It wanted to connect to that higher energy.
Yet there is still one thing that confuses the Fool. "But," he says, much softer now, "Why would you, fair maiden, want to keep company with a beast?"
"Because he, too, is filled with a wonderful energy," the Maiden says. "It is wild and fierce, but it can be banked, like a fire in a hearth. I knew if he would take direction from me, we could both be warmed."
"So, too," she adds, "are our passions. Let them run wild and they will do damage. But we can, with gentle fortitude, check and direct those passions. In doing so, we can get so much more out of them. And yet, still sate them."
His rage quieted, the enlightened Fool walks away knowing that it wasn't only the lion that was tamed this day by a Maiden's pure and innocent strength.
The Hermit
After a long and busy lifetime, building, creating, loving, hating, fighting, compromising, failing, succeeding, the Fool feels a profound need to retreat. In a small, rustic home deep in the woods, he hides, reading, cleaning, organizing, resting or just thinking. But every night at dusk he heads out, travelling across the bare, autumnal landscape. He carries only a staff and a lantern.
It is during these restless walks from dusk till dawn, peering at and examining whatever takes his fancy, that he sees things he's missed during his lifetime. His lantern illuminates animals and insects that only come out at night, flowers and plants that only bloom by moon or star light.
As these secret corners of the world are illuminated and explored by him, he feels that he is also illuminating hidden areas of his mind. In a way, he has become the Fool again. As in the beginning, he goes wherever inspiration leads him. Back then, however, his staff rested on his shoulder, carrying unseen his pack. The Fool was like the pack: wrapped up, unknown. The Hermit's staff leans out before him now, not behind. And it carries a lantern, not a pack. The Hermit is like the lantern, illuminated from within by all he is, capable of penetrating the darkness.
The Wheel of Fortune
From out of hiding comes the Fool, into the sunlight, as if being pulled up from some low, dark point on a wheel. It is time for a change. Staff in hand, he heads back out into the world, expecting nothing. But, strangely, things seem to happen to him as the hours go by, good things. Wandering by a water wheel a woman offers him a drink in a golden chalice, and then urges him to keep the cup; as he wanders by a windmill, he stops to watch a young man swinging a sword; when he expresses his admiration of the weapon, the young man presses it into his hand, insisting that he take it.
And finally, when he comes upon a rich merchant sitting in a wagon, right over one of the wheels, the man hands him a bag of money. "I decided to give this to the tenth person who walked past me today," explains the Merchant, "You're the tenth." The Fool hardly thought he could still be surprised, but he is. It is as if everything good that he ever did in his life is being paid back to him, three-fold. All luck this day is his.
Justice
The Fool is looking for a new path, a new aspiration and inspiration for his life. Sitting uncertain at a crossroads he notices a blind wise woman listening to two brothers argue over an inheritance. They have come to her for judgment. One brother has the whole inheritance, the other has nothing.
"I ask that all of it be given to me," the poor brother demands, "Not only because I have a better right to it, but because I will not be wasteful with it, as he is!" But the rich brother protests, "It is rightfully mine and that's all that should matter, not what I do with it!"
The woman listens, then awards half of the rich brother's inheritance to the poor brother. The Fool thinks this only fair, but neither brother is happy. The rich one hates losing half his wealth, and the poor one feels he ought to have gotten all.
"You were fair," the Fool remarks to the woman after the brothers have left. "Yes, I was," she answers plainly. "With only half the inheritance, the rich one will stop being so wasteful. And the poor one will have as much as he needs. Even though they cannot see it, this decision was good for both."
The Fool thinks on this and realizes that he has spent his life achieving worldly ambitions and physical goods while leaving his spiritual self to starve. He ought to have given half his time and energy to his spiritual self, but he didn't. It's no wonder that he feels unbalanced. Thanking the woman, he heads out to restore equilibrium to his inner scales.
The Hanged Man
The Fool settles beneath a tree, intent on finding his spiritual self. There he stays for nine days, without eating, barely moving. People pass by him, animals, clouds, the wind, the rain, the stars, sun and moon. On the ninth day, with no conscious thought of why, he climbs the tree and dangles from a branch upside down like a child. For a moment, he surrenders all that he is, wants, knows or cares about. Coins fall from his pockets and as he gazes down on them - seeing them not as money but only as round bits of metal.
It seems to him that his perspective of the world has completely changed, as if his inverted position has allowed him to dangle between the mundane world and the spiritual world, able to see both. It is a dazzling moment, dreamlike yet crystal clear.
Timeless as this moment of clarity seems, he realizes that it will not last. Very soon, he must right himself, but when he does, things will be different. He will have to act on what he's learned. For now, however, he just hangs, weightless as if underwater, observing, absorbing, seeing.
Death
Having left the tree from where he hung, the Fool moves carefully through a fallow field, head still clearing from visions. The air is cold and wintry, the trees bare. He knows he has started on his spiritual journey in earnest, but feels strangely empty and profoundly sad, as if he has lost something.
Before him he sees, rising with the sun, a skeleton in black armour mounted on a white horse. He recognizes it as Death. As it stops before him, he humbly asks, "Have I died?" And the Skeleton answers, "Yes, in a way. You sacrificed your old world, your old self. Both are gone, dead."
The Fool cannot keep from weeping. "Forgive me," he says, embarrassed by his tears.
"There is nothing to forgive," Death replies. "Mourning is natural and you must deal with your loss before you can accept anything new. Keep in mind, however, that old leaves must wither and fly away from a tree's branches, leaving them bare, before new green leaves can appear."
As Death rides away, the Fool sees the truth in those words. He, too, feels like a skeleton, all that he was stripped away. This, he understands, is how all great transformations start, by removing everything down to bare bone or soil so that something new has room to grow.
Temperance
Recovering from feelings of loss at last, the Fool begins to wonder if he will finally find the new spirituality he's after. It occurs to him that so far, he's been dealing with opposites: the two opposing sides of the scales (Justice), the material and spiritual (which he hung between as the Hanged man), death and birth (the one leading into the other in the Death card). Does one always have to be surrendered to get the other? he wonders.
It is at this point that he comes upon a winged figure standing with one foot in a brook, the other on a rock. The radiant creature pours something from one flask into another. Drawing closer, the Fool sees that what is being poured from one flask is fire, while water flows from the other. The two are being blended together into a completely different substance!
"How can you mix fire and water?" the Fool finally whispers. Never pausing the Angel answers, "You must have the right vessels and use the right proportions."
The Fool watches with wonder. "Can this be done with all opposites?" he asks. "Indeed," the Angel replies, "Any oppositions, fire and water, man and woman, thesis and anti-thesis, can be made into a unified third. It is only a lack of will and a disbelief in the possibility that keeps opposites, opposite." And that is when the Fool begins to understand that he is the one who is keeping his universe in twain, holding life/death, material world and spiritual world separate. In him the two could merge. All it takes, the Fool realizes, is the right proportions, the right vessel and enough faith that the two can be unified.
The Devil
The Fool comes to the foot of an enormous black mountain where reigns a creature half goat, half god. At his hooves naked people, linked to the god's throne by chains, engage in every indulgence imaginable: sex, drugs, food, drink. The closer the Fool gets, the more he feels his own earthly desires rising in him. Carnal desires, hunger for food and power, greed and selfishness. "I have given up all such desires!" he roars at the Goat god, resisting the beast's power with all his might. He is sure that this is a test of his new spirituality, one where he must prove that the temptations of the material world cannot sway him.
The creature responds to his defiance with a curious look. "All I am doing is bringing out what is already in you," it responds mildly. "Such feelings are nothing to fear, nothing to be ashamed of, or even to avoid. They are even useful to helping you in your quest for spirituality, though many try to pretend otherwise."
The Fool gestures angrily at the chained men and women, "You say that even though these are clearly enslaved to the material world?"
The Goat-god mimics the Fool's gesture. "Take another look." The Fool does so, and realizes that the chained collars the men and women wear are wide enough for them to easily slip off over their heads. "They can be free if they wish to be," the Goat-god says, "They remain here because they want to be controlled by their base, bestial desires. There are, however, others…."
At this the Goat-god gestures upward, toward the peak of the mountain. "…Others who have used these same impulses to climb to the highest heights. If they had denied their desires they'd never have gotten there."
On hearing this, the Fool sees that he has mistaken the Goat-god. This is not a creature of evil as he thought, but of great power, the lowest and the highest, both of beast and god. Like all power, it is frightening, and dangerous...but it is also a key to freedom and transcendence.
The Tower
As the Fool leaves the throne of the Goat God, he comes upon a Tower, fantastic, magnificent, and familiar. In fact, The Fool, himself, helped build this Tower back when the most important thing to him was making his mark on the world and proving himself better than other men. Inside the Tower, at the top, arrogant men still live, convinced of their rightness.
Seeing the Tower again, the Fool feels as if lightning has just flashed across his mind; he thought he'd left that old self behind when he started on this spiritual journey. But he realizes now that he hasn't. He's been seeing himself, like the Tower, like the men inside, as alone and singular and superior, when in fact, he is no such thing.
So captured is he by the shock of this insight, that he opens his mouth and releases a SHOUT! And to his astonishment and terror, a bolt of actual lightning slashes down from the heavens striking the Tower and sending its residents leaping out into the waters below.
In a moment, it is over. The Tower is rubble, only rocks remaining. Stunned and shaken to the core, the Fool experiences profound fear and disbelief. But also, a strange clarity of vision, as if his inner eye has finally opened. He tore down his resistance to change and sacrifice (Hanged man), then came to terms with Death (Death); he learned about moderation and synthesis (Temperance) and about power (The Devil). But here and now, he has done what was hardest: he destroyed the lies of his life. What's left are the foundations of truth. On this he can rebuild himself.
The Star
On the bleak landscape where the Tower stood, the Fool sits, empty, despairing. He hoped to find direction on this spiritual journey, a path to his spiritual self, but having just learned that most of his life was a lie, he now feels lost. Sitting on the cold stones, he gazes up at the night sky wishing for some kind of guide. And that is when he notices, nearby, a beautiful girl with two water urns. As he watches, she kneels by a pool of water illuminated with reflected starlight. She empties the urns, one into the pool, one onto the thirsty ground.
"What are you doing," he asks her. She looks up at him, her eyes twinkling like stars. "I am refilling this pool, so that those who are thirsty may drink, and I am also watering the earth so that more fruit trees will grow to feed those who are hungry." She nods back to a single fruit tree that stands nearby, a nightingale singing amid its branches.
"Come," she invites. "Sate your hunger and quench your thirst."
The Fool plucks some fruit from the tree, then kneels by her and drinks from the pool. The water tastes wonderful, like liquid starlight, and the fruit is equally delicious. Both help to heal his wounded heart.
Having quenched his thirst and sated his hunger, the Fool lays back to gaze up at the stars. "They're so beautiful," he said, "but so distant."
"Like possible futures," agrees the girl. "Cool and distant. Yet if you keep one in sight, it can guide you to your destination no matter how far away it is." Even as she says this, she began to fade away, like dew, vanishing. All that remains is a gleam that was at the centre of her forehead. This rises up and up, until it settles in the night sky as a shining star. "Follow your star," the woman's voice seems to sing from that light, "and have hope."
The Fool takes in a breath and rises. It is a dark night, a desolate land. But for the first time, he has a guiding light to show him the way. Distant as it is, it restores his faith.
The Moon
Following the star the Fool travels through the night. The full Moon rises, illuminating for him a watery path. And he begins to feel disoriented, as if walking in his sleep. He passes under the moon, between two pillars ancient and strange. Suddenly, he looks around to find himself in another land entirely. When he was in the presence of the High Priestess, he saw hints of this dark land through the sheer veil draped behind her throne. And later, when he hung from the tree, he felt himself between the physical world and this one. Now, he has at last passed behind the veil.
Here are the mysteries he sought, the darkest mysteries, ones that have to do with the most primal and ancient powers. It is a land poets, artists, musicians and madmen know well, a terrifying, alluring place, with very different rules. Wolves run wild across this land, hunting alongside maidens with bow and arrows. Creatures from childhood nightmares and fantasies peer from shadows, eyes glowing.
The path the Fool was walking is now a river, and he stands hip-deep in the powerful pull of its salty waters. There is, on the nearby shore, a small boat, but it has no rudder, no oar. The Fool realizes he has only two choices. He can lose himself in this desolate, primal land of madness and illusion, howl with the wolves, be hunted down, or he can get into the boat and trust himself to the river. The moon will be in control either way, but in the boat his surrender to the powers of the unconscious will at least take him somewhere.
Inspiration, visions and genius are the rewards of such surrender to the Moon's Magic, as artists, poets and seers know. The Fool gets into the boat, and shoves off. As the waters sweep him away, moonbeams light his "path" and he feels the Mistress of this dark land gazing down at him with the High Priestess's approving eyes.
The Sun
The Fool wakes at dawn from his long, dark night of the soul to find that the river has deposited him in a serene pool. There is a walled garden around this pond dominated by roses, lilies and splendid, nodding sunflowers. Stepping ashore, he watches the sun rise overhead. The day is clear. A child's laughter attracts his attention and he sees a little boy ride a small white pony into the garden.
"Come!" says the little boy, leaping off the horse and running up to him. "Come see!" And the child proceeds to take the Fool's hand and enthusiastically point out all manner of things, the busy insects in the grass, the seeds and petals on the sunflowers, the way the light sparkles on the pond. He asks questions of the Fool, simple but profound ones, like "Why is the sky blue?" He sings songs, and plays games with the Fool.
At one point the Fool stops, blinking up at the Sun so large and golden overhead, and he finds himself smiling, wider and brighter than he has in a very long time. He has been tested and tried, confused and scared, dismayed and amazed. But this is the first time that he has been simply and purely happy. His mind feels illuminated, his soul light and bright as a sunbeam, and it's all thanks to this child with his simple questions, games and songs. This boy has helped the Fool see the world and himself anew.
"Who are you?" the Fool asks the child at last. The child smiles at this and seems to shine. And then he grows brighter and brighter until he turns into pure sunlight.
"I'm You," the boy's voice says throughout the garden, "The new you." And as the words fill the Fool with warmth and energy, he comes to realize that this garden, the sun above, the child, all exist within him. He has just met his own inner light.
Judgement
As the Fool leaves the garden of the Sun, he feels that he is near the end of his journey, ready to take a final step. But something is keeping him from doing this, holding him back. He gazes up, hoping to find guidance from the Sun; instead he sees above him a fiery angel, beautiful and terrible.
"You are right," the Angelic figure confirms, "you have only one last step on your journey, one final step to completion. But you cannot take that step until you lay your past to rest."
The Fool is perturbed. "Lay it to rest? I thought I'd left it behind, all of it!"
"There is no way to leave the past behind," The Angel observes. "Each step wears down the shoe just a bit, and so shapes the next step you take, and the next and the next. Your past is always under your feet. You cannot hide from it, run from it, or rid yourself of it. But you can call it up, and come to terms with it. Are you willing to do that?"
The Angel hands the Fool a small trumpet. The Fool is hesitant, but he knows that the Angel is right. There are certain memories he has a hard time looking back on as they make him feel guilty, ashamed, angry. He knows that he's never come to terms with what happened and he must if he wants to make that final transition.
He blows the trumpet and it cracks open the Earth. From under the Fool's feet, the spirits of his past selves rise up, including those less than admirable past selves that he's tried to forget.
For the first time, he faces them. They are, he sees, nothing to fear. They were him once-upon-a-time, but not now. Even as he realizes this, he finds himself forgiving those past selves for the wrongs they did that left him feeling bad. He senses, in turn, that they forgive him for ignoring the lessons they had to teach him. As he reaches an understanding with them, they start to rise up and float away, vanishing into the sky. Though they remain as experiences and memories, they no longer have any power over him. He is free of ill-feelings, reborn, and living in the present.
The World
The Fool turns to take that final step along his final path, and finds, to his bemusement, that he is right back where he started, at the edge of that very same cliff he almost stepped over when he was young and too foolish to look where he was going. But now he sees his position very differently. He thought he could separate body and mind, learn all about one, then leave it to learn about the other. But in the end, it is all about the self: mind and body, past and future, the individual, and the world. All one, including the Fool and the Mystic who are both doorways to the secrets of the universe.
With a knowing smile, the Fool takes that final step right off the cliff...and soars. Higher and higher, until the whole of the world is his to see. And there he dances, surrounded by a yoni of stars, at one with the universe. Ending, in a sense, where he began, beginning again at the end. The world turns, and the Fool's journey is complete.
N.B. Dedicated to the diversity and beauty of Tarot, Aeclectic Tarot is the website which would provide its visitors with an abundant wealth of knowledge and information on the topic of Tarot. Thirteen, through the Aeclectic Tarot Forum, has weaved this beautiful story based on the design of the Major Arcana of the Rider-Waite Tarot style of the Tarot deck. The Rider-Waite Tarot is a classic Tarot deck, perhaps the most well-known in the Western world. It is often called the first modern Tarot deck, as the cards drawn by Pamela Colman-Smith and commissioned by Waite were the first to use detailed pictures on the minor arcana cards. One may sample some of the deck's designs at this link: http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/rider-waite/.
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