Intimate Oracle

I received an email from a friend . His letter I found quite profound. It reminded me of the three of swords from my Curious Carnal Tarot deck.
I will share this letter with you without the authors name.

𝗟𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗡𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗜 𝗦𝗮𝘄 𝗠𝘆 𝗦𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗛𝘆𝗽𝗼𝗰𝗿𝗶𝘀𝘆 𝗖𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆

Last night I saw something in myself clearly. I woke my wife up, and she told me she was in pain. My wife has had a traumatic experience involving being woken up after not sleeping for a significant period of time, and last night that wound was on full display. I woke her up, and then I denied the pain she experienced. I denied her reality while convincing myself I was speaking truth.

That is the part I have to sit with.

The witness saw it. It saw the reaction rise. It saw the defense rise. It saw the mind reach for spiritual knowledge before the heart reached for love. Instead of simply being with her pain, I quoted the highest truth. I told her the pain was not real. I watched how fast the mind could take something sacred and use it in a way that was cold, dismissive, and damaging.

That moment showed me something I cannot keep pretending I do not see.

I have watched this same thing in myself almost daily. The ego gets hold of spiritual knowledge and then uses it before the heart has been changed by it. The words become deep. The life stays shallow. The mouth speaks of God, truth, consciousness, love, forgiveness, and oneness, while the person standing in front of us still feels unseen, unheard, and dismissed.

Life and death are in the tongue, and I have watched my own tongue create harm while my mind was busy calling it wisdom.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗢𝗹𝗱 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲

People today call this spiritual bypassing. That means using spiritual ideas to avoid pain, avoid responsibility, avoid emotion, avoid honesty, and avoid the people we have hurt. This is not new. This is an ancient disease. It has shown up in religion, philosophy, churches, temples, spiritual communities, families, marriages, and private rooms where nobody else sees what is really happening.

This is what happens when the intellect learns about God faster than the heart learns how to love. Someone hears that God is beyond pain, and the ego turns that into, “Your pain does not matter.” Someone hears that the soul cannot be destroyed, and the ego turns that into, “I did not really hurt you.” Someone hears that all is one, and the ego turns that into, “There is no one here for me to answer to.” Someone hears that the world is passing away, and the ego turns that into, “Your experience is not real enough for me to care.”

The witness sees this without flinching. It sees how quickly the ego can use sacred language to protect itself. It sees how the mind can preach love while resisting correction. It sees how a person can speak about God, consciousness, awakening, surrender, forgiveness, and truth while still refusing the most basic humility.

I have done this. I have used spiritual language to avoid responsibility. I have used the highest truth to escape the most basic human decency. I have spoken about ultimate reality while failing the person right in front of me. I have used wisdom traditions to protect my ego instead of exposing it.

That is spiritual hypocrisy.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗛𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗟𝗶𝗳𝗲

The highest truth is what the sages, prophets, mystics, and awakened ones have pointed toward in different languages. God cannot be wounded. The soul cannot be destroyed. The deepest Self is not broken by what happens in the mind or body. Consciousness itself is not damaged by the events that appear inside it. At the deepest level, there is something in us that is untouched by birth, death, praise, blame, pleasure, and pain.

This human life is where that truth is tested. This is where we speak. This is where bodies feel pain. This is where minds carry wounds. This is where marriages are damaged. This is where children remember what was said to them. This is where people cry, forgive, shut down, heal, leave, return, apologize, and try again. This level may not be the final truth. This is still the level where love has to be lived.

The mistake is thinking that because something is not the final truth, it does not matter.

That mistake is where spiritual abuse begins.

The witness sees the confusion. It sees the mind take a truth from the highest level and use it against someone who is hurting right in front of us. It sees the ego using God to avoid love. It sees the person speaking of eternity while refusing to be gentle for five minutes.

This is not wisdom.

This is avoidance.

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝗢𝗹𝗱 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗦𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿

The Bhagavad Gita is an ancient Indian scripture written as a conversation on a battlefield. It is not just about war. It is about confusion, fear, the soul, God, action, and how to live when life becomes unbearable. It matters because it does not let spiritual truth become an excuse for escaping life. It teaches the highest truth while still demanding right action, self-control, compassion, and responsibility.

In that text, Krishna says the highest spiritual person is the one who sees the joy and sorrow of others as his own. That is the test. Not how much someone knows. Not how mystical their language sounds. Not how many scriptures they can quote. The test is whether another person’s pain still matters to them.

The Upanishads are some of the oldest spiritual writings of India. They are the root of the teaching that the deepest Self and God are not separate. They say that the one who truly sees the Self in all beings does not hate. That matters because real spiritual seeing does not make a person colder. It makes hatred, cruelty, and indifference harder to justify.

A yogi simply means someone seriously committed to union with God, truth, and the deepest reality. The word sounds foreign here, so say it plainly. A real spiritual person is not proven by visions, vocabulary, beliefs, or how well they can explain reality. A real spiritual person is proven by how they meet life.

The witness sees this too. Scripture is not the problem. The ego using scripture is the problem. The teaching is not the disease. The unhealed mind holding the teaching is the disease.

𝗝𝗲𝘀𝘂𝘀 𝗦𝗮𝗶𝗱 𝗜𝘁 𝗧𝗼𝗼

Jesus did not teach people to use God as an excuse to become careless with others. He said to love your neighbor as yourself. He said to love your enemies. He said that whatever you do to the least of these, you do to him. He said people would be known by their fruit. That means the life reveals the truth of the person more than the mouth does.

That should humble every religious person in America, including me.

Because we say we love God while speaking death over people. We say we follow Christ while refusing to love the person in the room. We say we believe in forgiveness while refusing accountability. We say we believe in truth while lying to ourselves about the harm we cause.

The witness sees this. It sees the gap between confession and conduct. It sees the distance between the Bible verse shared online and the tone used at home. It sees how easy it is to praise Jesus publicly and deny him privately in the way we treat the person closest to us.

Jesus already warned about this. Calling on the name of God means very little when the heart is far from love.

𝗕𝘂𝗱𝗱𝗵𝗮 𝗦𝗮𝗶𝗱 𝗜𝘁 𝗧𝗼𝗼

The Buddha looked straight at suffering. He did not deny it. He did not tell people their pain was meaningless. His whole teaching began with the honesty that suffering is present, and that suffering has causes. Craving, ignorance, clinging, pride, anger, and delusion keep the wheel turning.

That is exactly what I saw in myself. The suffering in the room was not met clearly because my own mind was clinging to being right. My own mind wanted the high ground. My own mind wanted to turn a real moment into a spiritual argument.

The Buddha taught compassion because seeing clearly should make us less harmful. If spiritual insight does not reduce the harm coming from our speech, our reactions, our pride, and our self-protection, then something has gone wrong.

The witness saw the suffering.

The ego wanted to explain it away.

𝗟𝗮𝗼 𝗧𝘇𝘂 𝗦𝗮𝗶𝗱 𝗜𝘁 𝗧𝗼𝗼

Lao Tzu taught humility, softness, simplicity, and returning to what is natural. He taught that the wise person does not need to force, dominate, or prove. The hard thing breaks. The soft thing endures. The person who needs to conquer the moment has already left wisdom.

That matters here because the ego is hard. It wants to win. It wants to be right. It wants to explain, correct, defend, and rise above the moment. The way of wisdom is quieter than that. It listens. It does not need to conquer the pain in front of it with a concept.

Sometimes the most spiritual thing I can do is stop talking.

Sometimes the deepest wisdom is to say, “I hear you. I am sorry. I am here.”

The witness saw how simple it could have been.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗶𝘁𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗦𝗲𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝘆𝗽𝗼𝗰𝗿𝗶𝘀𝘆

This is why the witness matters. The witness sees where I am not being what I say. It sees where the mouth and the life are out of alignment. It sees where I speak of love while acting without love. It sees where I speak of God while protecting my pride. It sees where I speak of oneness while dismissing the person in front of me. It sees where I use spiritual truth to avoid being human.

This is the way forward. Seeing it. Not decorating it. Not making excuses for it. Not turning it into another identity. Not pretending to be more awakened than I am. Not using God language to cover the same old ego. Not escaping into ideas of heaven, enlightenment, consciousness, or ultimate reality while the people closest to me are asking for basic tenderness.

Here in America, we have a spiritual sickness. Maybe the whole world does. Egos are running wild with religious and spiritual language. People preach love and create division. People preach forgiveness and refuse accountability. People preach God and harm their families. People preach awakening and still treat other people like obstacles.

I know this because I have seen it in myself.

𝗟𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗡𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗪𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝗠𝗶𝗿𝗿𝗼𝗿

Last night was a mirror. My wife was in pain, and I reached for philosophy before compassion. That is the whole disease in one moment. That is the whole hypocrisy exposed in one sentence. I did not need to explain the nature of reality. I needed to love the person in front of me.

All the great teachings meet here.

Jesus says love your neighbor as yourself.

The Buddha says look directly at suffering and let compassion arise.

Lao Tzu says become humble, soft, simple, and free from the need to force.

The Indian sages say the same Self lives in all beings.

Different languages. Same mirror.

If all is one, whose pain am I dismissing?

If God is in all, who am I speaking to so carelessly?

If the same life lives in everyone, what am I doing with my tongue?

Life and death are in the tongue. I have spoken both. The witness sees it now. The only honest path forward is to let that seeing change the way I speak, the way I love, the way I respond, and the way I live.

If my spirituality does not make me more compassionate, more honest, more humble, and more careful with the hearts of others, then it has not reached the place it was meant to reach.

It is still only in the mouth.

Not yet in life.

THE ALCHEMIST

Logos

You are the carnal expression of your own divine will. Do not concern yourself with ascension or salvation. Those are paths for the blind. You are the will and direction of change. You are your own cause and your own effect. You formed the sound that became your body. Your blood, your bone, your skin, all were created through your own divine will. The Alchemist is associated with Mercury, the Messenger of the Gods. It is not all active. Instead, it is both active and passive, as it is both that which transmits and that which is transmitted, as any phallus is. The Alchemist represents consciousness, action and creation. It's the symbol for the idea of manifestation: the possibility of making an idea come true. He gives meaning and direction to life, and he reminds us that the emotional and creative powers of our souls must have a physical basis to be of real use. Powers unused are powers non-existent: we have to set them free in order to use them. Mix your desires and dreams at the altar of intent and breathe yourself into the world, not as you wish, but as you will.

Card Description

The Alchemist stands vibrantly before the alchemy table. His ph***ic wand in one hand is being charged by divine light. The other hand holds a red rose and a white lily, symbolizing passion, love, purity and fertility. His blood red cloak denotes sacrifice and courage. On the table is the symbol of the philosopher's stone along with a sword, cup and a coin: the elemental ingredients for materialization. A candle and books are placed on one shelf indicating knowledge and illumination. A human heart and hourglass sit on the other shelf, showing his awareness of mortality and impermanence. A lemniscate hovering near the shelf symbolizes the act of turning upon oneself as a twisting or spiraling closed loop: no beginning, no end, only change. The table rests on a ta***ic base, suggesting a Kundalini awakening. The symbols of Net Alu for Intent and Ria Mui for Vigor are shown to enforce alchemical success.

Meanings & Musings

Power of intent, creativity, self-consciousness, knowledge, communication, egoism, primal urge.

There is work to be done.

Not upon the world first, but within oneself.

The mind can be observed. Its movements can be studied. Its habits, fears, desires, assumptions, and narratives can be brought into awareness.

In this sense, the mind becomes a laboratory.

Here the alchemist works.

Not with metals, but with perception.

Not with fire, but with attention.

Not with lead and gold, but with old habits, emotional wounds, rigid beliefs, and inherited illusions.

The shadow worker enters this inner laboratory willingly. He looks into the hidden corners of his own psyche. He examines what has been rejected, denied, feared, or forgotten. He does not search for perfection. He searches for understanding.

This work requires courage.

Not the courage to conquer others, but the courage to confront oneself.

To question one's assumptions.

To recognize self-deception.

To witness emotional reactions without immediately obeying them.

To acknowledge suffering without becoming identified with it.

The alchemist understands that transformation begins with observation.

What remains unconscious governs us.

What becomes conscious can be understood.

What is understood can be integrated.

And what is integrated no longer needs to hide in the shadows.

The work is never truly finished.

Each day reveals new layers.

Old habits return.

New insights emerge.

Illusions dissolve and subtler illusions appear.

Yet the work continues.

Not because one seeks perfection, but because one seeks greater clarity.

The true alchemist is not the one who claims to have found the final truth.

The true alchemist is the one who remains willing to examine his own mind, again and again, allowing what is false to fall away and what is real to emerge through experience.
~Intimate Oracle