Month: August 2012

A New Eye and an Old Favourite

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

  –Rudyard Kipling

I really thought I could do this. Put in a poem without commenting. After all, I find this to be one of the most motivational poems of all time. Then rereading this, it occurred to me that its pretty masculine in tone. Don’t women have these qualities as well if not more than men. Still Mr. Kipling was a product of his time and I can’t think of many who would read this and  only think it applied to those of us who had the XY chromosome. Still its better to be mindful of these thing than not. It is the unconscious isms that become the most dangerous.
Blessings, G

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Eye-re by G A Rosenberg

 

Quote of the Day – August 14 2012

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”
― Maya Angelou

 

One of the most important things I have learned is how to lose my attachment to being right. If the universe is truly impossible to comprehend more than one part at a time as R Buckminster Fuller said than at most anything we say or think will only be part of the whole therefore even when it is mostly right, it is a little bit wrong. If you like learning, it’s awesome, it means there is always more to learn and a more accurate view that can be developed. Of course the question begs to be asked that if you don’t like learning, why did you sign up for this trip in the first place?
Hmmmm I wonder if there’s a lesson in that. I mean if life in the physical on earth is a school and we chose to be here, does that make all of us humans cosmic nerds? There’s something appealing about that thought somehow. 🙂
Blessings, G

 

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Human By Design by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – August 13 2012 (2)

“Stories you read when you’re the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you’ll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.”
― Neil Gaiman

Not just the stories we read but all the stories we were exposed to when we were younger whether they were television, movie, comic books or I guess more and more often video games. We carry those memes inside of us. That can become pretty scary when you realize how much the media is controlled and how many people blindly use the television as an electronic baby sitter.  But I digress which means it might be another blog topic somewhere down the line. I know it freaks me out when I discover I’ve been whistling the theme song to the Monkees or Scooby-Doo or Mr. Ed and then I realize I can remember every word despite the intervening 30-40 (sometimes very) odd years. I was lucky. My parents put up with and indulged my reading habits so I became exposed to anything and everything but mostly things that involved myths and legends from different countries, comics and other heroic legends and on television the ouvre of Sid and Marty Crofts (H R Puffnstuff, the Bugaloos, Lidsville, wow they had some serious psychedelics there) In a way so much of who I am now was generated by those stories. I’ve tried to expose my son to as wide a range of influences as possible with the result that even tho he is at the age of ultimate conformity, he still very singular and very individualistic.
What stories did you grow up with and how did it shape your life?
Blessings, G

 

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Guardians by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – August 13 2012

“Of all the frictional resistances, the one that most retards human movement is ignorance, what Buddha called ‘the greatest evil in the world.’
The friction which results from ignorance can be reduced only by the spread of knowledge and the unification of the heterogeneous elements of humanity. No effort could be better spent.”
– Nikola Tesla

I’ve been listening to William Shatner cover songs all day and going to see Macbeth (or should I say ‘the Scottish Play’ for are we not all actors, especially when we act according to our natures) tonight so am feeling a bit well bloody minded? Nah just feeling the world and hopefully it is a pleasant feeling for us both.
Ignorance can be tricky. We all have areas of ignorance and have so much trouble admitting that fact so often… I don’t get why. I mean ignorance enlightened can feel as good or almost as good as sex in the right situation. When all of a sudden something is understood that wasn’t before, it’s orgasmic or at least i feel that way.
Blessings, G

 

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Geom by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – August 12 2012

“If only everyone could know and live with their inner craziness. Would the world be a worse place for it? No, people would be fairer and happier.”
―Paulo Coelho

 

I believe we all have a little bit of craziness in us. Quite often it is where our creativity lies and the more we can channel it, the better we can express ourselves. Far too often we tend to repress it and become envious of people who let theirs have freer reign.  Do we fear our crazy because we feel that once expressed the genie cannot be put back into the bottle? Can we let our freak flag fly knowing that we can choose the time, place and circumstance for it. I believe to a large extent we can at least to the extent that our lives authentically express who we are. I mean we all learned the social conventions game at an early age. As we’ve grown older we’ve realized that not everyone plays it the same way and like it or not some people will think our normal exceeds their crazy. Of course most often they are the ones who tend to run into difficulties at a later stage in life with problems either physical or emotional due to suppression of their authentic selves. At the very least their lives tend to have the colour range of a watercolour left in the rain for too long. Far better from my standpoint anyway to live authentically in vibrant colours a happier expressed life.

Blessings, G

 

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Expansion by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – August 11 2012

“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”
― Rumi,

 

Cleverness never seems to get me as far as I would like it to. Oh there’s something to be said for being witty, being quick, having the right answer but in the long run the fastest way to avoid learning at times is the belief that I have all the answers. Thank you universe for sparing me from that at least most of the time. Still I see it surprisingly often. People so convinced they know that they close themselves off to what could be learned from others. I kind of find that self-limiting tho I guess it is a way to have an unchallenged world view.
Blessings, G

 

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Eddy in the Neon Stream by G A Rosenberg

Living Scripture Redux and What the Fract?

Living Scripture

 

We are all living scripture
reflections and statements
of divine being
made manifest
by an act of will

 

Like most holy words
our message becomes distorted
but are gems less beautiful
because of their flaws
or the sky less perfect
when ringed by clouds

 

How differently would we speak
if we knew our words
expressed the whole….
how whole would we be
if our words expressed ourselves?

 

– G A Rosenberg (2010)

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What The Fract?  by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – August 10 2012

“The imagination is the goal of history. I see culture as an effort to literally realize our collective dreams.”
― Terence McKenna

Activating the imagination…allowing people in my head on the monitor to flip through, like Alice knowing that you are all a deck of cards tho I include myself in that and the cards are tarot…combining possibilities and potentialities in archetypal memories…I was asked whether I am in an altered state when I create my art. Answers both yes and know… yes, altered from when I do my day to day living, a bit more drifty and meditative, know in that none of it is externally chemically induced — at least not chemicals i’ve taken in recent memory…Do certain parts of the psyche stay activated once they are turned on ever after able to come aglow not always at desired times but you can’t always get what you want but life tends to give you what you need. Does that work even for those suffering? To be honest I have no idea tho I hope and pray so to the depth of my being. May all beings be freed from suffering as the saying goes especially that which we tend to inflict on ourselves.
Interesting night, A friend is doing a project with the tarot cards and asked me for my input and its like an archetypal mafia, every time i get out i get dragged back in but we do tend to carry our dream images around with us dont we? Containing multitudes but none of us see these multitudes exactly the same way. Excuse the consciousness stream tonight but I decided to let whatever wanted to escape through my fingers escape tonight. Tomorrow perhaps I’ll be back to cogency but tonight we swim in the stream but don’t worry I’ve brought life preservers for the unweary and I vow to leave no man nor woman behind =)
Blessings, G

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In a God-a de Vida by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – August 9 2012

‎”Biographies bore me. I don’t care how insightful a biographer is, no one knows what’s going on inside someone else’s head. Autobiographies bore me, too, because we lie to ourselves even more than a biographer does. Here’s what I think the bottom line is: if you’re looking for truth, try fiction…. I’ve always believed that the lies we use to make our fictions reveal the truth with far more honesty than any history or herstory or life story. ”
— Charles deLint

Tell me a story.

What kind of story?

How about one where we can believe that heroism exists and that love survives and thrives. How about a story about life in a kingdom who’s rulers are just and care about the land and the people. One where in the end people grow and change and noone goes to bed hungry and alone and no one has to worry that their neighbours will hurt them because they can and they take everything. How about a story where happiness exists and can be realized, recognized and honoured?

Oh I see. You want fiction, a fairy tale

No I want a real story about the life that I live in my heart…

Blessings, G

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Opal Infinitude by G A Rosenberg/h5>