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“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep

to gain what he cannot lose.”

—Jim Elliot, author, 1927-1956

We all travel a road, a journey to self actualization and realization. These trips are long and complex requiring detours, deceptions, backups and restarts.  Very few people experience consistent and smooth progression.  Every person has his or her unique path but the milestones and growth experience may be universal.  The Tarot calls this the Fool’s Journey as if it is a metaphor for our journey through life.

Some of us are born with innate gifts in one area, but blind in another.  We can be an intellectual genius and an emotionally immature child.  Or, perhaps you have known people with immense wealth and power but who never know love.  There are others who wander lost, bewildered and afraid to journey.  These people are contrasted by some interesting souls who are creative, action-oriented, risk takers and confident.

The Fool’s Journey is not orderly and is sometimes so lengthy that it cannot be perceived on a daily basis with the truths that are offered only revealed in retrospect.  We skip lessons or refuse to learn the lesson and then fail to reach our potential.  When we are blind to the lessons by ignoring the signals to look inward we might have to repeat and repeat the same situation in a new way until we see what is going on and thus surrender our notions to the depth of the experience.

Many times we try to overcome the difficulties encountered on the path but fail repeatedly.  No matter what the lesson is and no matter what the pattern of discovery is that is what we are here to do and cannot avoid in order reach our true potential.  Even the most successful, powerful and visible people are here to do the same things that the ordinary mortals do–for some reason their journey is public and not private.  Not better, not worse.  Just different.

We start as the Fool, in the beginning.  Innocent and with faith, we are simple souls embarking on a journey expecting a positive outcome and unaware of any hardship or pain that he or she might encounter as we venture out to learn the lessons of the world.

After commiting to the path–a school, a marriage, a child, a lifestyle, a new city–our Fool encounters the great balancing forces of the universe–the forces of opposites.  We awaken to the conscious awareness given by the Magician that allows us to impact the world we have before us with concentration of will and our power.   We also encounter the creativity of the feminine and fertile ground of unrealized potential that springs forth new life.  Both are needed, as father and mother to create new activity.  Each pole, positive and negative, male and female, are needed for balance.  Without the negative we cannot see the light and without the light, we cannot create anew.  So, with trial and error, we forge forward into the new experience.

As this Fool gains more awareness of his environment he gets to understand the surroundings and explores and delights in the new situation.  Our Fool is meeting the Empress, representing the earthly mother who surrounds us with support and nurturing.  But as soon as we meet this experience, we also experience the Emperor who represents structure and authority.  So we feel some restriction but also security from patterns and lines of demarkation around the experience.  Another way of putting this is that we have boundaries and rules in each stage of life that regulate behavior in the society that we find ourselves that are somehow necessary for our well-being.   We find ourselves somewhere where there is a figure in authority who will enforce our behavior.  No matter what system you find yourself in, somehow there is a built-in check and balance system.  In this way, the Fool learns and understand his purpose and boundary conditions.

Eventually, this Fool strays into the larger world and educates himself about the world he finds himself in.  Taking in information about this world, he will develop a personal belief system.   The new Fool has been indoctrinated, educated, and trained in the practices of this society and has become a part of the culture.  The Fool cannot help but identify with his group — is this a family, religion, country, company, school–and this group give him a sense of belonging and enables that feeling of separation or aloneness to dissipate.  The Fool enjoys the experience of this group and conforms to the culture or must move to another group.

Most people yearn for intimacy at some point in their life.  And this urge is powerful.  Sometimes intimacy is confused with sexuality, which is also an extremely powerful urge.  The young Fool begins to look for relationship.  And these relationships are formed with other Fools with similar belief systems and values. The relationship, once found, helps to balance individuals who become a half of a symbiotic relationship.  These relationships are especially important with those who need the comfort of another to feel whole because they are not entirely self aware and constantly experience the loneliness from separation.

Just past this adolescent phase, the Fool steps into adulthood.  Feeling masterful, the adult Fool has a strong identity with his experience or group and through discipline and willpower, repeating what has worked well in the past he feels that he understands his environment.  The ego feels victorious.  We have the exuberance of a happy child.  This is what we went through when we had the stock market bubbles….unjustified success and the feeling of self satisfaction.  You have the assured confidence of a winner and the feeling that this will never end and that somehow you did something good to deserve applause. This is the ride up on the Chariot of life.

Eventually, this ride up at the top presents challenges.  Some challenges are darn hard.  Some cause bubbles to burst.  Some challenges are amazing serving the purpose of reversing the previous thinking that had been ingrained in our belief system.   We have to draw on our inner strength to go on despite amazing setbacks.  This can represent ill health, job or relationship losses, children who don’t turn out the way we thought they should.  In comes a whole new phase of life requiring new attributes of patience, tolerance, and stoicism.  A kinder and softer power prevails as intense feelings temper the exuberance of the previous phase.   It is in these times that we realize that we do not control the world.  There seems to be more to life than that. It is in times like this that people begin to believe in a higher power.

What next, what hardships to I have to overcome, why is this happening to me?  The Fool cries like Job did.

More in the next blog entry….the Fool’s Realization.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 1:03 pm and is filed under Consciousness, Mastery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.