Ace of Cups. Looked at this card innumerable times, and never noticed, enough to comment, that it's encased in ice, that the sun is rising behind the edifice, because I can see now it might be read as one, so the ice is going to melt, melt that frozen heart. That’s part of the message. Then I look more closely and notice, for the first time, fish and a mermaid. God, so many symbols.

A cup, or rather a chalice., which connects it to Christianity, although I reckon it's more likely the chalice of the holy Grail, which has become coupled with the Arthurian legend, (Camelot and Avalon), a Celtic symbol of what in the east is referred to as enlightenment. The rising sun. New day, new dawn. Another symbol of enlightenment, renewal. Yes enlightenment is renewal. Never seen that before. ( Love the dawn. Used to go for walks at that time of the day in India, but dawn in the UK at any time is pretty wonderful) Fish are often used as code for Jesus, but are also pagan symbols of fecundity and the mermaid means little to me. A Tom Hanks film. Mediaeval manuscripts. A Disney cartoon movie. A particular freedom, because it's possible to move through water in three dimensions. The Lotus. Beautiful. Another eastern symbol of enlightenment and just so glorious, without any need to assign meaning. Some friends of mine have a lily pond in the back garden, pretty big as well, and they have taken a photograph of that pond at the start of every month for 15 years, since they moved in. How terrific is that. (The photographs are displayed as a collage on the wall in one of many rooms). Imagine a building like this. It would have to be in a particular place. Inaccessible, so that only those that really cared, not the merely curious, got to be in its presence. It would have to be given a vantage, so that we could watch the sun rise and set behind it. Yee Haa.

Two of Cups. Definitely not in a mood to add to any kind of debate about relationships, and more particularly to a discussion of marriage, but I will. So much to be said, and maybe that’s one of the things that goes wrong about relationships; all that talking and analysing. All those expectations of the other that he or she cannot possibly fulfil. According to the internet, well as I read it, in innumerable articles, partners are a commodity now,

like cars, washing machines, plasma screen TVs, and there’s the basic model with its basic specifications, and nobody wants one of those ordinary looking, reliable but no kudos models. Everybody's after the top brands with high specs, and then quite plainly has the idea that if they get that life will be utterly peachy; and of course it isn't, and it isn't because no one ever lives up to our expectations. It's like approaching the liaison with a script as comprehensive as a Shakespeare play. It won't happen. So it moves away from a few ramblings about relationship to the subject of expectation! The life wrecker. Expectations it seems to me screw everything. Have wondered if because of my expectations that if I get model A when I want model H, the former being a fantastic version, I won't recognise it for what it is, because my expectations are tied up with H. ( It's worth mentioning positive expectations, optimism, leads to disappointment, although not absolutely, and pessimistic negative expectations add to pessimism, put us in a constantly fearful place unable to see what’s under our noses.) Don't remotely have the expectations of people, or anything, that I had, but I find when painting that if things are going well I begin to expect it will go on like that and always end up feeling frustrated, and as often as not screwing something up. Expectations. Give them up. Have a good life instead.

Three of Cups. Super image. Get such a warm feeling. Youth. Having a good time. Not that its only youth who knows how to enjoy, but youth has a certain quality of unrestrained abandonment when backed up by physical strength and stamina,( even without the help of booze) that we don’t know is ours at the time! As in, ‘You don't know what you got until you lose it.' Was astronomically energetic in my twenties,

and on into thirties and forties. Then as I approached fifty, physical limits finally kicked in and I have experienced ongoing limitation, in one way or another since then, along with the growing ability, resourcefulness and facility, to work round these things, get into new projects that don’t require physical strength, and or agility. Don't miss being so physical actually, and fortunately. I mean I really did do the party thing, the charging around thing in my twenties and early thirties; and as I wrote fairly recently it did actually pall, so it's not been missed. Went off to India for a month with nine kilos on my back and stayed away for a year and a half at thirty two. Now I need to carefully plan a trip to the other side of the city to visit friends, and I get back, having had a great time, completely frazzled and desperate to be on my own, for about the next two or three days. Used to be such an extrovert, just like the girls in the image. Could dance day after day, or rather night after night, for hours, laugh and joke with friends and actually, yes all day as well, given the opportunity. Great to have got older and done it, so none of that ill will towards youth, the younger generation, most of whom appear to need no encouragement from me or anyone else, for that matter, to have a good time. Great stuff.

Four of Cups. The look on this guys face is so funny. Talk about sulk, talk about pout. Like a little boy or girl, not getting their own way. The drippy mode he's dressing in doesn't help me take him seriously. A fashion victim or fan of Duran Duran. Such a beautiful day. Early summer. You have the freedom and security to sit out in the open, under a tree, barefooted, feet in the grass. Come

on mate! come on! Give us a smile. Wiggle those toes. You've got two choices. In front of you three goblets. Hard not to connect them to the three of cups. Three pretty girls dancing and generally having a good time. The single cup, floating, offering you an opportunity. It's in your imagination, a new possibility. (Are you not attuned to the imagination?). Is that why you’re sulking. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Your not on one. You’re puzzled, in a dilemma. You’re torn between going forward into the new, taking a risk. Hanging onto the past life, past life that no longer works. How did I get here? Wrote about this yesterday and didn't set out to write about it now. In fact I was pretty unclear as to what I did want to say this morning, and I've written of something I posted yesterday and also something that connects to a mini Osho Discourse I shared at Stumble this morning. Not seen going forward as a dilemma before. (Although having said that its fairly obvious it is. Just never articulated it) We participate in training, and collude with being trained to act in a certain way. We’re such creatures of habit. anything different, might be ignored for a short while. It may invoke mockery. Might precipitate violence. It’s not paranoid is it? How many of us risk putting that to the test. How many of us risk stepping out of line. Fear of disapproval/, desire for approval colours our lives so intensely. Is that what you’re about mate? Or are you just a sulking prat who can't see what's under your nose? Deva means divine, arjava means straightforwardness, simplicity, authenticity, sincerity... all those things. The fundamental thing is authenticity. One should not allow any kind of imposition... not by others, not by oneself either. One should not wear masks. One should live one's original face whatsoever the cost. One has to pay much for it; that's why people decide not to be authentic. It is sacrifice, it is martyrdom, it is carrying one's cross. But immense is the benefit that comes out of it. The sacrifice is great, so is the achievement... far greater than sacrifice. But in the beginning you need the sacrifice, the suffering. Only in the end when you have suffered totally -- when suffering has done its work, has cleansed you, burned your ego, purified you, destroyed all that was false, when only that which was true is left, when the fire has passed -- do you start feeling the ecstasy of life. And that fire can be long; it depends on you. If you go very very slowly into it, are very miserly, then it can take years or even lives. If one can go passionately into it, intensely into it,

it can be finished within a single moment. Of course that moment will be almost like eternal hell. The intensity of it will be there; it will not be spread over a long period. But once you understand that suffering, if accepted -- through authenticity, sincerity, truth -- brings joy, if you can remember that, then sooner or later you will become acquainted with the whole alchemy of life. I am not a supporter of suffering, remember. I am not saying to create suffering for yourself; that is moving to the other extreme. There are people who go on living a comfortable, convenient bourgeois life. They think they are very happy, that this is joy. And for this so-called happiness they go on compromising. They become more and more false. The conveniences are there but they become untrue. To purchase those conveniences, those comforts, they go on compromising. They go on selling their soul and increasing their possessions. This is one type of person, one extreme, who becomes pseudo. The other is he who, seeing the way convenience, comfort, pleasures, makes people impotent, soulless, moves to the other extreme. He starts searching for misery, for suffering. He starts creating torture for himself. He thinks to live in inconvenience, to live in discomfort, to move in thorns is going to help bring up his authentic face, to give him reality. That too is false. His authentic face never comes from inconvenience; how can it? So I am not saying create suffering for yourself; that is pathology. What I am saying is that life wants joy. That is life's basic instinct. Follow it! But life can have joy only if it is authentic. Then comes the problem and the dilemma of life. Life needs joy, life is meaningful only when there is joy; life searches for joy, but joy is possible only if life is true, if it is based on truth. Truth will bring much suffering, but it is not that you create it. It comes out of your facing reality. Because everybody is false and you start being true, you start getting out of tune with people; hence the suffering. It is not really coming out of truth; it is coming because everybody is false. You become a stranger, you become an outsider; you don't fit any more. Wherever you go, you don't fit. That continuous not-fitting hurts but one has to go through it knowing perfectly well that it is part of cleansing. The gold has to go through the fire to become pure. And great is the blessing.... Once you have come to your originality with no imposition, with no false face, with no covering, with no curtain, when you have come to your nudity, to your nakedness of being, that's what meditation is all about... Osho. Darshan Diary Chapter #7

7 November 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Five of Cups. Identical in all details, this card is, (Thank you Yoda.) to the Wait Smith version, and yet it doesn't trigger the same response; either in detail or intensity. At first glance it's a depiction of a hermit and then a stereotype likeness of a mediaeval thief, or such, in a Thirties period movie, who's sneaking about for one reason or other. Find increasingly I’m not so much interested in the Tarot as interested in the opportunity to

explore symbols, symbolism and the meaning of symbols, the effect of symbols on me; and I guess these are pictures, which I presume Jung and archetypes are about, which will say much the same to most people, will articulate experience common to all humans, regardless of race, language, gender or sexuality. This is about loss is it not, although I don't read it as speaking of loss in the sense of physical death, rather its loss as in a relationship hasn't worked out, or the feeling of hurt, when snubbed and rejected. It's to do with relationships, although when I say that it comes to me that individuals have relationships with more than just folk. We have relationships with places, objects that we own, all things that are tied up with identity and I can imagine and have experienced the sense of loss regarding leaving a place. Before I moved to this flat (Forty seventh address.) I owned a tiny place nearby, which I inhabited longer than any previously. It was like a cave, so peaceful, private, away from everything, and everything was accessible, and I needed that at the time. Came time to go, I really did need more room, had started feel so cramped, and I found the dream flat (this one) which made me feel as though I’d won a fantastic prize and I was over the moon about moving in, couldn't wait to get here and felt such a sense of loss over the place ( Mole end.) I left behind.

Six of Cups. Interesting how a shift of style can so swing the meaning of a card. The Waite Smith version, on which this is based is so ambiguous and gets interpreted to death; although I’m certain the symbols that are at issue are just printing errors, that the figures in the card are just drawn out of proportion to the background, and for some reason the artist missed it.

Robin Wood has opted, with her signature sugar style, to represent what I see as small and out of proportion adults as children in

this version; and I find the whole scene sickly sweet. If the colours weren’t so sugary it would just be a picture of a couple of kids, now it reads to me as a sentimental expression of childhood. Kids are great fun, a delight to be around; can also drive any normal adult mad. Its in the job description surely.

Nothing wrong in it, so we don't have to pretend it's different to how it is. A friend once said of his kids, who he loves to bits, and he's the one who they came to for cuddles because the mother is the heavy-handed authority figure; this before it was politically correct to behave that way, that he felt himself hovering semi permanently at the edge of madness with them, that he found it next to impossible to cling to rationality at times, particularly when they had kicked off about something, and was amazed at his own capacity to love them so much, despite how challenging he found them. David, an Aussie mate, described life with six sons as hair pullingly testing; which from he, who never ever goes over the top, was really laying it on the line. Recall an occasion in a communal house in which I lived when the youngest member of the household managed to take me from utterly furious, and trying to keep a lid on it , to soppy melting lump in the snap of a finger. We adults function as if we have an emotional range of an octave, and kids, it seems to me, remind us, help us discover it's closer to thirty; and then demonstrate, over and over, an ability to play any key over that octave range at will; backwards and forwards, in a time span of about 30 seconds tops. Ha. Ha. Ha. Think I'm exaggerating. You know I'm not.

Saturday. 8. November. 08. Seven of Cups. Highly aware of the part imagination plays in life, but the image takes me back to a life previous to the life of meditation, which I‘m transcending anyway. Fantasies about fast cars. 'Fame

and fortune'. Ideal home. Partner. Work. Friends. Area to live in. The usual stuff. Stuff from which books are written. Commonplace fantasies. Yes. Suspect now that part of life's disappointment is that real life never lives up to what we can imagine One of the most revisited imaginings, which actually persisted into life as a meditater, was the dream house fantasy. Can recall going to sleep at night, night after night, in a flat I lived at in the Seventies; and in that fantasy I worked, modelled and remodelled the house in my imagination, turning it into the ultimate pad. Creativity manifesting, but of course I didn't know that then, and the fantasy ended when I moved into the dream flat eleven years ago. Recall one evening on a bus. A girl going on and on at her boyfriend about how he had ruined everything. She was actually really distressed, unignorably so, and he seemed a gentle soul, concerned at her distress and obviously completely confused by what was going on, and suddenly I knew, as certainly as one can in such circumstances, that she had envisaged, imagined the events down to the last detail, the way people with excellent recall might envisage, recall a film he or she had seen on innumerable occasions, and he of course wasn’t privy to what she’d imagined and the event was ruined for her; and she had no awareness whatsoever of what the real issue was. What goes on in my imagination has evolved so dramatically. Hordes of people who filled its echoing halls, imaginary people, based on people I had met, and been involved with, have gone, people with whom I identified, taking with them the identity, involvement with them gave, and so my personal sense of identity has evolved along with my evolving imagination.

Eight of Cups. He’s the adventurer in folk and she, that in us which takes risks, especially when younger, when we can so easily and blindly walk in innocence (or ignorance) into the unknown, innocent and ignorant pursuit of that which is in our imagination, even though we don't know that's the case. A heart warming image. Adventurousness. Boldness. How many times in the life have I set out on a

new escapade, large and small, as often as not a psychological and emotional, a spiritual quest, and sometimes a literal adventure, but literal adventures are wrapped up with the psychological, emotional and spiritual. A metaphorical dawn and often sometimes literal one. Myself and a friend hitch hiked to France when we were seventeen. (Father insisted I take out insurance, partly being sensible and in part because I was accident prone, in a clumsy teenager way.) and can picture us walking through Carmarthen in South Wales, past the front door of gold and red logoed F.W. Woolworth's, as the sun was coming up. We had set out in the dark, from the parents place, on a golf course, thirty miles away and got a lift immediately. ( (Woollies is shutting down because of the recession. Been there all my life. Employed me for some years.) Haven't seen that guy I set out with since my early twenties, but recently, while googling about a week ago I landed on a site which had been set up to provide information for an eco project in Essex, and the director, a guy who had been a merchant banker in London, was he I’d set out with for France. The spiritual adventurer in he had obviously been latent all those years and resurfaced so powerfully he walked away from that huge salary and high status career, to pour energy into something that obviously fired his idealism. Great stuff.

Nine of Cups You would have been the fat kid at school. You have that look. God, is it any wonder folk in our culture are obsessed with weight. Starts so young. The overweight kid is called fatty. The thin one skinny. The kid with glasses four eyes; (That was me.) although must say I don't recall any particular difficulty now. Came to see as I got older that I felt stigmatised because I wore glasses, and although it

was my intention to go off on a rant about the grotesqueness of so many people in the world starving, whilst we in the West are obsessed about weight, rightly so in many cases, my attention has being caught by the inner wince I felt when I acknowledged I felt stigmatised when younger because I wore specs. Didn't start wearing them until I was about nine. My sight was damaged because I caught measles. Apparently ( don't recall) we had to be kept in a dim room, but it didn't work for me and I've been wearing them ever since. So the first nine years of life was spent without glasses, developing personality in that way; and then it happened. Such things hold us, affect personality. Surely. Spectacles are signs, signifiers. Seem to remember it meant someone who was a weakling, a cissy , a brain box. Now that's a notion, that someone who got labelled intelligent (stereotype) would be seen negatively by some. Interestingly enough, glasses are a fantastic invention really improving the quality of life for so many people, as tools do, although as I mentioned yesterday, tools are badges as well, but have wondered if teachers, parents have expectations of kids who wear glasses, as in expect them to be studious, intellectual and scholastically capable. Read Irving Goffman's Stigma years ago and that registered in relation to wearing glasses, amongst other things. Certainly think it may have augmented a sense of being an outsider, although that may just be reflecting on what was nascent ego. Ego forms around whatever roles are available it seems to me, what role the kids and teachers at every new school decide, could or would do for the new kid.(Limited .(Limited .(Limited .(Limited

choices) choices) choices) choices) ( ( ( ( Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. )Identity. )Identity. )Identity. )

Ten of Cups. Family! Look at that. Idyllic; yet families are hotbeds of tension, unresolved conflict. Maybe a problem is represented here. The problem of the constant promulgation of that family ideal, against which most fail, or believe they fail. Maybe the problem isn’t the conflict within a family, but the expectation their shouldn't be any. Have wondered on occasions if part of the

reason America or Russia etc, is so ready to bomb the shit out of any country it takes against, is related, in the USA particularly, to the cult of mom, apple pie and family. All those people, this enormous number, desperately trying to live up to an impossible ideal and not successfully. The pressure. All that unresolved variance building up. It has to have an outlet, so any excuse to attack another nation will do. Useful phrase. 'Don't sweat the small stuff.' Maybe if we all dealt with our small stuff, our ongoing feelings more realistically, were more comfortable with them, the feelings wouldn't accumulate, get displaced, passed on. Presumably that's also part of hierarchy. We take shit from those higher in the pyramid and pass it on to someone lower. Was the sort of kid who essentially did what teachers said and grew up with the idea they were perfect, superior and above criticism. Was such a revelation when I began to mix socially with teachers ( lawyers, doctors barristers etc) and fond out the truth. Not that I’m suggesting they’re less than the rest of us, but certainly not better. They have all the same things to deal with as most of us. They’re just people who’ve been trained in, and practice a skill, just like a carpenter or plumber.

Page of Cups. Happening again, to the point where tis’ becoming something to take a look at for its own sake. Another image has triggered memories of childhood, and this one has gone even deeper than usual. Is it something I'm going through at the moment; or is the cards? As I took this from the box I recalled something I wrote when using the Waite Smith pack, about imagination, and then saw myself looking into

a rock pool at Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland. Saw myself standing at the point of the horn, that I had previously only seen on a map, called McGilligan's Point in County Londonderry, if I recall correctly. Would have been about nine years old. This huge sand horn had been created by two currents meeting and had been like that for centuries. was enthralled to be standing on it. Then another jump. Like falling into something and seeing a whole new panorama laid out before me; and I picture all the different places we went at the weekend, when we lived in Somerset and Ireland, my brother and I, and mother, in the sidecar of the fathers motorbike(In the fifties). We went to the lido in Street and I recall such hot summers swimming. We went to Weymouth. Bournemouth, Beer. Stonehenge, other places that only remain as vague images with no names.

Feel deeply moved, to actually recall something about the father that I can say yes to, although as I go more deeply tis ’tinged with all the difficult stuff. Actually feel as if I know him better now. Something in him was interested in seeing all those places, bit of a child in he I guess, and wanted to see them with his family, was being a good father, and in those days parental word was law and so off we went. Sadly being around him was less fun than standing naked in a howling storm on a hillside, but for all that I feel a sense of appreciation for it now. Have never had such a yes before to anything connected to him, and at this moment I feel sure it played its part in my ongoing ability, willingness to go to new places, psychologically, spiritually and emotionally.

Queen of Cups . King Canute. Yes! That came first; after the initial fragmented inner ramblings. Well! No matter what the author and or artist was trying to say, these cards are always mirrors to the viewer. She looks so imperious, and that makes me want to laugh; I mean, what do you think you're doing sitting on that chair, facing the breaking waves; dressed like you’re at a high society ball,

Woman and men who are obsessed with clothes and appearance! Might have said at one time I knew individuals like that, but in fact the only character I've seen who fits that label in recent years is a very old woman who I regularly perceive on my bus, ( She doesn't look right on public transport.) who never appears to wear the same close twice. Whose clothes are haute couture for young women of a certain physical type, model type appearance, in their twenties, and she has a gamin hair cut, boyish, silver grey and a sagging, jowelled face at its most extreme for an 80 year-old; looks like she on her way to the ball.. No criticism meant here. Her life; but whenever I see her I end up pondering on the way clothes are used to define us. Find myself mulling over the manner with which we judge and are judged by clothes worn . The way membership of certain groups, some more than others, is established in ways by clothes. Was very involved with a left wing activist group in the Seventies; and I'm fairly certain that if somebody had turned up always wearing a suit and bow tie they would have without doubt, been perceived as Tories and viewed with suspicion, although the way they dressed would have been acceptable eventually once credentials had been established by how they spoke. Was a time I could tell so much about people because of the clothes they wore, and my behaviour was affected by that. For example in my twenties I could pretty much get close to telling the kind of music people might like depending on how they dressed. That seems completely bizarre to me now. Ability to read attire is back to how it was in my very early teens, so I have to rely on how I feel about people to deal with them, which triggers off some fairly interesting reactions, because my observation is people have a very definite sense of the way they expect to be treated and the way they dress is a part of that. This is of course completely unconscious, but there nonetheless. Clothes. Hmm. Yes.

The Knight of Cups . God this is a fanciful image; and only affects me in as much as I find it irritating; the way I find the court cards in this pack generally irksome really; because they just seem so far removed from anything. So I start from a sense of frustration. ( Find beginning from where I am helpful.) and the only possible next step is to look at the symbols. Well! Lots

of water, and he’s holding a cup, so plainly, given water’s a symbol for feelings, emotions, and the cups a symbol for water in the tarot, it's telling us something about feelings; feelings as intense and powerful as a seahorse riding crashing breakers on a seashore, but tempered by reason, because a guy is riding the horse. (Only a little over the top.) Seen a number of attempts to connect the tarot cards, Court section, with the Myers Briggs/ David Kiersey system of classification, which is linked to Jung, and is divided into four temperaments, each temperament then into four personality types. It's the very devil to fit the four suites to the four temperaments. Can never make sense of it, but I do find connecting individual cards to personality types not unexciting, although the three attempts I've seen on line all disagree with each other and me. First came across the system in a book by Jana Riley. That turned me on to Jung-based personality profiling, and I’ve found it so informative, and its impacted on my life enormously. Came to associate the Waite Smith King of Cups with ENFJ, which is extrovert feeling and introverted intuition, an idealist type, and two people who I know are of this nature. One is my seventeen year old godson and the other a fifty four year old woman pal, who, along with her husband is one of my oldest friends. Both are driven and involved. Strong characters; and very sensitive, volatile. Can both comfortably swing between fearsome and kind. Incredibly sociable. Extremely good natured, but if they get on one, and both of them can, they've got a hardnosed edge, and both love to talk, to explore 'deep' ideas.

King of Cups . Just taking it easy; relaxing by the sea. (Some would say you’re a bit overdressed for it matey boy.) That's what Kings, the wealthy classes had at one time, was it not, that was exclusive to they. Leisure, time to themselves, to just hang out, take it easy; and nowadays, in the western world, huge numbers of people don't have to work, live on benefits; which provides them with just enough money to live if they

are careful; and more leisure time than any human beings have ever had. Recall a conversation with a friend years ago. Had realised that people who lived on benefits, the deserving and undeserving poor in the UK, had as much money as many of those who had private incomes in the 19th century. The genteel folk, at the lower end of the wealthy classes, who had to watch every shilling, but nonetheless were higher status than individuals who had incomes ten times greater, but who were in trade. Have a very developed notion of what I call access wealth. It's to do with all the benefits, the facilities, paid for by taxes, in one form or other, and then paid for by local councils and central government, for the benefit of all, in the western world; and there's another layer of those facilities in large cities. Birmingham has been in development a good number of years, and the city powers have not just set out to promote the local economy with building regeneration , but also by organising events on a regular basis throughout the city, throughout the year. laying on regular goings-on which draw varying crowds from large to larger and even larger. Always seems to be something happening somewhere. The city’s a very relaxed place to be at any time of the year now, and especially in warm weather, easily accessible by a large choice of bus's. Great libraries etc, free music. I could go on; and probably so much of it completely taken for granted. The most obviously poor, the homeless, have access to these events, to the vibrancy of the city and play their part in making it so. What is wealth. To people in Gaza I guess wealth would be that the bombing would stop. Who is rich and who is poor? Not just money and possessions is it?