“There is a balance between seeing the beauty of the world and appreciating it and despairing of its ugliness and demanding change. People who remain ensconced at either end of the spectrum seem a bit psychotic to me”
— Randall Wolfe
I know many people who have made the art of positive thinking into an art form. They insist on putting a positive spin on everything. If you tell them people are starving or about human atrocities they will look mourn fall and talk about how sad those people have attracted that kind of energy and how happy it makes them that they are able to do so.
I also know many people who insist the world is vile and that people are awful. They have all kinds of proof that the world sucks and that the only people who get ahead do so on the backs of others.
Yes both of those views are extreme tho it amazes me how often I see both extremes. I believe that life is an amazing adventure and that we have come here to experience it. Based on what we as spirits need to learn. Some lessons come easy and some we have to repeat over and over and some are just rough. One of the biggest lessons for most of us involve compassion. Sometimes in order to be able to understand another’s pain we have to get inside and feel it for ourselves.
I tend to believe in reincarnation and believe that over the course of all the lives we live we get to experience everything good and bad. If this physical life is but a stage then at one point or another we will experience everything we need to with a huge range of good, bad and in-between. Indeed our very definitions of good and bad change from one period of our lives to another. I would imagine that over the course of many lifetimes, the terms lose meaning all together.
Perhaps that is the point of it. If we look at each experience as just that an experience and a lesson without ascribing value to it, then only the experience and what we can learn from it remains. This is not an easy thing to do yet it is when I have been closest to this viewpoint that I have known the most peace.
Blessings, G
“Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.”
― Albert Camus
One of the quotes that haunts me the most of late is Peter Pan telling Wendy in dismay that she had gotten old. I know that advancing in years is inevitable yet the idea of giving into an arbitrary standard of behaviour, maturity and lifestyle disturbs me. I never want to lose the part of me that rebels against authority and the idea of being an or worse yet the authority does not sit easily with me. Yet being the parent of a teenager seems to thrust me in that position more often than I care to admit. At times it becomes an interesting dance between wanting the best for my son and trusting that when it comes along he will know it even if that means letting him make the mistakes that will lead to that discernment. Part of me envies the freedom he has to rebel in ways in which it does not seem workable for me to do at this point. Each day brings a new lesson and the hardest one of all is not only being there for him but letting him know that no matter what happens I will be there for him.
Blessings, G
“Pain is a relatively objective, physical phenomenon; suffering is our psychological resistance to what happens. Events may create physical pain, but they do not in themselves create suffering. Resistance creates suffering. Stress happens when your mind resists what is… The only problem in your life is your mind’s resistance to life as it unfolds. ”
― Dan Millman
When I first heard the concept that suffering is optional and that it shows resistance to life as it is, I immediately began to protest.
“Sure try telling that to people who are homeless and have nothing. Tell that to someone who is out of work and doesn’t know how to feed their families!”
Then I met people who’s lives seemed so much harder than my own and yet they had a joy that I don’t think I could match on my best days. I met people with death sentences from cancer hanging over their head who wanted nothing more than to tell jokes and misbehave. I learned that it was possible to hurt but not suffer.
It was then that I understood what Bruce Lee meant when he said “Be Like Water.”
Blessings, G
“Happiness, not in another place but this place…not for another hour, but this hour.”
― Walt Whitman
If happiness is a choice
why do we choose it so seldom?
Do we feel unworthy
to take our fill of joy
our measure of infinite bliss?
Has our pain been
such a constant friend
that even as it stabs us
it feels so good?
Perhaps its the drama
we fear if we’re too happy
it will grow repetitive
forgetting that joy
finds ways to renew
and the new and delightful
in the ordinary
I choose happiness
or I have let it choose me
I looked in your eyes and surrendered.
— G A Rosenberg
“I simply feel that a human being must always recognize that he is qualitatively more than any system of thought he can imagine, and therefore he should never label himself. He degrades himself when he does.”
— Alan Watts
I am statements are powerful. When we use the words “I am” in conjunction with any other words, we say that we so identify with the object of the sentence that we use that phrase as a boundary of our existence. I am Christian. I am black. I am female. I am gay. I am straight. I am male. I am a follower of Thelema. Any and all of these may be true but what else are you?
We are all unique expressions of the all. Mapping ourselves in a one to one relationship with any one philosophy, religion or orientation created by another limits us. What’s more we also give others the power to limit us as well. Far too often, we dismiss each other with a series of labels as if to say that once we know that someone is a Heterosexual Conservative we know everything that could be of interest about her. Somewhere along the way, we forgot that she practices the Rites of Spring with a group on the equinox or talk about how she raised a child with Downs Syndrome.
We are all so much more than the sum of our labels. I find that I describe myself less and less with I am statements as the years continue onwards. I am and that is enough.
Blessings, G
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Moon Gazing But Missing the Big Picture by G A Rosenberg
“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
― Ernest Hemingway
My sentence was commuted. Shortened in that way no one could say whether it was true or false. It wasn’t so much that I got time off for good behaviour or bad. Indeed it seems I lacked conviction. Still I will get off with time served in another 25 years or so. I serve time tho I am not sure it returns the favour and why should it? For quite awhile I defied it, refusing to show the maturity that it tried so hard to thrust upon me. I parried the thrust and behaved much as a child or one of younger years. Then the dice rolled and I found myself a parent and all my past came back to heal and to haunt and thus I became time’s hostage. Still its not so bad, time and I have enchained each other..time takes from me my youth and I make it do tricks, slowing down or speeding up and occasionally in my head it runs backwards bringing memories.
Blessings, G
“Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You’ve got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it. It’s like boats. You keep your motor on so you can steer with the current. And when you hear the sound of the waterfall coming nearer and nearer, tidy up the boat, put on your best tie and hat, and smoke a cigar right up till the moment you go over. That’s a triumph.”
― Ray Bradbury
I climbed the hill
in search of the promise
i thought I had to fulfill
It would take hours
still I continued
for there was a tree there
that held a message
with which I was to return.
When I reached the top
where the tree once stood
was a stump
I stood there crying
for how could I fulfill
my purpose
what message could I bring back?
I sat a long time
close to despair
still it was rather nice up there
green grass and warm sun
and a quiet that I could hear
I left carrying
the hill’s serenity
and the message of “Letting Go”
“You want to know what my secret is? You see, I don’t mind what happens.”
— Jiddu Krishnamurti
One of the best lessons that I’ve been learning from my improv class is that of “Yes and…” In most of the exercises, someone else in the class will say something and I have to build on it. The easiest way to do this is to somehow negate what the other person has said and throw it back to them. However it is much more interesting and makes for a better (and often funnier) improv is taking what the other person has said and build on it. “You smell funny.”
<em"Yes its this new musk oil I've been trying. It's supposed to make me impossible to resist, sexually."
This gives the first person something to build on. It also has helped speed up my reaction time somewhat.
Yes and fits in well with Ken Wilbur’s idea that everyone is right. There is no wrong thing to say, we are creating something together. Even if I find myself disagreeing with something that someone says or writes, I can take it and build on it in a way I do agree with. I find this to be a useful skill indeed.
Blessings, G
Leopard Under Strange Skies by G A Rosenberg 
