“It’s the really Big Picture!”
Or, The Greater Good

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Symbols and Color

• Background Position: Crashing waves onto volcanic shoreline of the Big Island of Hawaii. If there is a common theme about any Exalted character, it is that it likes to make a splash.
• Yin: Feminine Symbol – It is expansive but often passive.
• Member of the TAO ongoing unfettered characteristics.
• The Pharaoh – Symbol of the Exalted
•  Triality: A 3-part function of the Universe
• Border Color: Sea Green – The Scope Pair

Implications of the Upright Position or Positive Pole

There is a potent demonstration of perspective on the Internet called Powers of 10. In the work, it graphically depicts variations of visual perspective in mathematically calculated distances of 10. If only we could expand our perspective to see how tiny in relation to the Universe we are as individual? Perhaps what we believe is overwhelming might shrink in significance and a solution be right within our view. The only thing one has to do is step back far enough, and formulate the first statement of awareness and location positing: “Ok, I am here. Now what might I not be seeing?” Take the long view and almost everything might seem “like the small stuff.”

Card messages in the Illuminated position.

+ Expanded

(Cardinal, Expanded, preeminent, royal, macroscopic, philosophical, group, unique, public)

1. Expanded and capable of seeing the “big picture” the broad perspective is able to gather many options. Formulating visions and expanding potential is the gift of this card. You will overcome any limitation if you expand yourself beyond your current limits.
2. Make someone feel particularly important. Notice how they react toward you when you show them respect.
3. Be magnanimous in your actions toward others. Let your attitudes and tastes be worldly.
4. You are a universe of one: a Soloverse. In it you may expand to whatever your thoughts take you.
5. Play the “what if” game. Make the possibilities broad yet real. Then, how can they be done?
6. Embrace attitude and tastes that are worldly and cultured. Look through these lenses and you’ll see the grand view and great diversity.
7. Magnificence is your birthright. Live large!
8. The public sphere is where one can be larger than oneself in influence, notoriety, and power. Yet, to get there, one must manage to assert a Persona – whether genuine or crafted, that is bold, noticed and potent. If you are going to be seen, make sure you “clean up well.” Or at least apply the right props for what you are intending.
9. Make someone feel particularly important. Notice how they react toward you when you show them respect.
10. Whatever is happening is within public view. Everyone is available for comment.
11. Stretch your mind beyond the immediate or obvious. Scale back and take in the larger vista. The famous Nazca Lines in Peru were only realized to be animal forms on a mass scale when seen from an elevated position. Sometimes you have to step back and take in the big picture before you understand any of the smaller parts.
12. Play the what-if game. Make the possibilities broad, yet real. Then, how can they be done?
13. Formulate a vision. Your potential for meeting the challenge causes you to expand and use gifts that you never knew you possessed. Can you identify your ultimate goal?
14. You will overcome any limitation every time you open your havingness. Simply allow for the possibility of more to your life, and your chance of getting access is as good as anyone’s. The boundaries of your container expand and as such, no more lack, no more former limitation.
15. You are a universe of one: a Soloverse. In it you may expand into whatever your thoughts take you.
16. Cardinality, in statistics, denotes a thing as singular, unique, a discrete thing, and indicates a specific place holder. As a concept of metaphysics, a Cardinal view is one that has a prepositioned and absolute meaning. Here, ideas and principles are fixed, but who applies them may understand them only from their own point of view.

Quotation Illustrating this concept…

• “Thought great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principles which direct them.” ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
• “Magnanimous people have no vanity, they have no jealousy, and they feed on the true and the solid wherever they find it. And, what is more, they find it everywhere.”  ~ Van Wyck Brooks

Implications of the Reversed Position or Negative Pole

El Capitan in Yosemite Valley is part of the largest single slab of granite on Earth; called the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. I know, because I live near Yosemite, and on the slab itself. I took this photo standing just less than  a mile from the base of this monolith, and still it fills the entire area of the picture. Like spires on a Cathedral, it dominates the landscape and imposes its presence to everyone who sees it. As a symbol for the negative pole, it represents mass so intimidating and imposing, that one cannot ignore it. This image also suggests other features associated with this pole: density and weight. There is no way to get through it, only to go around it or over it. And therein lies the question: Do you form a workaround? Or, do you scale its height and actually reach beyond the limit it has set?

Card messages in the Shadow position.

– Imposing

(Exclusion, incursion, supremacy)

1. Worship advances the worst aspects of separation. Love God yes, respect those of accomplishment, emulate those with skills you admire, but put any on a pedestal, and you will eventually knock them off. Who has disappointed you?
2. Imposing one’s own views onto others is intrusive and usually unwelcome. Who’s the butt-in-ski?
3. Are you being obtuse or missing the point because of some grand abstraction you believe is applicable? Yikes! Get out of the way and take a cold hard view of the situation!
4. “Everyone knows.”  People assert this statement to make themselves feel superior: as if they had absolute knowledge of the TRUTH! Absolutes deny unique circumstances and blur responsibility. 
5. Napoleon Bonaparte, a very Cardinal figure in modern history, said of great decisions, “Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. It all depends on the principles which direct them.” A broad world view may still be that of a tyrant wanting glory instead of progress. What’s your agenda look like? Glory, greed, greatness, grace, or just get along?
6. The surest sign of a megalomaniac is someone who sees other people as cogs in their machinery. Who it being used as a tool instead of an ally?
7. “By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.” Franz Kafka – Just remember that seeing all the parts doesn’t mean you can do them all yourself. Collaboration is key in this endeavor.
8. There has been an unwanted incursion. Did you ever hear the story of a camel’s nose under the tent? Get that nose out of whosever’s business it’s been shoved into.
9. Crowding-out, a concept found in both evolutionary biology and economics, happens when one species or agency, has expanded so greatly as to spillover and as such begin to crush the domain of another. Something is gaining mass that is having an unhealthy effect on others. Find out what is taking over and move to stop the incursion.
10. Stop wanting to emulate anyone! They will always be an exceptions, but not the rule. Make yourself exceptional in your own right. Get bigger than you have ever been before and do so bravely.

Quotation Illustrating this concept…

• “By imposing too great a responsibility, or y rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.” ~ Franz Kafka
• “The whole imposing edifice of modern medicine is like the celebrated tower of Pisa – slightly off balance.” ~ King Charles III, when he was still Prince
• “If one is to do good, it must be done in the minute particulars. General good is the plea of the hypocrite, the flatterer, or the scoundrel.” – William Blake, English Poet and Mystic
• “I am larger and better than I thought. I did not think I held so much goodness.” Walt Whitman

Relevance in the Michael Teaching

The Exalted or Cardinal qualities are those features which might be thought of as seeing a broader vista. Innate to Overleaves bearing this perspective is a sense embedded of something behind the obvious.

The Cardinal Roles of Sage, King, Priest, may seem at times less interested in other individuals as they tend to be self involved trying to figure out the larger scope of the world and to establish there place within it. Engagement with the crowd or any body politique is libel to be viewed as more a matter of attention or power seeking than caring. Not because they are incapable but the sheer scope of their concerns extend past a single person and instead tend to be occupied with some larger imaginings of a whole or collective.

Extroversion and Cardinality

A common misstep is to equate the notions of Extroversion to Exalted Overleaves implying that somehow having a sense of the larger scope and being inclusive of other than personal perspectives is somehow a Personality that would be socially interactive or driven. While the notion has some elements that bias or enable a person to have considerations that are multifaceted, rather than say solipsistic (Ordinal), it does not mean that an individual is overtly jovial, externally focused, or relies on the inputs of others as a directing force in decision making.  Instead, the Exalted view is more likely to consider the setting, fashion, formal structure, and social consensus outside their immediate purview.

Introspection is a quality that is more associated with ongoing Soul Age, as one begins to cultivate awareness of internal states and discern the unique milieu of impulses that they arise from. Hence, notice how it can be a mistake to think an Exalted overview with someone simple because they are externally world focused or has some drivenness toward acquisition. Indeed, the more “personal gratification” that are driving these aims, the more they are indicative of younger Soul Age lessons as focused on material actions.

Examples of Exalted

Luxury, Royalty, Religion, Corporation, Philosophy, Hunter, Special, Big, Thought, Future, Individualism, Inclusive, Mystical and Metaphysical

Cultural Meaning

Exalted qualities might sound laudable and bear some romantic notions of greatness or virtue or achievement, but ultimately, it is about the scope of understanding and comprehension or influence and viewership.

Is there ever really someone whose status deserves adulation and pomp? In the history of the world, at the top of human hierarchies such people exist. By association with a social or income class alone, they are esteemed or at least obeyed with little or no need to have been a decent person…just position.

Associated with such lofty positions implies that those at the top are looking downward onto the mass of humanity and see it as one huge ordinal sprawl of undifferentiated bodies. Whereas those looking upward see idealized figures crafted by the media with press secretaries and Photoshop honing a brand and celebrity that seeks more fans and buyers of its memorabilia.

Hint as to your scope…

Your perspective might be Exalted if your primary method of assessment is to look at the whole.  Almost innately, you begin with big picture or plan for the long run. Maybe you look to history to gather the long view. In any case, there is a sense of dominion or breadth of implication which causes you to think how any one given part affects the whole.

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