Cosmic Consciousness

Breaking Through the Boundary of Personality Consciousness (Saturn) to Experience Wholeness (Tarot, The World)

Happiness is Wholeness! The tarot card The World is the same archetype as Saturn—the end, or better said the edge ,of personality/ego consciousness, meaning the boundary that separates this world from the next is represented, as an archetype, as the planet Saturn.

My astrology teacher says that when a progressed Saturn is retrograde in a personal chart, there is an opening between the conscious mind and sub-conscious or super-conscious (one could also say ‘higher mind’)—i.e. a channel is created. I found that information interesting because it was around 1999 that I began to do psychic readings professionally, meaning it turned into being my only source of income–therefore, professional. And that’s right around the time that my progressed Saturn turned retrograde. I only share that since it relates to the correlation of Saturn to The World tarot card and the channel between dimensions or levels of mind.

Typically, the World Card indicates the end of the cycle and the meaning is much like this: you’ve gone as far as you can for now and a new cycle is beginning.

When I programmed my tarot cards with personal memories, this card related to the memory of driving late at night on my way from Florida to Ohio. I ran off the road in a rainstorm and nearly went off a cliff! That was as far as I was going THAT night, for sure! I turned around and held up at the last Motel I passed until the next day.

In order to program tarot cards for personal memory meanings, draw a card without looking at it and ask your soul-mind to supply you with a memory to attribute to the meaning of that card.

Saturn rules time, limitations, form, and as mentioned above – boundaries, and the end of cycle.

When we can break through these boundaries in consciousness, we can have what some would call an experience similar to those who report NDE’s… near death experiences.

We can induce our self into these areas of breakthrough by doing yogic-type breathing and clearing of the chakras. A re-centering of the personality occurs which brings spiritual openings to the Greater Self in dreams and meditations. And then we see the human comedy of all past lives and present from a perspective of understanding, compassionate acceptance, and non-attachment. It can be shattering until you are ready for it but you completely understand that–there is no self!

From this standpoint, one begins to understand that there is, in the end, no division between a literal and symbolic world. There is simply ONE WORLD where The Divine is a sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere—or as Wayne Dyer likes to point out “now here”.

When we can achieve such a consciousness, all is both one ‘and’ many and everything is in its place in the ever transforming play of creation.

From this perspective there is no reincarnation because the individual soul that is said to be reborn has no separate reality except as one of the billions of sparks in the greater mind!

This is the realization that many of those who have had near-death experiences have reached. (I almost had one of those on the night I ran off the road in the rain!)

Anyway, this is the epitome of this card’s meaning and of today’s message. Like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, when we go as far as we can, another dimension opens and we fly through the opening to the higher one.

The good news is that we can do it with our feet on the ground upon the earth when we can channel through the openings in the Saturn boundary of consciousness and experience wholeness. And thus ends the Cosmic Communiqué for today.

PS– This is one tarot card that I could write book about but speaking of SATURN ruling time… must fly for now. See you tomorrow… wait! before I go, here’s the Heart Sutra (gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā) which pretty much explains it….

Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, practicing deep prajna paramita,
clearly
saw that all five skandhas are empty, transforming all suffering and
distress.

Shariputra, form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than
form.
Form is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form.
Sensation,
thought, impulse, consciousness are also like this.

Shariputra, all things are marked by emptiness –
not born, not
destroyed,
not stained, not pure,
without gain, without loss.
Therefore in emptiness there is no form, no sensation, thought, impulse, consciousness.
No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind.
No color, sound,
smell, taste, touch, object of thought.
No realm of sight to no realm of
thought.
No ignorance and also no ending of ignorance to no old age and death
and also no ending of old age and death.
No suffering, and also no source of
suffering, no annihilation, no path.
No wisdom, also no attainment.
Having
nothing to attain, Bodhisattvas live prajna paramita with no hindrance in the
mind.
No hindrance, thus no fear.
Far beyond delusive thinking, they
attain complete Nirvana.
All Buddhas past, present and future live prajna
paramita and thus attain anuttara samyak sambodhi.

Therefore, know that prajna paramita is the great mantra, the wisdom
mantra, the unsurpassed mantra, the supreme mantra, which completely removes all
suffering. This is truth, not deception. Therefore set forth the prajna paramita
mantra, set forth this mantra and say:

GATÉ GATÉ
PARAGATÉ PARASAMGATÉ BODHI SVAHA

[Beyond, beyond, totally beyond, perfectly beyond: Awakening ….Yes!]

Loosening up stuck and solidified emotions and leaving the old baggage behind. I’ve learned that to leave the baggage one has to pry it loose from the soul and what comes as an image in the mind is like an old anchor that has been in the sea a long time. When it is dredged up, it is full of barnacles—barnacles on a rusty anchor. Those barnacles and that rust are like issues of the past.

But we have to bring up that anchor and clean it off. Sand blasting cleans barnacles off anchors, chains and the bottom of boats or high pressure cleaners do too; but, sometimes scraping is called for to remove these crustaceans.

I’m thinking our soul could, like the anchor, chain and boat bottom also collect barnacles after many incarnations.

The tarot card that inspires today’s message is 8 of Cups which is archetypically the same as Saturn in Pisces.

Saturn is material or materiality (earth) and put anything in an ocean long enough (Pisces relates to Oceans) and we can get rust and barnacles. If these aren’t dealt with, over time the boat could get a hole and the barnacles on the bottom of the boat and propellers could slow down travel a great deal.

barnacles on anchor — Barnacles on our boat and on our soul can slow us down

Barnacles in this case are symbols for emotional baggage that slows us down on our journey just the way real barnacles can put a drag on the boat and in the case of unresolved rust can create a hole in the boat itself!

I used to watch a lady crabber (a person who went out in her boat daily to catch crabs or check her cages or crab traps). She went out into the Chesapeake in a little boat with a hole.

I’d be having morning coffee and around that time of day there’d she be rowing a bit and bailing a bit and then pulling up a trap and then bailing again!

It was comical and she wasted a good bit of time bailing. I suppose life itself can be like that sometimes if we don’t make those repairs when they’re needed.

I often wondered why she didn’t just fix the boat; maybe she enjoyed the bailing as much as the rowing and everything else out there on the bay.

When we bring our boat to dry dock to care for it properly, it saves us time in the long run… especially if we have new shores awaiting us and we really want to get somewhere. Some people, like this woman on the Chesapeake, may enjoy bailing their boat and getting little accomplished and maybe they have the luxury of time to be able to do that and enjoy every moment of it! (No judgment.)

It makes me think of people who actually enjoy the drama of life. No judgment there either. How can there be? We have multi-million dollar movie industries who bank on our love of drama and movie stars who love their work. And we love their work too.

I wonder if some people like the drama of bailing because if they didn’t keep busy doing that, they’d have the time and energy to do other things and they’d rather bail than to face the challenges of traveling to new shores. Maybe there are parts of me like that. Maybe you too?

Like the Chesapeake crabbing lady, she couldn’t go far from her own dock and in some ways, neither can I! But maybe I don’t want to or maybe I’m not supposed to.

Saturn in Pisces—material things in the ocean. Material and societal life and cosmic consciousness! Those two don’t seem to go well together.

Anyway, without continual maintenance—the ocean will eventually cause the boat’s deterioration. Lots of people give up their boats because of the continual maintenance involved.

Our lives can be like that too; some people simply cannot maintain their bodies and therefore give them up and we call that death. But until then, we do the continual maintenance of coming into dry dock, cleaning off the barnacles and treating the rust in our meditation and reflection/contemplation times.

And then back into the ocean of life I suppose and on to new experiences with rejuvenation—isn’t that how it’s supposed to go?

Life is impermanent and change happens and in that adjustment we have opportunities to release old patterns and remove those barnacles in dry dock. One way we know this is happening is when we have a lack of energy (the barnacles are beginning to create a drag) and our boat slows down. It’s time for some maintenance and to clean the bottom of our boat or scrape away attachments to past experiences.

Saturn represents the barrier between the individual conscious mind and the cosmic mind. The cosmic mind is represented by Neptune, the ruler of Pisces.

In my little analogy, Saturn is the material boat flowing on the ocean of cosmic consciousness. How well is the boat moving along? Are you able to reach new shores or are the barnacle attachments slowing down your movement? Has your boat sprung a leak from lack of maintenance and are you spending all your time bailing? Are you fearful about the possible new shores the cosmic ocean will bring you to? These are some thoughts for contemplation from today’s Cosmic Communiqué which is more an encouragement to reflect than a specific message.

PS—in the image of this card we see a woman who turns her back on the cups and heads off alone into the mountains. It sort of makes me laugh as that’s what I’ve done in my life—I am alone in the mountains having withdrawn a good bit from society (Saturn) to help me release emotions (Cups).

“Society” is another archetype of Saturn but how many of us can completely and totally withdraw from society? We have to have some connections to it… we have to remain in the world, don’t we?

I think I’ve put my boat permanently in dry dock and have headed toward the mountain top searching for something higher, the inspiration to find the meaning of life perhaps. I have given up a high paying (relatively so, for myself anyway) career as a physical therapist to be here where I am doing what I do. I walked away from the cups, the past achievements, like the lady in the image of the 8 of Cups card. I left a lot behind just like the image on the card and I had to scrape a good many barnacles off my boat to get here!

I hope you will be able to find a line or two in today’s post that brings you some meaning and insight for your life today. See you tomorrow…