A direct experience of your life

I first  reviewed the Art of Life Tarot in 2012, but I have yet to use it much. I have kept it though, through many deck culls, because it appeals to me as something that is handy to have for daily draws, for the expression of the heart of each card's meaning. Today's card is the High Priestess, with a quotation from Lao Tzu.

At all times we can trust our deepest inner knowing. We just don't always see how to get to it. So much gets in the way. We allow circumstances, situations, people, dogmas, or systems to come between us and our truth.

We think it requires bravery to know who we are and what we want. We may be afraid to look at what is. All of this comes of illusion, of images, rather than from reality. Even the attempt to name 'what is' results in a new layer of illusion separating ourselves from our truth. And we think that if we confront the truth of what is, it means we will have to change, to 'become'. This is an illusion, a world of images, but not reality. We are taught that life is about striving to 'become' something, to seek transformation. But have you ever considered that transformation only occurs when we let go of the concept of 'becoming'?

I have been contemplating the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti recently. Consider his thoughts on the concept of 'becoming': 

'The mind has an idea, perhaps pleasurable, and it wants to be like that idea, which is a projection of your desire. You are this, which you do not like, and you want to become that, which you like. The ideal is a self-projection; the opposite is an extension of what is; it is not the opposite at all, but a continuity of what is, perhaps somewhat modified. The projection is self-willed, and conflict is the struggle towards the projection. You are struggling to become something, and that something is part of yourself. The ideal is your own projection. See how the mind has played a trick upon itself. You are struggling after words, pursuing your own projection, your own shadow. You are violent, and you are struggling to become nonviolent, the ideal; but the ideal is a projection of what is, only under a different name.

'When you are aware of this trick that you have played upon yourself, then the false as the false is seen. The struggle towards an illusion is the disintegrating factor. All conflict, all becoming is disintegration. When there is an awareness of this trick that the mind has played upon itself, then there is only what is. When the mind is stripped of all becoming, of all ideals, of all comparison and condemnation, when its own structure has collapsed, then the what is has undergone complete transformation. As long as there is the naming of what is, there is relationship between the mind and what is; but when this naming process - which is memory, the very structure of the mind -is not, then what is is not. In this transformation alone is there integration.'

- J Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

The High Priestess teaches us that we already know what is. Krishnamurti affirms as well that we already are 'what we are' as well as 'what we want'.  All conflict, all becoming, is disintegration. Therefore, let us not concern ourselves with naming of 'what is', or naming of what we want to become. Let us relax into a direct experience of our lives.