A person told me that he feels that he has excrement in his heart, and I answered that the excrement is fertilizer, that he should think of adding earth to it and that anything can grow there. If the person can make something grow there, then the feeling changes.
“I feel like I have something on my shoulders, something that is crushing me.” Okay, someone feels like something is crushing her. Let it come. Do not defend yourself, okay? Change the feeling. Think that this comes from the interior and goes toward the exterior. Modify yourself. This emerges from your interior. Do you know what it is? Growing wings. So, let them grow. Push them! Push the wings that are going to allow you to go where you want to go. Create your wings and move your wings. Go where you like. Toward the earth, toward your territory, toward yourself, toward your fulfillment. This is how feeling works.
“I feel like there’s a ball of lead in my solar plexus.” Wonderful. Imagine that your body is an oven, an alchemist’s cauldron. Imagine: in another incarnation you are an alchemist. The ball of lead is the first material that is going to change you into gold. So, let this fall so it gets to the fire in the belly. The belly is the seat of the Great Work. Work, let the ball descend, instead of defending yourself, let it heat the fire of your sexuality, okay? Little by little, go about making it rise toward where it was, and as it is rising make it change colors, until it changes to golden, and gets to the center of your chest. And then, let it shine — project its rays to all sides. Make it rise. And this way you make gold. What will you do with the gold? Currency, money. It is the acceptance of money in your heart. The negation of money turns into a knot. Do you have problems with money? Yes? Well, now you are going to have to make your money. If, upon making this ball rise, that weight, you feel too materialistic, convert the money into love. Love is the only creativity that gives you this kind of currency. Through the use of creativity, the feeling of distress will go.
“I have an itch in my head, thorns that plunge into me.” We are not going to ask what the thorns are. Simply accept the feeling, but without asking yourself why or what it means, because it can be the critical thoughts that they threw at you when you were a child, things like that. You are going to think that this leaves your head, not that it enters into your head. But you still need to really work with this feeling. And what leaves from your head is going to change into roses, because roses have thorns. And when you imagine that you have roses coming out of your head, imagine that insects come to pollinate them. And with the pollen, you are going to pollinate other plants in the world. And then you can write poems; you can do what you want.
All of us have to stop with this game of “Look what you did to me” or “You don’t love me.” It is a lack of creativity. We should not delight ourselves in the feeling of not being loved. Precisely, if I have a feeling of not being loved, I must change this feeling and feel myself loved. And what can I do? Well, to begin with, stop asking. If I stop asking for love, I am in a position to give it. So we say: “You do not love me, but I adore you.” And instead of spending my life angering myself and annoying others and suffering, I will say “Enough,” and the problem ends. I love you. I am not going to live as a victim all of my life. No. I love you, and this stops. If you do not love me, it is your problem not mine. There is the cure. When we are creative, we are not centered on asking for something; on the contrary, we make it ourselves. We should put love there where there is not love, and we will find it. Because, if you use another like a mirror of your lack of capacity to love, it is because you have looked to someone who does not love you, and this is because you cannot love. You are incapable of loving, and your problem of not loving you deposit on another, you project it like a mirror. Love. And if you love, the other is going to love you, because you are going to project your love to him.
We begin by loving things: art, people, our work, everything. We dedicate ourselves to creating and to loving. Because the other attitude drove me to do nothing, to being foiled at every turn. Creativity, on the other hand, drives you toward what you do, what you should do. And what you do, you project. And if you project it, you receive it back. Everything you give to the world, the world gives to you. Everything you do not give to the world, the world does not give to you. You need to free yourself, using creativity, from the appeal. Instead of saying “I want to have talent,” we should say, “I have talent!” Why would I want to have talent, if I have it? I want to have success. But if I have success, everything I want, I have. So, I stop asking, and I start doing my work. That is it! If I want to play music, I play it. If I want to sing, I sing. If I want to write, I write. If I want to gain money, I gain it. Period.
Because at our side are always the barriers that prevent us from fulfilling ourselves. Father, mother, true? It is this damn mind-set that has said to us: be a victim, live like a victim, and make yourself a victim. Pester another. But this is already the subject of another less accelerated course.
Footnotes
*1 For some years now, Jodorowsky has been hosting, without publicity, a conference-happening to deal with therapeutic themes every Wednesday in Paris. The event is free of charge; five hundred spectators attend each week. At the end of the Mystical Cabaret sessions, volunteers pass the hat to collect the money necessary to pay for renting the hall. Three days before the conference, and always free of charge, Jodorowsky reads the tarot cards for some thirty people. At the conclusion of each reading, the person who received the reading is required to trace the words “thank you” with their index finger in Jodorowsky’s hands as payment.
*2 [Marjolaine, the name of the conference site, also means marjoram. — Ed.]
*3 [Jodorowsky coined this term to define his specific kind of tarot reading. — Ed.]
*4 [An ancient Chinese technique of self-massage. — Ed.]
About the Author
Alejandro Jodorowsky is a playwright, filmmaker, composer, mime, psychotherapist, and author of many books on spirituality and tarot, and over thirty comic books and graphic novels. He has directed several films, including The Rainbow Thief and the cult classics El Topo and The Holy Mountain. He lives in France.