“Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.”
― e e Cummings
Learning to trust a heart that has tended to doubt itself can be a challenge. I know myself to be constant in my inconsistency and will full and flighty in equal measures with little regard for timing. Yet I have been learning to accept the moment for what it is and work with what is at hand. Each challenge met builds my confidence even if the meeting does not go according to plan. Perhaps that gives me more to work with. I may procrastinate through a storm and take forever to reach my point yet on so many levels I persist. I don’t know with any certainty what tomorrow may bring but more and more I have been learning to trust both my present and my presence. If I can show up for whatever may be than I can make it through anything.
Blessings, G
“The simple fact is that we live in a world of conflict and opposites because we live in a world of boundaries. Since every boundary line is also a battle line, here is the human predicament: the firmer one’s boundaries, the more entrenched are one’s battles. The more I hold onto pleasure, the more I necessarily fear pain. The more I pursue goodness, the more I am obsessed with evil. The more I seek success, the more I must dread failure. The harder I cling to life, the more terrifying death becomes. The more I value anything, the more obsessed I become with its loss. Most of our problems, in other words, are problems of boundaries
and the opposites they create.”
― Ken Wilber
Whenever we describe something, we create its opposite. If that woman is beautiful then we are saying something else is not in relation to her. If we call a nation or a people free than we are saying that others are not in comparison. Thus we build walls and we fight for them…We seem to often to see in opposites, binary on/off switches where I tend to believe that most things are continuums, sliding scales that all fit on with very little at either end of the scale. To see in binary, means far too often having a preference..good/evil, left/right, black/white. In a universe of infinite colour it seems strange to want to fight for just one. I would rather experience the full range of almost any continuum. If this one life is but one act among many, than surely we are meant to have almost every type of experience and preference there is, the better to grow our souls. Perhaps I become a bit obsessed with understanding and perhaps preferences are hardwired into the package. Maybe so, but I find that the more I see things from a point of view of preferences rather than absolutes, the less I find myself in opposition.
Blessings, G
“The best teacher is experience and not through someone’s distorted point of view”
― Jack Kerouac
Each moment is an experience. We interact with others or with just ourselves and the potential for learning or hitting that sweet spot of connection with the all is ever present. It’s true that there are distortions in any medium. We talk about ourselves with fading memory with viewpoints half formed and inexact forms of communication. The surprise lies not in the fact that we misunderstand what we hear but that communication happens at all. Yet it does which to me means on some level we must want to communicate. We want to share our lives as clearly as possible and we want to feel the sharing of others. Yet when that sharing is inauthentic we know it.
One of the things I pray for is the ability to be as clear and open as it is possible for me to be in my writing, speech and perception. In that way, each person’s experience becomes part of my tapestry and I can share in theirs.
Blessings, G
“Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it.”
― Ram Dass
Stepping back
Step back from my body
I witness the pain
witness the discomfort
and the pleasure
from this vantage
they are one and the same
sensations across the skin
Step back from emotion
love, sorrow, rage
again one and the same
weather patterns across a landscape
so much bigger and smaller than myself
Step back from my thoughts
that ever shifting pattern
given colour by my feelings
beliefs, whims, notions, insights
I step back and watch the play unfold
at once player and audience
improving wildly yet knowing
it is but pantomime
the witness sees all
knowing this life
to be but one act
in an eternal storyline….
— G A Rosenberg
“If you stumble about believability, what are you living for? Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?”
― Yann Martel
Hard to believe my life got so good
Hard to believe I’m trying
Hard to believe I’ve lasted this long
Hard to forget my crying
I used to find my beliefs
blossoming like some flower
Then they left me one by one
felt like I rented by the hour
It’s hard to have faith
in anything, when faith
leaves you bleeding
It’s not so much a high ideal
that fed this junkie’s needing
I was that clown
that aimless fool
who wandered from sect to sect
but too much sects
leaves one unimpressed
till none could have affect
I finally gave up
stopped searching outside
myself for deeper truth
Needing to believe
in someone else
insecurities of youth
Inside myself
the universe
connection at the core
A deeper light
A deeper love
than any I’ve known before
— G A Rosenberg
“A good traveller is one who knows how to travel with the mind.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson
I’ve always journeying
When not going from place to place
physically
I travel with my heart
and I travel with my mind and spirit
looking for the unknown
the new thought
the new flavour of emotion
the new awareness
I move with the wind
I guess I’m restless that way
I try to travel light
no more preconceptions than I can carry easy
and I eat what’s offered
enjoying the kindness of strangers as I go
Eventually when I’ve gotten the feel of the place
or the thought or the outlook
I feel the call of the wind
and I grab the next train of thought
to someplace new…
-G A Rosenberg
“Think as I think,” said a man, “or you are abominably wicked; you are a toad.” And after I thought of it, I said, “I will, then, be a toad.”
― Stephen Crane
The Lazy Man’s Guide to Avoiding Thought
A) Find a group of people to identify with. (i.e., moral majority, the million mother’s, GLBTQ, women, men, christian, jewish, the list goes on)
B) When someone disagrees with you about anything… dismiss what they say as an attack against the group you belong to.
The simple method above will save you hours of time that would otherwise be spent in open-minded consideration of ideas and self-examination. It will also enable you to befriend any number of similarly minded people who will never offer you challenge or an inconvenient opportunity for growth.
Blessings, G
“Mankind is divided into two basic sorts: those who find the unknown future threatening … and those who find it thrilling. The rupture between those two sides has been responsible for most of the bloodshed in history.”
― Spider Robinson
I love to experience new things. Whether it be food or drink I’ve never tasted, places I’ve never seen, or ideas I’ve never encountered, I embrace them all. I know that I am not unique in this but I also realize that other people experience life much differently. Their mental maps have many unexplored areas marked “Here there be dragons” and they stay away assiduously. Perhaps it is because their lives are so comfortable that they have no desire to risk upsetting the apple cart. On the other hand perhaps it is because their previous encounters with the unknown proved to be upsetting. Perhaps it is for another reason altogether. I prefer to be like James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen who will “taste any drink once” I long to taste the adventure that is life and find some form of adventure in each new day. The best thing about this love of adventuring is that I realize no matter how much I experience in this lifetime, it is but a speck among infinite possibility. Here’s to adventure.
Blessings, G
Universal Eye by G A Rosenberg 
