Architecture school trained me to think, and to put images of my thoughts on paper, but more important those years at Tulane taught me discipline. In those all-night charettes, I experienced the torturous nature of creative work, and learned the value of patience and perseverance. How thankful I am for that preparation, because the writer, like the designer, must sit ever so quietly, listening with inner ear, looking with inner eye, waiting attentively with his mental net to catch whatever the gods may throw his way. And like the fisherman, we too must have mended nets if we are to be ready when the fish come. I learned then that if we listen, we will hear; if we look, we will see.

The bookstore exposed me to subjects and authors far beyond those of my formal education. Yet, as I fell deeper into that new world of books, I continued to approach those new subjects with my architect's mind. For the architect, when trained properly, is balanced delicately between left-brain and right-brain activity, a minotaur of half-artist and half-engineer. I delved into my fresh, right-brain interests with a left-brain need to find the order, the geometry of meaning in it all. I could not help but bring the critical designer's eye to bear. I had been set up to do just that.

Karmic Tarot was written when I discovered that the structure and order of the Tarot cards generate their meanings and thus their images. The images were created to satisfy the mathematics, the numerology of the cards and their relationships.

The Tarot revealed itself to be a microcosm, a record of the principles at work in the cosmos, a mnemonic device as symbolic record of the metaphysical laws governing our existence. To anyone who has grasped its structure, the Tarot provides a filing system for storing and retrieving the strategic information, the divine inspiration that flows continuously from God to help us along our path.

Led by the bright light that the Karmic Tarot shines on the tricky nature of dualities, I wrote Living the Perennial Philosophy: Journey to the Center of the Self, which identifies and details major duality pairs in order to limit their penchant for throwing us off balance. It is a guide for centering and walking the middle path between the guideposts of extremes, the way so beautifully shown in Taoist and Buddhist philosophy. Expanding on the practices and meditations that constitute Part Three of Journey  may well occupy the rest of this lifetime.