WHAT OPENS THE DOOR TO YOUR HEART?

We’re familiar with many expressions. Being ‘on-point’ is one of them. But what does it mean?

I was contemplating on this as I answered some questions about what the fastest track is to reading cards like the Devil.

I get this question often, and the courses that I’ve designed for Aradia Academy are all geared towards understanding the basic principle behind it.

The reason why I’m interested in basic principles is because I consider my work with the cards to be the work of investigating into singular expressions.

Given that I’m much more fascinated by direct transmissions rather than ‘schools’, it’s an obvious necessity that what I pursue in my work with the cards are modalities that open the heart, not the ones that enrich the head with borrowed ideas.

When the heart is open, you either see what’s what, or you don’t.

I’m interested in this non-negotiation of the obvious.

Eastern spiritual orientations and philosophies have long figured it out that the fastest track to understanding the essence of any manifestation or phenomena is if you keep it close to nature.

I take this to my heart, and consequently teach looking at the cards from the perspective of keeping it close to nature. I look at the function of the cards, trumps and pips alike, as they embody the cycles and seasons of nature – this includes our human lot: We get born, we live, we die.

If we experience a major breakthrough, it will not be because we happen to have a strong emotional response to the event that initiates the breakthrough, but because, in the moment, we get to see past it, past the emotion or thought that accompanies the spontaneous response. We’re here with seeing into the heart of nature, our own nature included.

When I read cards, my ambition is always this: To see what’s essential in a question and how what’s essential reflects in the visual language of the cards past my expectations, clever interpretations, fears of not getting it, or any of the other learnt responses that can arise.

If you’re lucky enough to experience a direct transmission from the cards, you will see that it distinguishes itself from the feeling of being merely overwhelmed.

I often read the cards for people, and they start crying. But there’s crying and crying.

People can cry because they experience seeing a fragment of their life or predicament very clearly in the cards. They experience the obvious.

If direct transmission occurs, then this will be something that goes beyond the recognition of the obvious.

Direct transmission can have many forms, and it can occur completely independently of the intention of whoever happens to initiate it.

To give an example: I consider one of my greatest teachers the ikebana samurai, Toshiro Kawase.

I was having coffee one day, when I came upon a particular flower arrangement by him. The next thing that happened is that I found a flood of tears coming out of me. I was bothered by this, as the trouble with floods is that you can’t stop them.

So I thought, ‘WTF, I must be having some very bad planetary alignments and emotional transits today to experience this,’ when I heard the heart screaming:

‘If you think this response belongs to the emotional field, then you’re as dumb as a door’ – with all due respect to doors, as they don’t deserve this comparison.

I stopped in my tracks. Whoa, so this is NOT an emotional response. What is it then?

What it was is seeing the obvious that carries you forward beyond the obvious.

If you ever experience such a thing, you get ample possibility to test how you know that you’ve gone beyond the obvious, beyond the point of recognizing that the trouble with most of us is that we identify completely with whatever idea, belief, or problem we happen to entertain at any given time.

You will know that you’ve gone beyond, because you’ll be right there with the ‘not-to-be-denied heart’, the field where your subjective responses harmonize with nature; the field that says, ‘congratulations, you’ve just managed to get over yourself’.

How can this manifest more concretely?

In non-differentiation. If I create a flower arrangement or read the cards, I can see Kawase, a flower person, not a card person, appear before me, remonstrating me: ‘Put a full stop to this, will you? Get over yourself. Don’t ruin beauty’. I’m so afraid of Kawase, as he’s full of strong opinions. But at the same time, I hear my heart saying: ‘Pay the man honors. He opened the door to your heart for you. Stop being so dumb.’

Amen to that.

I like to drag antique bronze vases to decrepit houses. You never know what gives.

These past few days people have engaged with my celebratory offerings, when I had an occasion to honor my dead father, my dead mother, and my living partner – though the latter insisted that my tribute to him was more appropriate for a funeral.

Among creating a few short films that fall into the category of what I like to call Grimoire Memoire, I’ve also designed a layout that I published on Patheos, the not-to-be-denied heart. I asked a simple question for it:

What in my life manifests itself so straightforwardly that you can call it ‘not-to-be-denied heart’? What carries the ‘not-to-be-denied heart’ forward?’

This layout has already elicited many interesting results.

At least two who have tried it, found it difficult to harmonize the thing that moves the heart with what carries it through, ending up offering ‘advice to the self’ in their reading, in order to remedy the conflict. But this is to miss the point.

When the heart is in the ‘not-to-be-denied’ mode, it will dwell in a container that will not be denied either, so there’s a singular expression taking place that reveals just how widely the door to the heart has been opened.

In addition to what I said about the ‘not-to-be-denied heart’, here’s another question that you can ask your cards, as a follow-up investigation:

What does it take for me to experience direct transmission?

A condition for experiencing direct transmission has always been to pay attention, or rather, more actively, to heed attention.

But the kind of spontaneous response that’s the result of direct transmission often exceeds ‘the words of the master’, diligent preparation towards it, or conscious effort.

Implicit in this question is the vague, oracular question: ‘What gives?’

Lay down your cards, and just look. Be attuned to what opens the door to your heart. It may be the sword of Justice, or her balance between sunlight and moonlight, or the Pope’s finger, the Hermit’s lamp, or the 10 of Cups.

Just look and smell the cards, as if they were a single flower manifesting the whole starry universe and putting a full stop to it too.

That’s what being on point is, when you experience your reading as radiant.

♠

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