Friday March 05, 2010
Monkey Mind and the Dog of Desire
Dog Poet Transmitting…….
When you are talking to a dog and you say his or her name and then you chatter on about being a ‘good dog’ or a bad dog’ and whatever you have to say; impressed or depressed by certain behavior, what the dog hears is its name and then something on the order of “quack, quack, quack, quack”. It could be any series of sounds that don’t make sense to the dog.
Some dogs can recognize a number of words that translate into actions. Most house pets don’t get a great deal but they can be reached through the subconscious the same way we can. You have heard about people who go to sleep with a problem in mind and then wake up with the solution. You can also impress things on your subconscious and, over time, modify your consciousness, your behavior… just about anything. This is the purpose of the Tarot. Fortune telling is not the purpose but that is the level that people who are of the house pet variety see it. It seems a little redundant and deluded to want to ‘attempt’ to predict the future with a particular medium when you can actually alter the future with the same medium. The future isn’t entirely fixed.
Some elements of the future are fixed, such the conditions one might find themselves in and people one might encounter but the level at which one enters the condition and/or meets the people is variable. By example; you can show up drunk for a particular event or you could show up at the top of your form. Your condition would have a telling impact on what might take place.
The Tarot speaks to the subconscious mind in pictures and symbols. That is how the subconscious mind processes information. Consider the nature of dreams. The ninth trump is called Strength. It shows a woman dressed in white with her arms around a red lion. According to the tradition I follow, she is opening its mouth to speak. This card stands for the modification of forces below the level of self-consciousness and it is the stage preceding mastery. I’m being overly simplistic here because I want to avoid getting into complex explanation for the sake of brevity and making a general point. This isn’t even about the Tarot, nor is it a suggestion to make use of it. The same results can be attained in various modalities.
The dog sees us as God. We’ve got hands to open the icebox. We make food appear. We’re at a whole other level. In a certain way we are dogs in relation to the divine who has other hands (see Hindu posters of the deities) and can open other iceboxes and provide certain foods we don’t know how to access.
A dog’s consciousness is modified by its association with human consciousness. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. A human being is modified by its contact with the divine. This is a good thing that can sometimes take the appearance of a bad thing depending on what you get put through to increase your contact with the divine. The end result is positive but the terrain you pass through can be trying. Seeking communication and union with the divine is not for the faint of heart.
We cannot access the divine directly; rather let me say that generally this doesn’t happen. Most people would be burned to a cinder. Our contact has to take place through a series of filters. Angels serve a purpose in this respect. The divine has a variety of mediums with which to reach human consciousness and we have a variety of routes by which to approach the light. It could be said that they all work out to be the same thing, such as when Jesus says, “No man comes unto the father save by me”, “I am the way, the truth and the light”. Other religions might object to the implied exclusivity of this but the essence of the thing doesn’t contradict other religions.
We carry on far too many pointless arguments in our heads and they lead nowhere. It’s a lot like a dog chasing his tail. I often think of the childlike quality that is recommended for those seeking the kingdom of Heaven. I fancy it because it gets results. It can be very profitable to consider why this is. Often we turn thoughts over in our head in a very casual way and do not give them a deeper scrutiny. Often we do not even scrutinize the manner by which thoughts appear in our head and why that occurs to begin with. There’s a great little pamphlet from some decades ago called, “As a Man Thinketh”.
People very often wind up at the end of their lives with a great deal of regret and emptiness. They obtain senility instead of regenerated innocence. They have the TV going all the time instead of the still small voice within. When they were young they were oh so confident about who they were and where they were going; not that they actually knew. Now they have no idea who they are or who they were and can’t even remember their past with any degree of accuracy.
The trump that precedes Strength is called The Chariot and its general meaning is, ‘triumph in the mind’. You have to get control of your mind. Nothing is going to work for you until you do and you can hardly move on to anything greater in a metaphysical way until you do. This takes work and relentless application but most people can’t see the point of it. Professionals in certain lines of work can definitely see the point of it or they won’t be much good at what they do.
I’m approaching this in a very elementary way. However, simplicity is a very important feature of success. It’s been said that even an illiterate person can attain illumination. The mind likes to complicate things and this obscures the way.
Dogs take upon themselves the characteristics of their owners. Seekers take on the characteristics of the divine or whatever archetype or animal nature they are seeking to emulate or wind up emulating; aware of it or not.
People identify themselves to themselves (and to others) according to their color; race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, profession and a host of things they associate with themselves and this conceals what they really are. We are none of these things and thinking we are… is a serious mistake. It’s a death sentence. After a certain manner one might say that all death is suicide. In the Bible it says, “We shall not all die but we shall all be changed”. We can look at that statement and many another scriptural statement and just gloss over it without deeper scrutiny. What’s the point of reading it in the first place if you don’t want to understand the deeper meaning? A partial effort comes to nothing or at the very best yields inconsistent results.
I’ve said before that the world looks like a mental institution to me. I mean this literally. It’s a remarkable self-defense mechanism to be able to identify different pathologies when you encounter them. You can’t always treat the patient but you can anticipate their madness and potential and not only inoculate yourself against it but avoid the consequences of engagement. This might seem a little cynical but you have to know what is and is not within your abilities and sometimes getting out of the way is the only alternative. This is what I got from the martial arts. My days of actual physical contact in this respect are long gone except for maintaining a certain level of ability and flexibility for reasons of mobility and health. These days the matter takes care of itself before it becomes a concern (raps on head with knuckles and says, “Knock on wood”.). It’s a lot like bullfighting but without the red cape.
Things like the Tarot and other interesting disciplines from earlier times can be very, very useful in many, many ways. When one can communicate with their dog (metaphorically speaking) one can often do some surprising things. One’s mind, which is very much like a monkey, can become one’s greatest ally instead of one’s most remorseless enemy. A great many of the residents of the animal kingdom symbolize activities, conditions and states of being in the human realm but… once again, we don’t look deeper. We don’t scrutinize intently and carefully. Many of us move through life like a pinball and wind up in the same location (metaphorically speaking) as the pinball.
Most of what we think we know about life is not what life is about. Life has a single purpose and engaging in anything else just means you go round and round and round and round until you discover it.
End Transmission…….
http://lesvisible.blogspot.com/2010/03/monkey-mind-and-dog-of-desire.html
