For something that has no solidity and can be walked right through, clouds can effortlessly block out the sun. They have no ultimate form or shape to them and barely any substance, but they can put up a barrier that cannot be broken until they choose to disperse. Even the most powerful energy source in our solar system is no match for an ethereal cloud. The sun, which could instantaneously ignite, burn, and destroy everything in its path, quakes and bows its head at the lowly cloud.
The things in our lives that appear to have no substance
whatsoever are the things that have the most power, but because we cannot see
them or touch them, we fail to understand how they shape our world. We often don’t even think of them as being
separate “things” from us.
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| The impenetrable strength of the cloud. |
Our thoughts have no solidity, no shape, no form, no
existence outside of our own minds. They
cannot be measured, weighed, or categorized.
But what power they have. They
can shape destiny. There is nothing we
have done in our lives that we have first not thought of doing before actually doing. Emotions cannot be measured or seen
either. Their effects on our human
vehicle can be evidenced, but the emotions themselves are invisible. They are so stealthy and so crafty that they
can control our breathing, our heartbeat, and even our hormones. There is nothing we have experienced in our
lives that did not first run through the screen of our emotions.
It’s a double-edged sword that can be used for good or for
bad. Our thoughts and emotions can blind
us and drive our fears to a frenzy. They
can block out all good or make their filters so thick that by the time
something gets through them, it is completely transformed. Our thoughts and emotions, especially when
used together, can create a wall so strong that nothing can penetrate it. Like the sun unable to penetrate the
nothingness of the cloud, the outside world and everyone in it can go no
further than the wall of our thoughts and emotions.
But they can move mountains, too. They can plough through solid exterior
barriers and mold our world into a better place, if we choose. They can build societies and bring dreams to
fruition. They can sail through
obstacles of the physical world like a hot knife through butter. They create our entire life and surroundings
. . . out of nothing.
The mystery of the cloud is one of the mysteries of the
Great Alchemist. Learn the cloud with
its formation and dispersal, and you learn the secret to your own power and
role in the physical world. There is
nothing in our world that does not have its roots in the unmanifest, and you are in charge of what gets rooted. There is nothing that we can see, taste,
touch, feel, or hear that was not first an unseen shadow in the unmanifest. Out of nothing comes everything, and
everything must eventually return to nothing.
The true power lies not in the ferocious outer world, that world which
boasts and brags and struts and threatens, but in the unseen planes, in the aether.
