The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe,to match your nature with Nature.
~Joseph Campbell
May the 4th Be With you...I love that each year in May we are reminded of that famous Jedi “handle” from the Star Wars series of movies. And this May the Magician is here to remind us that of course the force is with us, it is with us all the time, and always available, we just need to acknowledge it and work WITH it! For these purposes I have actually been so bold as to adjust another quite famous quote “Not [just] my will, but [in conscious alignment, co-creation & surrender with] Thy will.”I recently learned this the hard way. A few years ago I was so mad at the Universe for squelching major life plans I had made, that I absolutely refused to move forward with any new plans. As far as I saw it, if the universe could see fit to destroy my plans, then it could very well just make its future plans for me without me. I took the quote “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” by Joseph Campbell very literally and just refused to imagine myself forward in any new way, I decided to wait for life.Well, Life came calling when one night towards the end of this time, I woke in excruciating pain. No matter how I positioned myself, my right hip would not stop yelling very loudly at me with the only language I was capable of hearing in that moment, it was frozen in pain. I booked an appointment at the Downtown Community Acupuncture at 3 am, only to realize in the light of day that I actually couldn’t drive. A dear friend took me and picked me up after. And, as I searched frantically for relief, with the help of friends and family and an incredible energy healing, within 3 days I was up and moving and had got the message.
The whole of life is already tuned, and the gods are never out of tune. What they await is your being in tune with them so their wisdom and expression can be sympathetically transmitted through you...Get in tune, and life will play you beautifully and perfectly.
~Bradford Keeney,The Bushman Way of Tracking God
Within three weeks I had a new job and was moving to Carpinteria where I now live. And as soon as I started to move forward all sorts of serendipities and monies came forward to make sure I got to the next place I was headed safely and comfortably. I had gotten myself in tune with the Universe and so the Universe and I moved forward, gracefully, beautifully and almost instantaneously, together. For further insight on this see Teal Swan’s F*ck The Law of Attraction (Linked)
As you proceed through life, following your own path, birds will shit on you.Don't bother to brush it off.Getting a comedic view of your situation gives you spiritual distance.Having a sense of humor saves you.~Joseph Campbell
The Magician is in active Co-Creation with the Universe! S/he uses all the elements along with intention and SURRENDER to consciously align heaven and earth and create “magic”. The magician is in tune with the Universe. And the magician also has a sense of humor, there is a trickster aspect here that helps us to not take ourselves so seriously.“In the Kalahari, you are a spiritually enlightened being, a healer, a teacher, and a wisdom keeper only in the moments when you are a tuned instrument for the gods to play. After each gig, you return to being a spiritual idiot; there is no such thing as a spiritual master. There are only moments in which idiots like us get masterfully played by the gods. But we can’t perform unless we are in tune.” ~ Bradford Keeney, The Bushman Way of Tracking GodIn the sun and moon tarot which works with me, the magician stands, on a beach before a blazing fire while a monkey (tricksy little guy) looks out at us from rocks nearby. One of the magician’s hands is raised and pointing up to the sky, the other appears to have just hit the djembe drum worn hanging from his/her shoulders. In the sky above is the symbol of an encircling snake (representing the infinity of continuous endings and beginnings) and within that circle is another circle holding a Star of David (integration of masculine & feminine) that contains the symbolic elements of the tarot: a central cup in front of a pentacle, a wand (with the head of Anubis) crossing a sword (with the Eye of Horus); a lemniscate (another infinity sign) is in the top of the star and the tao (yin/yang) is at the bottom, while the astrological symbols of the signs of the zodiac fill the gap between circle and snake.This is a great deal of symbolic representation and information. Its as if all of the Universe is there, conspiring with the magician in each one of us. It's not just “as if”, it actually IS. And we are an active, living breathing incarnated part of the universe. “Your body is the piece of the universe you’ve been given…” ~ Geneen Roth, Women, Food and God I have long believed that we are all little pieces of Creation experiencing and learning about ourselves, as individual parts and as a whole. When I first learned about the hologram in highschool I was fascinated that no matter how many little pieces it was broken into, in every piece the entirety could be seen. That set the stage for further numinous experiences in my life to remind me that we really are all God. Even Jesus said it way back when in at least two ways: “The Kingdom of Heaven is within” ~Jesus and “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?” ~Jesus
Jesus Christ knew he was God. So wake up and find out eventually who you really are. In our culture, of course, they’ll say you’re crazy and you’re blasphemous, and they’ll either put you in jail or in a nut house (which is pretty much the same thing). However if you wake up in India and tell your friends and relations, ‘My goodness, I’ve just discovered that I’m God,’ they’ll laugh and say, ‘Oh, congratulations, at last you found out.
~Alan Watts
To me, it has always been about Creation AND Evolution. Just because we can explain, scientifically how a rainbow appears in the sky makes it no less a miracle that it exists, that we exist. I truly believe in a benevolent universe and that makes all the difference in my own existence.
Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.
~Joseph Campbell
For me, it's really all about connection and community and love, not only within myself and with my definition of God/dess but also with my friends and family, not to mention everyone else who inhabits this planet with us. There are people I love dearly that have completely differing views about the world and existence. I don’t worry about convincing them to believe in any other reality than what they believe, I just LOVE them. And they love me too. There is room for everyone’s perspective.
Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.
~Joseph Campbell
And so what about when difficult stuff happens? I just watched an amazing documentary film, CrazyWise (LINKED), that looks at how our western culture differs from eastern and developing cultures in how we view (and deal with) mental breakdowns and instability in people. In our modern western culture we label it disease and attempt to “fix” it with drugs. In other cultures it’s actually seen to be a gift, an opportunity for a healer/shaman being born. To these cultures, the person is not simply sick, they are ancestor sick, they are being called, they are sensitive, able to see through the veil between the worlds. Their eyes and other senses have been opened wide and while they were not necessarily prepared for such a view, others are there in the community to support and help them through the eye of the needle. They need to learn how to navigate that sensitivity and they need help in working with the ancestors and spirits and to be shown how to choose which spirits to communicate with and which ones to ask to leave.A mentor, someone who has been through a similar experience, takes the person under their wing and helps them to filter what’s coming through, hone their gifts and strengthen themselves. Through this experience the person then becomes a healer in their own right and helps others in a myriad of ways.
The magician lives in a world of wholeness and can access the world between the worlds at will. S/he has been broken, has made the journey forward to wholeness and so can help others heal, s/he has seen through the veil, and still does. S/he learns to consciously, intentionally, tune into the gods on a regular basis in order to help others. And s/he has been called, s/he knows that it is not only her will, but that s/he is guided by the creator to be of service to others.When we attune ourselves to our higher selves and use our emotions as navigation tools to guide us through our lives , we are able to more fully live the authentic life we incarnated here to live. Not all of us are magicians or shamans, but we all have an inner magician who is attuned to our essential/higher self and can help guide us when we attune and look within.
The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.
~Joseph Campbell
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
~Marianne Williamson
