Along the Tarot Path

I have the gift of being able to look reality in the face and deny it, and then build a life on that denial. That would be a reasonable description of insanity, I think. But I have an inner life that is rich and satisfying and an outer life that is as good as anyone else’s and better than most.

In a few days, I will be teaching an intensive on “Will and Intent,” surely an act of my own brand of insanity. The premise on which this intensive is built is so opposed to, so radically different from, the current standards of reality that it’s comic. But the participants are hungry for an improvement on a reality that leaves them inwardly poor and malnourished.

That is what I do at The Tarot School, and that is what people come for, and stay for. The teaching that Ruth Ann and I do is pleasing and useful to a surprisingly large number of people, come to think of it.

Even though the song of the world has been sung to them since birth, they are ready, willing and able to replace it with something better if only something better would appear. To such people I can speak. Then, the song that I’ve laboriously learned to sing leads to a faint but steady answering chorus.

Apparently, teaching has provided me with the only community of thought I have. Without students I would be, I guess, quite alone. Scary thought. It never actually occurred to me before so starkly. If I hadn’t learned to teach, I would have had to learn to keep silent. To stay safe. A perfect schizoid corner to have painted myself into. A perfect nightmare for someone who loves to talk.

As I write, a solution to this dilemma occurs to me. Instead of talk, how about act? Turn life into act instead of thought, will instead of talk, example instead of argument. That way, community can be there or not, but being alone need not be lonely.

This, in a nutshell, is “Will and Intent.” At least for me.

– Wald

Filed under: Tarot Musings, A Cup Full of Tarot, Unmesha on September 2nd, 2007