* atoms of spirit . . . . . . . . .

"The Kingdom of God is inside you and all around you, not in mansions of wood and stone. Split a piece of wood and I am there. Lift a stone and you will find me."

-- from the gospel of st. thomas, a rejected book of the bible

i definitely do not believe in any sort of deity. i do believe in spirit, and i believe that spirit reveals the truth to us when we are wise enough to know that we can learn it. spirit also reveals some things to us through tarot cards, though many do not truly know how to use them. tarot will never bring bad news, or a death omen, or any kind of superstitious nonsense. this is silly of course. people who are afraid of tarot usually are for good reason; because they are hiding something or because they fear what truths may be revealed about them. but tarot, like Dust and karma, or any other kind of universal force, is like this excerpt from st. thomas. it will not be found in the so-called “kingdom of heaven” or a church or a deity, or a divine person; it is microscopic, smaller than atoms, and it is everywhere, it is everything. it is like matter or gravity. it holds our universe together. It is what moves tarot cards to reveal the truth to us. it is what balances our world, known as karma, it is consciousness. and it is the only thing between this world and another... we are so close!

* the multiverse . . . . . . . . .

Everywhere and every why, the answer lay beyond the sky. Pass through the seven satellites, pass on to the place we go to. Learn to read, to rhyme, to count your primes, an earthly education. Climb the tree of life in hopes to find, the mid-space time dilation. On the Mansion World the roles reverse, a slave becomes a master. On the Mansion World the souls converse, and life moves a little faster. We unify in universe to arrive in the everafter. In the Mansion World, I might like to know you.

-- from the mansion world, by deadsy

in theory, new parallel universes are created every time there is an opportunity to make a choice. flip a coin and it comes down tails, and another universe is created where it comes down heads. but the most important thing to remember is that we are not limited to only two choices, heads or tails! there are an INFINITE number of choices and possibilities: there are choices you make or do not make that have an effect on what happens next. there are also things beyond your control that have an effect on the future as well: the choices and actions of other people, miracles, phenomena, the natural order of things (such as gravity, matter, time, space...), and things we cant even speculate on, things we simply do not have the capacity to fathom or understand.

for arguments sake, lets continue using the coin toss as an example: you toss the coin up, and.........? 1) the coin vanishes into thin air, 2) it spontaneously combusts, 3) you get hit by a car, forgetting all about the results of the coin toss, 4) someone reaches out and grabs it in mid-air, 5) someone sticks a gun in your back and you forget to look where it lands, 6) it lands on its side, 7) a bomb goes off before the coin reaches the ground. each of these possibilities are true, and it just keeps going on and on; there are a million-- actually, no not a million-- there are infinite possibilities here, and each action springs forth an infinite number of worlds, and in each one of them the same thing, and so on and so on. by this logic, anything is possible, and is already happening, has happened, and will happen in another parallel universe; we just cant access it. (...or can we?)

* tarot . . . . . . . . . . .

The one thing that drew her out of her boredom and irritation was the alethiometer. She read it every day, sometimes with Farder Coram and sometimes on her own, and she found that she could sink more and more readily into the calm state in which the symbol meanings clarified themselves, and those great mountain ranges touched by sunlight emerged into vision. ...
"It's almost like talking to someone, only you can't quite hear them, and you feel kind of stupid because they're cleverer than you, only they don't get cross or any thing... And they know such a lot, Farder Coram! As if they knew everything, almost! Mrs. Coulter was clever, she knew ever such a lot, but this is a different kind of knowing... It's like understanding, I suppose..."
He would ask specific questions, and she would search for answers.

"What's Mrs. Coulter doing now?" he'd say, and her hands would move at once, and he'd say, "Tell me what you're doing."
"Well, the Madonna is Mrs. Coulter, and I think my mother when I put the hand there; and the ant is busy-that's easy, that's the top meaning; and the hourglass has got time in its meanings, and partway down there's now, and I just fix my mind on it."
"And how do you know where these meanings are?"
"I kind of see 'em. Or feel 'em rather, like climbing down a ladder at night, you put your foot down and there's another rung. Well, I put my mind down and there's another meaning, and I kind of sense what it is. Then I put 'em all together. There's a trick in it like focusing your eyes."

-- from the golden compass, book one of his dark materials by phillip pullman

that was describing how the main character, lyra, was able to use a fictional truth-telling device called an alethiometer. reading tarot cards works the same way; you can ask a question, and the symbols on the cards will tell your answers.

i have a very unique deck of tarot cards. they are not a traditional deck, but have beautiful watercolor paintings of different symbols such as a star, mermaid, atlas (the man holding the globe on his back), a thief, a drunk, a pine tree, a ladder, a palm tree, different kinds of fruit, etc. they also have numbers on the front, and the name of whatever is on the card ("sun", "star", "maiden", "watermelon", etc). this deck came to me, it found me, and thats how i truly know it not only belongs to me, but is mine. because of this, i can get very good personal readings from them.

much like in the book i quoted above, each card or symbol has many levels of meaning. Dust is what moves the hands of the alethiometer in the book, but what Dust really is is just pure spirit, and that is indeed what moves the tarot cards.

[unfinished post]

* reality . . . . . . . . . . . .

"What you see before your eyes is merely a service of reality."
-- unknown

did you know that our brain filters out things that we see and hear? if your mind does not believe something to be possible, it edits it out and does not allow that "impossible" information into our consciousness. its the things that make us do a double take or say, "deja-vu..." at first glance, the brain didn't have time enough to edit over it. but on that second glance, it had fixed the glitch, so to speak, and what you thought you had seen, seemed to be a mistake. do not dismiss yourself so easily. its a little like the "deja-vu" phenomenon in the first Matrix movie. your brain changes things before you completely realize what has happened.

"do not try to bend the spoon; that's impossible. instead, merely try to realize the truth: there is no spoon."

* time . . . . . . . . . . .

"Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day."
-- orbital

i believe that "time" as we perceive it, (ie, linear, going forward, 60 seconds per minute, etc) only exists so that we can keep track of things in our heads and to make things less confusing. however, i believe that time is multi-dimensional, and ever-flowing. is is not merely a straight line, but more like a sphere.

stephen hawking (among other physicists) has said that time and space cannot really be separated. past, present, and future happen simultaneously. enlightened ones might sometimes know the future by remembering it.

* karma, baby . . . . . . .

"What goes around, comes around."
-- unknown

i believe that karma is the force that keeps the universe balanced. if you suffer, that will bring a little bit of good karma your way sometime. seeking revenge will bring bad karma; revenge is unnecessary because if you really believe in karma, the universe takes it upon itself to balance out. karma comes in ways many don't think of. karma is just as good as it is bad. karma may not come in chronological order, or in any order at all. but it is always quietly there, underneath it all.

karma IS balance.