On the Tree Path - The lover

[Guest guest]

The way turning a card each week along the path of the tree of life,

since 25 weeks now, comes to have an "effect" on one really amaze me. We

really do have the power to forge our life in every minute details. And

that power that one may have can be scary at times. The story of

Milarepa, is one that I did like to keep at my bed side for a long

while, as to the ways to play with this given power that we all have.

One way, the usual one, is to simply forget about this power we have to

create our destiny, and simply let the destiny work on a little part of

us that we may call ego. Another way, is wanting to become conscious of

this power, but then like the charioteer, or Jesus in the desert one

will have to come to face the "devil", inflation, etc...

 

Another way is simply to remember the Adam and Eve in each one of us.

 

"Now, two ways, two quite different method exist which can free us from

the illusion "me, living - you, shadow", and we have a choice. The one

is to _extinguish_ love of oneself and to become a "shadow amongst

shadows". This is the equality of indifference. India offers us this

method of liberation from _ahamkara_, the illusion of self. This

illusion is destroyed _by extending the indifference that one has for

other being to oneself_. Here one reduces oneself to the state of shadow

equal to the other surrounding shadows. _Maya_, the great illusion, it

to believe that individual beings, me and you, should be something more

than shadows - appearances without reality. The formula for realizing

this is therefore: "me shadow - you, shadow".

 

The other way or method is that of _extending the love one has for

oneself to other beings_, in order to arrive at the realization of the

formula: "me living - you, living". Here it is a matter of rendering

other beings as real as oneself, i.e. of loving them as oneself. To be

able attain this, one has first to love one's "neighbour" as oneself.

For love is not an abstract programme but, rather, it is "substance" and

"intensity". It is necessary therefore that one radiates the substance

and intensity of love with regard to _one_ individual being in order

that one can begin to ray it out in all directions. "To be able to make

gold one has to have gold", says the alchemists. The spiritual

counterpart of this maxim is that in order to be able to love everyone

on has to love or to have loved someone. This someone is one's

"neighbour".

 

Who is one's neighbour, understood in the Hermetic sense, i.e. meaning

at one and the same time in a mystical, gnostic and metaphysical sense?

It is the being nearest to one at or since the beginning; this is the

sister-soul for all eternity; this is one's twin-soul, the soul together

with whom one beheld the dawn of mankind.

 

The dawn of mankind: it is this which the Bible describes as paradise.

Now, this was the stage of existence that God said: "It is not good that

Adam should be alone" (Genesis ii, 18). "

>From The Lover, Meditation on the Tarot.

 

Antoine