The Labor of Libra Explained
JJ: What do you suppose the wild bore represents?
Audience: Inaudible
JJ: The bore represents our lower nature that is out of control again, particularly the emotional nature and the earthly nature, so he was told to go and capture it and not to kill it. Now remember in the last labor he wore the skin – he killed the lion and he has now a new personality, one that is woven from his own thoughts, one that will serve him well. This time he has to have further dominance not by killing but by capturing the wild bore – there are still wild parts of himself that must be tamed. Once a labor is accomplished then we come back in an entirely different life and wild things begin to grow again, so again and again we have to tame these wild things. So Hercules had to tame this wild bore and once again he had a hard time finding his quest and he comes across these two centaurs What do these centaurs represent?
Audience: Guards, centaurs are guards aren’t they?
JJ: One of them was kind of on guard.
Audience: Centaurs have a lower half of an animal a horse and the upper half is man so they are not fully human.
JJ: The two centaurs had names and one was Cherion, which means good thought and the other was called Pholos, which means bodily strength. The test was to show control of the emotional, astral and desire nature in whatever forms it may take. Often times in our quest to maintain dominance in our own nature we get discouraged and we give up for a period of time.
Lets take the emotion of anger. Many people have a lot trouble with anger and they enter into anger management programs. People go through these programs and it does not seem to help them. Take Lindsey Lohan for instance – she goes through her problems and goes to rehab and a week later she comes out and has the same problem again.
We get discouraged because we try to handle the lower nature and get it under our mastery and then the problem resurfaces again and we get discouraged. So we meet the centaurs which is half animal and half man and the animal part really likes to let loose and party and the man part is responsible and guards the camp and valuables What is interesting is they have this wine and the wine is to be shared by the brotherhood, what is the symbolism behind the wine?
Audience: It could be like Christ energy or spiritual energy or some kind energy of this nature.
JJ: The wine symbolizes the group life. There are certain things that are only beneficial when shared as a group. For instance, we as a group create a life energy that flows through us when we are together that if we try to attain this just by ourselves – it is just not available. Then there are certain things that we can have by ourselves that we can’t have as a group.
This wine was dedicated to the group and wine is often symbolic of the spiritual flow. The spiritual flow is designated to be shared as a group and what they did is they shared it away from the group and instead of having the spiritual flow it became a very carnal flow of lower type energy that reached down to the lower levels, and they got drunk.
They got drunk and out of control symbolizing that the spiritual energy of the life of the God within. When not used properly this gets us drunk on its own power so to speak. So we become out of control and I have seen this in quite a number of people throughout my life.
When they have a touch of the higher energies and do not share it with the group and want to keep it for themselves it makes them drunk on their own power. The life of God must be shared as a group rather than just keeping it to ourselves. It must be shared with all the people willing to receive it.
There is another great lesson to be learned. Hercules had the idea that he was not going to create any harm this time so he went with no weapons and yet his plan did not materialize. Why was that it the he vowed to be harmless yet he wound up hurting and killing some? What mistake did he make?
Audience: He took his eye off the ball?
JJ: No
Audience: He got off the path?
JJ: No
Have you ever this happen in your life? You say I am going to do this and the situation seems to change and you wind up doing something entirely different than you had planned and it didn’t work out?
Audience: Is it like in the Secret where they said people were treating this guy bad and he kept putting attention on the one thing and it just kept coming to him.
JJ: That could be an ingredient but it is not the main ingredient.
Lets say someone comes up to you and really presses a button and makes you angry and you have committed yourself not to get angry but this person says something so cruel or outrageous that there is no way that you cannot avoid telling him off. Have you ever had this happen?
Audience: Oh yes.
JJ: What could you have done to prepare yourself that you could have handled that situation without getting angry?
Audience: If I would have known going in that this person is probably going to say something then I would have been prepared to let it roll off of me because I would have had my guards up and ready. But if I am not prepared and pretend like that person is not going to hurt me then they usually can get to me.
JJ: That is a really good point. If you are prepared for the situation and you have seen it ahead of time then you can also prepare your reaction for it. But if someone comes to you out of the blue with something totally unexpected -what happens is you do not really know how to handle it.
For instance a person came to Artie and asked for a full refund for this symposium just before it started. We did not expect anyone to ask for a full refund and we did had not thought of how to handle it so Artie gave the money back. Afterwards we thought, well that really comes out of our pocket because we already had to pay for the food and the lodging whether they come or not so why in the heck did we do that? We should have at least charged him enough to cover the expenses we incurred for him.
We should have thought about that before hand and because we had not thought about it we were caught off guard for they wanted us to make the decision right then. We did not think carefully enough about what was fair and what was not fair – we were just thinking about what they wanted so the guy caught us off guard.
Have you ever been caught off guard like that? Especially by people that want something from you – that is where it really catches you off guard. So the key here is that Hercules did not envision all the possibilities that could happen to him. He just made one commitment that he was not going to kill anybody or hurt anybody and he was going to be harmless.
Well that is not enough. Just saying you are not going to get angry will not do it. Saying I am not going to react to a situation or I am not going to loan money to deadbeats is not going to do it. You have to visualize what is going to happen to you in the future – see the events before they come – project your life into the future for the day, the week, the month, the years and years to come.
Think of the people that you know who are close to you in your life, think of the things that they will ask you in the future and then visualize what how you are going to respond. The more you see into your future and plan what you will do and how you will do it in different situations, the more control you will have in your life. If Hercules would have looked into the future and thought, I am going to get discouraged if it takes me a long time and first of all he could have decided that he was not going to get discouraged and if he could have decided in advance not to get discouraged no matter how long it took then he would not have stopped and made friends with the centaur and taken this detour.
Once he made friends with he centaur he should have thought ahead and said to himself, won’t the brotherhood be upset if they find out we are drinking this wine because it is dedicated to the brotherhood? But he did not think about this because he was not looking ahead into the future. This is an important item that many of us overlook. We do not think to look into the future and see everything that is going to happen and visualize what we are going to do, what we are going to say, how we are going to react and how we are going to manipulate the situation to the best advantage of ourselves and the whole.
If you can do this one thing it will give a lot more control over your destiny. Now I really try to do this and still once in a while I am caught off guard. I am not caught off guard too much; certainly not like when I was younger. We were caught off guard because it hit us suddenly and we had just not thought about it and you will always be hit with things that you don’t think about and when you are hit with things that you do not think about in advance you will always make the wrong decision, every single time. Like we made the wrong decision on this and it was an unfair decision that we made to the other persons advantage. But every time you are caught off guard you will make the wrong decision.
I notice in my life that every time I have been caught off guard I make the decision in line with the least resistance. This is the one that is easiest to make and is almost always the wrong one and you end up giving yourself a hard time about it causing yourself more grief than was necessary. So think of the people in your life that may take advantage of you. It is like playing chess – think of their next move and then think of your move. When they make their move you will catch them off guard because then when they make that move they will anticipate that you will do X, Y, or Z and instead you will do A, B, and C, and it will somewhat flabbergast them because they will not be expecting it.
One thing Hercules learned also was to enjoy himself, but he went to the extreme with the centaurs and enjoyed himself too much. He was told to take the time to eat and drink and he did but he went too far. This is one of the lessons that we need to learn in this sign and that is to not go to the extreme and to take the time to enjoy ourselves, to eat, drink, and make friends but also to project ourselves into the future and avoid the pitfalls and still maintain control of your destiny and avoid the extreme.
Then as he was going down the hill with the bore instead of tying it up or killing it he made fun of the it and making fun of the bore, who represents the lower personality, means he made of fun of himself using his lower personality. Some of the best comedians do this, like say Robin Williams, for instance. Some of the best comedians will make fun of themselves and this turns their personality from an irritating thing to an enjoyable thing. So where the strong personality can be irritating, if used correctly is fun to watch and also harmless.
Copyright by J J Dewey
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