“I’ve just got to be me.” 

Denise Williams 

Symbols and Color

• Unifying Set Image: The Diamond – Sometimes in the rough, sometimes well cut and highly polished.
• Background Image: Like an impressionist painting, the swirling colors
  take, have.
• Diamond: Expression Axis (top and bottom)
• Alpha: Omega as one Motif of the TAO
• Toucan: A symbol of Nature’s amazing creation to fill a niche. They use their enormous beaks to crack large, hard, fruits and nuts other animals can’t penetrate. Its colorful composition makes it look as if an Artisan had a sense of humor, and its wider array of loud calls means a Sage must have trained it in sound effects.
• Border Color: Sky Blue – The color of the open Sky.

Implications of the Upright Position or Positive Pole

Art and Communication are at the core of Expression, they are both inventions of human imagination. The most powerful invention of the last century, in  regards to communication at least, was the television. The images it brought closed the gap between many of the world’s peoples, created commercial memes, conveyed norms and mores of cultures, and trained us to be glued to it, instead of to each other. As a tool of learning, it was unsurpassed in bringing ideas to life or into form with animation such that it was a window into the Universe. The Statue of Liberty is an icon of America given to us by France. In the US, television has grown beyond entertainment, beyond news, sports, or information; it has become virtual reality. The way to bridge them is to employ great cultural icons like Lady Liberty to mesmerize us, keeping us further glued to the set. Still, it gave rise to the computer which has made video interactive. And because of miniaturization, the same features exist on our phones, and now even extend into our glasses. What will they invent next? Question is, will it cause us to live more in reality or fantasy? Will it be PBS or Fox News? Expression has, at its base, the motivation to explore and define identity; the way a person reveals themselves. This process is the first phase in stepping into a new realm of consciousness. Exploration in invention, in words, or in any form of communication which conveys identity. This is who I am…at least for the moment. Much of the influence of the Expression Axis then falls under the broad heading of what to include and what to exclude into your reality or palette to create with. It involves discerning what things are and how to allow them to function in your makeup.

Card messages in the Illuminated position.

+ Invention

(originality, style, articulation, rendition, phrasing, design, statement, announcement, publication)

1. You are continually inventing yourself. If the results you are getting don’t satisfy you, rework and reinvent! It is a matter of fitting the pieces together in a different way.
   
2. Invention brings ideas into words, images, sounds, and then form. Are you capturing what you imagine and trying to describe it? Do so!
3. Originality is seldom outrageous to be effective. Precise articulation of something new and different is!
4. The first act of Being is that of Expression. It begins the cycle of choice and the questions that go with them.
5. Articulating your style means prototyping your words into ideas, images, sounds, and then form. Are you capturing your what you intended? Or, are you in need of a redo?
6. Sometimes, invention is just putting things to different uses or fitting the same pieces together in a different way. That too, can be very original.
7. Articulating your style means prototyping your ideas into words, images, sounds, and then form. Are you capturing what you imagined? A redo?
8. Give it to a child and see what they put together. They have no form in mind to limit what might created! 
9. Famed 20th century author Pearl S. Buck said, “Self-expression must pass into communication for its fulfillment.” Publish your intentions like the town crier of old, “Hear me, hear me.” Declare who you are, what you want, and what you feel. And, most importantly, collect useful feedback. Then, check in at each stage and see how life seems in your progression?
10. An original creation is seldom outrageous. Yet, precise articulation of something new and different might feel just incredible!
11. The first act of Being is that of Expression. It begins the cycle of choice and the questions that go with them.
12. Maybe a good HAHA will produce a great AHA! Be open to realization (or feedback) following any act.
13. Approach something with a beginner’s mind. Not knowing what to say just means that you may have the amazing experience of hearing what you actually think. Just start talking, painting, writing, or singing, the rest will happen on its own.

Quotation Illustrating this concept…

• “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” Albert Einstein
• “Every mind which has given itself to self-expression in art is aware of a directing agency outside its conscious control which it has agreed to label ‘inspiration’.” Norman Lindsay
• “Self-expression must pass into communication for its fulfillment.” Pearl S. Buck
• “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.” Pablo Picasso

Implications of the Reversed Position or Negative Pole

How many of you, at first look, think that the horse in this picture was real, but just colored? Some already have. Why I find it fascinating is that this carousel horse photo taken at the base of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, was already thought to have been real but Protochopped BM. Our modern world has allowed us ways to portray fantasy as reality, but just as problematic, we have constructed reality TV – which is almost entirely fantasy, or at least fabrication. Imagination is what creativity hinges upon for innovation, art, and progress itself. Yet, when it loops back on itself, where creating fantasy to explore more fantasy, then all of what might be best not explored is portrayed in graphic 3D, but with none of the consequences.

Card messages in the Shadow position.

– Fantasy

(apparition, mirage, illusion, fabrication, facsimile, simulacrum, withhold, hide, silence, conceal, suppress, travesty, simulacrum)

1. The “mean time” is the place of current fantasy disconnected from the tangible world yet real in your mind. A lovely place, but it is a state of ego-built exile that remains safe but unfulfilled. Why are you holding back or holding out?
2. Corruption of imagination requires only inaction. Are you using yours? Why are you holding back or holding out?
3. Saying nothing is not bad when you have nothing to say, it is mimicking the words or style of another in order to gain approval from others that may kill your authentic creative talent.
4. “No comment.” Great if you have nothing to say. Horrible if you are stifling yourself because you are afraid. Show yourself, with or without words. 
5. Are you mimicking the words or style of another in order to gain their approval? You may be killing your authentic creative talent!
6. Living in your head? A good fantasy isn’t all that great if you never get to experience it as reality.
7. The “mean time” is the place of current fantasy disconnected from the tangible world yet real in your mind. A lovely place, but it is a state of ego-built exile that remains safe but unfulfilled.
8. Some inventions die in the mind because the idea behind it didn’t ever get expressed! Broadcast your ideas like seeds on the winds of possibility, you never know which one will take root and grow.
9. As an Old Soul, it is virtually impossible NOT to express at least part of who you are, even if it is surreptitiously. Style is a birthright. But only you can show it.
10. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes waxed poetically and mourned “Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them.” – If all else fails, at least hum a few bars.

Quotation Illustrating this concept…

•  “The desire for self-expression afflicts people when they feel there is something of themselves which is not getting through to the outside world.” Fay Weldon
• “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Martin Luther King
• “Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them.” Oliver Wendell Holmes
• “Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another.” Madonna

Relevance in the Michael Teaching

As one of 4 Axis in the Michael Teaching, Expression is the first phase of exploration in being in a body. When an Essence emerges from its Devic evolutionary phase, a new individual is born…it is created anew. Or to plagiarize and distort the Evangelical concept “born again.” At the time of the first incarnation as a human, the mind is a blank slate since the databank of past experience can only refer to the rudiments of the animal or molecular connection to the planet. It is the mind that begins the accumulation of information. Learning is the key element under this stage. And the flavor of learning is a constant experimentation with the environment itself and within it.

Expression has, at its base, the motivation to explore and define identity; the way a person reveals themselves. This process is the first phase in stepping into a new realm of consciousness. Exploration in invention, in words, or in any form of communication which conveys identity.  This is who I am…at least for the moment. Much of the influence of the Expression Axis then falls under the broad heading of what to include and what to exclude into your reality or palette to create with. It involves discerning what things are and how to allow them to function in your makeup.

Expressive Overleaves are imbued with on-off, in-out, switches. The Overleaves that fall under the Axis are designed to act as the first level filter of forming an identity and whether to share it all, how much to it to share, and what it is they want to share. Underlying all of these factors is a constant weighing of significance or value each successive prototype expresses accurately the sense of person-hood you are trying to convey. Personal Truth is what is continually discovered and refined. As Miles Davis, the incredible jazz composer and trumpeter, “sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.”

Any Expressive quality, and to whatever degree it plays a part in the Overleaf configuration of an individual,  enhances or demurs needs relating to identity. If a person were to be lacking any Expressive Overleaves, it might be fair to assume that self expression is not a major concern of focus for that lifetime. However, there are those souls who rig the game and provide no internal force or stabilizer and make Expression without any of the requisite Overleaves facilitating, their objective. Thus, the opposite extreme might also be true; that to face self karmic issues of expression, one might make the bar very high by hindering themselves knowing that success would have come as a greater victory in that lifetime. In this rare circumstance, it might be humorously phrased, “we now attempt the impossible with nothing.” Perhaps an overstatement and not that extreme, of course; but really a stretch to say the least!

Cultural Meaning

In America, where individualism is prized and media bombards the collective  airways with collisions of non-stop expressions of information, there is a constant reshaping of fashion and opinions which seldom allows one time for introspection to arrive a true sense of your relationship to it. Do I agree? Is this what I like or what I need? How much of that idea or product or desire genuinely reflect my thoughts and feelings? Constant inundation from the outside might germinate a minute hint of Self but it is likely to bury it under an avalanche of expectations i.e. cultural imprinting.

Yet the Freedom of Expression, in particularly that of speech and religious exercise, facilitate the continual shaping and reshaping of both the individual and society. In a way we might refer to it as “hearing ourselves think aloud” which is a feedback loop which helps refines our ideas and our sense of Self.

Expressing a thought or a viewpoint is always the first step in the stages of development followed by action, then feedback, then conclusion. Each stage ramps up to a new level of understanding and refinement. And if fortunate, success, perhaps wisdom, and most gratifyingly happiness. Regardless of achieving these, one evolves none the less.

During times of Paradigm Change,  ideas that are new and unrefined begin a cycle of novelty or “out-of-the-box” thinking that propels us down an entirely new avenue of exploration. Musical trends have shown us historically how this process occurs. It can be seen in other artistic and innovative forms: literature, technology, philosophy, and superficially fashion. But in all of these, unique expression of an emerging self, commonly called a trend setter or inventor or rebel, they define themselves as they convey who they are through what they do or how they appear. That process is, of course, communication.

When information becomes superficial then true expression takes a back seat to mimicry. Copying and conformity is also a form of communication, but it renders one as part of a chorus mouthing a similar anthem. The ultimate goal of Expression and the communication of it is to find one’s own voice, one’s own song and sing it on the stage they make for themselves. That stage could be a expansive as a nation, or a intimate as a whisper to a single friend or child or even a journal.

But the choice in self expression depends upon a person’s willingness to share who they are and what they do.  Express yourself!

by Stephen Cocconi © 2011, Updated, 2024

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