“And this too shall pass…”

Card messages in the Illuminated position.

+ Tranquility

(calm, level, )

1. Ek “what the heck” Tolle, a Stoic, cites a story in the book The New Earth, about a man’s changing fortunes: from bad to good, then to great, then back to bad. Each phase, people offered him admonition, then praise, then envy, then disgust. Remaining tranquil each time, he responded the same way. “We’ll see.” Know that whatever happens, “This too shall pass.”. Take a time out and calm down.
   
2. Buddha’s way was to approach life in centered tranquility. Emotional aplomb is the key to this card. Whether circumstances produce pleasure or suffering meet them with balance.
3. Now is the time to have a poker face.  Be unreadable and emit tranquility.  Set a tone of calm and things will resolve themselves.

Quotation Illustrating this Pole

• “Belief in God and a future life makes it possible to go through life with less of stoic courage than is needed by sceptics.”  ~ Bertrand Russell
• It [baseball] will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us.  ~Walt Whitman

Card messages in the Shadow position.

– Resignation

(defeat, passivity, bemused)

1. “Most men live lives of quiet desperation,” wrote Thoreau, resigning themselves to a life of numbness yet actually holding emotions inside. They believed that no one cared. Have you become numb to something?
2. Careful not to hide your feelings too much, people might read a threat. It is OK to share what is going on inside.

Quotation Illustrating this Pole

• “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer” ~D.H. Lawrence
• “To seek tranquility by stopping our ears to the cries of human pain is to make ourselves not Christian but a kind of degenerate stoic having no relation either to stoicism or Christianity.” ~ A.W. Tozer
• The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain. ~ Colin Wilson
• “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor” ~ Seneca

Relevance in the Michael Teaching

Consider the benefit of a poker face? No one can read your idea or intention.  Seemingly emotionless, the Attitude of Stoic is designed to mute the experience of the Emotional Center. That condition affects the person who has this Overleaf, but is equally perceived by those who interact with them.

Characterized in some Michael books as viewing life with a “whatever” perspective, is not indifferent. An Essence choosing this Attitude generally does so with the intent of making the personality less susceptible to emotional mood swings or shocks.

Such a strategy would attempt to bring about some balance of a previously intense life. But like Buddha, who realized that all suffering is inevitable and the best way to cope with it is to adopt an attitude of tranquility (the positive pole) and thus be present, but unruffled by sentiment and pain.  This can produce a spiritual harmony and resonance with life making no experience worth drastic or erratic behavior. Peace emerges when the “ocean of emotion”  is calm.

Its cost, however, relegate the nuance of emotions to a bland soup. In the negative pole, Resignation, the seas of tumultuous thought are leveled by the doldrums. Life is a continuous slew of nullities which make the simplest enjoyment virtually unattainable.  To the person stuck in this pole, numbness leading to a view of life as dreary, gives way to apathy.

At about 4% of the general population, or about 300 million people, this Attitude is culturally valued by the Japanese, and is frequently paired with Lunar body type. Of all the Souls who enable Stoic Overleaf, 80% of them are men. In other words, it is rare to see women with this attitude. But when it does happen, their Personality can complex.

For example, Julia Child, an late Mature Artisan, who was a Stoic female, in Passion mode!

Paired with the Spiritualist Attitude, both view greater existence as the outgrowth of some inevitable force. However, for the Stoic it is most likely devoid of any sense of deity or higher design as with the Spiritualist; but the forces of chaos leading to conclusions categorized under the heading of Fate. Not as hostile nor erasable as the Cynic nor as curious as the Skeptic, still this Ordinal Attitude shares with its counterparts a very personal quality.

Sobriety is a term applying to the Stoic in contrast to Spiritualist whose sense of hopeful optimism.

Cultural Meaning

As human competition becomes more intense, stoicism as presently connoted as one who is seemingly indifferent to or unaffected by joy, grief, pleasure, or pain; is to those in power, a desirable state for the compliance of their population.  Apathy is an abdication of life force and leads to a passive citizenry.

Residing at the other end of the spectrum from the Goal of Discrimination,  a persons loosing any sense of pleasure or distinction may be conditioned as simply as Pavlov’s Dog. A dog which had been largely nurtured.  Passive and obedient, futility and lack of hope dominate the landscape of their lives and result in a dimming of any intellectual thought of sense of humanity.

In the dystopian novel 1984, George Orwell describes a society cowed into virtual brain death. But hope is not lost. The ancient martial artist of the Orient have shown us that in the quiet of a still mind, the body can react with a smooth efficiency and complete lack of fear of pain.

In using the Stoic goal for Tranquility, we can move beyond the disturbing thoughts and confront with solid awareness that much of what is thrown at us is an attempt to capture us in the MAYA of advertising, propaganda and embroil us in needless distraction and emotional turmoil.

Famous Examples

Queen Latifa, Joan Baez, Winston Churchill, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Ringo Starr, Bill Walsh, George Washington, Whoopi Goldberg, Queen Elizabeth II, Buddha, Cher, Jim Morrison, Kris Kristofferson, John Wayne, Jeff Bridges, Steven Wright, Edward James Olmos, Willie Nelson, Scarlett Johannsen, Chairman Moa, Ringo Starr, Seth Rogan, Alec Guiness, Bing Crosby, James Earle Jones

You might have this Overleaf if…

1. Whatever comes is the way that it was probably meant to be.
2. I am not easily shaken by things.
3. People get too involved with petty things.
4. I feel apathetic about the way the world works.
5. Most of what I see and hear of peoples actions seem pointless.

by Stephen Cocconi © 2011

For a Tarot Session or Channeled Consultation call: 209.768-4956209.768-4956 or email Stephen at channeling@themichaelteaching.com