Colours that Crayola Has Never Seen

“My skin is kind of sort of brownish pinkish yellowish white. My eyes are greyish blueish green, but I’m told they look orange in the night. My hair is reddish blondish brown, but its silver when its wet, and all the colors I am inside have not been invented yet.”
― Shel Silverstein

 

Unlimited Potential
We may reach for stars that do not yet exist
or seek mountains yet to emerge from the sea.
We contain multitudes of possibilities
Some which have never expressed before.
What colours are your dreams?
What is their texture?
We each possess unspoken languages
with ideas unuttered
Do we reach for our shadows to create?
Do we seek someone to sew them on for us
or do we let them fly free.
Draw with your many-hued pen
and express
a new being never seen before.
Blessings, G

 

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Multi-ChambreMulti-Chamber by G A Rosenberg

 

Electric FlowElectric Flow by G A Rosenberg >

Longing for the Endless Immensity…

“if you want to build a ship, dont drum up the people to collect wood and dont assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

 

It seems to be out of fashion to love life on this planet. Everywhere we turn, we can discover new reasons why life is difficult and injustice abounds everywhere. There is definitely a lot of selfishness and shallowness and exploitation of others everywhere we look and that can all too easily take the joy out of life. Yet… this world is beautiful and life holds the potential for magick. If we choose to focus on this beauty and the love and see that than we can find ourselves living the old native blessing, “Walk in Beauty” This does not mean that we forget the ugliness or that we fail to move beyond it not only within ourselves but within the world as well. It is a matter of finding that balance and never forget to long for the immensity of existence in all its qualities.
Blessings, G

 

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Memories of Those that Went BeforeNighttime Memories of Those Who Have Gone Before Us by G A Rosenberg

 

Spider Monkey?Monkey Spider? by G A Rosenberg

Matchmaking Realities

“What is life without incompatible realities?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

 

Life is paradox. We seek truth and yet there are so many around. So many answers and they all seem to contradict each other. Even the question of our very identities becomes open to contradiction. Who we are as a parent may be very different than who we are as a child which is very different to who we are as a friend, a lover, a teacher. Yet all of these contradictions are true. Are they incompatible? Well it is a dance for sure. Ultimately tho an integral approach to both our search for meaning and our search for identity (are they truly separate searches, I don’t believe so) pays off well. Taking all of the different aspects of both who we are and what we perceive and understand and finding the larger ways in which they intertwine.
Blessings, G

 

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Electric RibbonsElectric Ribbons by G A Rosenberg

 

Finding AnswersFinding Answers by G A Rosenberg

Integral Quality

A few quotes about quality from Robert Pirsig:

“The result is rather typical of modern technology, an overall dullness of appearance so depressing that it must be overlaid with a veneer of “style” to make it acceptable. And that, to anyone who is sensitive to romantic Quality, just makes it all the worse. Now it’s not just depressingly dull, it’s also phony. Put the two together and you get a pretty accurate basic description of modern American technology: stylized cars and stylized outboard motors and stylized typewriters and stylized clothes. Stylized refrigerators filled with stylized food in stylized kitchens in stylized homes. Plastic stylized toys for stylized children, who at Christmas and birthdays are in style with their stylish parents. You have to be awfully stylish yourself not to get sick of it once in a while. It’s the style that gets you; technological ugliness syruped over with romantic phoniness in an effort to produce beauty and profit by people who, though stylish, don’t know where to start because no one has ever told them there’s such a thing as Quality in this world and it’s real, not style. Quality isn’t something you lay on top of subjects and objects like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Real Quality must be the source of the subjects and objects, the cone from which the tree must start.”
― Robert M. Pirsig

“Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one’s heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. ”
― Robert M. Pirsig

“I like the word ‘gumption’ because it’s so homely and so forlorn and so out of style it looks as if it needs a friend and isn’t likely to reject anyone who comes along. I like it also because it describes exactly what happens to someone who connects with Quality. He gets filled with gumption.

“A person filled with gumption doesn’t sit around dissipating and stewing about things. He’s at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what’s up the track and meeting it when it comes. That’s gumption.

If you’re going to repair a motorcycle, an adequate supply of gumption is the first and most important tool. If you haven’t got that you might as well gather up all the other tools and put them away, because they won’t do you any good.”
― Robert M. Pirsig

 

A friend of mine on Facebook today asked ‘what is quality in thought and statement?’ The word quality itself brought to mind Robert Pirsig’s book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which is a very long response to that very question. After reading the above quotes and considering the question for a bit, it strikes me that there is a definite link between the idea of quality and the idea of integrity. After all what is integrity but a combination of internal consistence, honesty and an examination of whether the integrity holds or whether things have to be re-evaluated. It is easy to rest on one’s past integrity and claim to always hold it yet each day we encounter new things and add on to our knowledge and awareness of the world. Each time we add something to our consciousness base, we need to examine the whole to make sure the integrity holds. The times I have ‘leaked’ the most have been times when I have prided myself on past consistency without examining the present state of things.
Blessings, G

 

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Body and Mind in SpaceBody and Mind in Space by G A Rosenberg

 

Design ElementsDesign Elements by G A Rosenberg

Expression is Key

“You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too. No, I think there was too rigid a pattern. You came out of an education and are supposed to know your vocation. Your vocation is fixed, and maybe ten years later you find you are not a teacher anymore or you’re not a painter anymore. It may happen. It has happened. I mean Gauguin decided at a certain point he wasn’t a banker anymore; he was a painter. And so he walked away from banking. I think we have a right to change course. But society is the one that keeps demanding that we fit in and not disturb things. They would like you to fit in right away so that things work now.”
― Anaïs Nin

 

Ultimately we need to forget what they say and forget societal pressures and be who we are when we are. Luckily society as a whole has been moving well past the stage of being stuck on one career path our whole life and most people now will experience 3 or 4 (or perhaps like me several more than that) What becomes ultimately important is how well our lives reflect our being in every aspect at any given time. The more it does the more successful and happy we are. Yet it takes so long for most of us to realize this. This is the age of being and doing and exploring as many possibilities as we can. Let’s make the most of it.
Blessings, G

 

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Astral MandarinAstral Mandarin by G A Rosenberg

 

Marbled Mandala2Marbled Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Butterfly’s New Dawn

You people always hold onto old identities, old faces and masks, long after they’ve served their purpose. But you’ve got to learn to throw things away eventually.”
― Neil Gaiman

 

In the process of becoming, we often have to sacrifice a part of who we are to who we can be. Richard Bach talked about ‘ the butterfly being the end of the world for the caterpillar.’ This sacrifice may seem painful but in reality it is a natural occurrence. The more we try to hold on to our old selves, the more difficult the transformation will become and the more inevitable the change. Oh we may not become what we originally set out to, we may become that person who refuses to change but that was not who we were in the first place and while we may collect irony points, we just delay our full realization.
I will make the sacrifice gladly and will attempt to do it without fear. If I have to choose who’s bitch I will be I’d much rather it be the present and the future’s rather then the past.
Blessings, G

 

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The True HeartThe True Heart by G A Rosenberg

 

InterwovenInterwoven by G A Rosenberg

Study With and Without Desire

“Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

 

Probably one of the most egregious failures of most western systems of education is that of motivating students to learn. Indeed most are based on extrinsic grades rather than the ability to generate an interest in the material at hand. This is due to many factors. One of them is the focus on classical intelligence and the prioritizing of that over artistic, intuitive and or social intelligence. Another is that most school systems have not evolved beyond the 1950’s idea of training people to be factory or office workers, drones in work environments that have long since become outmoded.
Imagine how it could be. People encouraged to follow their passion and to find ways of utilizing that in innovative ways for social benefit and construction. Imagine the increase in knowledge that becomes possible when one explores one’s passion.
Blessings, G

 

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MythMythos by G A Rosenberg

 

Orange FlameOrange Flame by G A Rosenberg

Of Stories Told and Untold….

“The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

 

If a story exists but is not communicated does it still hold meaning? Each of us live our stories every day and yet if there is no expression of self in our lives, no way in which we communicate our story than what meaning is gained by it? To me, each tale I hear communicated, each life in which I somehow share whether by talking with people or experiencing their art, music, writing enriches not only me but spreads out in ripples with everything I share. For to experience someone else’s story is to make it part of our own story and part of our being. This in turn even if it is not on a conscious level gets communicated by me in my own art, writing and speech. Perhaps it will only be a turn of phrase, perhaps a colouration of mood yet my expression becomes touched by everything that has touched me. We live in a web of interconnection. With the internet our stories become spread even wider and more pervasive to the point that we tangentially touch almost every other story in the world.If we have but the perspective to appreciate it.
Blessings, G

 

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By the Moon's LightMoonlit by G A Rosenberg

 

FirefallFirefall by G A Rosenberg