07-18-2019, 02:52 AM
(07-17-2019, 05:09 PM)JustLikeYou Wrote: I've read your post. Thanks for sharing it on this forum.
I have a few comments that might help you bring your synthesis into closer harmony with the rest of Ra's words. Such a synthesis is, after all, the challenge of any student who attempts to study the archetypes as Ra taught in so incomplete a course of training with Don.
First, though I'm having trouble finding the passage, Ra says that energy blockages available for healing are either (a) within the mind, (b) between mind and body or © between mind and spirit. This suggests that the work of spiritual evolution exists at the interface between mind and anything else, including itself. So I interpret the archetype cycles to describe these interfaces. Thoughts and emotions, then, cannot neatly be cordoned off into separate cycles; rather, they will be found in different forms in each cycle. The body archetypes, for example, include the mind's direction of the body. Practical planning, trade, and the physical sciences are forms of thinking that are proper to the body cycle, since they are concerned exclusively with physical activity. You are right, of course, to include instinct and cravings in the body cycle, but these are the feminine features of the body cycle. As feminine features, they await the activation through conscious action. The mind cycle, on the other hand, includes belief, identity, significance, value, emotional investment, devotion, betrayal, and all other aspects of human storytelling. The mind cycle is where I locate love, hate, and empathy, since these emotions are so responsive to and indicative of our judgments about who we are to each other. Finally, the spirit cycle's thoughts and emotions include mystery, awe, trust, hope, fear, resignation, and grace. The spirit is a channel between us and the infinite totality, so the experiences appropriate to it are the ones where we find ourselves approaching the infinite.
Another feature to ponder is in Ra's answer in 3.16. Ra says: "Before the body can be initiated, the mind must be initiated." This is the reason for the numbering of the cards. The structure of the mind/body/spirit complex, though, does not match this ordering: mind links body to spirit, so whatever comes through the spirit to the body must first move through mind. Now the requirement that the mind be initiated before the body should be suggestive of the content of the archetype cycles: the work of mind is more foundational and the work of body is a refinement upon the work already completed in mind. Ra says in 4.17 that the disciplines of the body have to do with the balance between love and wisdom. But this means that initiating the mind must require learning love and wisdom so that they can then be balanced in body. To put the same idea differently: we need to make our compassion manifest as attempts to be of service to others in order to discover how to be most efficiently of service. The lessons of body are lessons of trial and error.
The different thought structures that make up mind body and spirit, are differentiated for the most part by the vibration frequency of the thoughts. Typically the body can connect with the spirit with less distortion than the mind. This is a natural process that happens instinctively i.e. intuition. To connect the mental thought process with the spiritual thought process one needs to apply intelligent energy and effort, things DO NOT just work this way naturally or else everyone would find enlightenment the moment they thought about it.
If for some reason a person has elevated a certain thought process higher than another, they would find they have had in theory switched a few cards around. This wrong functioning is not abnormal, sadly this is the norm.
But a caveat I should add about using the Tarot to study the LOO. The adept should follow the same path for learning the tarot that Carla was upon. The meaning of the tarot cards are so ephemeral and hidden, that is quite easy to become lost in the veritable sea of analogies metaphors and definitions of the card meanings. Picking up an average tarot book that covers the Rider Waite deck, Thoth, Tarot de Marseilles, etc. will likely lead down a completely new path not the LOO. The questions Don poses and the Answers give by Ra directly reflect the Brotherhood of Light teachings that were very popular at the time and as the LOO group goes through the tarot they are merely expanding and elucidating the meanings of the cards in respect to those teachings.