Month: April 2012

Quote of the Day – April 16 2012

“Is”, “is.” “is” — the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don’t know what anything “is”; I only know how it seems to me at this moment”
― Robert Anton Wilson

So much of what I’ve been thinking and writing about of late seems to come down to this quote. We human beings love to generalize and then stop. If we can peg something down and describe it then we think we have a handle on it.  “Pumpkin Pie is good”,  “Violence is bad”, “Roberta is smart” Once we have these descriptive maps, we tend to fit our reality around them. Even the worst pumpkin pie will taste bette than Brussel Sprouts if we have in our mapping of reality that one is good and the other is bad. Violence done to defend oneself or one’s loved one is looked on critically because everyone knows that ‘Violence is bad’. When applied to  highly relativistic areas like politics, this classification becomes even more fraught. Words that we use to describe our countries or our points of view can come back to bite us in the ass in a big way. Right now in the United States, the government tells us that ‘Iran is bad’, ‘Iran is warmongering’ etc. It is justifying a possible war using much the same language that it used the last time to justify the last war. You remember the second gulf war? The one where we were told that Iraq was manufacturing and stockpiling nuclear missiles and so we should get them before they get us? Only later on, it turned out that that wasn’t quite true. Once the rhetoric was stripped away, there was no proof of nuclear weapons in Iraq.

Now we are being told similar things about Iran. What’s worse is that many believe it without question. After all our elected officials are reliable. Aren’t they?

Blessings, G

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Fractal Soup (Unicursal Hexagram) by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – April 15 2012

“If Spirit has any meaning at all, then it must be eternal, or without beginning or end. If Spirit had a beginning in time, then it would be strictly temporal, it would not be timeless and eternal. And this means, as regards your own awareness, that you cannot become enlightened. You cannot attain enlightenment. If you could attain enlightenment, then that state would have a beginning in time, and so it would not be true enlightenment.
Rather, Spirit, and enlightement, has to be something that you are fully aware of right now. Something you are already looking at right now… We are all already looking directly at Spirit, we just don’t recognize it. We have all the necessary cognition, but not the recognition. ”
— Ken Wilber

What is the recognition that Dr. WIlber is talking about? It doesn’t seem to me that it can be reached through cognition or any form of conscious endeavour but rather by letting go of consciousness altogether :

“It was a marvelous morning and you could have walked on endlessly, never feeling the steep hills. There was a perfume in the air, clear and strong. There was no one on that path, coming down or going up. You were alone with those dark pines and the rushing waters. The sky was that astonishing blue that only the mountains have. You looked at it through leaves and the straight pines. There was no one to talk to and there was no chattering of the mind. A magpie, white and black, flew by, disappearing into the woods. The path led away from the noisy stream and the silence was absolute. It wasn’t the silence after the noise; it wasn’t the silence that comes with the setting of the sun, nor that silence when the mind dies down. It wasn’t the silence of museums and churches but something totally unrelated to time and space. It wasn’t the silence that mind makes for itself. The sun was hot and the shadows were pleasant.

He only discovered recently that there was not a single thought during these long walks, in the crowded streets or on the solitary paths. Ever since he was a boy it had been like that, no thought entered his mind. He was watching and listening and nothing else. Thought with its associations never arose. There was no image-making. One day he was suddenly aware how extraordinary it was; he attempted often to think but no thought would come. On these walks, with people or without them, any movement of thought was absent. This is to be alone.”
– J Krishnamurthi.

In that silence, lies that recognition that Ken Wilber talks about. The awareness that lies beyond cognition.
Blessings, G

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Thoughts in Motion by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – April 14 2012

“It’s partly true, too, but it isn’t all true. People always think something’s all true.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

I dislike sloppy thinking. Especially when it goes on in my own head. It seems so easy to fall into patterns. Many women I know have acted in a certain way. You are a woman therefore I will interpret you as acting this way whether you are or not. Instead of woman, insert any kind of race, creed, culture or any or the other ridiculous ways that we use to differentiate each other. Jewish people like to argue. Irish people like to drink. Left handed people are more creative. Yes sometimes this is true, other times it is laughably ridiculous. What is it that causes us to need to categorize people so that we can predict their actions rather than see each person as an individual ever capable of surprising us? What makes us see certain countries or groups of people as evil to the extent that not only do we then see everything they do as evil but attribute ALL evil to them?
I wish to look at this a bit more. Until then…
Blessings, G

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Imagining by G A Rosenberg

Under Skies of Red by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – April 13 2012

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”
–Rabindranath Tagore

I know well the clouds that Tagore meant. Running late for a meeting. Having to go after the dog that has once again escaped the yard. Unexpected telephone calls from social workers.. Any one of the things that can be seen as stressors. I really like Tagore’s take on it tho and more and more I see what he means. Even tho any of these things can throw me off my schedule, they can also be seen as adding flavour or colour to the day. The more I adjust my outlook to see them in this way, the more they can be enjoyed rather than be thrown by them. More and more I am getting there.
Blessings, G

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Seed by G A Rosenberg

Solar-Flare Mandala

Turquoise Flare Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – April 12 2012

“Don’t forget – no one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell.”
― Charles de Lint

“It’s all a matter of paying attention, being awake in the present
moment, and not expecting a huge payoff. The magic in this world seems
to work in whispers and small kindnesses.”
― Charles de Lint

A pair of quotes tonight from one of my favourite writers,Charles de Lint. Both of them seem to reflect different things going on in my head tho which probably means that down the road a ways they connect.
We all have our stories and our perspectives. No one else has experienced the same life we have and so we each carry something of infinite value. If nothing else, a new exercise in compassion. By this I don’t necessarily mean that every one’s view on everything is as good as anyone else’s. These things are relative.
Everyone’s experience and insight does hold value, its to who, how much and relative to what that’s the rub.

I have always wanted to understand others. I want to understand the joy and pain and life that has made each person what they are and pushes them to become more. I want to understand and heal what stops them. I realize of course that this comes from a strong need to understand myself and overcome my own inertia but more than that. For understanding each person means being aware and seeing those small moments of magic that Mr. de Lint talks about in the second quote. Hmmm, easier to match them up then I thought.
Blessings, G

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Eye Transform by G A Rosenberg

Eye Travel by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – April 11 2012

“O Maker of Mysteries
Who makes every stranger a friend,
Who has given the rose to the thorn
as a robe of honour,
shift our dust again!
Make our nothing something”
— Rumi

This prayer I feel well and perhaps often, perhaps tonight more often than most. Sometimes inspiration becomes quiet. I spread my net and sing to my muse only to hear nothing back but the faint echo of my song. A friend of mine used to tell me at those times that I had a holding pattern happening and that the plane would land when it was time but until then to enjoy the circling lights. Very well then tonight I will contemplate the thorn on the rose and the friendliness of strangers.
When I was a teenager I used to have a problem with the concept of giving roses (or any flower for that matter) as gifts. “Why would you give someone a present that would die in a few days?”, I use to say with the worldly (or so I thought) disdain of an adolescent. It took me years and the loss of a few amazing people to realize that there is admirable beauty in the transitory and some things are beautiful because they do not last.
Blessings, G

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Blue Reflections by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – April 10, 2012

“Go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
— Kurt Vonnegut

Why do we do what we do? Why do we as humans need to express our being either in small ways or large. Perhaps for some it is in the way we dress or the language that we use. Perhaps in what we believe how we pray or who we choose to hang around with. With every breath of our being we find new ways to express who we are. I am grateful for the talents I’ve been given (such as they are) for writing and for art. I love how I get inspired to dig deeply and create something new. Recently I came across a quote that every time we sit down to write something, it is a spiritual act in that we pray for language. I suppose the graphic corollary to this is that every time I open up Photoshop and start messing with images, I pray for aesthetics. I pray that somehow the images and symbols and photos I play with can be rearranged and combined and coloured in a way that will express something of my being.
Even if many of my pictures aren’t quite successful. Even if my words fall short of expressing what I wish them to. At least I can say that I’ve brought something new into the world and sometimes, sometimes, I know I have achieved beauty and meaning. If I can do that once than it is worth the ten thousand attempts. For all of you creative beings, of which I include everyone I’ve ever met whether or not they consider themselves an artist, I am grateful and humbled
Blessings, G

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Spirits of Love by G A Rosenberg

Stained Class 2 by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – April 9 2012

“Everybody wants to let go, but how do you let go if you don’t hold things, if you don’t touch things in full consciousness, with a totally open heart?
–Daniel Odier, Tantric Quest

Looking inside myself and contemplating. How deeply do I touch life? I know that I live mostly in my head and sometimes feel everything is somewhat remote. More and more tho I have allowed myself to feel. I wake up in the morning and feel the sun upon my face and say thank you. I gaze at the sun and feel it charging me. I walk the dogs and more often than not do it mindfully.
I have started to ask objects and rocks for their stories and am listening. More and more I do the same with people tho that can be a challenge. Still there are too many ways in which I avoid the interaction.

What ways can you think of to interact more with life?
Blessings, G

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Weaving by G A Rosenberg

Projecting Lotus by G A Rosenberg

Buddha’s Butterfly by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – April 8 2012

“Transformation means removing the rocks from our garden, the boulders that block our naturalness… when we were kids, we were free and innocent. As time passed, we accumulated the rocks of resistance, piling them up until they become mountains in our minds. Transformation comes not by adding things on but by removing what didn’t belong in the first place. We change by pealing away all the toxic layers, emotional debris, and beliefs that we have added on over the years. We forget that there is something perfect already within us; through years of habit and hypnosis we took a wrong turn, and now we automatically look outside ourselves for something that will fix us”. – Baron Baptiste, “40 Days to personal revolution

I speak quite a bit about the potential for each moment to be a new beginning. Yet how often do I take advantage of it. I am as guilty as anyone and possibly more than most of falling prey to old habits of thought and being, many of which I believed myself to have outgrown. I hear the voice of an old friend saying “See how we are”
What can I remove from myself today that I no longer need? How about impatience and anger? Those are good ones. At some point I have found myself letting what I have to say take precedent over other people’s expression. I find myself either cutting them off in conversation rather than listening and so probably lose out in at least two ways from this. I might be able to figure out where they’re going in conversation but in trying to shorten their route I am depriving myself of learning it. I can change this.
What other changes can we make either by losing the build up of bad habits or developing new ones? This universe is a pretty big canvas on which to draw and we are large as the saying goes. We contain multitudes.
Blessings, G

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Waking Spirals by G A Rosenberg

Universal Rave by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – April 7 2012

“Whenever you are happy, the real source of happiness is within you. It bubbles up. It is just that you are looking for an external stimulus to make you happy.”
–Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

It would amaze me how often people find excuses to be unhappy except that I know that I have often done the same thing. It is almost as if we believe that our happiness has to be conserved because we fear running out. We attempt to hoard our happiness and seek it in strange places. Sometimes when we feel it eludes us we seek to take that of others. I had it backwards for so long.
Happiness is a fountain that is always available to us and one we cap off at our own peril. Only by giving it to others can we widen the flow. Well that and acknowledging it is there in the first place
Blessings, G

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Centre by G A Rosenberg

A Dream of Red by G A Rosenberg