Month: June 2012

Quote of the Day – June 25 2012

“The you that you think of as you (and that thinks of you as you, and so on) is not you, it’s just the character that the underlying truth of you is dreaming into existence. Enlightenment isn’t in the character, it’s in the underlying truth.”
–Jed McKenna

Compare this to:

“Perspective – Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you’re forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that.”
–Richard Bach

Sometimes its so easy to get caught in our lives like a fly on a fly strip. We take things so very seriously. We forget that the play’s the thing and we are here to work things out, experience it. We find ourselves in relationships with kids and it becomes so easy to believe that that is us. When things go wrong, we bemoan our fates or at least I do and have…I feel glad that I can also shift perspectives..eventually and realize it is all an act. Funny I have done the same thing in parenting moments with Zev. I start out by giving him a talking to and then at some point we both realize that father and son are roles we are playing and we start smiling. Then the talk resumes but at a much more comfortable level.

I have also fallen prey to the opposite effect. Getting so into trying to live the underlying reality that I forget that quite often the people around me are taking things a lot more seriously than I am. That can as I’ve realized in others and myself can come off as quite insufferable. So I strive for balance and hope one day to achieve it in this as in so many other things. At this point I figure the point of balance will probably come about five minutes before I leave this body. Perhaps that’s the way it should be.
Blessings, G

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Fire Nymph by G A Rosenberg

Radiating Spectrum by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – June 24 2012

“And if I claim to be a wise man
It surely means that I don’t know”
— Kansas, Carry On My Wayward Son.

and sometimes my own ignorance screams at me way too loudly and comes thru no matter how much perspective I give.
Knowing without Knowledge
Knowledge without knowing
and the I don’t know cries out very loudly
At least I am not enough of a liar to ever get to
I don’t care…

Morning Glories

We started out to build a garden
Now all we have’s the weeds
you’re growing like a wild flower
and I don’t have the seeds
you’re taking all the sunshine
you’re cutting off my air
Can I have just a drop of water
I cry out in despair

I thought you were an orchid baby
gave you my love to grow
turns out you’re more like morning glories
now I’ve nothing to show
Can we weed our garden please
both have room to expand
I didn’t think i’d need to be transplanted
that wasn’t in my plans
If we both were roses lover
then we’d intertwined
support each other in our journey
it would be both yours and mine
perhaps i never realized
that the garden belonged to you
I need to die or find some sunshine
and start to grow anew.
— G A Rosenberg

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Window by G A Rosenberg

Chaotic Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – June 23 2012

“When you’re touched by magic, nothing’s ever quite the same again. What really makes me sad is all those people who never have the chance to know that touch. They’re too busy, or they just don’t hold with make-believe, so they shut the door without really knowing it was there to be opened in the first place.”
― Charles de Lint

People who have opened themselves to magic stand out by a mile. They tend to see the magic in everything and many of them are able to touch it and harmonize with it. Today I watched a friend of mine start toning with the whining sound of a bus driving by. He matched and harmonized and I can imagine him doing much the same with the babble of a brook or the whirring of mosquitos. For that moment tho he was touching magic. Funny how it comes from both within and without.

Touching magic isn’t difficult. It’s a matter of paying attention and noticing what’s around you and honouring it in grass and field, tree and street light, anywhere and most important understanding that the same force flows within all of us.

Blessings, G

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Honouring the Tree by G A Rosenberg
Missile Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – June 22 2012

“Reality is whatever you can get away with. If you can’t get away with it, it’s not real.”

–Robert Anton Wilson

So often we forget that what is going on around us is not reality but is simply our take on it. But what I want to talk about is only slightly tangential to that. I want to talk about ice cream. A friend of mine wrote today something along the lines that God is not colour-blind that indeed he enjoys all of the flavours like a full range of ice cream flavours at Baskin Robins.

 

Everything is part of the whole. Colour blind is such a poor choice of words and yes words matter why do you think such emphasis is put on spell-ing. The problem comes, as he stated, in believing that one colour or one anything has greater value than anything else….
That doesn’t mean we, as humans don’t have preferences.. choosing one thing over another is part of the human condition. It’s when we try to justify our preferences as value judgements that things start going awry and things totally go to messed-up-ville when we start insisting that everybody should share our preferences because they are BETTER.
Forget that noise.

 

Could you imagine going to war for rocky road or persecuting anyone who doesn’t like chunky monkey because you KNOW what They’re like. T. hat doesn’t mean the flavours are the same…or that vanilla is peaches and cream…of course that’s absurd. Yet we tend to have so much trouble acknowledging that there can be other valid choices, other flavours also good that so many of us become Almond Creme Supremacists , convinced that because another flavour is chose, that the person choosing it is inferior in some way. Of course we somehow miss the fact that this is because we doubt our own choices. It’s almost enough to make one lactose intolerant.
Blessings, G

 

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Riding the Eye Way by G A Rosenberg
Coral Spiral by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – June 21 2012

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

 

My son when he was quite young would tell us about waking up before he was born. He seemed to think he was in some kind of control room where he was given lots of options. “I chose you guys and I chose red hair and I chose my grandparents and all of these other things including being a boy and then I was born and I looked down and said ‘Hey, I’m a boy!

 

He seemed to intuitive grasp that we choose on some level the circumstances behind our lives to come including it seems to me when we are born. More specifically  we’ve chosen to be alive during this period of upheavals both political, geographical, spiritual and almost every other way. Even if you don’t subscribe to it being a transition of ages It seems that when the dust settles our lives will look very different.

 

Still as old Gandalf tells Frodo, since this is the hand we’ve either dealt ourselves or that has been dealt us (If you subscribe to the idea of Karma than this period by its very nature gives us the ability to balance out quite a bit of stuff). Is it more difficult to be alive now than other periods? I guess that would depend upon your definition of difficult. I can’t see being in Europe doing the time of the Black Plague to be comfortable or born into an oppressed society (of which history has no shortage of). Chances are if you’re reading these words it means you have both access to technology and one would assume time that you can spend not either finding food or shelter or finding a way to gain financial access to the same so that takes care of most of Maslow’s hierarchy right there.

 

Still it seems to me that we are living up to the old curse of living during interesting times for sure. All we can do is navigate our personal waters in the way that works best for each of us.
Blessings, G

 

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and  Some People Just Have Closets by G A Rosenberg

Scattered Eyes Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Road Journeys (Redux)

The Road To ?

 

 

I hear the sound of the open road
It’s calling me to travel
It’s siren call beckoning
as it lies naked spread out before me
entreating me to explore its mysteries
and in doing so
discover myself

 

 

I have always travelled with the road
by thumb, or bus or train
passenger and entertainer
learning the lessons
only to be learned from strangers
Our lives touch briefly
1000 epiphanies gained
in the journey of one afternoon

 

 

You meet spirits on the highway
ghosts and gods
travel with you
giving both advice and warning
I’ve learned the hard way
that its better to listen
The road has a long memory

 

 

I will follow the the music of the road
and dance once more to its gypsy tune
Travel a sacrifice i had to give
and now I must replace
Lifetimes spent rooted
Growing, Seeding
Feeding the fires of others
while mine banked down

 

 

I was born the child of the road
and to it I return
— G A Rosenberg

 

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The Road Ahead by G A Rosenberg (2010)

Quote of the Day – June 20 2012

“A single ego is an absurdly narrow vantage from which to view this–this experience.”
— From the movie Waking Life

I could quote from the Verve and say I’m a million different people from one day to the next but that is a hopeless exaggeration . Still it seems easier and easier to switch hats especially when something is bothering me and view it from a different vantage point.
I’ll give you an example. Lately I’ve taken for me an unnaturally large interest in politics. It’s very easy to look at what’s going on in the world today and become angry and frustrated. I did and several other emotions besides. However when I step back and look at everything as part of a whole that beyond time and space shines like an infinite jewel than everything I see today is part of a large unified beautiful whole. Things will play out as they will play out and things may shift but it is all complete. It helps
That’s not to say that we shouldn’t do what we can to make the world a better place. While that ‘lofty’ balance definitely lends perspective, it does squat for the development of compassion. Nor are those the only two possible perspectives. Indeed it is helpful to shift gears and look at things from the ‘reality tunnel’ or point of view that is radically opposed to your own or one (or a few) in the middle. Little by little the more I have done this the more relative reality seems to me.
Blessings, G

 

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Abstract Lovers by G A Rosenberg

Purple Torch Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – June 19 2012

“People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That’s not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn’t understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you’re given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further.”
― Pema Chödrön

Wow odd feeling of heaviness tonight. The quote is apt for I feel I should repent of something but not sure of what. Odd tho this shall pass also. The witness as always watches behind the scenes and we shall see where the next steps will take me.  Perhaps there is a need to pull back for a few days and see what may come of it

I’m rather fond of the pictue I did this evening of the girl and the tiger on the beach.  I love the beach at night especially with a campfire. Truly the meeting of the four elements.

Blessings, G

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Nightime Idyll by G A Rosenberg
Night Mandala by G A Rosenberg

On Asking Questions

Asking questions of ourselves, or others and the universe seems to be a vanishing skill. Not surprising governments seem to like to keep their populaces dumbed down and unquestioning. In public schools, as classes get larger and larger there is greater and greater emphasis placed on learning the ‘facts’ as presented and kids are told there is only limited time at best for questions.

 

 

We are told which questions are ok to ask and which ones aren’t. News conferences and interviews with politicians and celebrities are vetted beforehand to make sure nothing unexpected comes through that there may not be a ready answer to. If certain questions get asked about government policies even in countries that are supposedly ‘free’ and ‘democratic’, they don’t get answered. Instead the questioner becomes lambasted, called unpatriotic or self-hating. The rhetoric grows louder and louder and becomes more and more repetitious until the original question becomes lost or forgotten.

 

 

In today’s world, the child who points out the Emperor has no clothes becomes silenced before he can utter four words. He, tho at least has the willingness to ask. Please ask questions and demand answers of your government, your organization, your teachers, your friends and your self. Don’t settle for canned responses, open your eyes to what goes on around you. After all, can’t we learn as much from questions as we can from their answers?
Blessings G

 

 

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Mindstorm by G A Rosenberg