I wish I could post the card images too, but I can't. To explore more with this deck, visit www.osho.com and click Zen Tarot.
Card 1: The Issue
49. Friendliness
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Friendliness
First meditate, be blissful, then much love will happen of its own accord. Then being with others is beautiful and being alone is also beautiful. Then it is simple, too. You don't depend on others and you don't make others dependent on you. Then it is always a friendship, a friendliness. It never becomes a relationship, it is always a relatedness. You relate, but you don't create a marriage. Marriage is out of fear, relatedness is out of love. You relate; as long as things are moving beautifully, you share. And if you see that the moment has come to depart because your paths separate at this crossroad, you say good-bye with great gratitude for all that the other has been to you, for all the joys and all the pleasures and all the beautiful moments that you have shared with the other. With no misery, with no pain, you simply separate.
Osho The White Lotus Chapter 10
Commentary:
The branches of these two flowering trees are intertwined, and their fallen petals blend together on the ground in their beautiful colors. It is as if heaven and earth are bridged by love. But they stand individually, each rooted in the soil in their own connection with the earth. In this way they represent the essence of true friends, mature, easy with each other, natural. There is no urgency about their connection, no neediness, no desire to change the other into something else. This card indicates a readiness to enter this quality of friendliness. In the passage, you may notice that you are no longer interested in all kinds of dramas and romances that other people are engaged in. It is not a loss. It is the birth of a higher, more loving quality born of the fullness of experience. It is the birth of a love that is truly unconditional, without expectations or demands.
Card 2: Internal Influence I am unable to see (unconscious influences)
3. Creativity
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Creativity
Creativity is the quality that you bring to the activity that you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach - how you look at things....
Not everybody can be a painter - and there is no need also. If everybody is a painter the world will be very ugly; it will be difficult to live! And not everybody can be a dancer, and there is no need. But everybody can be creative.
Whatsoever you do, if you do it joyfully, if you do it lovingly, if your act of doing is not purely economical, then it is creative. If you have something growing out of it within you, if it gives you growth, it is spiritual, it is creative, it is divine. You become more divine as you become more creative.
All the religions of the world have said God is the creator. I don't know whether he is the creator or not, but one thing I know: the more creative you become, the more godly you become. When your creativity comes to a climax, when your whole life becomes creative, you live in God. So he must be the creator because people who have been creative have been closest to him. Love what you do. Be meditative while you are doing it - whatsoever it is!
Osho A Sudden Clash of Thunder Chapter 4
Commentary:
From the alchemy of fire and water below to the divine light entering from above, the figure in this card is literally 'possessed by' the creative force. Really, the experience of creativity is an entry into the mysterious. Technique, expertise and knowledge are just tools; the key is to abandon oneself to the energy that fuels the birth of all things.
This energy has no form or structure, yet all the forms and structures come out of it. It makes no difference what particular form your creativity takes - it can be painting or singing, planting a garden or making a meal. The important thing is to be open to what wants to be expressed through you. Remember that we don't possess our creations; they do not belong to us. True creativity arises from a union with the divine, with the mystical and the unknowable. Then it is both a joy for the creator and a blessing to others.
Card 3: External influence of which I am aware (conscious influences)
73. Compromise
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Compromise
Don't be clever, otherwise you will remain the same, you will not change. Half-techniques on the path of love and half-techniques on the path of meditation will create much confusion in you. They will not help.... But to ask for help is against the ego, so you try to compromise. This compromise will be more dangerous, it will confuse you more because, made out of confusion, it will create more confusion. So try to understand why you hanker for compromise. Sooner or later you will be able to understand that compromise is not going to help. And compromise may be a way of not going in either direction, or it may be just a repression of your confusion. It will assert itself. Never repress anything, be clear-cut about your situation. And if you are confused, remember that you are confused. This will be the first clear-cut thing about you: that you are confused. You have started on the journey.
Osho Dang Dang Doko Dang Chapter 4
Commentary:
In the courts of ancient Japan, the male attendants were often selected from the ranks of petty criminals who were castrated. Because of their intimate familiarity with the activities of the court, they were often at the center of the political and social intrigues and exercised a great deal of power behind the scenes. The two figures on this card remind us of the sleazy and conspiratorial situations we can get into when we compromise our own truth. It is one thing to meet another halfway, to understand a point of view different from our own and work towards a harmony of the opposing forces. It is quite another to "cave in" and betray our own truth. If we look deeply into it, we usually find that we are trying to gain something--whether it is power or the approval of others. If you are tempted, beware: the rewards of this kind of compromise always leave a bitter taste in the mouth.
Card 4: What is needed for Resolution
14. Integration
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Integration
The conflict is in man. Unless it is resolved there, it cannot be resolved anywhere else. The politics is within you; it is between the two parts of the mind. A very small bridge exists. If that bridge is broken through some accident, through some physiological defect or something else, the person becomes split, the person becomes two persons and the phenomenon of schizophrenia or split personality happens.
If the bridge is broken - and the bridge is very fragile - then you become two, you behave like two persons. In the morning you are very loving, very beautiful; in the evening you are very angry, absolutely different. You don't remember your morning...how can you remember? Another mind was functioning - and the person becomes two persons. If this bridge is strengthened so much that the two minds disappear as two and become one, then integration, then crystallization, arises.
What George Gurdjieff used to call the crystallization of being is nothing but these two minds becoming one, the meeting of the male and the female within, the meeting of yin and yang, the meeting of the left and right, the meeting of logic and illogic, the meeting of Plato and Aristotle.
Osho Ancient Music in the Pines Chapter 1
Commentary:
The image of integration is the unio mystica, the fusion of opposites. This is a time of communication between the previously experienced dualities of life. Rather than night opposing day, dark suppressing light, they work together to create a unified whole, turning endlessly one into the other, each containing in its deepest core the seed of the opposite.
The eagle and the swan are both beings of flight and majesty. The eagle is the embodiment of power and aloneness. The swan is the embodiment of space and purity, gently floating and diving, upon and within the element of the emotions, entirely content and complete within her perfection and beauty.
We are the union of eagle and swan: male and female, fire and water, life and death. The card of integration is the symbol of self-creation, new life, and mystical union; otherwise known as alchemy.
Card 5: Resolution: the Understanding
42. Totality
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Totality
Every moment there is a possibility to be total. Whatsoever you are doing, be absorbed in it so utterly that the mind thinks nothing, is just there, is just a presence. And more and more totality will be coming. And the taste of totality will make you more and more capable of being total. And try to see when you are not total. Those are the moments which have to be dropped slowly, slowly. When you are not total, whenever you are in the head--thinking, brooding, calculating, cunning, clever--you are not total. Slowly, slowly slip out of those moments. It is just an old habit. Habits die hard. But they die certainly--if one persists, they die.
Osho Take it Easy, Volume 1 Chapter 12
Commentary:
These three women are high in the air, playful and free, yet alert and interdependent. In a trapeze act, nobody can afford to be a little bit "absent" even for a split second. And it is this quality of total attentiveness to the moment at hand that is represented here.
We may feel there are too many things to do at once, but get bogged down in trying to do a bit here, a bit there, instead of taking one task at a time and getting on with it. Or perhaps we think our task is "boring" because we've forgotten that it's not what you do but how you do it that matters.
Developing the knack of being total in responding to whatever comes, as it comes, is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. Taking one step through life at a time, giving each step your complete attention and energy, can bring a wondrous new vitality and creativity to all that you do.
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I decided to share this reading with you because when dealing with matters of the heart, it seemed like this path of understanding is something that would apply to more than just me.
With Love and Understanding,
Mama Gaea