“And this too shall pass…”

Siddhartha Gautama, aka The Buddha

Symbols & Color

• Fireman’s Helmet: Server Set
• Attitude Controller: Symbol of the Attitude Group
• Penny: Ordinal Scope – person, internal or private
• Heart: Image of the Inspiration Axis
• Border Color: Green – Server Set

Implications of the Upright Position or Positive Pole

Few icons illustrate the definition of Tranquility than the Buddha. In the positive pole of this Inspirational card, he achieves that vibration not through exuberance, but through stillness and tranquility. From this space, he could feel all of the suffering going on around him, but remain steady and empathize, but maintain equanimity and reservedness of a witness, not a judge.

Card messages in the Illuminated position.

+ Tranquility

(calm, level, unflappable, mysterious, nuanced, reflective, deep, sober, cool, unreadable)

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, seek to balance them with the attitude: “thank goodness, here it comes up for my healing”.
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.
4. Nothing ever lasts or stays the same. Let life take its course. Pay attention to both conditions and your reactions to them. Take a deep breath before you act. Calm down. 
5. It is time to put on a ‘poker face’. Emit tranquility and be unreadable and unflappable. Keep your composure no matter what happens. Let them be the ones to flinch first. 
6. A maxim from the Stoic philosophy is “He who angers you, conquers you.”  It means that you have lost your composure. But turning anger into resolve and using it as fuel is like turning fire into a laser. Burn precisely.
7. Act with nonchalance. It will help to reduce anxiety: theirs and yours.
8. Find a measure of peace. Calm down first, and then quell the fear which upset you in the first place. It is going to be OK.
9. It is OK to share what is going on the inside. Safety is within you, security is what you perceive from the circumstances.

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
• Sometimes, even to live, is an act of courage. Lucius Annaeus Seneca
• It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. Aristotle 

Implications of Reversed Position or Negative Pole

A man with his head hung shows a type of heaviness associated with loss and grief, holding oneself in the self-deprecating act of viewing oneself as a failure. This is the plight of the modern male in Western Society. Resignation deflates a person of hope. (Card 63 – ) It cast one down into a pit of despair robbing one of life force. Men especially are trained to be detached from their emotions until they are unable to connect with them at all. Yet, those emotions are churning within. In this negative pole of Stoicism exhibits qualities as if reduced to a zombie, the ultimate state of the living dead. British writer D.H. Lawrence noted this hardness and characterized the American soul as “hard, isolate, stoic and a killer.” To operate from a deadened Heart is to not to live but merely exist. Your challenge is to feel your own unique emotions with courage and not merely drool on with the hoard.

Card messages in the Shadow position.

– Resignation

(defeat, passivity, bemused, detached, poker-faced)

1. “Most men live lives of quiet desperation,” wrote Thoreau, resigning themselves to a life of resigned hopelessness, and actually locking their emotions inside. They believed that no one cared. Have you become numb to something? Perhaps it was they themselves who stopped caring?
   Who has stopped caring?
2. If a person has closed-in on him/her-self they are not only numb to their own emotions, but they are immune to the feeling others. Tyranny in the name of peace.
3. Careful not to hide your feelings too much, people might read a threat. It is OK to share what is going on inside.
4. When someone suppresses emotion with no outlet for releasing them this is emotional tyranny, not emotional maturity. An explosion may be imminent. 
5. Emotional trauma turns into Dissociation. Best to be on the lookout for a trauma hiding as a reasonable response. 
6. Be careful not to hide your genuine emotions too much. Such actions might make people perceive that person as inhuman. Alienation promotes feelings of threat.
7. Do not confuse numbness with peace. All that energy is going somewhere! Loss or compression?
8. “Whatever” is the phrase some Michael books have characterized this attitude. Yet, hiding reaction is not the same as genuine indifference sought by spiritual masters. A.W. Tozer, a commentator of morality stated it eloquently, “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.” Or any other aspect that confirms our mutual humanity. Fight for your humanity no matter what. Checking out is not the same as keeping oneself in check.
9. Like the Server, who tends to follow, the average man/woman is a conformist, which is sometimes a very useful strategy. But when one is passively stoic and allows themselves to accept miseries and disasters like a sheep freezing in the snow, it is counter to his/her survival.

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
• “It’s not what happens to you but how you react to it that matters.” Epictetus

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, Updated 2024

For a Motivation Cards Reading or Channeled Consultation call: 209.768-4956 or email Stephen at channeling@themichaelteaching.com