Three of Cups

The Three of Cups is first of all the sharing of fellow feeling, and particularly between related individuals (however distantly) on common ground. This is our extended family, which only for the wisest and most understanding among us includes all of life on Earth. This is our fraternity, or sorority, our in-group, of whatever size. It’s where our feelings feel belonging. Thought and judgment, planning and artifice, rules and regulations are all still relatively absent here. Effective spontaneity is the only conditionality. Holding is done with the open hand. When we do impose order on top of this, it seems diminished. Clearly, the larger the group, the more the intimate social affections are challenged and the more trust will give way to precaution. As such, most of our human clubs and conventions are limited or parochial in scale, and define themselves at least in part by the kind of folk they are not. We cut ourselves off in this way from the fuller effects of this card, but at least within the circles we draw we get to know a liberality of feeling and get a taste of what we could be in a better world. The Yijing’s counterpart, Gua 08, Belonging or Holding Together, depicts water spread out over the earth, with the water being naturally or spontaneously drawn to the lowest or humblest place. This anticipates the Daojia image of confluence: the hundred tributary streams paying tribute or making con-tributions to the humblest state. There is neither structure nor force involved here in all of this movement. This is simply gravity and water's surface tension, and might be likened to the cohesive tendencies of familial and familiar relationships. And it might also be applied to holding social institutions together without need of excessive artifice. We emphasize what the Lakota Sioux call in prayer: mitakuye oyasin, all our relations. The standards of quality we have here are organic and spontaneous. We are following our bliss and our hearts, guided by attraction, but there is a real hazard here in being too unconditional with our affections and falling in with the wrong crowd, of adopting and being adopted by what might be called inferior people. Commonness and commonality, even averageness or normalcy, can drag us down to our lowest common denominators. Common ground, origin, interest, or cause is a low standard, not a high one, an inclusive principle, not a noble cause. There is more to the big picture than what like minds can agree on. This should be remembered when we want to turn the human norm into a god or political leader. It flies in the face of the painful half of evolution on earth, the half that makes sure it all works: selection. Our interrelatedness has a big place in the life of enlightened and sentient beings, but ultimately the highest and best use of our humility is still, paradoxically, to elevate ourselves. Transcending the person, getting beyond the person, or getting over the person, may be regarded as one of the main goals here. Transpersonal psychology is concerned with expanding the sense of identity beyond the individual and embracing greater realities, the human family, the web of life, the starry cosmos evolving to study itself, and exploring our more distant horizons, from the depths of experienced time up to the higher orders of trans-human awareness. But having the experience that proves to you once and for all that ‘we are all one and interconnected’ is not a spiritual attainment, nor is it seeing the whole of reality. It is merely a little piece of firm ground to stand on and another experience to explore. It’s a place to get started, and not the final goal of understanding. We gather with our kin and kindred to learn a little kind-ness. And cease for a while from struggle. So this is a place to begin, not an end to our journey. The benefits of community are sweeping: sharing a sense of belonging with others, supportive friends and environ- ments, a sense of fitness to our place and acceptance, without critique, a sense of life proceeding as it should, thankfulness, welcome, comfort, enjoyment, home, and celebration. Few experiences are more damaging to us than having our trust betrayed and this spares us much of that and offers the healing force of an overflow of affection. We just need to remember the hazards as well: the loss of the outside that is being excluded, forgetting that the mind of a group is a fiction, and the loss of the personal center that’s the ultimate source of all mind and all sovereignty.