Month: May 2013

Strange Child Dreams

“Don’t start brooding about that, too,” she says. “Everybody’s got a piece of stranger inside them. It’s what lets us surprise ourselves and keeps things interesting.”
— Charles de Lint

 

Stranger Self
Shadow self
Part of me left on the shelf
hidden back on the rack
behind that old paper stack
The part of me I never knew
the part of me I outgrew
so I had thought
so I was taught
tho the Dreamer has come through

 

When I was a kid, there were very few things I was closed off to. At night I would have visions and dreams and speak to all manner of beings. Was it in my imagination? Perhaps tho quite often the dreams would end up coming true in ways that were to surprise me.
Not all the visions were comforting ones. I dreamed my parents divorce way before it happened. Some of the dream beings I would talk to were a bit intimidating. As kids we take it all in and don’t look so much at good and bad, positive and negative as much perhaps as calming and frightening.
Still, at a certain point those visitations went away. Oh I still get some interesting answers tho the channels are not quite as clear as they once were tho clearer than they’ve been in years. Imagine tho how great it would be to open up the way we did when we were kids while keeping the experience, knowledge and wisdom we’ve gained since…
Blessings, G

 

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Shadow PoolShadow Pool by G A Rosenberg

 

Yes One Nears InfinityYes One Nears Infinity by G A Rosenberg

Curling Words of Smoke

 

 

“When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing.”
― Virginia Woolf

 

It’s fascinating  searching through quotes about language and discovering example after example of brilliant wordsmiths who mistrusted the tools of their trade. Perhaps mistrust is not the correct word. Perhaps its that they realized the inherent limitations of language that so often can become arbitrary and what good craftsman does not? Then once we realize the limitations of the tool we see just how far we can stretch to transcend those limitations.

 
Virginia Woolf in the above quotes feels that without her words she is nothing and yet isn’t that nothingness, that space between words where true creativity comes from? Tho it does sound like a pretty awesome meditation, visualizing our words and thoughts curling like rings of smoke and then dissipating leaving us in stillness..
Blessings, G

 

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Mindfield 6Mindfield by G A Rosenberg

 

Flowers and FlamesFlowers and Flames by G A Rosenberg

Having words

 

All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.”
― Ernest Hemingway

 

It seems I’ve been writing quite a bit lately on the subject of map making. What is a map after all but a symbolic representation that tells us where we are.  What then are words? Don’t we use words as a symbolic representation to describe where we are as well?
We abuse words even more than we abuse other mapping tools. One of the largest ways in which we abuse words is by assuming that everybody who we speak to uses the same meaning for each word that we do even when the evidence starts racking up that this is simply not the case. I have seen so many arguments that derived from people using the same word or words yet they both seemed to come from separate dictionaries. At least a few times when I’ve pointed this out to people rather than focus on establishing a common meaning for the term so that debate or discourse was even possible, the people involved focused on who was using the word ‘more correctly’ Being right had become more important than communication.
Still despite this problem, many people do communicate. Sometimes it is just with a hand offered or a smile exchanged but nothing is more beautiful than the sound of two people conversing in harmony.
Blessings, G

 

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Guarded IdyllGuarded Idyll by G A Rosenberg

 

SpikedSpiked by G A Rosenberg

Me and My Shadow

 

“the abyss you stare into and that stares back at you is your reflection in the mirror – we all have it – that shadow self – that dark heart…”
― John Geddes

 

Do I accept my shadow or do I fear it? Do I turn away from the dark thoughts, the anger, the weirdness or do I watch it flow through. I know what happens when I try to repress these feelings, deny them in myself. There is only so long you can hold the lid down on something before it expresses itself in undesired ways, better to express or at least acknowledge the existence of anger or sorrow or lust or any of the things that make me uneasy. It’s amazing how fast they dissipate once I admit they are there.
How do you handle your shadow self?
Blessings, G

 

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Butterfly Night LandingButterfly Night Landing by G A Rosenberg

 

Netted MandalaNetted Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Beyond Opposites

 

“Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.”
― Hermann Hesse

 

Where are your lines? Where are your boundaries? Where is it that you demarcate between what is something you believe in and what is not? What defines you? Have you ever blurred the line, even for a moment and pretended you believed something else, that you are someone else as so many of us define ourselves by what we believe.

I enjoy stretching myself. I talk to someone new and I try to imagine what its like to see the universe as they see it. I ask questions and learn and I find myself falling into their reality. Oh quite often I’ll find it to be a garment that doesn’t quite fit but the wearing of it has given me something precious and I can now remember what it was like. It has made a permanent impression on how I will see things from now on and when I talk to my friend from that point on (and when you have shared something as intimate as a reality, how can you not be friends?) it will be with a greater understanding of where they are coming from. Of course they may be evolving also so perhaps once again I’ll dive in and learn.
Blessings, G

 

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That Was Just A DreamThat Was Just a Dream by G A Rosenberg

 

Ra Hoor KhuitRa Hoor Khuit by G A Rosenberg

Tarot Post – King of Wands

King of Wands (Fire of Fire)

KIng of Wands (N)King of Wands (Reimagined) by G A Rosenberg

Lead with passion’s grace
Mastery of the fire
tempers rulership

 

Come join me
You know your way will fail
while mine is glorious!
I will create our futures
and blaze a wide trail
doing things in ways
No one else has conceived of.
Let’s go!
the quest awaits
and yes there’ll be danger
but we’ve seen worse
Are you coming or not?

 

The suite of Wands deal with force-creative, spiritual, and vital and are associated with the element of Fire. Kings are the leaders, the shakers, the initiatory force or person that get things moving and are associated with the element of Fire. The King of Wands is someone who will gladly sweep you along in his path. He will pull you along on adventure after adventure and after you encounter him you will see life in a totally different way. He is a leader and wants everyone to come along on his journey. You may easily find yourself consumed by his intensity. He may not follow the adventure through to the end or want to stick around very long before beginning a new endeavour. His inspiration is likely to be in the area of spirituality, teaching, challenging and infuriating those he encounters with both his brilliant insights and his brutal putdowns of those with whom he disagrees.At his worst, the King of Wands can be quite intolerant of the views of others with a cruel and bigoted streak. Despite these tendencies tho, the King of Wands is difficult to dislike as we all tend to be drawn towards his bright flame.

 He has amazing ideas even if he hasn’t laid the groundwork for them and lacks the steadfastness to follow them through to the end. He will be on to something else fast enough.

Astrological Correspondence: 21° Scorpio – 20° Sagittarius Elemental: Fire of Fire
The Court cards according to the Golden Dawn among other sources have a corresponding influence that goes from the third decan of one sign through the second decan of the next.
Thus the King of Wands has a Scorpio influence that gives him his strong will and generous and caring nature that tempers his Sagittarius love of adventure and impetuosity.
The King of Wands therefore will care deeply about whatever adventure he is currently engaged in and then in a lightning flash will switch to another endeavour of which he is equally passionate about.

 

I Ching Correspondence – 51) Zhen – Taking Action / The Arousing (Thunder) –

___ ___
___ ___
_______
___ ___
___ ___
_______

 

The trigram for Thunder is doubled. This hexagram represents the energetic older son who powerfully seizes the reins of power. Thunder when its doubled doubles its energy. Tho the sound may startle, it is a temporary fear that fills us with joy as it passes, the equivalent of the universe jumping out from behind a corner and yelling “BOO!”. How many of us were told as little kids that when we heard thunder it was the angels bowling. My sister and I would gleefully call out whenever we heard something loud enough to be a strike. Sometimes in order to accept the new, we must first be shocked out of our complacency with the way things have been. After the shock, we need to take stock and see how our perspective has changed before continuing onwards.

 

Quite often when the King of Wands shows up in a reading, it refers to someone who is very creative and intense and who carries us along in his (or her) wake. It may also mean that these are qualities that we need to find within ourselves during this period of our lives. This energy is visionary and conceptual rather than detail oriented. If this refers to a person in our lives, it may be someone who is expecting us to take care of the details while they do the creative work.

 

When the King of Wands shows up reversed, we may be encountering someone who cannot see beyond their own vision. They may be selfish, greedy, bad-tempered and bigoted not wishing to either share credit or see value in the ideas of others. It may also mean that we have temporarily lost sight of our objectives and are not listening to others.

Witnessing Thoughts

 

“I’m simply saying that there is a way to be sane. I’m saying that you can
get rid of all this insanity created by the past in you. Just by being a simple
witness of your thought processes.

It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts, passing before you.
Just witnessing, not interfering not even judging, because the moment you
judge you have lost the pure witness. The moment you say “this is good, this
is bad,” you have already jumped onto the thought process.

It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once
the gap is there, you are in for a great suprise, that you are not the mind, that
you are the witness, A watcher.

And this process of watching is the very alchemy of real religion. Because as
you become more and more deeply rooted in witnessing, thoughts start
disappearing. You are, but the mind is utterly empty.

That’s the moment of enlightenment. That is the moment that you become for
the first time an unconditioned, sane, really free human being.”
― Osho

 

Letting thoughts go by, watching them without judgement and if I judge then letting that go too. Otherwise we get into a loop of judgement – no evaluation just watching the flow, the go, the know…Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, the hole down which we spill, chill, will, not the want will but a call to the true self, and always love, prem, cosmic crazy glue that sticks us together with everything else, yet is there anything else? yes on this level we differentiate tho we’re all part of something greater, like the U2 song one but we’re not the same, sane i’ve given up worrying about that long ago, very few worries these daze, letters flow, mind flow watching my thoughts, words on the screen of mind, no mind never mind…
Blessings, G

 

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OcclusionOcclusion by G A Rosenberg

 

ShieldShield by G A Rosenberg

Journey to Forgiveness

“It’s not an easy journey, to get to a place where you forgive people. But it is such a powerful place, because it frees you.”
― Tyler Perry

 

I know many people who had very painful childhoods. Either mistreated or neglected by their parents or others, they carried pain around with them for years. I don’t mean physical pain of course but those emotional scars that make intimate  connections with others so difficult. They know the cause of their problems but in many cases they are unable or unwilling to do the work necessary to get past this, Most often because they have  not yet learned to forgive.

Many of them will say they have forgiven their parents or others whom they identify as their victimizers. Many will say forgiven but not forgotten. They then will recount at length painful event after painful event in which they were the victim perpetuating both their role and reinforcing the memory adding yet one more crime to be forgiven, one more link in the chain that connects them to their past. Sometimes there is not even an external person whom we hold responsible but ourselves. This was my situation for years.

Forgiving is difficult. It means using our compassion to put ourselves into the heads of someone we’ve feared, hated or both for years and understanding why the do what they do. It means taking responsibility for our present and realizing that that was then, this is now and we are not going to let our past or the people in it keep us from having the kind of present and future that we deserve. Those are the true first steps to our liberation.
Blessings, G

 

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Masque2Masque by G A Rosenberg

 

Rippling SpiralsRippling Spirals by G A Rosenberg